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Brief Lives

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Hilarius Bogbinder considers the all too human life of the notorious iconoclast.

“The last two weeks were the happiest of my life” (Letters, 321) wrote Friedrich Nietzsche. The year was 1884. He was completing what he himself considered his greatest work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. There can be no doubt that this son of a Lutheran vicar was moved to almost religious ecstasy when he composed the book, even if he had lost his faith while a student of theology. Unfortunately, when it was published, the tome, dedicated to ‘all and nobody’, seemed to only be for the latter.

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