7 Nietzsche Quotes for Free Thinkers
…and one puzzler
After his death, Frederich Nietzsche’s little sister Elizabeth began to publicize his work but misrepresented the message. Although I wish the man had more sympathy for women, his sister did him no favors.
The two had a convivial relationship until Elizabeth married an anti-Semite. Frederich pulled away — refusing to attend her wedding — then she moved far away and for years there was no contact.
She and her husband, who was deeply bigoted, founded an expat colony in Paraguay but it never thrived. After her husband killed himself, she returned to Germany to find her older brother quite ill and in need of daily care.
She looked after him, and sought to promote his work.
Elizabeth lived to 89, and in her later years joined the Nazi party. Scholars continue to debate the influence she had in promoting Nietzsche as a Nazi sympathizer and supporter, and whether Nietzsche’s original writing had any anti-Semitic leanings all.
Frederich died in 1900 at the age of only 55, after years of suffering from a mental disorder believed to be brought on by syphilis, now considered possibly due to bipolar disorder, meningitis, or some unspecified vascular dementia.
