Friedrich Nietzsche (born October 15, 1844, Röcken, Saxony,Prussia [Germany]—died August 25, 1900,Weimar, Thuringian States) was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic ofculture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. His attempts to unmask the motives that underlie traditional Westernreligion,morality, andphilosophy deeply affected generations of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, poets, novelists, and playwrights. Hethought through the consequences of the triumph of theEnlightenment’ssecularism, expressed in his observation that “God is dead,” in a way that determined the agenda for many ofEurope’s most-celebratedintellectuals after his death. Although he was anardent foe ofnationalism,antisemitism, andpower politics, his name was laterinvoked by fascists to advance the very things he loathed.

Early years

Nietzsche’s home was a stronghold ofLutheran piety. His paternal grandfather had published books defendingProtestantism and had achieved theecclesiastical position of superintendent; his maternal grandfather was a country parson; his father, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, was appointed pastor at Röcken 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 aunts.

In 1850 the family moved toNaumburg on theSaale River, where Nietzsche attended a privatepreparatory school, the Domgymnasium. In 1858 he was admitted to Schulpforta,Germany’s leading Protestantboarding school. He excelled academically and received an outstanding classical education there. Having graduated in 1864, he went to the University of Bonn to studytheology and classicalphilology. Despite efforts to take part in the university’s social life, the two semesters at Bonn were a failure, owing chiefly toacrimonious quarrels between his two leading classics professors, Otto Jahn andFriedrich Wilhelm Ritschl. Nietzsche sought refuge in music, writing a number ofcompositions strongly influenced byRobert Schumann, the GermanRomantic composer. In 1865 he transferred to theUniversity of Leipzig, joining Ritschl, who had accepted an appointment there.

Nietzsche prospered under Ritschl’s tutelage inLeipzig. He became the only student ever to publish in Ritschl’s journal,Rheinisches Museum (“Rhenish Museum”). He beganmilitary 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 discoveredArthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy, met the great operatic composerRichard Wagner, and began his lifelong friendship with fellow classicistErwin Rohde (author ofPsyche).

Basel years (1869–79)

When a professorship in classical philology fell vacant in 1869 inBasel,Switzerland, Ritschl recommended Nietzsche withunparalleled praise. He had completed neither his doctoral thesis nor the additional dissertation required for a German degree; yet Ritschl assured the University of Basel that he had never seen anyone like Nietzsche in 40 years of teaching and that his talents were limitless. In 1869 the University of Leipzig conferred the doctorate without examination or dissertation on the strength of his published writings, and the University of Basel appointed him extraordinary professor of classical philology. The following year Nietzsche was promoted to ordinary professor.

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Nietzsche obtained a leave to serve as a volunteer medical orderly in August 1870, after the outbreak of theFranco-German War. Within a month, while accompanying a transport ofwounded, he contracteddysentery anddiphtheria, which ruined his health permanently. He returned to Basel in October to resume a heavy teaching load, but as early as 1871 ill health prompted him to seek relief from the stultifying chores of a professor of classical philology; he applied for the vacant chair of philosophy and proposed Rohde as his successor, all to no avail.

During those early Basel years Nietzsche’s ambivalent friendship withWagner ripened, and he seized every opportunity to visit Richard and his wife, Cosima. Wagner appreciated Nietzsche as a brilliant professorial apostle, but Wagner’s increasing exploitation of Christian motifs, as inParsifal (1882), coupled with hischauvinism and antisemitism proved to be more than Nietzsche could bear. By 1878 thebreach between the two men had become final.

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Nietzsche’s first book,Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (1872;The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music), marked his emancipation from the trappings ofclassical scholarship. A speculative rather than exegetical work, it argued that Greek tragedy arose out of the fusion of what he termedApollonian and Dionysian elements—the former representing measure, restraint, andharmony and the latter representing unbridled passion—and thatSocratic rationalism and optimism spelled the death of Greektragedy. The final 10 sections of the book are a rhapsody about the rebirth of tragedy from the spirit of Wagner’s music. Greeted by stony silence at first, it became the object of heated controversy on the part of those who mistook it for aconventional work of classical scholarship. It was undoubtedly “a work of profound imaginative insight, which left the scholarship of a generation toiling in the rear,” as the British classicistF.M. Cornford wrote in 1912. It remains a classic in thehistory ofaesthetics to this day.

Having requested and received a sick leave, Nietzsche in 1877 set up house with his sister and his friend Peter Gast (Johann Heinrich Köselitz), and in 1878 his aphoristicMenschliches, Allzumenschliches (Human, All-Too-Human) appeared. Because his health deteriorated steadily, he resigned his professorial chair on June 14, 1879, and was granted a pension of 3,000 Swiss francs per year for six years.