He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in at the age of Nietzsche died in Nietzsche's writing spans philosophical polemics , poetry, cultural criticism , and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. After his death, his sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German nationalist ideology while often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism ; [40] 20th-century scholars contested this interpretation and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th and earlyst century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism , postmodernism and post-structuralism —as well as art, literature, psychology , politics, and popular culture.


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Early years
Friedrich Nietzsche — was a German philosopher and cultural critic who published intensively in the s and s. He is famous for uncompromising criticisms of traditional European morality and religion, as well as of conventional philosophical ideas and social and political pieties associated with modernity. Nietzsche also used his psychological analyses to support original theories about the nature of the self and provocative proposals suggesting new values that he thought would promote cultural renewal and improve social and psychological life by comparison to life under the traditional values he criticized. His father died in , and the family relocated to Naumburg, where he grew up in a household comprising his mother, grandmother, two aunts, and his younger sister, Elisabeth. Nietzsche had a brilliant school and university career, culminating in May when he was called to a chair in classical philology at Basel.
Quick Facts
In the last decade of his life, he suffered from insanity and died on August 25, His writings on individuality and morality in contemporary civilization influenced many major thinkers and writers of the 20th century. Nietzsche and his younger sister, Elisabeth, were raised by their mother, Franziska. Nietzsche attended a private preparatory school in Naumburg and then received a classical education at the prestigious Schulpforta school. After graduating in , he attended the University of Bonn for two semesters. He transferred to the University of Leipzig, where he studied philology, a combination of literature, linguistics and history.
I have a terrible fear that I shall one day be pronounced holy. I even assume that he removes his shoes when he does so — not to speak of boots. To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not — that one endures.