Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

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Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, around 1894
Forester's yard in Nueva Germania settlement colony , Paraguay

Therese Elisabeth Alexandra Nietzsche (born July 10, 1846 in Röcken ; † November 8, 1935 in Weimar ), known as Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche , was the sister of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche . As the sole administrator of her brother's estate, founder and director of the Weimar “ Nietzsche Archive ”, she had a considerable influence on the Nietzsche cult in Germany in the first half of the 20th century.

After the Second World War , her forgeries of Nietzsche's writings and letters became known. She is made responsible for and criticized for certain interpretations of her brother's philosophy , especially that of National Socialism . The Nietzsche image spread by her, however, met the zeitgeist of the time and was largely shared by numerous scholars and writers.

Life

Before Friedrich Nietzsche's mental derangement

Friedrich Nietzsche's sister, who was two years younger than him, was - after the death of his father Carl Ludwig Nietzsche in 1849 - together with his mother Franziska Nietzsche, his closest reference person. The relationship between the two siblings was very close for a long time, if not free from repeated arguments and reconciliation. For a time Elisabeth ran the household to her unmarried brother, who gave her the nickname “the Lama”. Both relationships deteriorated significantly in the 1880s, among other things because Elisabeth joined Bernhard Förster (1843-1889), a German national high school teacher who had been suspended from school service because of his rabid anti-Semitic agitation and who then founded the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay with like-minded people . Elisabeth married Bernhard on May 22, 1885 - Richard Wagner's birthday was probably chosen on purpose - and followed him to Paraguay in 1886, where she was still living in 1889 when Friedrich collapsed in Turin.

Shortly before his collapse, Friedrich Nietzsche expressed himself extremely derogatory about his sister in letters and in his autobiography Ecce homo :

"The treatment that I have received from my mother and my sister, up to this moment, instills an unspeakable horror: here a perfect infernal machine works, with infallible certainty about the moment when I can be bloody wounded - in my highest Moments ... because I don't have any strength to defend myself against poisonous worms. "

In contrast, many earlier letters also show love, concern and affection. To this day, there are different views about the changeable relationship between the siblings. It is quite unanimously agreed that Elisabeth unconditionally admired her brother personally, but had little knowledge of his philosophy.

Editor and mistress of the Nietzsche archive

In 1893 Elisabeth Förster, meanwhile widowed (Förster had committed suicide after the failure of his project), returned from overseas and was faced with the task of building up her own existence. She began to secure control of Nietzsche's work, which she only fully managed to do in 1897, after the death of her mother. In 1895 she received official approval to bear the double name "Förster-Nietzsche". She founded the Nietzsche Archive , which was initially housed in Naumburg and from 1897 in the "Villa Silberblick" in Weimar, donated by Meta von Salis . The night philosopher lived on the upper floor of the house until his death in 1900.

She was the sole owner of the Nietzsche archive. For archival work, she hired skilled employees, such as Rudolf Steiner , who brought experience from the Goethe Archive and was still an enthusiastic Nietzschean in the 1890s, and Heinrich Köselitz (known as Peter Gast), who for many years, so to speak, Nietzsche's secretary was and indispensable for deciphering his handwriting. None of the employees had free access to the entire archive, so that Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche's later notorious forgeries went unnoticed until her death in 1935. These forgeries, which mostly concerned statements about her in letters from her brother, were intended to give her, a woman without academic training, legitimation to manage the archive. She also took private lessons from Rudolf Steiner for some time to learn about her brother's philosophy.

Even though Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, as archive manager, had numerous quarrels in the following years - with employees, publishers, the not trusting Nietzsche friend Franz Overbeck and others - she managed to find a number of respected supporters of the archive: for example Harry Graf Kessler and the Stockholm banker of Jewish origin Ernest Thiel . The famous Belgian architect Henry van de Velde could be won for the representative redesign of the Villa Silberblick. This became a place of pilgrimage for admirers of the philosopher. The names of Stefan George , Richard Dehmel , Thomas Mann , Gerhart Hauptmann and other celebrities can be found in the guest book of the Nietzsche Archives.

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche took care of the publication of the works of her brother, who quickly achieved great fame in the 1890s, of the archiving and indexing of the papers she had bequeathed and, with particular emphasis, of acquiring the numerous letters that Nietzsche wrote to friends and other partners would have. It is thanks to their eagerness to collect, which began at a young age, that Nietzsche is today one of the people of the 19th century whose biography contains the most extensive material. In addition, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche herself wrote a Nietzsche biography in several volumes.

In addition to the above-mentioned forged letters, today she is mainly charged with the publication of a book, The Will to Power . With the collaboration of Peter Gast, she compiled it from Nietzsche's estate and issued it as Nietzsche's main work: initially in 1901, in a greatly expanded version in 1906. This compilation is often seen as the cause of a misguided reception of Nietzsche, especially by fascists and National Socialists . For the National Socialist Nietzsche appropriation, however, other circumstances were decisive, including Alfred Baeumler's Nietzsche interpretation and his selection The innocence of becoming, which surpasses the will to power in terms of political tendencies .

Academic philosophy showed an often hesitant interest in Nietzsche only a decade later. Renowned philosophers such as Hans Vaihinger , Alois Riehl , Bruno Bauch and others. a. stood up for Nietzsche and the Nietzsche archive, also, despite their controversy, for Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Some of them even suggested her for the Nobel Prize in Literature because of her contributions to Nietzsche's life's work . After this did not lead to success, on her 75th birthday in 1921 the University of Jena awarded her the title “ Dr. phil. hc ”.

Although Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and her Nietzsche archive were criticized from the start - she defended herself against this with numerous lawsuits, for example against Carl Albrecht Bernoulli , and in 1907 in a publication Das Nietzsche-Archiv, his friends and his enemies - there was obviously a sufficiently stable layer of nationally and ethnically minded educated citizens who celebrated the Nietzsche cult that they founded. Her past as the wife of Bernhard Förster was not detrimental. Under the influence of her three cousins, Adalbert Oehler , Richard Oehler and Max Oehler , who were active in the archive, she was able to come to terms with the rising NSDAP , even if she admired Benito Mussolini in particular and at least in 1932 still stood out against the National Socialists as a " German national " as Harry Graf Kessler noted:

"In the archive everything from servants to major up to Nazi, only she herself is, as she says, German national."

“Major” means Förster-Nietzsche's cousin Max Oehler , who took over the management of the archive after her death and was supposed to adapt even more to the prevailing politics. Between 1932 and 1934, Förster-Nietzsche received Adolf Hitler several times as a visitor to the Nietzsche Archive.

Later assessments

Even before Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche's death, however, Erich F. Podach had begun in 1930 with the publication of a series of critical biographical investigations that were intended to permanently undermine the Nietzsche myth she had established. Previously, Heinrich Rickert had already expressed sharp criticism in lectures, above all of her handling of the posthumous writings and their presentation of Nietzsche. It shows "that one can be the sister of a philosopher without understanding anything about philosophy". After her death in 1935, new opportunities arose for critical Nietzsche research. However, due to the intellectual climate in the time of National Socialism and then because of the war, this got stuck in its beginnings (so-called historical-critical edition ). It was only with the edition of Karl Schlechta in 1959 that the interventions, forgeries and destruction of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche's works, letters and estate of her brother became known to a broad public. Since then it has been portrayed very negatively in many publications about Nietzsche and the Nietzsche reception.

Shortly afterwards, in 1960, Podach turned against Förster-Nietzsche, which was now often exaggerated, and saw it as " the latest legend ." He accused the numerous former supporters and employees of the archive of their own failure, their inability or even more active involvement Help to divert Nietzsche's falsification. Against the nonetheless persistent trend, Ernst Nolte attested her in 1990 " very outstanding " contributions to Nietzsche's work. David Marc Hoffmann admitted this only with regard to the collection of Nietzsche's papers, but in 1991 saw himself entitled to renew Podach's warning:

"When Nietzsche's sister is sentenced, it is often forgotten [...] that generations of philosophers, philologists, artists, writers, statesmen and industrialists have provided Ms. Förster-Nietzsche with decisive ideological and material support for the archive and thus for the Weimar tradition."

- Hoffmann, S. XIII

Nevertheless, it still seems to be the case, as Klaus Goch wrote in 1998, that Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche is often portrayed as the “sin lama” who is to blame for the “entire historical misery of a failed Nietzsche reception with its fascist ones Distortions “have to bear alone. Goch also says in a biographical portrait that he wrote for a volume Sisters of Famous Men edited by the feminist Luise F. Pusch that we might “gain a new, differentiated picture of her if we ask under what general and special conditions Elisabeth had to shape her life as a woman in a society of men. ”Avoiding the previously predominantly one-sided view of the“ witch ”and“ forger ”, Goch tried to draw“ a critically appropriate portrait ”of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche,“ that makes their strengths and weaknesses, their achievements and their failures vivid. "The women's rights activist Helene Stöcker , who tried to get a differentiated picture of the Nietzsche sister, saw them quite critically (" that there was a lot of petty, conventional, immaturity attached to her ") , however, also stated that one could not avoid the suspicion that, with the vehement resentment against Förster-Nietzsche, perhaps unconsciously, also a little bit of anger that led the pen, that a person of the female sex had been given the right to make decisions and determinations, which according to the old opinion only representatives of the male sex would have been granted. The annoyance that in this case fate had chosen a woman to be the guardian of such an important estate. "

In her biography of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Kerstin Decker avoids the hitherto common oversubscription only as a forger of her brother's texts and as a party member of the right, but after a detailed study of the sources shows Förster-Nietzsche primarily as a strategist with her own goals. In order to found the Nietzsche Archive , she tracked down letters and other manuscripts from her brother, bought them, sometimes using pressure, saved them and sifted through whatever is possible. That was her great achievement, Decker sums up, and no one else could have achieved it. Part of the image of this woman is that she was undeniably close to Adolf Hitler , to whom she even gave her brother's walking stick. But it is also important to note, according to Decker, that she refuted her brother's dreadful image of women and knew how to assert herself in a male-dominated scientific world.

In a discussion of the large-scale political Nietzsche study by Domenico Losurdo , Kurt Flasch begins by stating that Nietzsche wrote many "sentences that his admirers would have to call horrific if they didn't read them consistently." These extreme statements by Nietzsche (praise of slavery , the fight against pity , extermination of inferior and others) could be so Losurdo and Bottle, not, as is usual in the widespread "deleveraging rhetoric", "attributed to its discharge to Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth", for they were in the writings from her estate, some of which were falsified by her, but in the books published during Nietzsche's lifetime. For the Nietzsche expert Christian Niemeyer, these statements by Losurdos, Flasch and other authors of recent times were a sign of a tendency "towards the rehabilitation of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche", for whom he was "an obviously necessary reminder" of her role as "falsifier of the letters and Her brother's works ”. In it he assumes that Losurdo and Flasch are “completely ignorant of most of the facts described below”, but after a meticulous description of the forgeries, he does not go into Flasch's (and Losurdos) main argument.

Works

  • The life of Friedrich Nietzsche , 3 volumes, vol. I: 1895, vol. II / 1: 1897, vol. II / 2: 1904.
  • The Nietzsche Archive, its friends and its enemies , 1907.
  • The life of Friedrich Nietzsche , 2 volumes, vol. 1: The young Nietzsche , 1912; Vol. 2: The lonely Nietzsche , 1914.
  • Wagner and Nietzsche at the time of their friendship , Munich 1915.
  • Nietzsche and his work (together with Henri Lichtenberger ), Dresden 1928.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche and the women of his time , 1935.
  • Numerous newspaper articles and introductions to Nietzsche's works, proven by Peters (1977/1983).
  • Thomas Föhl (ed.): Harry Graf Kessler and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. The correspondence 1895–1935. 2 volumes. Weimarer Verlagsgesellschaft, Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-86539-694-5 .

See also

literature

  • Edith Selow:  Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 273 ( digitized version ).
  • Heinz Friedrich Peters: Zarathustra's sister: the case of Elisabeth and Friedrich Nietzsche. Crown Publishers, New York 1977, ISBN 0-517-52725-1 ;
    • German version (abridged, without sources): Zarathustra's sister. Fritz and Lieschen Nietzsche - a German tragedy . Kindler, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-463-00857-2 .
  • Klaus Goch: Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. A biographical portrait . In: Sisters of Famous Men , ed. v. Luise Pusch. Insel (it 796), Frankfurt am Main 1985, pp. 361-413, ISBN 3-458-32496-8 .
  • David Marc Hoffmann: On the history of the Nietzsche archive. Chronicle, studies, documents . De Gruyter, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-11-013014-9 .
  • Dirk Schaefer: On behalf of Nietzsche. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Lou Andreas-Salomé . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-596-14577-5 .
  • Carol Diethe: Nietzsche's sister and the will to power . Europa, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-203-76030-4 .
  • Christian Niemeyer: “the sister! Sister! It sounds so terrible! ”Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche as a falsifier of her brother's letters and works - an apparently necessary reminder . In: Nietzscheforschung , Volume 16 (2009), pp. 335–355, ISBN 978-3-05-004600-6 .
  • Kerstin Decker: The sister. The life of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-8270-1277-7 .
  • Daniela Kraus: Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth . In: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/1, 2009, p. 237.
  • Nils Fiebig: The fight for Nietzsche. Human, all too human by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche , Weimar 2018, ISBN 978-3-7374-0256-9 .
  • Nils Fiebig: Under Nietzsche's spell. Letters and documents from Richard M. Meyer, Estella Meyer and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche , Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1045-2 .
  • Ulrich Sieg : The power of will. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and her world , Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-446-25847-1 .

Web links

Commons : Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kracht, C. , & Woodard, D. , Five Years ( Hannover : Wehrhahn Verlag , 2011).
  2. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Ecce homo , Why I am so wise, Section 3 (KSA 6, p. 268).
  3. ↑ To the first name: On Thielska Galleriet and in the literature you can find the two versions Ernst and Ernest.
  4. ↑ Harry Graf Kessler, Diary, August 7, 1932, quoted from Krummel : Nietzsche and the German Spirit , Volume II, p. 30.
  5. ^ Heinrich Rickert: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Lecture summer semester 1928; again in the winter semester of 1932/33 under the title "Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, Nietzsche" (Heidelberg University Library, Heinrich Rickert estate).
  6. ↑ Erich F. Podach: Friedrich Nietzsche's Works of Collapse , Heidelberg 1960, p. 11.
  7. ↑ Ernst Nolte: Nietzsche and Nietzscheanism , Berlin 1990, p. 13.
  8. ↑ Klaus Goch: Witch and Queen. In: Nietzscheforschung 4 (1998), pp. 301-317, here: 304.
  9. ^ Klaus Goch: Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. A biographical portrait. In: Luise F. Pusch (Ed.): Sisters of famous men. Twelve biographical portraits. Insel, Frankfurt / Main 1985, pp. 361-413, cit. P. 365 f.
  10. ↑ Helene Stöcker: Memoirs , ed. by Reinhold Lütgemeier-Davin u. Kerstin Wolff. Cologne: Böhlau, 2015, p. 161 u. 164.
  11. ↑ Kerstin Decker: The sister. The life of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-8270-1277-7 .
  12. ↑ cf. http://www.lipola.de/printable/rezension/buecher/die-schwester.php .
  13. ^ Domenico Losurdo: Nietzsche, il rebelle aristocratico. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2002 (German translation: Nietzsche, the aristocratic rebel. Argument, Hamburg 2009).
  14. ↑ Kurt Flasch: And yet he was a destroyer of reason. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 21, 2003.
  15. ↑ Niemeyer is the author of numerous relevant publications, most recently the editor of a Nietzsche lexicon (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2009).
  16. ↑ Christian Niemeyer: “the sister! Sister! It sounds so terrible! ” Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche as a falsifier of her brother's letters and works - an apparently necessary reminder. In: Nietzscheforschung , Volume 16 (2009), pp. 335–355.
personal data
SURNAME Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nietzsche, Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sister of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Skirts
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1935
Place of death Weimar