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Friedrich Nietzsche biography

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Quick Facts

  • NAME: Friedrich Nietzsche
  • OCCUPATION: Scholar
  • BIRTH DATE: October 15, 1844
  • DEATH DATE: August 25, 1900
  • EDUCATION: Domgymnasium, Schulpforta, University of Bonn, University of Leipzig
  • PLACE OF BIRTH: Rcken, Germany
  • PLACE OF DEATH: Weimar, Germany
more about Friedrich

Best Known For

19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche radically questioned widely held cultural beliefs and is best known for his "God is dead" concept.


Synopsis

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on Oct. 15. 2844 in Rcken, Germany. His family was Lutheran. He was highly educated in theology and philology and became a professor in 1869. He contracted dysentery and diphtheria while volunteering in the Franco-Prussian Wa

(born Oct. 15, 1844, Rcken, Saxony, Prussia [now in Germany]—died Aug. 25, 1900, Weimar, Thuringian States) German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. His attempts to unmask the motives that underlie traditional Western religion, morality, and philosophy deeply affected generations of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, poets, novelists, and playwrights. He thought through the consequences of the triumph of the Enlightenment's secularism, expressed in his observation that “God is dead,” in a way that determined the agenda for many of Europe's most celebrated intellectuals after his death. Although he was an ardent foe of nationalism, anti-Semitism, and power politics, his name was later invoked by Fascists to advance the very things he loathed.

The early years

Nietzsche's home was a stronghold of Lutheran piety. His paternal grandfather had published books defending Protestantism and had achieved the ecclesiastical position of superintendent; his maternal grandfather was a country parson; his father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was appointed pastor at Rcken by order of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, after whom Friedrich Nietzsche was named. His father died in 1849, before Nietzsche's fifth birthday, and he spent most of his early life in a household consisting of five women: his mother Franziska, his younger sister Elisabeth, his maternal grandmother, and two maiden aunts.

In 1850 the family moved to Naumburg on the Saale River, where Nietzsche attended a private preparatory school, the Domgymnasium. In 1858 he earned a scholarship to Schulpforta, Germany's leading Protestant boarding school. He excelled academically at Pforta, received an outstanding classical education there, and, having graduated in 1864, went to the University of Bonn to study theology and classical philology. Despite efforts to take part in the university's social life, the two semesters at Bonn were a failure, owing chiefly to acrimonious quarrels between his two leading classics professors, Otto Jahn and Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl. Nietzsche sought refuge in music, writing a number of compositions strongly influenced by Robert Schumann, the German Romantic composer. In 1865 he transferred to the University of Leipzig, joining Ritschl, who had accepted an appointment there.

Nietzsche prospered under Ritschl's tutelage in Leipzig. He became the only student ever to publish in Ritschl's journal, Rheinisches Museum (“Rhenish Museum”). He began military service in October 1867 in the cavalry company of an artillery regiment, sustained a serious chest injury while mounting a horse in March 1868, and resumed his studies in Leipzig in October 1868 while on extended sick leave from the military. During the years in Leipzig, Nietzsche discovered Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy, met the great operatic composer Richard Wagner, and began his lifelong friendship with fellow classicist Erwin Rohde (author of Psyche).

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