HIS LIFE
Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in the small town of Röcken, which is not far from Lützen and Leipzig, within what was then the Prussian province of Saxony. He was born on the 49th birthday of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia and was thus named after him. His father, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, was a Lutheran pastor, who died of encephalomalacia in 1849, when Nietzsche was four years old. In 1850, Nietzsche's mother moved the family to Naumburg, where he lived for the next eight years before heading off to boarding school, the famous and demanding Schulpforta. Nietzsche was now the only male in the house, living with his mother, his grandmother, two paternal aunts, and his sister Elisabeth. As a young man, he was particularly vigorous and energetic. In addition, his early piety for Christianity is born out by the choir Miserere which was dedicated to Schulpforta while he attended.
After graduation, in 1864, he commenced his studies in classical philology and theology at the University of Bonn. After one year, he moved to the University of Leipzig, following Professor Friedrich Ritschl who soon became aware of Nietzsche's capabilities. Meanwhile, he had become a close friend of fellow student Erwin Rohde. Both of them were also admirers of Arthur Schopenhauer and the composer Richard Wagner, whom Nietzsche first met in November, 1868. A brilliant scholar, he became special professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at the uncommon age of 24. Ritschl recommended to the faculty board that Nietzsche be given his doctorate without the typically required dissertation.
At Basel, Nietzsche found little satisfaction in life among his philology colleagues. He established closer intellectual ties with the historian Jakob Burckhardt, whose lectures he attended, and the atheist theologian Franz Overbeck, who remained his friend throughout his life. His inaugural lecture at Basel was Über die Persönlichkeit Homers (On Homer's Personality). He made frequent visits to the Wagners at Tribschen.
When the Franco-Prussian war erupted in 1870, Nietzsche left Basel and, being disqualified for other services due to his citizenship status, volunteered as a medical orderly on active duty. His time in the military was short, but he experienced much, witnessing the traumatic effects of battle and taking close care of wounded soldiers. He soon contracted diphtheria and dysentery and subsequently experienced a painful variety of health difficulties for the remainder of his life.
Upon returning to Basel, instead of waiting to heal, he pushed headlong into a more fervent schedule of study than ever before. In 1870, he gave Cosima Wagner the manuscript of The Genesis of the Tragic Idea as a birthday gift. In 1872, he published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy in which he denied Schopenhauer's influence upon his thought and sought a "philology of the future" (Zukunftsphilologie). A biting critical reaction by the young and promising philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, as well as its innovative views of the ancient Greeks, dampened the book's reception and increased its notoriety, initially. After it settled into the philological community, it found many rings of approval and exultations of Nietzsche's perspicacity. To this day, it is widely regarded as a classic piece.
In April, 1873, Wagner incited Nietzsche to take on David Friedrich Strauss. Wagner had found his book, Der alte und der neue Glaube, to be shallow. Strauss had also offended him by siding with the composer and conductor Franz Lachner, who had been dismissed on account of Wagner. In 1879, Nietzsche retired from his position at Basel. This was due either to his declining health or in order to devote himself fully toward the ramification of his philosophy which found further expression in Human, All-Too-Human. This book revealed the philosophic distance between Nietzsche and Wagner; this, together with the latter's virulent Anti-Semitism, spelled the end of their friendship.
From 1880, until his collapse in January, 1889, Nietzsche led a wandering existence as a stateless person, spending most of the summers in Sils-Maria (Engadin) and the winters in French and Italian cities like Nice, Rapallo, Genua and, finally, Turin.
After his mental breakdown, both his sister Elisabeth and mother Franziska cared for him. His fame and influence came later, despite (or due to) the interference of Elisabeth, who published selections from his notebooks with the title The Will to Power, in 1901, and maintained her authority over Nietzsche's literary estate after Franziska's death in 1897.