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Category: Friedrich Nietzsche
Excerpted from Werner Ross’s Der ängstliche Adler
– Friedrich Nietzsches Leben (1980):
Carl Ludwig Nietzsche,
Nietzsche’s father
The boy does not remember the Röcken home dominated by women, but only the image of the father, idealized on par as it gradually fades out. The pious rural cleric remains completely safe from the uprising against Christianity, which would be the true mission of Nietzsche from his eighteen years. Since then, his father is for him an “ethereal angel.” One of the qualities that he has inherited from him is the kindness, the renunciation of revenge for nobility. So in the late self-portraiture of Ecce homo we read that, in case of offense, Nietzsche prohibits himself “any retaliation, any measure of defense.”
[Chechar’s note: Those who have read the passages of Alice Miller in The Untouched Key as to why Nietzsche went mad—just imagine a self-proclaimed Antichrist who, simultaneously, never defended himself before the father clergyman!—would treasure passages such as these.]
Another inherited quality is the love of music. In a postcard to Peter Gast [Heinrich Köselitz] of the time of Zarathustra an observation is included: “It is raining in torrents, music gets me away. I like that music and the way I like it is something I cannot explain based on my experiences: rather based on my father. And why should not…?”
The phrase is cut, but can be completed with another of Ecce homo in which he says: Why should not I continue to live in him and he in me after his untimely death?
And he was no less mystical in his later years, when he conceived the doctrine of eternal recurrence, so he could skip the generational order to become a descendant of Napoleon, Caesar or Alexander. But the same process also allowed otherwise: the mysterious identification with the father, either in the agonizing fear of premature death and madness, either in the gut, not even confessed to his friend Gast, that having survived the fateful thirty-third year of his life he would merge with his father to form a single figure with him.
The family was assured that Fritz (short for Friedrich) would be clergyman as the father. His mother, who was not limited to accompany him to the bed but every night carried him into it, panting said, “If you continue like this I’ll have to carry you up to bed until you study theology.” Fritz, meanwhile, was a precocious and obedient child; knew by heart passages of the Bible and religious songs so that their local school classmates called him the little shepherd. He was no friend of other children, and in school they laughed at him but then, at home, spoke wonders of the little sage.
Young Nietzsche, whose strange factions made one think of an owl, had an excellent performance. An anecdote belonging to the repertoire of Elisabeth [Nietzsche’s sister] tells us that, at one point, it started raining and as everyone ran from school to their homes, he continued to walk at a leisurely pace with the board over his hat and scarf on the blackboard. When Nietzsche got home was completely soaked. That why he had not run like the others? Well, because the school regulations say that, after school, children should go to their houses quietly and politely. The story seems credible; it was not normal behavior, but a show of obedience directed against his classmates’ behavior.
The little shepherd never tires of reciting pious maxims, edifying virtuous desires and prayers. Words like purpose, wise decision of God, beneficent hand of God, heavenly father come out of his lips with astonishing naturalness.
The strongest impressions were those that religious music gave Nietzsche. In the misty autumn evenings, the boy came sneaking into the cathedral to witness the rehearsals of the Requiem for the day of the dead; he was overwhelmed to hear the Dies irae and was deeply delighted with the Benedictus. It was not just a childish impulse that led him at fourteen, in Schulpforta, to write in all seriousness motets, chorale melodies and fugues and even try a Missa for solo, chorus and orchestra. At sixteen Nietzsche outlined a Miserere for five voices and, finally, began a Christmas oratory on which he worked for two years.
At seventeen, the son of the pastor received confirmation. His classmate Deussen, also a son of pastor says the two maintained a pious attitude, away from the world. They were willing to die immediately to go to meet Jesus. When his friend Wilhelm Pinder received confirmation, Nietzsche wrote: “With the promise you walk into the line of Christian adults who are considered worthy of the most precious legacy of our Savior, and through their enjoyment of life, achieve happiness of the soul.” Not even from the pastor’s pen would have come such pious words.
In High School Nietzsche had an “excellent” in religion. The commentary reports confirm that the student has shown, along with a good understanding of the New Testament, a keen interest in the doctrine of Christian salvation which he has easily and solidly assimilated, and is also able to express himself clearly on the subject.
♣
The above was extracted from one of the first chapters of Ross’ book. Unlike Curt Paul Janz, hundreds of pages later Ross only dedicates a few paragraphs to Nietzsche’s life after his breakdown. He writes:
Nietzsche’s biography ends in the early days of 1889, although his life was extended until August 25, 1900. Paralyzed and demented, he died of pneumonia.
On August 10, 1889 Nietzsche entered the psychiatric clinic of the University of Basel; a week later he is taken to the Jena University Clinic where he remains for about fifteen months, and on March 24, 1890 he is discharged in writing and sent home. Nietzsche remains under the care of his mother until her death in 1897. In July 1897 the sister purchases a Weimar villa, “Silberblick,” for the Nietzsche Archive and in it she installs the patient.
About the demented Nietzsche several persons issued reports: (1) Turin dentist, Dr. Bettmann, who with Overbeck brought Nietzsche to Basel; (2) the diaries of Basel and Jena for the sick by the physician (and later professor) Ziehen; (2) the mother in his letters to Professor Overbeck, and (4) friends and visitors, from Gast to Deussen and from Overbeck to Resa von Schirnhofer.
The extracts that follow from 1889-1892 show on one hand the state of the disorder, but on the other they shed light on the “healthy” Nietzsche, specifically those oppressed and repressed aspects that madness liberated.
Dentist Bettmann’s opinion, in Turin:
The patient is usually excited, he asks much food but is unable to do something and take care of himself. He claims to be a famous man, and constantly asks a woman for him.
Basel journal for the sick, January 1889:
He only answers partially and incompletely or not at all to the questions addressed to him, insisting in his confused verbiage nonstop.
First day at Jena, January 19, 1889:
The patient walks on the department with many bows of courtesy. With majestic step, staring at the ceiling, enters the room and gives thanks for the “great reception.” He doesn’t know where he is.
Extracts from the diary for the sick at Jena, from January to October 1889:
He wants his compositions to be premiered. He has little understanding or memory of ideas or passages from his works. He always identifies the physicians correctly. He proclaims himself now Duke of Cumberland, now Emperor, etc… “At last I have been Frederick William IV,” “My wife Cosima Wagner has brought me here.” “At night they have uttered curses against me, have used the most horrible mechanisms.” “I want a gun if there is any truth in the suspicion that the very Grand Duchess commits these filthy acts and attacks on me.”
At night we always have to isolate him. He often smears himself with excrement. He eats excrements. He urinates in his boot or glass and drinks the urine or smears himself with it. Once he smeared a leg with excrement. He wraps excrements in paper and puts it all in the drawer of a table.
The mother to Overbeck, April 8, 1889:
About an hour ago my son has been taken to the department of the peaceful sick… The greatest joy you can provide is to speak in Italian or French to him… Gone are the ideas of grandeur that initially made him so happy…
On March 24, 1890 the mother takes Nietzsche out of the center to live with him in Jena. On one occasion Nietzsche undresses in public with intent of swimming and a guard is hired, who follows at a distance mother and son when they go for a walk. On June 17, 1890 she writes to Overbeck:
He plays a little of music every day, partly his small compositions or songs of an old book of songs… The religious sentiment is asserted more and more in him. During Pentecost, when we were sitting quietly in the balcony with me holding an old Bible [he says] that in Turin he had studied the whole Bible and taken thousands of notes, when I read this or that psalm; this or that chapter, I expressed surprise that he knew the Bible so thoroughly.
From 1892 Nietzsche can no longer feed himself. He has to be washed and dressed. The walks have to be abandoned because Nietzsche shouts and hits everything on his way. In 1894 Nietzsche recognizes Deussen, but in 1895 he no longer recognizes Overbeck.
In madness it clearly appears a regression to infantile and juvenile stages. In the time of megalomania Dionysus and Zarathustra are totally excluded. Instead it reappears Frederick William IV [discussed in Ross’ earlier chapters], and Nietzsche says to his mother he is twenty-two. The last letter to Jacob Burckhardt is written by a “student.” His fears (the light should remain lit at night, the door must be closed) belong to an early childhood stage, like the “magic of the pieces of glass.” It is also noteworthy the return to the old religion and a fearful, even radical avoidance of everything philosophical. As a sick man Nietzsche is an obedient or uninhibited child.
At the end he completely sinks into apathy.
The mother, fearful, “limited” (as seen in the Basel clinic) was at first mean, although she continued to receive Nietzsche’s pension. But when he was with her she cared for him, protected and looked after him with motherly love. Friedrich then again became what in her opinion should have always been: her little child.
Excerpted from Curt Paul Janz’s last volume of his biography, Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie. Band 3: Die Jahre des Siechtums, Chapter “The Catastrophe”:
On Sunday January 6, 1889 Jacob Burckhardt received a long letter from Nietzsche. While it is true that, from the Genealogy [On the Genealogy of Morals] at least Burckhardt had not followed Nietzsche’s philosophical way, he did continue to be humanely united to his former colleague. For long Burckhardt had watched with concern his state and inquired about it, but this turn towards mental disturbance surprised and deeply affected him.
Burckhardt did immediately what was in his hand: he went immediately with the letter to see Franz Overbeck, whose close contact with Nietzsche he knew. Although their houses were not far apart—from the suburb of St. Alban to the Sevogelstrasse there are only a few hundred meters—, Burckhardt had never felt moved to walk that way. But now, the terrible impression he received prompted him to overcome that barrier. Also for Overbeck it was an alarming surprise to see Jacob Burckhardt into his home.
Following a review of the two letters to Burckhardt and Overbeck, Wille [Prof. Dr. Ludwig Wille, a psychiatrist] had no doubt about how he had to try the case and what they had to do. He urged Overbeck that, without loss of time, to bring the friend from Turin to Basel, before he disappeared in any one of the dubious Italian centers.
Overbeck immediately followed the advice, which seemed more like an order. By doing so he had to weight two considerations: firstly the question of costs. Neither he nor Nietzsche were doing well economically. Professorial fees were then rather scarce. And besides, surely it was not easy to a conscientious teacher to leave without official dispensation for a few days.
In spite of everything, in the night of January 7 he parted to Turin, where he arrived the next day around 2 pm. Given his perennially poor health, the feat demanded a great effort from Overbeck, especially in the middle of winter. 18 hours in those times when trains, insufficiently heated or not heated at all during the night (no sleeper), meant a real sacrifice. But the worst still awaited him.
By his own efforts Overbeck found Nietzsche’s housing in a city unknown to him. The landlord, Fino, was absent. Nietzsche, with his behavior, had finally put Fino in a state of despair, and he was now seeking help from the German consulate and police. The whole family was scattered so that it took some time for Overbeck to find the wife. Only then he approached his friend. In his letter of January 15 to Köselitz he narrates the encounter:
It happened in the last time when it was still possible to get him without official impediments, except his own state. I pass over the moving circumstances in which I found Nietzsche as a pupil of his landlords; which seem to be also characteristic of Italy in general. With the terrible moment as I saw Nietzsche I come again to the principal issue: a terrible moment like no other, and totally different from everything that happened afterwards.
I see Nietzsche in a corner of the armchair, curled up and reading—as it was apparent later, the latest proofs of Nietzsche contra Wagner—, tremendously deteriorated in external appearance. He sees me and rushes towards me, recognizing me he hugs me tightly, and becomes a sea of tears. He goes back then, in convulsions, to sink himself into the armchair. Neither do I find strength, because of the shock, to pull myself on my legs. Did it open at that moment the abyss in which he finds himself, or better, into which he has fallen? In any case, no such thing has been repeated. All of the Fino family was present.
Just as Nietzsche returned to rest there, moaning and with convulsive contractions, the watered bromide that was on the table was given to him. Instantly he relaxed, and, laughing, began to talk about the great reception that was prepared for him at night. Thus Nietzsche moved in a circle of delusions from which he never came out after I lost sight of him; being always clear of mind about me in general and other people, but caught in a full night about him. It happened that, exalting himself without measure, and with strong songs and frenzies on piano, shreds of the ideas were recovered from the world in which he had lived lately.
Then, in short sentences, uttered in a tone indescribably flat, he had us hearing sublime, wonderfully visionary things and unspeakably terrible about himself as the successor of the dead God, tapping all, so to speak, at the piano. Afterwards the convulsions and fits of indescribable suffering returned. But, as said, this only happened in rare and fleeting moments. While I was present, generally the profession statements that he awarded himself dominated: to be the jester of the new eternities, and he, the incomparable master of expression, was unable to represent the enthusiasm even from his joy otherwise than through the most trivial expressions or by a ridiculous dancing and jumping.
Overbeck’s report in his memoirs and letters to Köselitz is very summary. Carl Albrecht Bernoulli was able to complete it:
He then wrote to Peter Gast [Heinrich Köselitz] everything that happened in Turin during the terrible encounter; his hand refused to transcribe to paper the latest and most sordid details. Although occasionally he alluded to this in the most intimate circles, and to me personally he completed by word the description.
Overbeck was also more forthcoming with Möbius, who visited him on April 10, 1902. Möbius informs us:
In Turin he met a Jewish man who volunteered as a caregiver of the crazy (but he was not) and that with the help of his intervention they carried out the risky venture. Nietzsche was in bed and refused to get up. The Jew told him that they were prepared for large receptions and festivities, and Nietzsche got up, dressed and went to the station with them.
There he wanted to embrace all people, but the companion explained him how it was not appropriate for such an important man: and Nietzsche calmed down. Using large quantities of sleeping pills the patient remained quiet during the trip, and thus came the three happily to Basel.
Another visitor to Overbeck, the writer Eduard Platzhoff-Lejeune, based on an earlier conversation with Overbeck, presented the episode thus:
The Turin police was already aware, and only a true kidnapping could prevent a forced entry into a center of that place.
Then, miraculously, a stranger, a German Jew, apparently offered himself [for a fee] to transport the sick. Overbeck agreed and did not repent of his acceptance. With surprising touch the stranger immediately got influence on the wayward sick, something that the friend was not able to.
Nietzsche obeyed as a child, left the bed and dressed. A new outburst became a torture for Overbeck on the way to the station. Shouting and chasing them, Nietzsche was addressing the curious crowd, at the point of nearly thwarting the traveling. The train left while Nietzsche sang a fishermen’s Neapolitan song [?]. That deeply touched the excited friend. The caregiver tried a suggestion: “You’re a prince. In Basel station a festive crowd is expecting you. Come in before it without greeting to the car that is waiting to you!”
The trick worked better than expected. The morning of January 10, 1889, around 8, Nietzsche and his caretakers arrived to Basel. A ready-cab took them to “Friedmatt” where the patient could be entrusted to the care of specialists.
With that Nietzsche stopped being a person acting autonomously.
I have noticed that people are not interested in my recent entries on Nietzsche and the New Testament (and my next entry will be none other than Karlheinz Deschner’s introduction to his ten-volume Criminal History of Christianity). Why I believe these topics are relevant for the cause?
Let’s put it this way. If inspired by Nietzsche a million Whites transvaluated Christian values, as I have already done in my mind—a process that like this poor man almost drove me mad—, most of our current problems would evaporate in a decade or so.
Incidentally, today I moved my toughest post ever written to the Addenda only because the pic of the Star Child, symbol of this New Christ or transvaluated Overman who returns to Earth over the clouds with great power and glory, combines better with the bluish colors of the Addenda than with the reddish background of this main page.
Excerpted from the prologue of Werner Ross’s Der ängstliche Adler
– Friedrich Nietzsches Leben (1980):
I
The two-volume work of Heidegger on Nietzsche begins with the lapidary phrase: “Nietzsche, the thinking man testifies to the content of his thought.” But in the following hundreds of pages he does not appear, only his philosophical activity.
Nietzsche had the misfortune to go down to posterity as a philosopher whereas he would have liked to do it as an apostle or officer of artillery; a lyric poet or composer; a revolutionary or reformer; ultimately, as a buffoon or a god.
Nietzsche argued against the claims of truthfulness of all doctrines, including his. He ardently sought for results: a reversal of all relations, the abolition of Christianity, the beginning of a new era. His aspiration was to divide the history of humanity with a single stroke into two halves. Instead, it has been classified with others; and in college textbooks his name appears next to Leibniz and Kant.
II
At the height of his self-consciousness, of his “delusions of grandeur,” Nietzsche came to think that the mere dissemination of his doctrine would cause the disintegration of the tablets of the law and of our civilization as the trumpets of the Israelites had caused the collapse of the walls of Jericho. But the earth did not shake nor the sun darkened when, in early January 1889, he went crazy.
Obviously, great works take time. Nietzsche indeed contributed to the destruction of something that, at the time, many wanted ardently: “the fundamental values.” He was convinced that his ideas were dynamite, but all blasting is, ultimately, a child’s play compared to the persistent action of erosion. And if no revolution took place after Nietzsche, at least he caused a radical change in the general climate.
III
Nietzsche became famous overnight the same year he was admitted to an asylum. But the person immediately disappeared behind the work, behind the exposed and fought doctrine. This work moved the spirits and divided them in twain; it also marked the beginning of a new era, which provided mottos and slogans. The literature on Nietzsche, for and against, increased greatly…
IV
In the circle of collaborators responsible for the historical-critical edition of his complete works, whose first volume appeared in 1934, the project finally came to publish a full biography of Nietzsche. This was undertaken by Richard Blunck during the Second World War. The owner of the Archive [Nietzsche’s sister] had died in 1935; Hitler had already visited her before and had brought with him as a gift Nietzsche’s swab.
Blunck was unlucky: the whole edition of the first [biographical] volume, which was printed in early 1945, was destroyed during air raids. The volume did not appear until 1953. Blunck died in 1962, when he was working in the other volumes. Curt Paul Janz, a professional orchestra musician that had received a solid philological training at Basel, continued the work of Blunck. The result was the three-volume biography published in 1978-1979 by Hanser Verlag. This is a thorough study that collects all the facts and circumstances of the life of Nietzsche. My work has a lot to thank him.
I have been asked why the recent focus of The West’s Darkest Hour on Nietzsche. I replied that my intention is to explain (1) the “transvaluation of all values” (Nietzsche’s ultimate philosophy) and (2) “poisonous pedagogy” which goes together with the “trauma model of mental disorders” (illustrated in Nietzsche’s life).
As to #2, I believe that one of the ingredients of the witches’ brew that is killing whites is the toll of child abuse in the adult. In the white nationalist movement no one has suspected this. A few months ago Alex Kurtagic wrote on The Occidental Observer that the engulfing behavior of Jewish mothers towards their male children explained the haughty behavior of the grown-up Jew. But Kurtagic and the rest of writers of the pro-white blogosphere have failed to ask what could the engulfing behavior of white mothers cause on their white children.
I am the only one in the movement who has written on the implications of the trauma model on white pathology. See for example my seminal article, “A body-snatched Spaniard.” I even plan to translate to English the rest of my book Hojas susurrantes, the most didactic and comprehensive explanation of the model under a single cover.
However, since that kind of literature is very strong meat indeed, and since pro-white advocates are uninterested in the subject, I better start introducing it by means of baby steps, like my next series of entries on Carlo Collodi’s novel for children.
Pinocchio
The original Pinocchio tale by Collodi is must reading. A 1880 magazine series (Disney’s 1940 film is a betrayal of the original Italian tale), Collodi projected his feelings for his abusive parents onto the characters of the very manipulative Blue Fairy and Geppetto.
In chapter XV Pinocchio is hanged in front of the Blue Fairy mansion and the motherly Fairy didn’t help him at all. The wooden puppet exclaimed Jesus-like words on the cross:
The editor asked Collodi to rescue Pinocchio in the following issue of the magazine.
♣
As a child Collodi had been tormented in a Jesuit school (incidentally, as a child my father was also tormented in a Jesuit school). Since Collodi (like my father) never settled accounts with the perpetrators, he later identified himself with them; hated the children, illustrated boring school textbooks for them and always lived with his manipulative “Blue Fairy” mother.
The original Le Avventure di Pinocchio is poisonous pedagogy at its worst. The parents and the school system are idealized at the expense of the child’s true self. (Later in my series on Nietzsche you will see the relevance of the Prussian pedagogy applied to the child Nietzsche by his mother and other female figures and his adult breakdown.) A major bestseller, Collodi’s novel was used to manipulate and socialize children in the early 20th century.
In future entries I will show that together with the German biographers of Nietzsche I will be quoting, Alice Miller is the obliged reference to understand “poisonous pedagogy” and ultimately my interpretation of both Pinocchio and many people who have suffered mental breakdowns.
A revaluation of all values: this question mark, so black, so huge that it casts a shadow over the man who puts it down—such a destiny of a task compels one to run into the sun at every opportunity to shake off a heavy, all-too-heavy seriousness. Every means is proper to do this; every “case” is a case of luck. Especially, war. War has always been the great wisdom of all spirits who have become too introspective, too profound; even in a wound there is the power to heal… This little essay is a great declaration of war…
Turin, September 30, 1888,
on the day when the first book
of the Transvaluation of All Values
was completed.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Excerpted from Curt Paul Janz’s last volume of his biography, Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie. Band 3: Die Jahre des Siechtums, Chapter “The Catastrophe”:
Omens
In the last months before the disaster, acute disturbances of the understanding of reality and his identity increasingly piled up. A fact whose significance cannot be underestimated is that Nietzsche’s philosophical thought is definitely interrupted with the Antichrist on September 30, 1888. In a completely wrong assessment of the magnitude and significance of the matter, Nietzsche wants to see from that date a new beginning, a new measure of time, and what happens is the beginning, just for him, of a “new” time, a new and radically different consciousness.
What is perhaps the most significant part of his philosophy, the critique of knowledge, seems totally forgotten. Nietzsche no longer speaks of moral and cultural criticism; there are only vague memories of the world of Zarathustra (lyrical content is precisely what revives in some poetry). On the contrary, neither the “overman” or the “eternal return” are any longer defended.
With the alleged murder of Pauline Christianity as inverted Platonism and as a building for Jewish priestly power, Nietzsche believes he has finished the major philosophical work. Everything else, all “revaluation of all values” naturally follows that, so that he is no longer committed but to ensure the propagation of this final “knowledge.” With it, on September 30, 1888 philosophy is finished!
“It’s all over,” Nietzsche writes to Carl Fuchs on December 18. Even before, it shone occasionally, and strangely, this split regarding his own work. Thus for example on July 18, 1888, Nietzsche makes the arrogant statement to Fuchs: “I have given men the deepest book they possess, my Zarathustra” (which is also repeated multiple times to other recipients), and Nietzsche adds a few lines later: “Since then I do nothing but buffoonery to keep beating a vulnerability and an unbearable tension,” an idea—that of being the “jester of the millennium”—that continues well into the time of the transition into darkness. The strangeness toward his latest work, The Genealogy of Morals, can be captured more accurately in the letter of August 22, 1888 to Meta von Salis:
The first glance I threw inside surprised me: I discovered a long prologue… whose existence I had forgotten… Actually I kept in memory only the title of the three treaties: the rest, the content, was lost. This is the result of extreme intellectual activity… which, as it were, had brought a wall in the middle… Those times I underwent an almost uninterrupted state of inspiration, so that this text emerged as the most natural thing in the world… The style is passionate and disturbing, full of finesses: flexible and colorful as I had not written such prose before.
Nietzsche took another decisive step still further in this way when he confesses to Köselitz on December 9, 1888:
A few days ago I leafed thru my writing, for which only now I am mature… I’ve done everything very well, but I had never thought of it… Damn, how much is hidden in there! —In the Ecce homo you will find a discovery on the third and fourth Untimely Meditations that will put you on the willies, as it did to me. Both speak only about me, anticipating… Neither Wagner nor Schopenhauer appear there psychologically… I could only understand these writings four days ago.
The reference to Ecce homo is to be taken very seriously. For very valuable and significant the biographical and data regarding the history of his work are, in this letter the interpretations of his books are to be taken with extreme care. The Nietzsche of Ecce homo is no longer the Nietzsche who wrote a philosophical work. He is now facing a stranger. He “interprets it,” thinks he only now understands his work; that only now he has a feel for it. Unwittingly, with the signing of the letter he reveals that he is not the same: “Yours, the phoenix.”
Thus start the mystifying pseudonyms. For example, in the December 18 letter to Fuchs he is “the monster,” and after the collapse the pseudonyms take full possession of him. After philosophy, what Nietzsche first lost is his identity. Just two weeks later, on December 31, 1888 (to Köselitz) he does not already know his address: “Suppose it could be in principle the Palazzo del Quirinale.” Turin, from which emerged the young Italian kingdom, and Rome, from where it dominates now, merge into one before that blotchy look.
Later Nietzsche sees himself as the organizer of a European congress of princes, who wants to convene on January 8, 1889 in Rome, the heart of “Imperium Romanum.” He has already drafted the invitations: one for the Italian king Umberto II, another for Mariani, the papal secretary of state, and one for the “House of Baden.”
What remains for the moment is poetry and music. But even poetry could not be maintained for long…
For an easy reading,
you can read all of my excerpts
of Zweig’s essay on Nietzsche
at Ex libris (here).