Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
3 books in the library
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher, born in Röcken in Prussian Saxony, the son of a Lutheran pastor. A brilliant student of classical philology, he was appointed a professor at the University of Basel at the age of twenty-four, and for some years was a close friend of the composer Richard Wagner, before breaking with him. His first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), was followed by works of growing boldness. Chronic ill health forced him to give up his post in 1879, and he spent the next decade moving between boarding houses in Switzerland and Italy, writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality. In January 1889 he suffered a mental collapse in Turin from which he never recovered, and he died in Weimar in 1900. His sister Elisabeth, who controlled his papers, bent his reputation towards causes he had despised.
