Friedrich Nietzsche

God is dead

First in 'The Gay Science' (1882): meant as a diagnosis of the culture, not a triumph.

💡 Did you know? „God is dead“ is no cause for joy but a diagnosis: faith has lost its binding force and humanity must find new values.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

'A book for all and none' (1883 to 1885): Richard Strauss made the title world-famous as a tone poem.

💡 Did you know? His poetic masterwork lets a prophet speak: in a biblical style Nietzsche deliberately parodied and heightened.

Übermensch

The human who creates his own values after the 'death of God': often misunderstood and misused.

💡 Did you know? The „Übermensch“ is no master-race figure but the ideal of a person who creates new values by their own strength.

eternal recurrence

The hardest touchstone: live so that you would will your life repeated endlessly.

💡 Did you know? What if you had to live your life over infinitely, exactly the same? Whoever can affirm that lives rightly: Nietzsche's test.

will to power

Not mere lust for domination, but self-overcoming and creative force: the concept remains contested.

💡 Did you know? The deepest drive of all life, for Nietzsche, is the „will to power“: the urge to grow, to shape, to prevail.

at 24

As a classical philologist, before even completing his doctorate: an academic record.

💡 Did you know? At 34, illness forced him out of the post again.

slave morality

Its counterpart: 'master morality': brilliant, one-sided and contested to this day.

💡 Did you know? Nietzsche interprets the morality of pity and humility as „slave morality“: the cunning of the weak against the strong.

embracing the horse

Not historically certain: he spent his last eleven years mentally deranged.

💡 Did you know? In Turin in 1889 Nietzsche is said to have thrown himself weeping around the neck of a beaten cab horse: the start of his mental breakdown.

his sister Elisabeth

Her compilation 'The Will to Power' eased the Nazi abuse of his work: Nietzsche himself despised antisemitism and nationalism.

💡 Did you know? His antisemitic sister Elisabeth managed and falsified his papers: which later allowed the Nazis to misuse Nietzsche.

Richard Wagner

From house guest at Tribschen to author of 'The Case of Wagner'; the breaking point was, among other things, Wagner's 'Parsifal'.

💡 Did you know? At first Nietzsche revered Wagner like a father, then broke with him utterly: the composer became a target of his cultural critique.

Sils Maria

There, by the lake of Silvaplana, the thought of eternal recurrence came to him: '6,000 feet beyond man and time'.

💡 Did you know? Many of his ideas came to Nietzsche on solitary walks around the Engadine village of Sils Maria.

Weimar

Cared for by his sister: grown famous just when he could no longer know it.

💡 Did you know? The pastor's son also composed music of his own throughout his life.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who, with „God is dead“ and the „Übermensch“, radically questioned Western morality.

💡 Did you know? His last eleven years he spent, after a mental collapse, in insanity.