Known for movies

Short Info

DiedAugust 25, 1900, Weimar, Germany
MarkMuch misunderstood.
FactAt the age of 21 he applied for Swiss citizenship and revoked his Prussian citizenship. After his Swiss naturalization forms were rejected, he remained stateless for the rest of his life.


Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. He was born on October 15, 1844, in Röcken bei Lützen, Prussia, to Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, a Lutheran pastor and former teacher, and Franziska Oehler, a homemaker. Nietzsche had one older sister, Elisabeth. Nietzsche’s father died in 1849, when Nietzsche was five years old. His mother remarried in 1850, and the family moved to Naumburg. In 1858, Nietzsche began attending the Domgymnasium in Naumburg. He was an average student but excelled in languages and literature. In 1864, he enrolled at the University of Bonn to study theology and classical philology.

At Bonn, Nietzsche met Arthur Schopenhauer, whose work would greatly influence his own. In 1865, Nietzsche transferred to the University of Leipzig, where he continued his studies of classical philology. It was during his time at Leipzig that Nietzsche began to question his Christian faith. In 1867, he published his first work, “The Birth of Tragedy,” in which he argued that the Dionysian and Apollonian impulses were the two fundamental principles of art.

In 1868, Nietzsche returned to the University of Bonn to complete his doctoral dissertation. The following year, he was appointed to a position at the University of Basel in Switzerland. At Basel, Nietzsche taught classical philology and continued to write. In 1872, he published “The Untimely Meditations,” a series of four essays critiquing contemporary culture. In 1873, he published “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” in which he argued that history should be used to enhance life, not merely to record it.

In 1876, Nietzsche published “Human, All Too Human,” a collection of aphorisms on morality and culture. The following year, he published “Mixed Opinions and Maxims,” a collection of essays on various topics. In 1878, he published “Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality,” in which he critiqued the morality of Christianity.

In 1880, Nietzsche published “The Wanderer and His Shadow,” a collection of essays on various topics. The following year, he published “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” a philosophical novel about the Übermensch, or superman. In 1882, he published “The Gay Science,” a collection of essays on various topics. In 1886, he published “Beyond Good and Evil,” a work in which he critiqued traditional morality and argued for a new morality based on power.

In 1888, Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown and was hospitalized. He never recovered and spent the last years of his life in seclusion. He died on August 25, 1900.

Nietzsche’s work had a profound influence on 20th-century thought. His ideas about the Übermensch, power, morality, and history were adopted by many thinkers, including Friedrich Engels, Adolf Hitler, and Michel Foucault.

General Info

Full NameFriedrich Nietzsche
DiedAugust 25, 1900, Weimar, Germany
Height1.73 m
ProfessionPhilosopher, Poet, Composer, Cultural critic, Philologist
EducationUniversity of Bonn, Schulpforta, Leipzig University
NationalityPrussian

Family

ParentsFranziska Oehler, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche
SiblingsElisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Ludwig Joseph Nietzsche

Accomplishments

MoviesThe Divine Comedy, Die Nacht, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Road to Rio, Carbon Elvis

Social profile links

Marks

#Marks / Signs
1Large, bushy moustache.
2Much misunderstood.

Quotes

#Quote
1The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.
2To wake up in the morning, in the fullness of youth, and open a book. Now that is what I call vicious!
3I am too inquisitive, too skeptical, too arrogant, to let myself be satisfied with an obvious and crass solution of things. God is such an obvious and crass solution; a solution which is a sheer indelicacy to us thinkers - at bottom He is really nothing but a coarse commandment against us: ye shall not think!
4Life is not, after all, a product of morality.
5Let the World End. But let there be Philosophy. Let there be a Philosopher. Let there be me!
6You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
7And those who danced were considered mad by those who could not hear the music.
8But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangmen and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had-power.
9We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.
10We have art to save ourselves from the truth.
11We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
12He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
13There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
14No artist tolerates reality.
15Convictions are greater enemies to the truth than lies.
16Without cruelty there is no festival. There is much about punishment that is festive.
17Fear is the mother of morality.
18Every Church is a stone on the grave of a God-Man. They do not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.
19Of all that a man has written, I want to know what he has written in his own blood.
20Christianity is the metaphysics of the hangman.
21The earth has become small, and upon it hops the Ultimate Man, who makes everything small. His race is as inexterminable as the flea; the Ultimate Man lives longest. "We have discovered happiness," say the Ultimate Men and blink. . . . They still work, for work is entertainment. But they take care the entertainment does not exhaust them. Nobody grows rich or poor any more: both are too much of a burden. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both are too much of a burden.
22That faith makes blessed under certain circumstances, that blessedness does not make of a fixed idea a true idea, that faith moves no mountains but puts mountains where there are none: a quick walk through a madhouse enlightens one sufficiently about this.
23The man of knowledge must not only be able to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
24The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding -- in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.
25For believe me!-the secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships out into uncharted seas! Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and ravagers as long as you cannot be rulers and owners, you men of knowledge! The time will soon be past when you could be content to live concealed in the woods like timid deer!
26Selfishness has as much value as the physiological value of him who possesses it: it may be very valuable or it may be vile and contemptible. Each individual may be looked at with respect to whether he represents an ascending or a descending line of life. When that is determined, we have a canon for determining the value of his selfishness. If he represent the ascent in the line of life, his value is in fact very great - and on account of the collective life which in him makes a further step, the concern about his maintenance, about providing his optimum of conditions, may even be extreme. . . . If he represent descending development, decay, chronic degeneration, or sickening, he has little worth, and the greatest fairness would have him take away as little as possible from the well-constituted. He is then no more than their parasite.
27Not every one has the right to be an egoist. Whereas in some egoism would be a virtue, in others it may be an insufferable vice which should be stamped out at all costs.
28Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.
29I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful -- of a crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not a man I am dynamite.
30Whoever lives for the sake of combatting an enemy has an interest in the enemy's survival.
31Life without music would be a mistake.
32The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
33The Christian resolution to see the World as ugly and bad has made the World ugly and bad.
34He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance. One cannot fly into flying.
35Out of chaos comes order.
36Woman was God's second mistake.
37It was Christianity which first painted the devil on the worlds wall; It was Christianity which first brought sin into the world. Belief in the cure which it offered has now been shaken to it's deepest roots; but belief in the sickness which it taught and propagated continues to exist'.
38A woman does not want the truth; what is truth to women? From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than the truth - her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty.
39Growth in wisdom can be measured precisely by decline in bile.
40Madness is something rare in individuals-but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule.
41Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
42There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena.
43Remedium amoris--The cure for love is still in most cases that ancient radical medicine: love in return.
44To live alone one must be an animal or a god, says Aristotle. There is yet a third case: one must be both--a philosopher.
45Either we have no dreams or our dreams are interesting. We should learn to arrange our waking life the same way: nothing or interesting.
46He who considers more deeply knows that, whatever his acts and judgments may be, he is always wrong.
47How can anyone become a thinker if he does not spend at least a third of the day without passions, people and books?
48We are like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities others ascribe to us-in order to deceive ourselves.
49So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.
50Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows.
51The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
52Why does man not see things? He is himself standing in the way: he conceals things.
53He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
54True, we love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness...
55I love the great despisers. Man is something that must be overcome...
56The higher we soar, the smaller we seem to those who cannot fly.
57One hears only those questions for which one is able to find answers.
58The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
59Mighty waters draw much stone and rubble along with them, mighty spirits many stupid and bewildered heads.
60That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
61I am by far the most terrible human being there has ever been; this does not mean I shall not be the most beneficent...
62I am not a man, I am dynamite.
63We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
64Of all that is written I love only what a man has written with his blood...Whoever writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read but to be learned by heart.

Facts

#Fact
1A Lyric from the One Republic song "Counting Stars" is "Everything that kills me makes me feel alive".
2A philosopher.
3He is the youngest person to have ever held the position of chair of classical psychology at Basel University.
4He coined the word "Super Man" in 1888. Fifty years later Jerry Siegle and Joe Shuster would use to the word in creating Superman.
5Nietzsche was a lifelong but unwilling bachelor. In 1876, he proposed to Mathilde Trampedach. She turned him down, partly because she had only known him a few days, but mostly because he had sent his proposal in the form of a letter that was delivered by her boyfriend (and later husband) conductor Hugo von Senger. Six years later Nietzsche repeated the experiment with German-Russian author Lou Salome, once again sending his proposal through her then-lover, philosopher Paul Ree. Lou also rejected both Nietzsche's and Ree's proposals, and instead fell in love with poet Rainer Maria Rilke.
6Became a professor of classical philology at the age of 24.
7At the age of 21 he applied for Swiss citizenship and revoked his Prussian citizenship. After his Swiss naturalization forms were rejected, he remained stateless for the rest of his life.
8His father, a Lutheran minister, died when Friedrich was 5 years old.
9Earned his doctorate in at the age of 24, without examination and became a professor of classical philology.
10Abstained from alcohol and coffee.
11First book, "The Birth of Tragedy," published at the age of 27.

Movies

Writer

TitleYearStatusCharacter
Dionysos, Szenen und Dithyramben - Eine Opernphantasie2011TV Movie after: "Dionysos-Dithyramben"
Carbon Elvis2007
Unsere Besten2003TV Series 1 episode
Thus Spake Zarathustra2001book
Dancing Queen1999Short inspiration
A Divina Comédia1991extracts - as Nietzsche
Die Nacht1985text
Der Weg nach Rio1931novella

Soundtrack

TitleYearStatusCharacter
The Addiction1995writer: "Eine Sylvesternacht" - as Friedrich Nietzshe

Thanks

TitleYearStatusCharacter
Nietzsche2003Video short special thanks
Continental1990acknowledgment

Archive Footage

TitleYearStatusCharacter
The Drunken Peasants2016TV SeriesHimself

Source: IMDb, Wikipedia

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