Friedrich Nietzsche biography
Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in
Röcken, Prussia. Both his grandfathers had been ordained
into the Lutheran Church. His father Ludwig, also a minister,
died in 1849, at the age of thirty-six, having sustained head
injuries through a fall about a year previously. Nietzsche was
five years old at the time of his father's death and was raised
by his mother in a home that included his grandmother, two maiden
aunts, and a sister.
During his childhood he seems to have developed an aversion
to such things as piety, nationalism, bourgeois provincialism
and domineering women. From 1858 he attended the academically
distinguished Pforta boarding school where he began to suffer
from the migraine attacks that were to be a burden to him for the
rest of his life. He was also affected by having poor eyesight.
Pforta had turned out many famous men in the past and was run
along "Prussian" lines of discipline, piety, and hard work.
After (gladly) leaving Pforta in 1864 he studied theology
and classical philology at the university of Bonn he was,
however, turning away from the religious atmosphere in which he
had been raised. He transferred his studies to Leipzig the
following year and this time was commited to the study of
classical philology only. Arthur Schopenhauer's The World as
Will and Idea greatly influenced him during his time at
Leipzig!
Nietzsche was considered to be a most particularly
brilliant student and was appointed professor of classical
philology at the University of Basel at the young age of 24 - at
which time he had not yet been awarded a doctoral degree! When
his doctoral degree was awarded it was actually awarded without
examination!!!
Ill-health forced his retirement from the University post
at Basel in 1879 - his life was despaired of at this time but he
did make a recovery. That being said he himself believed that his
close brush with mortality had, in fact, enhanced his abilities
and deliberately set out to present a culminating view of his
philosophy and perceptions in two works later published as The
Gay Science and Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-5).
In 1889 he suffered a mental breakdown from which
he never recovered to anything like full sanity. The critical
breakdown occured in Turin where he collapsed with his arms about
the neck of a horse that had just been cruelly whipped by a
coachman.
It happened however that, with Nietzsche being affected by
his health problems, his "opinions" were often sought from his
sister Elisabeth who, in response, tended to introduce a fair
amount of her own ideas. It would seem that The Will to
Power (1901) is in fact assembled from various sources
amongst the her brother's writings - the selection being made by
Elisabeth!!!
She also witheld his autobiographical work Ecce Homo
(1889) from publication and published some of his letters after
editing them in ways that altered their meaning.
Friedrich Nietzsche died in Weimar on August 25,
1900.
For some fuller mention of major works please follow the link
below:-
Friedrich Nietzsche
Major Works
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![[Nietzsche, biography]](philosophy.gif)
