The actress Andrea Ummenberger is currently putting Nietzsche on stage in Halle with a solo play. In a captivating evening at the theatre, the audience can experience the thinker as he possibly was, at least in the interpretation of Austrian writer Alexander Widner, during his last years: not necessarily mentally abducted, but rather insane and in permanent conflict with his sister, his mother — and last but not least his home country. A self-proclaimed fool who rebels against the tight shackles of German small-mindedness and dreams of the South and liberated sensuality. Ummenberger shows us a Nietzsche who still has something to say to us today; not a brilliant idol, but rather a complex anti-hero who asks important questions.

On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin achieved the unbelievable: He was the first person in history to leave the protective atmosphere of our home planet and circumnavigate the Earth in the Vostok 1 spaceship. In 2011, the anniversary of this “superhuman” act was declared International Manned Space Day. The stars aren't that far away anymore. With the technical progress achieved, the fantasy of expanding human civilization into space takes on concrete plausibility. The following text attempts to philosophically rhyme with these prospects and finally describes the approach of a possible space program from Nietzsche. Although airplanes didn't even exist during his lifetime, his concepts can still be applied to this topic in a productive way, as is so often the case.

Editorial note: We have explained some difficult technical terms in the footnotes.

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