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Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, whose wrote a number of manuscripts
in the late 19th century. His works, while little known at the time of their
writing, have become popular and widely known in the time since his institutionalisation
and death. In particular, Nietzsche gained notoriety through his works
well-publicised association with the Nazi movement in Germany. In fact, there were
only two books that were required to be carried by all Nazi soldiers. One was
Hitler's Mein Kampf, the other was Nietzsche's The Will To Power.
Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran minister. This could go some way to explaining
his future condemnation of religion, and Christianity in particular. In fact, in one
of his writings, Nietzsche asserts the line: "God is dead" (Musical aside - this
later became the chorus of a great Nine Inch Nails song called 'Heresy').
Nietzsche's philosophy centred on what he called the "will to power". That is, every
human being is driven to achieve power over some other being. Even acts of apparent
kindness were explained as asserting power over the weak. Nietzsche also condemned
the State, and the herd mentality of humans in general. He believed that the
Darwinian theory of evolution showed that most humans were herd animals, with no
great intelligence. This also led him to develop the concept of the Superman (although
this is a dodgy German translation of Ubermensch - sorry about the lack of accents!).
The Superman was the next step in the human evolutionary scale - a person with a
will strong enough to totally ignore the constraints of society. It was this
philosophy that the Nazi's relished, despite missing the whole point of Nietzsche's
philosophy of the herd mentality (one could argue that Nazi Germany was perhaps the
greatest example of the hed mentality and mankind's deevolution back to animals).
Nietzsche was an associate of Wagner, and a great admirer of his music. However, the
composer's anti-Semitic sentiments and overt racism eventually caused Nietzsche to
turn against him. Where Nietzsche has once considered Wagner to have almost reached
the status of Superman, he actually wrote a treatise on his fall, The Case of Wagner.
Nietzsche's sister, Elizabeth, became a leader in the Fascist regime, along with
her husband, Richard Forster. Their Aryan dreams actually led them to found a German
colony in the centre of South America. The colony exists still today, although the
chronic inbreeding caused by the lack of settlers is already having serious genetic
effects. Forster and Elizabeth made a formidable duo, with Elizabeth "editing" her
brother's work for publication. She, like many Nazis, completely misread Nietzsche's
work. However, her edits got her introduced to Hitler, who she had admired from afar.
Unfortunately, Friedrich was unable to defend his works at this stage. In fact, after
completing his later works, he became mentally ill, and was institutionalised until his
death, not long into the new century. His works, though, have been extremely
influential in the twentieth century.
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