NIETZSCHE BIOGRAPHY

Concentrating on the personal aspects of Nietzsche's life

Return to Nietzsche for Creative Spirits

Nietzsche's life is paradoxical. It is both common and extraordinary, filled with mundane events and a "world-historical task", plagued by a painful illness and illuminated with a "great health". "I am one thing, my writings are another matter." (Ecce Homo, p3 s1) His books were criticized as exaggerated and bombastic, but Nietzsche's measured, polite manner towards friends and acquaintances should not be seen as compensation for the exuberance and passion of his writings. Both are deliberate styles of his spirit and live in paradoxical unity.

Acknowledgements: For this short biography I am indebted to Malcom Brown's The Nietzsche Chronicle and Ronald Hayman's biography 'Nietzsche, A Critical Life'


Age
0 -    1844 - October 15: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is born in a small rural town of Rocken, Germany. His father and both grandfathers were Lutheran ministers.

2 - His sister Elisabeth is born.

4 - His father dies at age 35.

5 - The family moves to nearby Naumburg.

14 - Nietzsche enters the famous Pforta High School.

20 - October: He starts studying theology at the University of Bonn but by the second semester shifts to philology (the study of language and literary texts)
Easter: He refuses to take communion which upsets his mother.

21 - October: Nietzsche transfers to the University of Leipzig to study classical philology.  A pianist and composer, Nietzsche also tries to study music there.
     By accident at a bookstore, he discovers the philosophy of Schopenhauer.
     January: The renowned professor A. Ritschl "discovers" Nietzsche and lavishly praises his possibilities as a future philologist. "One day, I was suddenly a philologist" (EH p2 s9) 

23 -  Nietzsche enlists in an artillery regiment but later is discharged due to injuries from riding a horse.
     All during his Leipzig years, Nietzsche has doubts about philology, seeing it only as a stepping stone to interesting philosophical problems.

24 - November: Nietzsche has his first meeting with Richard Wagner, the famous composer.
     February: Not even finished with his doctorate, Nietzsche is amazed to be appointed as Professor in Philology at Basel University through the intervention of Ritschl. The pay is excellent but he soon laments, "What does this wonderful luck ... consist of? Sweat and effort ... the stale milk of the job's daily monotony."
     April: Nietzsche renounces his German citizenship to become Swiss.  But because of a residency technicality he never becomes a Swiss citizen and so remains officially stateless for the rest of his life.
     In his inaugural university lecture Nietzsche reveals his radical view that philology should be subservient to philosophy.
    April to July: Nietzsche makes frequent visits to Wagner's home, becoming almost 'one of the family'.
    He has a heavy schedule teaching at the university and an associated preparatory high school.  He mostly teaches Greek and Roman classics.
    September: Nietzsche becomes a vegetarian but he gives it up shortly after an argument with Wagner about it.

25 - December: He plays "Santa Claus" for Wagner's [future] wife Cosima, making numerous purchases in Basel.
    January, February: He considers getting a dog as a pet but never does.  Wagner writes to his new friend, "I have at present nobody with whom I can be as serious as with you--apart from [my wife]"
    June: Franz Overbeck, a professor of Theology at Basel, moves into the same house as Nietzsche. Their close friendship lasts all of Nietzsche's life.
   August: He volunteers for the German side in the Franco-Prussian war. The university gives him a leave of absence but because of Swiss neutrality he can only be a medic. He becomes sick while tending to severely wounded soldiers at the front and spends a month recovering at home.

26 - January: Nietzsche applies for a position as philosophy professor but is unsuccessful.
   April: His first book, "The Birth of Tragedy" is ready for submission. The book breaks from scholarly tradition by it's exhuberant style and by having no footnotes refering to other sources.

27 - January: "The Birth of Tragedy" is published. The Wagners are very ethusiastic about it but Ritschl remarks, "clever drunkedness".
   March: Nietzsche's aspirations as a musical composer is set back by a scathing criticism of his music by the conductor Hans Von Bulow. May: An important philologist, Ulrich von Wilamowitz attacks the "Birth of Tragedy" and in octorber students begin to avoid Nietzsche's classes because of the controversy surrounding his book.

28 - December: Awkward visit by Ritschl who reports Nietzsche is becoming unpopular at the university. February: Ritschl further embittered by Nietzsche's wayward style and writings. Ritschl writes to a friend, "But our Nietzsche! --- that it certainly a very muddled chapter... it's remarkable how in that single man two souls live side by side. On the one hand the most rigorous methodology of schooled, scientific research... on the other this phantastic-exaggerated, overly clever, reaching into the incomprehensible, Wagnerian-Schopenhauerian art-mysticism-enthusiasm!... What annoys me the most is his impiety against his own mother, who nursed him at her breast: philology."
    May: Nietzsche begins an intensive reading of books on natural science.

29 - December: More arguments and tension between Ritschl and Nietzsche. February: Nietzsche continues to be plagued by ill health. Wagner says that marriage is the key to Nietzsche recovering
   July: The faculty by a vote of 6 to 4 decides against admission of women to doctoral programs. One of the faculty voting in favor of admission is Nietzsche.
August: There are disagreements with Wagner. Cosima says, "In all, a clear indication that Nietzsche is unable to "toe the line" as Wagner expects".
Vacation in Flims. He writes, "My health has been changeable, so I hope the holidays will be restful and productive. For it is only when I am producing something that I can be really healthy and feel well." (H165)

30 - March-September: Nietzsche works on "Schopenhauer as Educator" (Untimely Meditations I II)

31 - January: For health reasons he is released from teaching at local High School. February: His illness also interupts university teaching.
     April: He proposes marriage to Mathilde Trampedach but she loves someone else.
    June: He requests a year's leave from the university. It is granted, with full salary. Summer: His close relationship with Wagner has all but ended. His flight from Wagnerian anti-semitism is extreme. Later, when Wagner sends him a text of his latest opera, he remarks that he almost wishes his jewish admirer, Siegfried Lipiner would rewrite it.(H195) August: He is attracted to but resists a love affair with a married woman from Paris, Louise Ott. (H189)

32 - October: He leaves with his new jewish friend and scholar, Paul Ree to join Albert Brenner and Malwida von Meysenbug as a community of "free spirits" living in a villa in Sorrento. On the way he makes a detour to visit Pisa with Isabella von Pahlen, a girl he had met on the train.(H191)
   November: Nietzsche's final meeting with Wagner in Sorrento.
January: The group spends their days together, taking walks reading and working on their own projects. There is much discussion about Nietzsche and whom he should marry. The see marriage as helping to relieve his illness.
Early October: To help his eye condition doctors recommend "absolute avoidance of reading and writing for many years."

33 - March: He is relieved of his high school teaching responsibilities.
May: "Human, All Too Human" is published. Wagner attacks the book saying it is influenced by jewish thought. To Ree he says, "All my friends are now in agreement that my book was written by you: for which I congratulate you on its authorship ... Long live Reealism and my good friend!"

34 - Autumn: Nietzsche's illness continues to plague him. His teaching exhausts him.
March: Publication of "Mixed Opinions and Maxims". As always the sales of the book are poor.
May: Submits resignation to the university on grounds of ill health. In June the university expresses regret and thanks and he is awarded a pension of 2/3 his regular salary. His friends discuss how he might get extra financial support. He sells his furniture and his books are stored in Zurich.
August-September: Dispite his illness he keeps wringt aphorisms for his next book. He is helped by his new friend, Peter Gast.

35 - December: "The Wanderer and His Shadow is published. His friends praise the book but only 192 copies are sold.
March-June: With help from Gast, Nietzsche goes to live in Venice. Gast reads to and takes diction from his bedridden friend.

36 - February: "The Dawn" is completed.
July: "The Dawn" is published.
Nietzsche goes to Sils Maria, high in the Swiss Alps. The idea for Zarathusra occurs to him there.

37- January-March: Material originally intended for "The Dawn" is developed into "The Cheerful Science"
He tries a typewriter, invented only 10 years earlier but it doesn't make his task of writing easier and he gives it up.
March: Nietzsche boards a ship for Messina, which he likes but goes to Rome 4 weeks later
May: Nietzsche meets Lou Salome in Rome. She is perhaps the one woman in his life that he has strong feelings for. Lou is young and adventurous. She, Ree and Nietzsche talk and dream about living in Paris together. Lou, years later, says Nietzsche twice proposed marriage to her, but recent biographers doubt it was true.(MB) Ree too has feelings for Lou and together with Nietzsche's jealous, prudish sister Elizabeth a real emotional mess is starting to develop.
August: The Cheerful Science is published. Lou and Elizabeth have a loud bitter argument. Nietzsche is unaware of this. Lou gives him a beautiful poem she wrote and he likes it so much he puts it to music and later publishes it. September: Plans are set for the "trinity" to go to Paris but at the last minute everything falls apart. Nietzsche's mother, influenced by Elizabeth is violently opposed to Lou. Nietzsche learns of the hate between Lou and Elizabeth.
October: There is a last meeting of the "trinity". By November Nietzsche is definitely not going to Paris.

38 - November: Nietzsche spends a difficult month in Rapallo alone. Through letters relations between Ree and Lou worsen. He's so upset with his mother and sister he won't even write to them. At Christmas to his friend Overbeck he writes, "This last bite of life was the hardest I've ever chewed..."
January: Nietzsche swings between highs and lows. When his spirits are high, in only ten days, he completes a clean copy of the first part of Zarathustra.
February: Wagner dies.
Late February to May: Nietzsche in a cheerful frame of mind, his health improving. Renews writing to his mother and sister.
June to September: The mountains of Sils-Maria. Writes second part of Zarathustra.
October: Elizabeth annouces her engagement to the anti-semite Bernhard Forster.

39 He breaks again with his sister. In a letter to Overbeck "The cursed antisemitism... is the cause of a radical break between me and my sister..."[5] 1884
   He goes to Genoa. His health declines and he moves to Nice in search of good weather.
   January: Zarathustra Book 2 is published.  Like part 1, the book sells very poorly.
Acquaintance with Resa von Schirnhofer who says, "Nietzsche once gave me the good advice to keep paper and pencil on hand at night, as he himself did, since at night we are often visited by rare thoughts, which we should record immediately. . . for by morning we can usually not find them again . . ."

40 - June to mid-September:  He meets Louise Röder-Wiederhold who transcribes a number of aphorisms by his dictation. Most of these will be used in Beyond Good and Evil. In a letter, Nietzsche wonders if Louise can long stand his "anti-democratic" ideas and his aphorisms about women.[5] (1885) Difficulties start with his anti-Semitic publisher, Schmeitzner who refuses to publish Zarathustra 4. In a letter to Overbeck: "my writings lie completely buried and unexhumeable in this antisemitic hole (meaning Schmeitzner)

41 November: Nietzsche is delighted to encounter an astronomer, a "snow white old man," making observations who recites passages from Human, All Too Human.[5] (1885)
    June: He begins Beyond Good and Evil.
    August: He spends time with Meta von Salis, Emily Flynn, Helen Zimmern.

42 - November: Accidentally "discovers" Dostoevsky. "...my joy was extraordinary: I would have to go back to my acquaintance with Stendhal's Rouge et Noir to recall the same degree of delight"[5](1886)
  January: He completes Beyond Good and Evil. August: The book is published.
  October: Nietzsche writes the fifth book of The Gay Science.

43 - November: Nietzsche sends a copy of Genealogy of Morals to Georg Brandes, the influential and famous Danish literary critic, who replies, "you are without doubt the most exciting of German writers."[4] (p.314).  A lively correspondence ensues.
   Early April: Nietzsche discovers Turin and is delighted with the dry weather, the people, the cuisine and the beautiful, "quiet, aristocratic" atmosphere of the city.
   April:  Brandes writes that he had been "seized with a kind of anger that no one in Scandinavia knows of you, and had quickly decided to make you famous all in one blow".  He will give a series of open lectures at the University of Copenhagen on Nietzsche's philosophy.  The five lectures are a great success and at the end Brandes is given a ovation by a large audience. In May he tells Nietzsche, "Your name now, I can say without exaggeration, is very popular in all intelligent circles of Copenhagen and known, at least in all of Scandinavia.[7] (p.289)  Later in the year Brandes "completely wins over" the influential Swedish writer August Strindberg, who tells Nietzsche, "I am ending all my letters, 'Read Nietzsche' ". [4] (p.333) 
   Nietzsche is delighted by all this. The rest of the year becomes one of his happiest and most productive years. His health and energy seem much better. He senses approaching fame. He writes 5 books where his usual pace is one per year.  Turin continues to enchant him especially after September.  
   May: He begins work on The Wagner Case.
   June: Nietzsche leaves for Sils Maria. He works on Twilight of the Idols.
   September: He finishes The Wagner Case and the Twilight of the Idols and begins work on the The Antichrist.

44 - January 3: On a street in Turin, Italy, Nietzsche collapses unconscious after tearfully flinging his arms around a horse that was being beaten by it's master. Awaking later in his room, he writes and sends off several strange clowning letters. He is brought to a clinic in Basel. At first his friends think he would recover. " 'He did not look very ill. I almost had the impression that his mental disturbance consists in no more than a heightening of the humorous antics he used to put on for an intimate circle of friends.' ... Gast could see he didn't want to be cured : 'It seemed - horrible though this is - as if Nietzsche were merely feigning madness, as if he were glad for it to have ended this way'. This tallies with Overbeck's feeling when he came to Jena in February: 'I cannot escape the ghastly suspicion ... that his madness is simulated.' " (from Hayman's biography NIetzsche, p. 340-41)

44-54 - His mental and physical condition progressively worsen leaving him helpless and unable to write coherently.

55 - August 25, 1900: Nietzsche dies.

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