Mick Hartley

Ben Macintyre takes the opportunity of the row over the fate of Nietzsche’s grave to revisit the story of Elisabeth Nietzsche, the philosopher’s sister:

Before insanity struck him down in 1889, at the age of 44, Nietzsche lived in fear of being misunderstood. “Above all,” he wrote in Ecce Homo, “do not mistake me for someone else.” He was a conservative elitist, an aphorist of brilliance championing individual greatness in the midst of mediocrity. His writing is explosive and apocalyptic, dense and complex, and often shocking in its violence.

But Nietzsche was no Nazi. He vigorously opposed German nationalism, as he rejected all mass movements; he had no time for ideologues, mocked the notion of a Teutonic master race and loathed anti-Semitism in all its forms.

Elisabeth, by contrast, was an enthusiastic Fascist. An early acolyte of Richard Wagner, she and her furiously anti-Semitic husband Bernhard Förster (this newspaper described him as “the most representative Jew-baiter in all of Germany”) picked up on one of the composer’s barmier ideas, and set off for Paraguay in 1886 to establish an Aryan, vegetarian republic in the middle of the jungle, which they called New Germany.

There’s an excellent book about this Paraguayan adventure, as it happens, by, um, Ben Macintyre. Anyway – back to the Nazis:

Elisabeth avidly offered up her brother’s writings in support of militarism and Nazi world domination. Mussolini, she declared, was “the genius who rediscovered the values of the Nietzsche spirit… Nietzsche would have regarded him as the splendid disciple”. Nietzsche, I am certain, would have regarded Mussolini as a dangerous buffoon.

Hitler’s will to power sent Elisabeth into paroxysms of delight. Nietzsche’s warnings against nationalism and the dangers of anti-Semitism were conveniently ignored. “The link between National Socialism and Nietzsche is the heroism in both their souls,” she declared. The Nazis eagerly embraced Nietzsche, or rather his sister’s mangled version: Hitler, who probably never read a word of his writings, was photographed gazing contemplatively at a bust of the great man.

While accepting that Nietzsche was no anti-Semite, I can’t help thinking that all these apologetics are a little overdone. Every time you read something about Nietzsche, it’ll be accompanied by some expression of regret at the way he was appropriated by the Nazis. Fair enough no doubt, and of course he could have had no idea how his views would appear in the light of what the Nazis did, but you can’t help thinking that, with the Übermensch, and his views on master and slave moralities, the question of why some of the more philosophically inclined Nazis might have seen him as a precursor was never going to be one of life’s great mysteries.

From Wikipedia:

[H]e offers the will to power as an explanation of all behavior; this ties into his “perspective of life”, which he regards as “beyond good and evil”, denying a universal morality for all human beings. Religion and the master and slave moralities feature prominently as Nietzsche re-evaluates deeply-held humanistic beliefs, portraying even domination, appropriation and injury to the weak as not universally objectionable.

Yes, he contradicted himself; he enjoyed throwing off aphorisms (“Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual”) to, as it were, épater le bourgeois; but his subsequent reputation can hardly be blamed entirely on his wretched sister.