Walking the Tightrope

The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 was part of Otto Bismarck’s efforts to unify Germany, with Prussia as its center of power. Being a Prussian, Nietzsche had been reared in a culture where the military was valued and Fritz seemed to value it as well. “He became an ardent admirer of Bismarck and even a ‘rabid Prussian’ (as he wrote to his mother)…” ( Cate , page 71) Nietzsche wanted to volunteer but was not eligible because of his poor eyesight. As the war continued, however, some restrictions on service were loosened to accommodate badly needed replacements. On October 9, 1867, Fritz’s studies were interrupted by conscription into the mounted section of a field artillery regiment stationed at Naumberg. “You will know that a mounted artilleryman is supposed to learn an amazing number of things. I like the riding lessons best. I have a very good-looking horse, and people say that I have a talent for riding. When I whirl around the exercise area on my Balduin, I am very satisfied with my ...

Bonn turned out to be a dead end for Nietzsche. Intellectually, the primary influence he from there was his appreciation for Friedrich Holderlin . In 1861, Fritz wrote an apologia for this, the most spurned of German Romantic poets. ( Cate , page 27) Holderlin had written a poem on Empedocles . It profoundly affected Nietzsche who wrote: “Empedocle’s death is a death from godly price, scorn for men, world-satiety, and pantheism. The entire work has always shaken me most deeply each time I read it; there is a godly majesty in this Empedocles.” (Cate, page 28) Fritz decided to pursue philology in Leipzig where, at age 21, after his break with the Church, Fritz discovered Arthur Schopenhauer . A letter Nietzsche wrote in 1865 explains: “At home I nestled into a corner of my sofa with the treasure I had found and began to let that vigorous, gloomy genius work his effects on me. Here every line screamed renunciation, denial, resignation; here I saw a mirror in which the world, life, and my...

Fritz adored his father’s music-making. So, naturally it must have been an existential shock to the child when his father died. He records his remorse in very early letters and writings. But, he definitely inherited his father’s inclination toward music in general and the piano in particular. His mother took keyboard lessons after the death of his father, apparently because music was so important to her son. She wanted to offer it to him as his father did. Soon, Fritz was taking lessons of his own. He played after only a few lessons (which were then halted possibly for financial reasons) and was perhaps able to improvise even before that, quite naturally imitating what his young eyes might have seen his father’s fingers doing on the keyboard. His powers of observation were always very strong. In his late teens, a friend of Nietzsche’s tried to introduce him to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde but Fritz didn’t like it. He was more interested in Beethoven , Schumann and Liszt at the time. ...