I. Im Streit um ein lukratives Erbe

Als Nietzsches „Mama“ endlich dazu kam, ihre Memoiren zu schreiben – sie begann damit exakt am 12. Mai 1895, „69 Jahre 3 Monate u 10 Tage alt“¹ –, war sie eigentlich spät dran, denn die Interpretationsschlacht um ihren mittlerweile weltweit berühmten, doch geistig weitgehend abwesenden Sohn war schon längst entbrannt. Ihre Tochter Lieschen (Elisabeth-Förster Nietzsche) hatte den Streit mit der Publikation des ersten Bandes der Biographie ihres Bruders ins Rollen gebracht. Doch das war nur die erste Salve eines aus allen Rohren gefeuerten Sturmangriffs mit dem Ziel, das nicht unerhebliche symbolische und ökonomische Kapital an sich zu ziehen, das die Verfügungsgewalt über den Nachlass ihres Bruders versprach, die Lieschen ihrer Mutter zu entreißen und in die eigenen Hände zu bringen gedachte. In einem Brief, den Franziska über Pfingsten an ihren Neffen Adalbert Oehler, mit dem sie sich die Vormundschaft über Nietzsche teilte, schrieb, berichtet sie darüber, dass Lieschen gerade einen ganzen Brief voller unverblümter Verleumdungen über ihre vermeintlich schlechte Pflege ihres Sohnes an den Arzt der Familie, Gutjahr, geschrieben habe. Dieser sei angesichts „‚eine[r] solchen Sprache wie gelähmt gewesen‘“² und habe beabsichtigt, Frau Förster-Nietzsche zu antworten, „daß bei etwaiger Wiederholung solcher Injurien sie mit dem Schöffengericht könne Bekanntschaft machen“ (ebd.). Während sie anerkennt, dass die Biographie „wunderhübsch geschrieben“³ sei, fühlt sie sich durch dieselbe nichtsdestotrotz tief verletzt: „Es ist zu traurig in seinem 70. Lebensjahr nach Lieschens Meinung auf ein verfehltes Leben zurückzublicken.“⁴ Schlimmer noch: Es schmerzt sie, dass ihre Tochter „ganz außerordentlich“ „fabelt“⁵ und dass sie, mit der Frage konfrontiert „‚wo aber [in dem Buch] die Mutter bliebe‘“ (ebd.) auf ihre moralische Überlegenheit bestanden habe, hätten sie beide doch „‚unsagbar gelitten einst durch seine Bücher’“⁶. Halt die Klappe, Mama, mit anderen Worten: Ich hab ebenso viel Recht jetzt mit all dem Leid Kasse zu machen wie du.

Lieschens Coup war nur die jüngste einer ganzen Reihe von Attacken im Rahmen eines lebhaften Streits um Nietzsches Erbe, der mal mehr, mal weniger öffentlich ausgetragen wurde – und dies mit der ganzen glamourösen Begeisterung eines nackten Wrestlingkampfs im Schlamm. Lou Andreas-Salomé, die später der ersten Generation von Psychoanalytikern angehören sollte und bereits zu den führenden Figuren des deutschen Geisteslebens zählte, hatte den ersten Aufschlag gemacht, als sie im Vorjahr ihr Buch Nietzsche in seinen Werken publiziert hatte. Franziska vermochte es letztendlich nicht, sich gegen rhetorisch derart bewanderte Mitstreiterinnen durchzusetzen. Die ignoranten und gemeinen verbalen Tiefschläge, die gegen sie ausgeteilt wurden – und zum Teil bis heute kolportiert werden – machten ihre Lage nicht leichter. Sue Prideaux’ in der meistgelesenen englischsprachigen Biographie der letzten Jahre, auf Deutsch erschienen als Ich bin Dynamit, kolportierte Behauptung, dass „Franziska kaum richtig lesen konnte“ (S. 461) ist beispielsweise unhaltbar. Man kratzt sich den Kopf, wie den Lektoren von Prideaux’ renommiertem Verleger Faber & Faber dieser grobe Schnitzer entgehen konnte: Franziskas Fragment von 1895, das nach etwa dreißig Seiten abbricht, beweist mehr lexikalisches und erzählerisches Können als es ein durchschnittlicher smartphonesüchtiger Millennial mit Universitätsabschluss jemals unter Beweis stellen wird. Es liest sich wie eine unterhaltsame und zugleich erbauliche autobiographische Erzählung, in der sie über ihre Kindheit als Pastorentocher berichtet und darüber, wie Carl Ludwig Nietzsche (1813–1849) – im Text einfach als „Ludwig“ bezeichnet – um sie warb und wie sie ihn heiratete, ehe sie abbricht, als die Frischvermählten aus den Flitterwochen zurückkehren, um ihren gemeinsamen Hausstand zu gründen. Ihr Neffe Adalbert weist zu Recht darauf hin, dass dieses Fragment, hätte sie es fertiggestellt und veröffentlicht, der Nachwelt ein gänzlich anderes Bild von Frau Nietzsche hinterlassen hätte:  

Hätte die Mutter oder jemand aus ihrem Verwandten- und Freundeskreis damals eine zusammenhängende Lebensbeschreibung erscheinen lassen, die mit dem gleichen Temperament und der gleichen Anschaulichkeit zum Leser gesprochen hätte wie das verheißungsvolle Anfangskapitel, so würde die öffentliche Meinung ihr ohne weiteres einen Platz neben Frauen wie Goethes Mutter eingeräumt haben, deren urwüchsige Herzlichkeit sprichwörtlich geworden ist.⁷

Wenn historisch interessierte Menschen auf Franziskas Existenz aufmerksam werden, dann zunächst in ihrer Rolle als Mutter Nietzsches. Eine kleine Gruppe von Entdeckern wagt sich jedoch weiter vor und stellt die Frage nach der Lebenswelt und den Überzeugungen jener Person, auch unabhängig von den unintendierten Konsequenzen ihrer meistdiskutierten Tat: Einen Kerl auf die Welt zu bringen und aufzuziehen, der später die Geistesgeschichte in neue Bahnen lenken sollte.

Franziskas Erzählung hebt ganz klassisch an, indem sie die Berufe und gesellschaftliche Stellung ihrer Eltern und Großeltern aufzählt, um endlich mit den Halbwahrheiten und Lügen aufzuräumen, die Lieschens Buch in die Welt gesetzt hatte. Ihr Großvater väterlicherseits, „Webermeister Oehler“⁸, erreichte das gesegnete Alter von 84 Jahren. Entgegen Elisabeths mit heißer Nadel gestrickter Fabrikation,⁹ wurde Lieschens „Großpapa“¹⁰  (also der Sohn des Webers) nicht „in einem Waisenhaus erzogen“ (ebd.), nachdem ihre Urgroßeltern „im jugendlichen Alter[] von einer in Zeitz grassierenden Krankheit dahingerafft worden sind“ (ebd.). Dieses Missverständnis entstand dadurch, dass David Oehler während seiner Schulzeit, um sich ein paar Groschen dazuzuverdienen, als ein Weihnachtssänger tätig gewesen war; und Lieschen, ein begnadetes Talent im Fingieren, wenn ihr das reine Berichten der Tatsachen als zu beschwerlich erschien, zog die kühne Schlussfolgerung, dass nur Elternlosigkeit dieses Verhalten erklären könne.¹¹ Die entscheidendere Frage, die sich jetzt, wo er nicht mehr für sich selbst sprechen konnte, stellte, war jedoch, wem Friedrichs Genie legitimerweise zugeschrieben werden konnte:

Lieschen will eben durchaus nicht den geringsten geistigen Einfluß meinerseits, eben „Oehlerschen“ dulden und alles nur dem „Nietzscheschen“ zuschreiben, und so bleibt nur das einzige, was sie mir nicht abstreiten kann, daß ich Fritz geboren habe.¹²

Heutzutage ist diese Methode unter säkular gesonnenen Interpreten in Verruf geraten, doch die Nietzsches sahen es als unvermeidlich an, die Vorfahren in den Blick zu nehmen, um Hinweise auf den eigenen individuellen Charakter zu erhalten – mithin als eine achtbare Obsession. Als er noch zurechnungsfähig war, hatte Friedrich beiläufig folgende Erinnerung notiert:

Man hat mich gelehrt, die Herkunft meines Blutes und Namens auf polnische Edelleute zurückzuführen, welche Niëtzky hießen […] : was von deutschem Blute in mir ist, rührt einzig von meiner Mutter, aus der Familie Oehler, und von der Mutter meines Vaters, aus der Familie Krause, her[.]¹³

Elisabeth zitiert diese Passage in ihrer Biographie von 1895. Es kommt ihrer Agenda entgegen, ihren vermarktbaren Bruder und sich selbst als Nachfahren polnischer Protestanten darzustellen, welche sich angesichts „unerträgliche[r] religiöse[r] Bedrückungen“¹⁴ gezwungen sahen, „ihre Heimat und ihren Adel“ (ebd.) aufzugeben – lieber als ihn zu einem Abkömmling des „Zeug-, Lein- und Wollenweber[s]“¹⁵ Oehler aus Zeitz im heutigen Sachsen-Anhalt zu erklären. Die Stadtarchive bezeichnen Franziskas Großvater als einen „Bürger“ (ebd.), der durch diesen Status vor der allerschlimmsten Armut jener Zeit gefeit war. Weitere Quellen belegen jedoch, dass seine Frau und er gerade noch dem unteren Rand der Bürgerschaft angehörten. Franziskas Vater sein Theologiestudium zu finanzieren, konnten sie sich nicht leisten. Es ist so wenig verwunderlich, dass Lieschen einen so ‚unstandesgemäßen‘ Urgroßvater jung sterben lässt und stattdessen lieber alles auf die Polenkarte setzt.

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II. Franziska schlägt zurück

Im weiteren Laufe des Jahres 1895 wurde Franziska nicht müde, den außerordentlichen Fabeleien über ihre „polnische[] Herkunft, wovon ich weder von meinem Manne noch meiner Schwiegermutter etwas gehört habe“¹⁶ energisch zu widersprechen. Im Gegensatz zu den unzuverlässigen Angaben ihrer Tochter hält sich ihr eigener Bericht über ihr jüngeres Selbst, ihren Verehrer und späteren Gatten und die Orte, an denen sie beide aufwuchsen, an die Fakten. Diese werden freilich idealisiert und in einer Sprache ausgedrückt, die frömmer ist als die von einem dicken ländlichen Akzent gefärbte, die sie als Kind gesprochen haben dürfte. Ihre Eltern firmieren fast durchweg als „unser guter Vater“ und „die gute liebe Mutter“, werden kaum einfach nur als Mutter, Vater oder gar Papa bezeichnet. Sie war das sechste und damit das mittlere von elf Geschwistern – ihrer Einschätzung nach kein Nachteil:

[S]o unter fünf Brüdern als einziges Mädchen dazwischen aufzuwachsen, hat mir gewiß zu meiner guten Gesundheit verholfen, indem ich die tollsten Spiele u Belustigungen mitmachten mußte, wollte ich mich nicht ihrem Hohn aussetzen.¹⁷

Sie berichtet etwa von halsbrecherischen Schlittenfahrten.¹⁸ Diese Truppe von Lausebengeln machte zusammen das Pfarrhaus samt Nebengebäuden unsicher, in dem ihr Vater eine kleine Landwirtschaft betrieb, um sein karges Gehalt aufzubessern. Es befand sich auf einer kleinen Anhöhe, von der aus man Pobles überblicken konnte, einem Weiler von 130 Seelen, einstmals kurfürstlich-sächsisch, seit 1815 Teil der preußischen Provinz Sachsen, in der sich auch Zeitz, Röcken und Naumburg befanden. Diese Gemeindemitglieder grüßten ihren Landpastor einhellig, wenn Franziskas Vater sonntags nach getaner Arbeit, der Etikette folgend, die paar Schritte heimwärts feierlich alleine zurücklegte, seiner Familie voran. Wenn sich die Haustür dann hinter ihnen schloss, lockerte sich die soeben noch demonstrierte Frömmigkeit schnell auf: Franziska sah ihren Vater seinen langen schwarzen Talar abwerfen, um zu seiner Pfeife zu greifen und zuzuhören, was Franziskas Mutter – die man Wilhelmine nannte, obwohl sie mit erstem Vornamen Johanna hieß – über den Gottesdienst zu sagen hatte.¹⁹  

In diesen Kindheitserinnerungen und in ihren zahlreichen ausführlichen Briefen, die sie während ihres Lebens verfasste, vertritt Franziska die Auffassung, dass ihre engste Familie den Kern dessen, was sie ist, definiert, so energisch, dass Franziska für sich darstellen zu wollen so sinnvoll erscheint wie in der Dämmerung nach seinem eigenen Schatten zu haschen. Diese Überzeugung gewinnt für sie sogar noch mehr an Gewicht nach der Geburt ihres ersten Sohnes am 15. Oktober 1844 – ziemlich genau ein Jahr, nachdem sie Ludwig geheiratet hatte. Zur großen Freude beider Eltern kam das Kind „unter dem Geläute der Glocken, die die Gemeinde zur Feier des Geburtstages […] Friedrich Wilhelms IV. riefen“²⁰. Ihr Gatte war erzkonservativ und ein fanatischer Monarchist – da stand es gar nicht erst zur Debatte, dass das Neugeborene keinen anderen Namen als denjenigen des preußischen Königs tragen sollte, nachdem Gott ein so untrügliches weltliches Zeichen gegeben hatte.

Solche Omina tauchen in Franziskas Memoiren immer wieder auf, Reminiszenzen einer Erziehung und einer Geisteshaltung, die sich weniger gut in Schubladen stecken lässt, als es manchen Kommentatoren lieb ist. Auch wenn etwa Carol Diethe zu Recht Kritikern widerspricht, die Franziskas Religiosität für Nietzsches psychologische Auffälligkeit verantwortlich machen – „ob sie anders hätte handeln können“²¹ ist immer noch ein packendes psychologisch-philosophisches Rätsel –, verwechselt sie, worin diese Religiosität bestand. Ihr Vater und ihr Ehemann waren beide äußerst religiös, aber nur letzterer ein Anhänger des Pietismus.²² Klaus Goch jedenfalls sieht keinen Anhaltspunkt dafür, dass Franziska in einem pietistischen Haushalt aufwuchs. Er findet es im Gegenteil

erstaunlich, daß Franziska, wenn sie in ihren Erinnerungen den Vater und das Elternhaus beschreibt, kaum etwas erzählt von evangelisch-christlichen Andachtsritualen, von Gebeten, Gottesdienstbesuchen, geistlichen Übungen, wohl aber über Lese- und Gesangsstunden, Rezitationen und Theaterspiel berichtet, also all jene Freizeitbeschäftigungen, die kennzeichnend sind für eine bürgerlich-gebildete, offene, humanistische bestimmte Familienkultur.²³  

Und mehr noch: Franziskas Neffe Adalbert Oehler bezeugt, dass sein Großvater David kein Pietist gewesen war, sondern vielmehr ein Freimaurer. Dies sei die wahre Quelle seines Rationalismus.²⁴ Sowohl pietistische als auch orthodoxe protestantische Kreise bekämpften die Freimaurerei entschieden, so dass es abstrus erscheint, davon auszugehen, dass sich David auf beiden Seiten dieser kulturellen Front bewegte.²⁵

Die Freimaurer zu David Oehlers Lebzeiten kombinierten Rationalität mit Spekulation – „[e]s ist die Vermischung von Vernunft und Spiel, von Rationalität und der Suche nach dem Exotischen, die das Logenwesen [im Deutschland des 19. Jahrhunderts] so modern erscheinen läßt“²⁶ –, so dass Franziskas Hang zur Wahrsagerei teilweise von ihrem Vater herrühren könnte – neben den Gleichaltrigen, mit denen sie aufwuchs. In der Zeit nämlich, als Ludwig noch um sie warb und sie regelmäßig mit seinen zwei Schwestern und seiner Mutter besuchen kam, und sich die Franziskas Eltern dazu entschlossen hatten, diese Besuche zu erwidern – natürlich ohne Franziska oder ihren Schwestern zu gestatten, sie zu den Nietzsches zu begleiten –, besuchten die Oehlers noch eine andere „auch mit 4 erwachsnen Töchtern gesegnete uns sehr bekannte Pastorenfamilie“²⁷. In einem Gartenhäuschen, den Blicken der älteren Generation entzogen, legte eine dieser Töchter für die jungen Frauen Karten

u. als wir hinzutraten, meinte sie: „Ich will doch denen auch einmal die Karten schlagen“, im Tone als wie „zum Überfluß“. Doch welch Erstaunen, als sich bei mir alle Könige und wer weiß was, sich drehten u. unsre Prophetin erregt kund that, „was sich mit Fränzchen zunächst zuträgt wissen wir vielleicht alle nicht“[.]²⁸

Man muss kein Tarotexperte sein, um zu erahnen, was bald darauf folgte: Heiratsantrag und Vermählung. Auf sie folgten wiederum, binnen nur etwas mehr als sechs Jahren, die Geburt von Franziskas drei Kindern, die letzten Züge der qualvollen Krankheit ihres Ehemanns, dessen Tod und der plötzliche Tod ihres Jüngsten, Joseph, im Alter von nur zwei Jahren im Januar 1850. Zu allem Überfluss sah sie sich von dem Moment an, als sie ins Röckener Pfarrhaus – nur eine einstündige Kutschenfahrt von ihrem Elternhaus entfernt – einzog, auch noch der psychologischen Grausamkeit ihrer resoluten Schwiegermutter Erdmuthe (1778–1856) und Ludwigs erwähnten Schwestern Rosalie (1811–1867) und Auguste (1815–1855) ausgesetzt, die sich ihrer jungen Schwägerin gegenüber überlegen dünkten. Franziska „wurde […] ein rückseitiges gelegenes Wohnzimmer und zwei Schlafräume zugewiesen, während ihre alles beherrschende Schwiegermutter, Erdmuthe Nietzsche (1778–1856), in den sonnigen Räumen im Erdgeschoß das Regiment führte.“²⁹ Durch seine Unfähigkeit, seiner Mutter zu widersprechen oder auch nur den geringsten offenen häuslichen Konflikt zu ertragen, trug Ludwig seinen Teil zu dieser grausamen Behandlung bei. Gemäß der strengen Rangordnung, an die man sich zu halten hatte, wäre es, wie Carol Diethe zu Recht bemerkt, an Ludwig gewesen, darauf zu bestehen, dass „ihr, als Ehefrau des Amtsinhabers, die vorderen Räume des Pfarrhauses zugestanden“³⁰ hätten. Wie so viele Menschen in ihrem Umfeld, ließ auch er sie in ethischer Hinsicht im Stich, indem er darin versagte, sich empathisch in ihr Schicksal einzumischen.

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III. Eine entsetzliche Liebesehe

Ein wenig wie subtile Hinweise in den Eröffnungsszenen klassischer Horrorfilme, streuen Franziskas Erinnerungen den Lesern Brotkrumen aus, denen folgend sie den Schmerz und die Aufregung erahnen können, die Franziska später ereilen sollten. In einem Gespräch vor ihrer Ehe erzählte Ludwigs ältere Schwester Rosalie, „welche äußerst reizbar war“³¹, Fränzchen

daß auf den [sic] Pfarrboden ihres Bruders, eine ganz hübsche Aussicht sein solle, sie könne dieselbe aber ihrer Nerven halber nicht genießen. Dieses Wort „Nerven“ hatte ich noch nie gehört […]. Als aber unsere Gäste fort waren, erzählte ich Mutterchen das Gespräch mit Frln. Nietzsche u. frug „was das eigentlich wäre „Nerven.“³²

Fränzchen bekommt eine ganze Ladung von ihnen Anfang 1846 ab, als Ludwig, als er gerade die Liturgie versieht, eine heftige Heulattacke übermannt, anscheinend eine nervöse Reaktion auf ein unangenehmes Gespräch mit einem Gemeindemitglied im Vorfeld des Gottesdiensts.³³ Die Rolle, die Nerven beim späteren Zusammenbruch und schließlich der tödlichen Krankheit ihres Sohnes spielten, war schon der Stoff von Hunderten von Aufsätzen und Büchern – und wird es auch künftig bleiben. Es mutet unseren heutigen Ohren vielleicht ein wenig kurios an, aber „Nerven“ bot sich den Protagonisten von damals als naheliegendes Konzept an, um über die Psyche nachzudenken.

Ein anderer Vorfall, der nichts Gutes verheißen ließ, ereignete sich, als die Frischvermählten direkt nach der Hochzeit zurück nach Röcken gefahren wurden, wo sie der örtliche Schulmeister und seine Schützlinge erwarteten, um ihnen ein Ständchen darzubringen, und ihnen Geschenke der drei Gemeinden übergeben wurden, aus denen sich Ludwigs Pfarramt zusammensetzte: „2 Dz. silberne Esslöffel“³⁴ und vieles Nützliche mehr. Wie es die Etikette verlangte, widmete ihnen Ludwig daraufhin eine Dankesrede von der Schwelle der Tür seines Pfarrhauses aus,

wollte aber auch daß dabei sein Frauchen neben ihn in die einige Stufen erhöhte Hausthür trat. Mit par force öffnete er dafür die sonst nie offene u. wahrscheinlich verquollene andere Hälfte der Flügeltür, wobei das ganze untere Fach ausbrach; ich kann mich aber nicht erinnern, daß es von uns Glücklichen als ein böses Omen angesehen worden wäre u. doch könnte man es, den späteren traurigen Erfahrungen nach wenn man überhaupt abergläubisch wäre.³⁵

Trotz ihres vorsichtigen Gebrauchs des Konjunktivs ist dieser Vorfall für Franziska wichtig genug, um sich seiner ein halbes Jahrhundert später noch zu erinnern, als sie ihre Lebensgeschichte schreibt.

Nachdem sie zur Witwe geworden war, zog sie mit ihren Kindern, ihrer Schwiegermutter und ihren Schwägerinnen 1849 ins nahe Naumburg, das größer war als Röcken, aber dennoch eine recht kleine Stadt.³⁶ Diese Entscheidung geht auf Erdmuthe zurück, die in dieser Gemeinde einige Jahrzehnte vorher aufgewachsen war. Allerdings hatte sich seitdem einiges getan, denn die Erweckungsbewegung, in dieser Zeit einfach nur „die Erweckung“ genannt, die damals durch die protestantischen Teile Deutschlands fegte, hatte auch vor dem verschlafenen Provinznest nicht Halt gemacht. Man erklärte sich öffentlich für „wiedergeboren“ und bereute seine vergangenen Sünden.³⁷ Erdmuthe hatte diese Inbrunst nicht gutgeheißen, als ihr Sohn derartige Anwandlungen an den Tag gelegt hatte. Sie empfand sie als Bedrohung der sozialen Hierarchie und der Verhaltensregeln, die ihr so teuer waren, und Ludwig hatte aus Rücksicht darauf seine entsprechenden Sympathien weitgehend verheimlicht. Erdmuthe gab gleichermaßen ihr Bestes, auch Franziska von dieser Bewegung fernzuhalten.

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IV. Eine grausame Vorhersehung?

Aber auch, wenn ihre unmittelbare Umgebung dem Aberglauben und allzu emotionalen religiösen Regungen feindselig gegenüberstand, ließ es sich Franziska nicht nehmen, insgeheim mit ihrem gerade verstorbenen Gatten zu kommunizieren, überzeugt davon, dass er sie hören konnte. In einer acht Tage nach seiner Beerdigung verfassten Tagebuchnotiz erzählt sie ihm, dass dieser Anlass, bei welchem „Du mein lieber fürwahr seliger Ludwig durch so viele Zeugen der Liebe und Achtung so geehrt wurdest“³⁸ „unser [sic] tiefbetrübten Herzen wohlgethan“ (ebd.) habe. Darüber hinaus beschwört sie Ludwig:

[B]itte […] doch den lieben Gott auch in meinem Nahmen [sic] daß er Dich den guten Engel sein lasse, der mich mit meinen [sic] ganzen Leben leite und führe damit wir unsere drei Kinder fortan in Gemeinschaft erziehen, zu des lieben Gottes Ehren.³⁹

Auch in unseren eigenen Leben geschehen solche schrecklichen Dinge und in denen derer, die wir lieben, und wir hoffen, dass diejenigen, die uns nahestehen, durch und nach diesen Tragödien wachsen werden – dass sie sich entwickeln. Wenn es für eine Frau aus einer Mittelschicht in jener Zeit der naheliegendste Weg war, um mehr Unabhängigkeit und einen besseren finanziellen Status zu erreichen, warum entschied sich Franziska nicht dafür, sich auf dem Wege einer zweiten Ehe weiterzuentwickeln? Sie war noch immer sehr jung, ungewöhnlich attraktiv – wie zeitgenössische Porträts von ihr belegen – und nicht ungebildet. Anscheinend fühlte sie sich durch all diese Geschehnisse so niedergeschlagen und existentiell bedroht durch die Aussicht, ihre Kinder alleine großzuziehen und nur von ihrer spärlichen Witwenrente leben zu können, dass sie sich für die Sicherheit eines repressiven, aber finanziell angemessen ausgestatteten gemeinsamen Haushalts mit ihrer Schwiegermutter entschied, anstatt einen Ausbruchsversuch in die Freiheit zu wagen.

Angesichts der Tatsache, dass sie dieses Opfer als die einzig richtige Option angesehen haben wird, muss es sich bitter angefühlt haben, von dem Ausmaß der Verachtung und Zurückweisung zu erfahren, die ihr ihre Kinder am Ende ihres Lebens entgegenbrachten; vor allem Elisabeths erbarmungslose und sture Distanzierung.⁴¹ In dem verstörenden Brief von 1895 an Dr. Gutjahr nennt Elisabeth ihre Mutter eine

Frau ohne Charakter, die ihre Kinder nicht wirklich liebte und von ihnen auch nicht geliebt wurde, denn es war auch nichts Wahres an ihr, alles nur Schauspielerei für andere Leute berechnet. Das hat uns grenzenlosen Kummer bereitet, zum Beispiel unserer Mutter Christentum, was für eine jämmerliche Tuerei und Spiegelfechterei, Augen-Aufschlagen etc. etc. und da wundert man sich, daß Fritz zum Antichrist geworden ist[.]⁴²

Auch wenn sie dem massiven Druck, der auf sie ausgeübt wurde, anfangs widerstand, überschreibt Franziska Ende 1895 „das Nietzsche-Archiv mit allen, auch seinen Naumannschen Honoraren“⁴³ an Elisabeth gegen eine Pauschale von 30.000 Mark zuzüglich einer jährlichen Rente von 1.600 Mark, die ihr für die Pflege des „guten Fritz“⁴⁴ ausbezahlt werden sollte.

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V. Franziskas Tod

Die etwa sechszehn Monate, die ihr noch blieben, brachten Franziska etwas Ruhe und Frieden. Im März 1896 schreibt sie an Franz Overbeck – Professor der Theologie und enger Freund Nietzsches, seitdem sie in den frühen 70er Jahren im selben Haus gewohnt hatten – und versorgt ihren Korrespondenten mit dem neusten Naumburger Klatsch und Tratsch. Während sie schreibt, liegt ihr Sohn schlafend neben ihr auf dem Sofa. Die Garstigkeit zwischen ihr und ihrer Tochter scheint bis zu einem gewissen Grad verflogen zu sein: „Lieschen“ geht nun ganz darin auf, die Renovierung der Villa Silberblick, ein etwas überdimensioniertes Herrenhaus im Süden Weimars, zu überwachen, das Nietzsches adlige Gönnerin Meta von Salis-Marschlins erworben hatte, um das Nietzsche-Archiv hierher zu verlegen. Der Kaufpreis von 39.000 Mark – kombiniert mit dem absehbaren Wert von Nietzsches Nachlass – lassen Franziskas kurz zuvor herausgehandelte Rente karg erscheinen.⁴⁵ Noch in dieser späten Phase konzentriert sich ihr Bericht darauf, was andere tun und was sie über ihr Verhalten und ihre Pflege Friedrichs sagen. Es ist für sie von eminenter Bedeutung, sie als gute Pflege darzustellen – was sie auch ohne jeden Zweifel war, jedenfalls deutlich besser als diejenige, die Nietzsche erhalten hätte, wenn er in den psychiatrischen Kliniken geblieben wäre, in denen er während der ersten Phase seiner schweren geistigen Erkrankung untergebracht war. Gegenüber Overbeck erinnert sie sich an einen ihr aus zweiter Hand berichteten Kommentar des Psychiaters Otto Binswanger, der Nietzsches frühe institutionelle Behandlung überwacht und ihnen kürzlich einen Besuch abgestattet hatte. Binswanger soll bemerkt haben, dass „‚die Liebe der Mutter […] bei Professor Nietzsche der Krankheit die Spitze abgebrochen hat‘“⁴⁶ hat.

Franziska Nietzsches eigene Gesundheit verschlechterte sich schlagartig ab Weihnachten 1896 und sie verstarb schmerzhaft an Krebs im April des folgenden Jahres. Nicht mehr in der Lage, sich um ihren Sohn in dieser Welt zu kümmern, musste sie nicht lange warten, bis er, ihrer Ansicht nach, im Himmel wieder zu ihr stieß – wie kitschig das auch klingen mag. Ihre Widersprüche und ihr Unbehagen teilte sie mit zahlreichen Frauen ihres Jahrhunderts: Wie konnten sie gemäß ihren eigenen Vorstellungen leben, arbeiten und einfach nur existieren? Fragen, die Franziska an eine Anekdote aus ihrer Jugend erinnerten. Sie handelt davon, wie Ludwig Nietzsche sie eigentlich kennenlernte. Der „hübsche[] junge[] Herr[] Pastor“⁴⁷ stattet seinen Antrittsbesuch bei den Oehlers in Begleitung ihres Paten „Herr Pstr. Hochheim aus Starsiedel“⁴⁸ ab. Auf dem Rückweg fragt Pastor Nietzsche den „lieben alten Junggesellen“ (ebd.): „[W]ie heißt denn nun die jüngste Tochter von Herrn Pastr. Oehler?“⁴⁹ Das versetzt den „für sich sehr zerstreuten“ (ebd.) alten Geistlichen in Aufregung, „er quält sich, dabei immer ausrufend ‚S’ist ja mein Pathchen u. kann nicht auf den Namen kommen‘“ (ebd.). Sie „reden dann von ganz anderen Dingen, als er plötzlich ausruft: ‚Fränzchen heißt sie Fränzchen heißt sie‘“ (ebd.).

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Das Artikelbild ‍stammt von der Zwickauer Künstlerin Christina Stephan – die uns zu dieser kleinen Serie erst inspirierte. Erfahren Sie mehr zu ihr und ihrer Kunst auf ihrer Internetseite. Die Zeichnung zeigt die junge Franziska als „Tochter und Schwester in Pobles“ mit ihren Geschwistern – deren Gesichter wir nicht kennen – und ihren Eltern. Ihre Mutter Johanna war auf einem Auge blind.

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Bibliographie

Bohley, Reiner: Nietzsches christliche Erziehung. In: Nietzsche-Studien 16 (1987), S. 164–196.

Diethe, Carol: Vergiss die Peitsche. Nietzsche und die Frauen, übers. v. Michael Haupt. Europa: 2000.

Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth: Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche’s, Bd. 1. C. G. Naumann: 1895.

Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth: Der junge Nietzsche. C. G. Naumann: 1912.

Goch, Klaus: Franziska Nietzsche. Ein biographisches Porträt. Insel: 1994.

Hoffmann, Stefan-Ludwig: Die Politik der Geselligkeit. Freimaurerlogen in der deutschen Bürgergesellschaft 1840-1918. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: 2000.

Kloes, Andrew: The German Awakening. Protestant Renewal after the Enlightenment, 1815–1848. Oxford University Press: 2019.

Nietzsche, Franziska: [Autobiographische Erinnerung]. Unveröffentliches Manuskript, GSA 100/851, Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv, Weimar. 36 S. (manche davon lose Blätter). Kommentiertes Transkript in: Klaus Goch, Franziska Nietzsche. Ein biographisches Porträt. Insel: 1994, S. 32–64.

Nietzsche, Franziska: Der entmündigte Philosoph. Briefe von Franziska Nietzsche an Adalbert Oehler, hg. v. Gernot U. Gabel & Carl Helmuth Jagenberg. Gabel: 1994.

Nietzsche, Franziska: Der kranke Nietzsche. Briefe seiner Mutter an Franz Overbeck. Bermann-Fischer: 1937.

Oehler, Adalbert: Nietzsches Mutter. Beck: 1940.

Peters, H.: Zarathustras Schwester, übers. v. H. Peters. Kindler: 1983.

Prideaux, Sue: Ich bin Dynamit. Das Leben des Friedrich Nietzsche, übers. v. Thomas Pfeiffer & Hans-Peter Remmler. Klett-Cotta: 2020.

Schaberg, William H.: The Nietzsche Canon. A Publication History and Bibliography. University of Chicago Press: 1995.

Schenkel, Gotthilf: Die Freimauerei im Lichte der Religions- und Kirchengeschichte. Klotz: 1924.

Stadt Naumburg (Saale): Einwohnerzahlen der Stadt. Statistikportal der Stadt Naumburg (Saale): undatiert [2025], https://www.stadt-naumburg.de/Stat/Einwohner.html.

Stern, Fritz: The Trouble with Publishers. In: London Review of Books 18 (1996), https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n18/fritz-stern/the-trouble-with-publishers.

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Fußnoten

1: Franziskas handschriftliches Manuskript mit autobiographischen Erinnerungen, GSA 100/851, im Goethe-Schiller-Archive, Weimar (insgesamt 36 Seiten, manche davon lose Blätter). Eine mit Anmerkungen versehen Transkription dieses Manuskript ist enthalten in Klaus Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 32–64. Im Folgenden zitiere ich aus diesem Manuskript gemäß dieser Transkription, in diesem Fall: GSA 100/851, in: Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 32.

2: Franziska Nietzsche an Adalbert Oehler am 8. Juni 1895. In: Briefe von Franziska Nietzsche an Adalbert Oehler, S. 31.

3: Franziska Nietzsche an Adalbert Oehler am 23. & 24. Juni 1895. In: Ebd., S. 34.

4: Ebd., S. 33.

5: Ebd., S. 34.

6: Ebd. Wortlaut im Original: „unsagbar gelitten eins doch seine Bücher“.

7: Adalbert Oehler, Nietzsches Mutter, S. 49 f.

8: Franziska Nietzsche, GSA 100/851, in: Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 32.

9: Vgl. Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 354.

10: Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche's, S. 13.

11: Vgl. Franziska Nietzsche, GSA 100/851, in: Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 34.

12: Franziska Nietzsche an Adalbert Oehler im Oktober 1895, zit. n. Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 30.

13: Nachgelassene Fragmente Nr. 1882 21[2]. 2024 schrieb Paul Stephan für Nietzsche POParts über Nietzsches ‚Polen-Komplex‘.

14: Selbes Fragment wie in Fn. 13. Elisabeth zitiert es in Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche’s, S. 10 f.

15: Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 73.

16: Franziska Nietzsche an Adalbert Oehler im Oktober 1895, zit. n. Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 353.

17: Franziska Nietzsche, GSA 100/851, in: Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 35.

18: Vgl. ebd., S. 35 f.

19: Vgl. Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 83.

20:  Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Der junge Nietzsche, S. 14, zit. n. Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 129.

21: Diethe, Vergiss die Peitsche, S. 9.

22: Diethes Behauptung, nicht nur Franziskas Gatte, sondern auch ihr Vater seien pietistisch gewesen (vgl. ebd.), überzeugt nicht. Reiner Bohley geht einen Schritt weiter und zeigt, dass auch Carl Ludwig kein Pietist gewesen sei, sondern sich der Erweckungsbewegung angeschlossen habe: seiner Ansicht nach zwei Paar Stiefel (vgl. Bohley, Nietzsches christliche Erziehung, S. 171).

23: Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 76.

24: Vgl. Adalbert Oehler, „Erinnerungen meines Lebens“ [unveröffentlichtes Manuskript], zit. n.: Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 78 f. und Endnoten 97 f. in ebd., S. 361 f.  

25: Vgl. Gotthilf Schenkel, Die Freimaurerei im Lichte der Religions- und Kirchengeschichte, S. 34, zit. n. Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 361 f.

26: Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Die Politik der Geselligkeit, S. 36 f.

27: Franziska Nietzsche, GSA 100/851, in: Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 51.

28: Ebd.

29: Carol Diethe, Vergiss die Peitsche, S. 18.  

30: Ebd., S. 23.

31: Franziska Nietzsche, GSA 100/851 in: Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 54.

32: Ebd.

33: Vgl. Ludwigs Brief an Emil Julius Schenk v. 21. Januar 1846, zit. n. Reiner Bohley, Nietzsches christliche Erziehung, S. 177.  

34: Franziska Nietzsche, GSA 100/851, in: Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 61.

35: Ebd., S. 61 f.

36: Vgl. die Einwohnerzahlen in Stadt Naumburg (Saale), Einwohnerzahlen der Stadt.

37: Für zwei unterschiedliche Darstellungen dieser Bewegung vgl. Prideaux, Ich bin Dynamit, S. 27 und Kloes, The German Awakening. Friedrich Kantzenbachs in den 1950ern publizierte Forschungen paraphrasierend, weist Kloes darauf hin, dass, die Erweckung und der Pietismus, auch wenn sie viele Gemeinsamkeiten aufwiesen, „zwei Bewegungen“ (S. 16; Übers. PS) mit „grundsätzlich unterschiedlichen Orientierungen“ (ebd.) gewesen seien: „Im Kontext des späten 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhunderts war der Pietismus eine primär kirchenimmanente Bewegung, die sich an diejenigen richtete, die bereits Christen waren. […] Die Erweckung hingegen verhielt sich ‚antithetisch gegenüber Aufklärung und Idealismus‘ und orientierte sich nach außen in ihren Bestrebungen, den fremden Einflüssen zu widerstehen, die ihres Erachtens in die Kirche gekommen seien“ (ebd.).

38: Franziska Nietzsche, Tagebucheintrag ca. vom August 1849, GSA 100/849, zit. n.  Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 150.

39: Ebd., S. 151.

40: Franziska Nietzsche, Tagebucheintrag ca. vom Januar 1850, GSA 100/849, zit. n. Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 152.

41: Nietzsches boshafte Invektive gegen Mutter und Schwester in Ecce homo, Warum ich so weise bin, Abs. 3, geschrieben nur wenige Wochen vor seinem Zusammenbruch, hat es nicht minder in sich. Es ist eine glückliche Fügung, dass Franziska sie vermutlich nie zu Gesicht bekam (auch wenn das nicht ausgeschlossen werden kann, befand sich Nietzsches gesamtes Nachlass doch bis 1896 in ihrem Haus): „Wenn ich den tiefsten Gegensatz zu mir suche, die unausrechenbare Gemeinheit der Instinkte, so finde ich immer meine Mutter und Schwester, – mit solcher canaille mich verwandt zu glauben wäre eine Lästerung auf meine Göttlichkeit.“ Ecce homo wurde allerdings erst 1908 veröffentlicht, und auch nur in einer von seiner Schwester redigierten und zensierten Form. Eine zuverlässige Fassung des Textes erschien erst 1969, herausgegeben von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari im Rahmen der Kritischen Gesamtausgabe.

42: Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsches Brief an Dr. Gutjahr, Hausarzt von Franziska Nietzsche, von 1895. Zit. n. Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 13 (von H. Peters, Zarathustras Schwester, S. 202).

43: Franziska Nietzsche in Naumburg an Franz Overbeck am 26. Dezember 1895, in: Franziska Nietzsche, Der kranke Nietzsche. Briefe seiner Mutter an Franz Overbeck, S. 193. Der Drucker C. G. Naumann aus Leipzig wurde um 1886 Nietzsches Hauptverleger, ein Status, der ihm auch einen Anteil an den Rechten der Werke sicherte, die erschienen, nachdem Nietzsche nach seinem Zusammenbruch 1889 das Urheberrecht an seinen eigenen Werken verloren hatte. Für mehr über die Ökonomie der Nietzsche-Ausgaben vgl. William H. Schaberg, The Nietzsche Canon und die gründliche Rezension desselben Werkes von Fritz Stern (The Trouble with Publishers).

44: Brief wie in Fn. 43, S. 194.

45: Vgl. Prideaux, Ich bin Dynamit, S. 461.

46: Franziska Nietzsche in Naumburg an Franz Overbeck am 27. März 1896, in: Briefe seiner Mutter an Franz Overbeck, S. 198.

47: Franziska Nietzsche, GSA 100/851, in: Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, S. 50.

48:  Ebd., S. 49.

49: Ebd., S. 50.

„Fränzchen heißt sie Fränzchen heißt sie“

Über die frühen Jahre Franziska Nietzsches – und ihr umkämpftes Ende

Zum diesjährigen Muttertag widmen sich zwei unserer Stammautoren einer oft vergessenen Person aus dem Nietzscheversum, ohne die es den Philosophen jedoch nicht gegeben hätte: seiner Mutter Franziska Ernestine Rosaura Nietzsche, geborene Oehler. Die Pfarrerstochter erblickte am 2. Februar 1826 das Licht der Welt und starb am 20. April 1897, nur wenige Jahre vor ihrem Sohn, der zu diesem Zeitpunkt bereits so geistig umnachtet war, dass er ihren Tod womöglich gar nicht bemerkte. Wer war diese Frau? Inwiefern prägte und beeinflusste sie Friedrich Nietzsche?

Henry Holland berichtet in diesem ersten Teil unserer kleinen Reihe über ihr Leben und ihre Herkunft, während Natalie Schulte sich in dem folgenden vertieft dem Verhältnis zwischen ihr und ihrem Sohn widmen wird und der Frage, inwiefern es sein Bild von Frauen färbte.

Was waren die entscheidenden Faktoren, die Franziska Nietzsches Leben bestimmten? Wie gelang es ihr als Frau in einer zutiefst von patriarchalen Strukturen geprägten Lebenswelt, die nie einem bezahlten Beruf nachging, dennoch ein gewisses Maß an Selbstbestimmung zu behaupten? Wie verarbeitete sie den traumatischen frühen Tod ihres Mannes? Wie religiös war sie? Ein in der Forschung selten beachtetes autobiographisches Fragment, das sie kurz vor ihrem Tod verfasste, lässt ihr Leben in einem neuen Licht erscheinen.

Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Paul Stephan.

In the dignified Christian Wolff Hall of the Halle City Museum, between paintings from the 18th century and equally old furniture, there is a dominant chaise longue on the parquet floor. On it, wrapped in blankets, huddled up, an androgynous person with a distinctive footed moustache who immediately electrifies the room with her first exclamation: “Don't look so concerned! It is the worried faces that make me ill.” A clear message: No one here wants to be pitied as Christians, but rather to be admired tragically... It rises, wearing a nightgown and with a confused look: Friedrich Nietzsche. And reach out to the ranks of the audience. Ask “Peter Gast” from the audience to get a bottle of wine from his cupboard because his pain is too great. He later also asks to scratch his back: “Not so timid — or are you a convent student? “And rips apart under the exclamation “I destroy all altars! “a picture of Wagner, throws paper into the audience as “brain footage.”

Yes, anyone who sits at the front of this piece gets up close and personal with the Nietzsche of the 1890s, not at all, but between madness and rearing, storming and urging genius, oppressed by sister and mother in Naumburg¹. The play tells this narrative Nietzsche, or The German Misery by Austrian Alexander Widner, brought to the stage in Halle an der Saale by solo theatre artist Andrea Ummenberger.

It tells a fictional episode in which Lou Salomé (who in reality did not meet Nietzsche in person after their intensive time together in 1882) visits the “House of the Dead,” as Nietzsche calls the location of his sisterly care in the play. Lou tries to encourage Nietzsche, who believes in his recovery in the sunny south, although severely physically and mentally impaired, to travel to Italy again. Both Lou and he himself fluctuate between motivation and doubt — Nietzsche once again embodies exactly the qualities he criticized crushingly in his actions, for example:

You should only live in countries where garlic is appreciated! Countries hostile to garlic are sense-hostile countries! That's where you write; instead of nurturing and pampering your senses. You write your fingers sore, you think your ganglia crooked, you pour out your heart — instead of filling it. To the south! To the south! In a paperless area!

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Nietzsche, the poetic philosopher of ambiguity, an apologist of statements such as: “There are no facts, only interpretations.”² In this piece, he is presented in facets that can be interpreted in many ways, including from his left-wing, anti-German and state-critical side. In this respect, the choice of Alexander Widner's piece, which bears criticism of the German nation in its title, is certainly a good one — especially in the current times when, according to surveys, a nationalist party in the federal state has 40% of the performance.

Alexander Widner portrays Nietzsche as a critic of all “supernatural” instances, from state to church to spirit itself, as a philosopher of the body who upholds the power of nature and instinct. He makes him call, in reference to Zarathustra³: “We are body, not mind! [...] We are Earth! Earth! Earth! [...] I implore you, my brothers, remain loyal to the earth and do not believe those who speak to you of supernatural hopes! ”

More relevant than ever: Back then, it was the Christian priests who wanted to stir up false hope with the supernatural god, today it is the tech billionaires who preach infidelity to the earth in other ways: hope for extraterrestrial colonies in space, hope of immortality through genetic engineering and nanochips, hope of disembodiment through digital alter egos. With Nietzsche, this can also be countered here by respecting the earth in terms of the environment and not striving for limitless growth on a limited planet.

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But even more than these serious subtexts, the piece is also an ode to the “dancing and laughing God,” because Andrea Ummenberger knows how to incite viewers to laugh and smile with subtle or direct humor and therefore — as Nietzsche certainly approved — to stimulate the affects instead of the ganglia. As a result, she has already secured a certain fan base in Halle. Good conditions for taking on the complex matter of Nietzsche as a “one-woman show” as a next step and refreshing to see the “whipping” Friedrich on stage in a woman's body — at the same time an acknowledgment that, despite all criticism of it, the spirit (and philosophy) is exactly what is beyond gender and thus a bridge-building force.

In view of so much courage and commitment, minor technical faux pas can easily be overlooked and express the hope that this piece, with Ummenberger as Nietzsche, will find many more spectators, may travel to the stages of many cities and that the outstanding actress may even be able to afford a few more people on or backstage at future performances.

Anyone who wants to experience the “old” Nietzsche “resurrected” in his natural habitat should not miss the opportunity to see, hear and feel him so close to his penultimate place of work and so authentically staged. The piece will be played in Halle until May 30.

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Mandus Craiss (born 1983) grew up in Ludwigsburg and studied political science, cultural studies, philosophy, new history and geography in Tübingen and Leipzig. He has socialized in the ecological and age-mondialist movement and traveled extensively in this context, largely by hitchhiking. As central editor of the former BUNDjugend magazine Kritische Masse ("Critical mass") he has also published articles and interviews on political philosophy from Fromm to Foucault. His master's thesis deals with the works of Deleuze & Guattari with regard to the unconditional basic income. He lives with his son in a house community on the outskirts of Leipzig.

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The article image was photographed by Juliane Apel.

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Footnotes

1: Widner has the piece set around 1896/97, but mistakenly locates Nietzsche to Jena, where he was in a psychiatric hospital in 1889/90.

2: Posthumous Notes No. 1886 7 [20]

3: Cf. Preface, 3.

“Facts” and a Damn Good Interpretation

Nietzsche as a Solo Piece in Halle

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.

What would Nietzsche — he only lived today and enjoyed brilliant mental health — say about our Pappenheimers Trump, Putin, Weidel & Co.? Would he be impressed, appalled? Would he write poisonous polemics against the Trumps of this world or would he rather write: against the Trump-haters of this world? Or even both? Anyone who wants to dismiss such anachronistic questions as idle has good arguments for this, but I old nihilistic atheist have the time for this idle on Good Friday and will therefore dedicate myself to a reflection on the question: How would Nietzsche have positioned himself in the face of today's right-wing populism?

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Define Nietzsche?

As always, there are easy answers. One of the very few questions about Nietzsche's political stance, which is (largely) answered uncontroversial in today's scientific Nietzsche research, concerns anti-Semitism: Nietzsche deeply despised it. It is easy to conclude from this that Nietzsche would have thought little of our current right-wing populists, provided that they had a new form of “anti-Semitic screaming neck.”¹ looks embodied. However, I don't want to make it that easy for myself — otherwise reading this article would be all too short! So it's a little further afield...

... A determination of proportion requires first a determination of what should be set in relation, i.e. in this case: a definition of Nietzsche on the one hand and a definition of populism on the other. Unsurprisingly, it must be stated here that the definition of both subjects of the investigation is anything but obvious. Isn't the appeal of our favorite philosopher precisely his stubborn refusal to be “unified”? What's more, isn't his philosophy itself essentially one of the “ambiguities”? What some recognize as perspectivism, others grumble completely contradictory within themselves and still others (I) call paradoxical thinking “that you can't cope with.”², is presumably determined precisely by the fact that it cannot be clearly defined and thus abandons thinkers who are looking for definitions, who are even sorely in need of definitions, with an angry smile. But that's something after all: defining Nietzsche about his indefinability, his 'anti-uniqueness. '

If this abstract definition is to be concretized politically, on the one hand, there is the problem of a philosopher who, due to the ambiguity of his political positions, cannot be assigned to any political camp. On the other hand, there is a picture of radically pluralistic thinking which not only allows, but also expressly affirms, the most diverse, even contradictory views: a way of thinking that dares to push contradiction itself, antagonism, to its extreme extreme at any time. This basic antagonistic feature appears in the first work, which Birth of Tragedy, clearly expressed when Nietzsche creates the highest of all art forms from the productive high tension between Apollinian and Dionysian. And the antagonistic spirit of Nietzsche is still at work in the last creative phase, in the development of the metaphysics of a 'will to power, 'when the will to overwhelm becomes the essential determination of life itself.

Nietzsche does not want to be defined, appears as a radical pluralist precisely because of this, but, as should not be embezzled here, he most likely identifies himself with the attribution of “aristocratic radicalism” given to him by Georg Brandes.³ Would a pluralistic aristocracy be conceivable?

As it should be, the attempt to define Nietzsche led me astray — to the brink of an impossible term, 'pluralistic aristocracy'...

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Define Populism?

What is the definitive score of populism? What does this label actually mean in more detail? Anyone who delves into the scientific debates of political theory will notice from a first superficial review that there is no agreement on this either, but rather a variety of opposing views entirely in Nietzsche's antagonistic and perspective sense.⁴

Ernesto Laclau and Jan-Werner Müller present two very different attempts to describe populism. Müller defines populism as a “shadow of representative democracy,” which combines an anti-establishment stance with a harshly anti-pluralistic stance, which can be attributed to the political campaign “We — and only we — are the people.”⁵ Populists can be recognized “by their claim to sole moral representation.”⁶ Populism is therefore opposed to pluralistic democracy, even though it appears to be indissolubly linked to it as its “shadow.” Laclau, on the other hand, develops a positive concept of populism, according to which “populist reason” is a legitimate way of constructing the political in general,⁷ by drawing a line between “us” and the “others” — freely following the antagonistic definition of the political as a friend-foe distinction in the sense of Carl Schmidt. According to Laclau, who belongs to the “we” and who belongs to the “others” results from the series of “similar” political demands (“chain of equivalence”)⁸), through which “we” identify “us” with each other. Without such a “populist” demarcation between antagonistic social groups, political struggles and changes are inconceivable. According to Laclau, anyone who does not want to think of the political as a purely economically determined, politically ultimately powerless administrative apparatus must affirm populist reason — only then can democracy be politically realized.

Both authors, Müller and Laclau, reject popular psychologizing provisions of populist attitudes as fearful, overwhelmed by modern complexity, led by resentment and therefore reactive-aggressive. But in both definitions, a hard distinction between a “we” or a “people” on the one hand and a “not us”, a “not our people” on the other hand appears to be essential to the concept of populism — which shows a significant lack of complexity as a basic element of populism. But while Müller regards this relentless simplistic demarcation as anti-democratic (and therefore as morally reprehensible), Laclau sees it as a condition of the possibility of political action par excellence (and therefore something good).

This rough outline of two populism definitions of political theory in the early 21st century includes the intricate questions that regularly arise in private and public discussions on the topic of populism: What is the state of the complicated relationship between democracy and populism? How do integrating pluralism and exclusionary nationalism relate to each other? Can, may, or must each exclude or include the other? Are populists now anti-democratic or are they the actual democrats?

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Pop — the People and Nietzsche?

What would an article be on the online blog NietzschePoparts without self-referentiality? If the POP blog already talks about populism, then the question is: Are both expressions the same “pop”?

Is it not in both cases the people who are to be alluded to, precisely in the “lowest” meaning of this word: Populus, the people who Plebs, the 'wide' mass? This mass of individuals, who become mass due to their lowest common denominators, are henceforth no longer characterized by their uniqueness, but by the mediocrity hated by Nietzsche? Average, dozens of goods, good for sale! None Fine Arts on this website, which would only be accessible to a small elite, but rather an art that opens Nietzsche's “aristocratic radical” to everyone, makes it available to every “Hinz and every Kunz” and every “Crethi and every Plethi”? What would Nietzsche say about that! Wouldn't he somersault in the grave out of sheer indignation?! Nietzsche, who considered himself so noble that he would “not give the young German Kaiser the honor of being his “coachman”?!⁹

And wouldn't this awareness of Nietzsche's own nobility also remove Nietzsche from any populist movement for miles? Just as he despised the anti-Semitic “all-Germans” of his time, he would probably also have disgusted today's 'Reichsbürger. ' If the young German Kaiser didn't seem noble enough to him in 1888 — would he have had any words at all for people like Donald Trump or Björn Höcke today? It's hard to imagine. It seems more obvious that Nietzsche would not have condescended to any comment at all in view of the appearance and ramblings of today's right-wing populists. On the other hand...

... Perhaps the sheer audacity of Donald Trump would have impressed him on some level after all. Perhaps he would have had nothing but ridicule and ridicule for those who are morally indignant at such audacity. Perhaps he would certainly have appreciated the Machiavellian skills of some populists and their aggressive political style — didn't he profess to be a big fan of the power-hungry human butcher Cesare Borgia?¹⁰ In view of the historical examples of 'great politicians, 'whom Nietzsche liked to cite provocatively (Napoleon, Julius Caesar...), all of our current populists appear almost pious and humanist...

And perhaps Nietzsche would have secretly enjoyed a popular online blog, in which his writings circulate and his thoughts are interpreted and interpreted again and again, like a Snow King. In any case, throughout his (mentally healthy) life, he has tried to make his thoughts accessible to an audience through language communication and publication. If this audience was very small or remained completely uninterested, Nietzsche was in no way amused! — And what is an audience other than a broad mass to whom something should be conveyed?

Like most of Nietzsche's work, his relationship with the “people” proves to be ambiguous despite all the polemics he regularly raises against them. Is an extremely paradoxical relationship with the “people” not also a genuine characteristic of Nietzsche's Zarathustra? The prophet descends from his mountain to speak to the people. His devotion to the people, the desire to know their truths mediate, are the driving force behind his entire journey! But the people understand him poorly — Zarathustra fails in his attempt to make himself understood: “Do you have to smash their ears first so that they learn to hear with their eyes? Do you have to rattle like timpani and preachers of repentance? Or do they just believe the stammerer? ”¹¹ Is Zarathustra perhaps failing precisely because it is impossible for him to speak like a current populist: rattling and stammering?

Mediation is just the word after mediocrity. In the end, letterpress gives birth to pop culture. Paradoxically, the aristocratic radical Nietzsche strives for popularity as a journalist. Nietzsche's aristocratism is to be taken seriously, because what he expresses with him is worth considering. But it should not be forgotten that Nietzsche counteracts his own aristocratism often enough and clearly enough — sometimes explicitly, sometimes subtly and very often implicitly, if only by seeking to make a public impact: by writing books.

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Nietzsche, the Failed Anti-Populist?

It is quite possible that Nietzsche would have profoundly despised our current right-wing populists. It is not unlikely that he would have had just as little left for moralizing populism abusers. It cannot be ruled out that Nietzsche would even have spoken positively about a populist political style out of provocation or genuine admiration. Idle speculation...

Anyone who primarily recognizes Nietzsche as a complex thinker of radical pluralism and suspects the most important characteristic of populism with Müller in its anti-pluralistic nature, will regard Nietzsche and populism as irreconcilable opposites. On the other hand, anyone who essentially interprets Nietzsche's philosophy as one of antagonism and sees populism with Laclau as a way of constructing the political through a clear social demarcation, will attribute to Nietzsche a clearly populist tendency on the basis of the antagonistic principle of his thinking — and will not criticize him for it, but rather praise him.

A reflection on today's right-wing populism, as well as a reflection on Nietzsche's politics, is exposed to the torrid tension between aspects of popularity and aspects of elitianism. I am convinced by the idea that Nietzsche (did not) want to be both: popularly — beautiful and accessible, understandable to all, loved by everyone — and elitist — beautiful and reserved, misunderstood by most, hated by many. He succeeds in both, he fails at both. Against this background, how appropriate does the subtitle appear to be Zarathustra? — A book for all and none.

Nietzsche would probably not have acted as a populist or as a supporter of populist politics today. But would he have acted as an anti-populist? Wouldn't he also necessarily have failed as an anti-populist? Is it not failure itself that he presents again and again, in ever new constellations, with his devising work — even in the triumphal howl of the author of Ecce homo? Is today's populism not itself a symptom of failure and, as such, perhaps even to be affirmed in the sense of completing nihilism according to Nietzsche? More question marks than exclamation marks — that is perhaps the biggest discrepancy between the effect of Nietzsche and that of Trump. Although: even a question mark can be deceptive, because it is often used purely rhetorically...

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Jenny Kellner (born 1984) studied acting, philosophy, and sociology in Hamburg and received her doctorate at the Berlin University of Arts with a thesis on the political implications of Georges Bataille's reading of Nietzsche. Her doctoral thesis was published in 2025 under the title Anti-ökonomischer Kommunismus. Batailles nietzscheanische Herausforderung ("Anti-economic communism. Bataille's Nietzschean challenge") at Campus Verlag. She currently teaches at the Berlin University of Arts and at Hafencity University Hamburg and is a speaker for the electronic beat prose projects Nach uns die Ewigkeit ("After us eternity") and Deimos with.

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Article Image

Tobias Fendt: The Vision of Ezekiel (1565) (source)

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Sources

Kellner, Jenny: Anti-ökonomischer Kommunismus. Batailles nietzscheanische Herausforderung. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main: 2025.

Laclau, Ernesto: Populist Reason (2005). Passagen Verlag, Vienna: 2022.

Müller, Jan-Werner: What is populism? An essay. Suhrkamp, Berlin: 2016.

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Footnotes

1: Beyond good and evil, Aph 251.

2: waiter, Anti-economic communism, p. 52 f.

3: Cf. Letter to Georg Brandes v. 2. 12.1887: “The term 'aristocratic radicalism' that you use is very good. That is, with all due respect, the scariest word I've ever read about myself. ”

4: In this regard, see, for example, Müller, What is populism, p. 15 f. & 25 f. and Laclau, Populist Reason, PP. 29-41.

5: Müller, What is populism, p. 18 f.

6: Ibid., p. 20.

7: Laclau, Populist Reason, P. 23.

8: Ibid., p. 164.

9: Ecce homo, Why I'm so wise, paragraph 3.

10: See e.g. Beyond good and evil, Aph 197, The Antichrist, paragraph 61 and Götzen-Dämmerung, rambles, Aph 37.

11: So Zarathustra spoke, Preface, paragraph 5.

Nietzsche as a Populist?

Attempt at an Anachronistic Determination of Proportions

What would Nietzsche have said about the rampant populism of our time? Does his elitist attitude, his “aristocratic radicalism,” not make him an anti-populist par excellence? Or did he not himself dream of populist leaders inspiring the masses and the mass success of his books? — But what is “populism” anyway and what is the score of Nietzsche's stance on populist movements in his own time?

These are not entirely unimportant questions for our blog, which Jenny Kellner addresses in detail in the following article.

“On the pages read

On all sides that are white

Stone blood paper or ash

I'll write your name. ”

(Paul Eluard, liberty¹)

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I. Unequal Funerals, Conflicting Conditions

It was crowds who arrived at the Montparnasse cemetery, with children on their shoulders so that they would not miss anything. It was a huge, colorful, unexpected meeting, a flocking crowd. Squirting, screaming, shoving. A man fell into the grave on the coffin. It was Saturday afternoon and over fifty thousand people had symbolically wanted to exist. On this day under a grey and heavy sky, “Sartre's people” traveled a Sartrean route of over three kilometers long in an atmosphere of spontaneity and crowding. Some claimed that at the famous restaurant La Coupole The waiters stood outside and bowed before the funeral procession. “Stepping into a dead person is like stepping into an open city,” Sartre had in his preface to Flaubert^[2] written. The scenes of this funeral, the hustle and bustle seemed to confirm this: And the colorful, lively, agitated and likeable people of Sartre proved it. It was both dignified and humble, simple and uncontrolled. Sartre left, and his departure led to one of the strangest rallies of intellectuals at the end of the 20th century. The little lonely, isolated man, the anarchist, the childless father went down in a kind of legend that day. He was lifted into heaven against his will.³

Today we want to talk about the topic “Sartre and Nietzsche.” I think that as a proven expert in Sartre's philosophy and chairman of the Sartre Society, the leading association for Sartre research in the German-speaking region, you are exactly the right person to talk to, especially since you will give a presentation at the conference I co-organized Between life and existence Nietzsche and French existentialism , which took place from 31/7 to 02/08/2020 in Naumburg⁴ — So we've both already dealt with the big topic of “Sartre and Nietzsche.”

This conversation, which we are having on March 21, is due to be published on April 15 on the anniversary of Sartre's death. I have just read out from Annie Cohen-Solal's great Sartre biography, one of the standard biographies, what she has to say about Sartre's funeral, which was really a very impressive event. All you have to do is look at the photos. Around 50,000 people were on the streets of Paris to pay their last respects to Sartre.

A philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, who is very important in our time, died recently, and I find the comparison very surprising: I don't even know whether his funeral has already taken place. In any case, there were numerous obituaries for him⁵ His death was a big topic in the features section and for everyone interested in culture — but that there could be such a big funeral procession for him in Berlin seems impossible; and that certainly applies to every philosopher working at the moment.

Against this background, my initial question is: Was it not just Sartre that was buried in 1980, but an entire era of philosophy? What happened in the intervening years? Why is philosophy no longer able to “seize the masses” in this way?

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Jens Bonnemann: That's when you start with a very difficult question. I don't even know whether there would ever have been a philosopher in Germany who would have been comparatively popular... Perhaps Adorno, who also worked beyond universities, who was therefore somehow important for cultural events — but when he died, no crowds came after his coffin, no. So maybe the difference is the cultural status of the intellectual in Germany and in France. In France, there is a completely different tradition when you think of Voltaire, of Émile Zola... These are intellectuals who don't necessarily stay in the ivory tower, who are engaged, who are popular, who are offensive, who have a sense of effect, and who are also more close to their respective cultures. In Germany, the distance between intellectuals and ordinary, non-university audiences is much greater. So when you think of Heinrich Böll, for example, he was certainly also popular — but now you can see the difference again, because Sartre was not just a philosopher. Sartre wrote plays, wrote novels, and was, of course, also a political intellectual. Sure, that was Habermas too, but Habermas limited himself to newspaper articles, Sartre was at demonstrations, he stood in a garbage can in 1970 and made speeches in front of the workers at the Renault plants, visited the RAF terrorist Andreas Baader in Stammheim... You can't imagine that with Habermas. So Sartre threw himself even more into the hustle and bustle, into the “scuffle”, while Habermas remained much more committed to the academic milieu, he was also a university professor, Sartre never. In fact, Sartre doesn't belong to a university at all, that is not his place at all, the coffee house much more than the university. I believe that is the decisive difference: First, that Sartre was not only a philosopher, but also a writer, and once that he was political in a completely different way than Habermas, for example; and then there is also a difference between countries that perhaps in no other country in the world is the intellectual as relevant as in France.

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PS: Yes, at least since the French Revolution, when it was already the case that some lawyers came to Paris from the village, so to speak, who were enthusiastic about the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau, made big speeches and seized the masses — the monarchy was abolished. Whether that was exactly the case or not — that is exactly the founding myth of the French nation, to this day. There is nothing comparable in Germany. The great German philosophers and writers have always sought a certain distance from political topics — think of Kant or Hegel, Goethe or Schiller; and also of Nietzsche.

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II. Philosophy and the Lifeworld

JB: Another factor is, of course, the way of philosophizing. When Habermas formulates his theses, i.e. when he says, for example, that the system imperative from the economy colonize the living environment, then you may be interested in it. But if you're not exactly a philosopher yourself, then these topics are rather alien to you. While Sartre does address topics that should actually interest everyone, even if you're not a philosopher. Sartre talks about the freedom that you can create yourself, that you can't give up responsibility for your life, and so on. And that you invent yourself. You don't have to be a philosopher to feel addressed by such questions — Habermas is much more academic in that regard. Of course, he also talks about philosophical topics that are relevant outside of philosophy, such as democracy. But such topics are not particularly relevant for someone who simply wants to live their life and is not interested in public affairs. Sartre has more to say to that.

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PS: Exactly, I too would see the big parallel between Sartre and Nietzsche in this aspect. It was no coincidence that Nietzsche was a great admirer of France. At times, he even toyed with the idea of moving to Paris and read a great many French authors. Perhaps it was precisely this broad understanding of the intellectual that he found so exciting about French culture. In other words, the intellectual may also write poetry without immediately making himself impossible. Even in terms of the way he writes, it must be said that Nietzsche is actually more of a popular author, for example when you compare him with Kant or Hegel — but also in terms of the topics. He deals with exactly these topics that you raised, which really speak to the individual, from which you can barely escape as an individual in the world in which we live. That's where Nietzsche and Sartre meet — and to this day, the probability that a high school graduate will of her own free will The disgust or So Zarathustra spoke seems to be much larger than that of Habermas' main work, Theory of communicative action, works through.

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JB: Nietzsche has also been read very heavily by people who don't see themselves as philosophers, just think of Thomas Mann. His worldview was decisively influenced by Nietzsche. Other examples include Hermann Hesse or Robert Musil.

So Nietzsche is someone you also read when you just want to think about life and about your fellow human beings, about life and death and so on. The big questions of life — that is not an issue for a Habermas, because he also believes that we now live in a post-metaphysical age and that philosophers can actually no longer give binding answers to questions about what the good human life is. From Habermas's point of view, this takes place in the individual living environments and the answers that you find there are culturally relative, finding them is no longer the task of the philosopher. From Habermas's point of view, this consists more of taking a mediating position, making sure that none of the different ideas of what the good life is treated unfairly, neutrality, and so on. How can we develop a process to treat the way of life fairly? That would be the approach of his discourse ethics and no longer to provide answers to the “big questions.”

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III. The “Death of God” as a Condition of Freedom

PS: But isn't that even something connecting Habermas, Sartre and Nietzsche that they start from a post-metaphysical situation for which Nietzsche found the famous formula of the “death of God”?

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JB: Yes, at least as far as Sartre is concerned, it is post-metaphysical in the sense that he does not say that we philosophers must now think about the West of man, which would be there eternally immutable, in order to then draw conclusions from the analysis of this being as to what a happy life should be like. That would be the approach of Aristotle, for example, who says that people are characterized by reason and that a reasonable life therefore also makes them happy.

We no longer find such metaphysical considerations in Sartre. And maybe you would disagree with me, but I would even venture to say even less so with Sartre than with Nietzsche. Because — and this is where we now come to a very decisive difference between Sartre and Nietzsche — in his remarks on existential psychoanalysis, Sartre rejects the thesis that there are basic human traits, such as the “will to power.” So Nietzsche would say that the will to power is active in everything alive and, of course, also in people. Therefore, if we want to understand what bothers people, then you are not wrong to say that it has something to do with striving for power. Sartre would counter this: No, it is neither as Freud assumes that sexual need forms the origin of man, is the most fundamental thing, nor how Nietzsche or even Freud students such as Alfred Adler assume that the will to power is such a basic need. He rejects both. He would probably say: The quest for power is a pleasant consolation for the actual basic problem and that is the experience of contingency; that we are simply in the world, but that it is not necessary for us to be there at all. Basically, we're all superfluous. If we didn't exist, the world would lack nothing. In his autobiography The words (1964) he sums it up well in the picture of the travelers without a ticket. You sit on the train and then the conductor comes and wants to see our ticket and Sartre says: We all don't have one, we are all travelers without legitimacy, without justification. And to stay in the picture: You then try to engage the conductor in a conversation, you try to entertain him in some way. The conductor is then the other person who gives you the feeling: “It is good that you are in the world.” “The will to power” would then mean: I make myself important, indispensable, make myself stand out in some way. That is, of course, a suitable way to forget this feeling of contingency, but at the beginning, at the origin, it is not power, but the experience of contingency.

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PS: I wouldn't disagree with you in principle. It depends, of course, on how you interpret the “will to power.” So if you interpret it as a metaphor, for example as a metaphor for the fight against contingency — Nietzsche speaks in So Zarathustra spoke About turning chance into fate⁶ —, then you might even be able to establish a connection with Sartre. But in the late Nietzsche in particular, there is a very strong biologism, where the “will to power” is really reinterpreted as the biological and even cosmological principle of life. There are indeed worlds between this doctrine and Sartre's emphasis on human freedom.

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JB: Exactly when Nietzsche says that we are actually nothing more than a bundle of contradictory urges that throw us back and forth and that cannot be reconciled, i.e. contradictions that can be endured⁷ — Sartre always rejected such substantial ideas of human subjectivity. Above all, he has this idea of nothing. Well, we're always kind of nothing. Basically, we — even such a contradiction — are of course part of being, we are also facticity through our physicality — you can weigh and measure us and so on, of course we are also in things — but we are also always a relationship to facticity, to being, and that requires that there is such a gap, a distance. And to say now: “But humans have certain urges,” for Sartre, that would mean that you refill this relationship with substances and then level it out again. Sartre thinks of people from this nothingness, which, however, is a reference, a reference to being. In this respect, you can choose the title of the main work, Being and nothingness (1943), don't translate like this: On the one hand, there are things, that is being, and the human being is nothingness. Of course, nothingness comes into the world with man, but man is always a dialectic of being and nothingness, a contradictory unity, a relationship to being that is only possible through nothingness, i.e. a non-reference.

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IV. Freedom as Resistance

PS: You've already heard of The words Spoken, Sartre's great autobiography. For them, he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, but as is well known, also as a grand gesture, he rejected this award. Which is funny, of course, because he still got the prize. This means that he can say at the same time “I am a prize winner, I have received this prestigious award”, but at the same time he can also present himself as a brave hero who did not allow himself to be deprived of his freedom again.

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JB: Although he really didn't take the money. Yes, that is, of course, this existentialist attitude: You don't want to be determined. A crowned work is a finished work, and if Sartre hates something, it is to be finished. Sartre is always on the move, constantly redefining himself, he is not defined by what he has done in the past. You come across this gesture over and over again: “I'm not doing that anymore, I'm not thinking in a completely different way now.” Many people associate it with his attitude in the 1950s, when he gradually turned to Marxism, but when you read his diaries from the 1930s, this attitude is already there, this attitude: “No, I thought that before, I don't even think that anymore.” But sometimes there are only two weeks in between. — Well, that's kind of a pose too. On the one hand, he refused to receive the Nobel Prize because a crowned work is simply a completed work. On the other hand, it had political reasons: He did not want to be taken over by the West, so to speak.

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PS: This is, of course, also a difference from Nietzsche, who has also written something about politics from time to time and has also been politically interpreted in very diverse ways — which is also significant — but for whom you cannot now say that he has developed a real political philosophy. So this whole idea of freedom is of course highly political and was then also applied by Sartre's colleagues, by Albert Camus, among others, to the fight against fascism, by Simone de Beauvoir to the question of women or the problem of sexism, by Frantz Fanon to the fight against the oppression of blacks and the colonized in general, which was also a very big issue for Sartre himself. Especially with the late Sartre, it is no longer the case anymore, as he was often accused, for example by Adorno, that freedom was such an ontological certainty on which one could rest — actual freedom already consists in the political struggle against lack of freedom, i.e. against patriarchy, against capitalism, against colonial exploitation, etc.

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JB: Of course, the objection is obvious: “Sartre, you are convinced that the human being is free, i.e. the servant just as free as the master, the sick just as free as the healthy, the poor just as free as the rich, and so on.” These allegations came up, of course, as early as the 40s, when his thinking became popular. And he has already taken that seriously, this question: How can a being be free and yet still depend on being liberated? He already tried to explain this problem in his early articles in the 40s. Of course, it is always our decision whether we want to live a comfortable life or protest against grievances. But if a consequence of our decision is that our lives are in danger, that we are imprisoned, that we are tortured and so on, then those responsible for this must of course not be acquitted of allegations. In other words, we must ensure that none of our options is to put our lives in danger. If a decision results in us being shot, then there is reason to liberate our situation.

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PS: That seems to be the crux of the matter to me. Sartre starts from freedom and this is logically associated with radical universalism. All people are equally free and therefore the freedom of all people must be taken into account, no one must be oppressed. There are, for example, these very famous sentences with which Sartre wrote his Considerations on the Jewish Question concludes, which appeared in 1945 and first bore the title “Portrait of the Anti-Semite”: “No Frenchman will be free as long as Jews are not in full possession of their rights. No Frenchman will be safe as long as a Jew in France all over the world, must tremble for his life.” (p. 190) So the oppression of individual, even small, groups is a problem that concerns everyone, not just the Jews or the anti-Semites or the Sinti and Roma and their enemies, for example — we all have to make sure that we combat these oppressive relationships, because it also affects us in our privileged position in our freedom when we are part of a society that tolerates these oppressive relationships.

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JB: Yes, if I want my freedom, then I must also want yours and basically that of all people. Sartre attempts to push his existentialist individualism to universalism. However, I think Sartre never really succeeded in doing that. He also tries that in his Drafts for a moral philosophy, which he wrote at the end of the 40s but never completed, and which were only published after his death. And I suspect that one reason for the termination of this project is really that Sartre had a thought that Bertolt Brecht also formulated in his play The Good Man of Sezuan (1943): If the world is poorly arranged, then the good deeds of the individual do not help at all. He himself then wrote a play with the title The Devil and God (1951). It's exactly about the fact that a basically very angry person, Ritter Götz, decides to do something good now. But the problem is that his well-intentioned, well-intentioned actions always result in bad consequences: consequences that he did not intend. This means that the world is poorly arranged and every good intention must fail in it. You can then draw the conclusion from this: First, the world, the organization of the world, the situation must be fundamentally changed — and then we can think about individual morality. That would be one possible explanation for why Sartre abandoned morality and turned to Marxism.

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PS: That is really also a complete contrast to Nietzsche, who, when he has spoken out on political issues, said: There should be free people, there should be masters who can develop their will to power at will — and a large army of slaves on whose backs this freedom is based. — Sartre would make exactly the opposite point: “That kind of freedom that you have in mind in your comic Dream image, that wouldn't be real freedom at all. Freedom cannot exist on the backs of slaves. ”

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JB: Yes, Sartre really has an exceptional position within the philosophy of existence. So if you take Søren Kierkegaard in 19th century Denmark, he of course also sees his thinking as a defense against a certain measurement, a levelling. This is also due to the rise of big city life and industrialization. Against all of this, he emphasizes the relevance of the individual. But that always has such an aristocratic, arrogant gesture: “Of course I'm not like my stupid neighbors, these 'dozens of people, 'who actually just chase the conventions, who don't really lead a self-confident life at all, but just do what everyone does.” And even in Karl Jaspers, we often find the phrase “nobility of mind.” And even Martin Heidegger is not necessarily what you call a flawless democrat, not at all. — With Sartre, you never find anything like that, that is, such arrogance that he somehow thinks of himself as “something better.”

But I think you also have to be careful about that. When you The words When you read, you have the suspicion that he is thinking: “Well, I'm already like everyone else, but I'm already the intellectual. And when I help the weak, then I'm even better than those who oppress and exploit the weak.” Well, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that such secretive, hidden arrogance also plays a certain role in Sartre.

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PS: That is perhaps another such difference between German and French culture. In Germany, including Nietzsche, there is this widespread idea that there is such a thing as “appointees,” “chosen people,” who by nature form a “special genius” and a kind of new “secret nobility.” That seems to me to be something that is rather alien to French culture and its republicanism.

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JB: With Flaubert, however, we already find statements such as: “My political vote is of course worth much more than that of ten or twelve philistines.” So you don't have to look long for arrogance there either. But that's kind of alien to Sartre. I have never found such direct expressions of self-exaltation, although it is already the whole gesture in the 1930s to create oneself and so on to also see oneself as the center of the world, as the center from which meaning is ascribed. At its core, there is something arrogant about this radical individualism.⁸ But I've never found that Sartre directly contempts his fellow human beings. At most, that he laughs at the philistines. There is in The disgust Yes that famous passage where the protagonist Roquentin stands in the museum and makes fun of the stiff portraits of citizens. But it is always the citizens, the “big” citizens he ridicules, they are not the workers, not the lower ones.

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V. My Freedom — and That of Others

PS: There is a passage from The words, which I find very appropriate at this point. In general, this book is full of aphorisms; there is something very aphoristic about it. It's not always that coherent. Time and again, you come across pointed formulations that could also come from Nietzsche. And there is one of them that made me think very strongly of Nietzsche while reading and where this existentialist social critique that you spoke of also comes out very well again:

Even deep faith is never completely uniform. You have to perpetuate it or at least refrain from ruining it. I was consecrated, I was glorified, I had my tomb at Pere Lachaise and maybe in the Panthéon. I had my main street in Paris and my back roads and squares in the province and abroad: alone in the heart of optimism, I kept — invisible, unnamed — suspicion of my lack of substance. In the Sainte-Anne Sanatorium, a sick person screamed from his bed: “I am a prince! They should arrest the Grand Duke.” They went to bed, they said in his ear: “Clean your nose,” and he brushed his nose; they asked him: “What is your profession? “, and he answered calmly: “Schuster,” and then he kept screaming. I mean, we all resemble this man; in any case, I was like him at the beginning of my ninth year of life: I was a prince and a shoemaker.⁹

As you can see, the early Sartre certainly still considered himself a kind of chosen one — but it is precisely this attitude that the later one distances himself from. The whole big theme of the book is actually how he frees himself from arrogance.

What Sartre is expressing here is the very radical idea that we are not at all different from these crazy people who pretend to be Napoleon or someone else, that we are all really just playing roles. We don't have a being that sets us apart. Regardless of whether we are king, “leader”, high priest — or worker, farmer, beggar: On this level of principle, we are actually not as different as people.

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JB: Whereby this person who screams: “I am the prince” is of course not in a completely different way than he would be after Sartre Schuster. So, to give another example: If I now say that I am not a world champion in boxing heavyweight, then that is a very clear case, no one would say otherwise — but after Sartre, I should also not say: “I am a philosopher,” because, as a free existence, I cannot be as philosopher as a glass of water is a glass of water. I just can't do that being, I can't say, “I am philosopher”, “I am Politician” etc. I can't being Just as a glass of water is a glass of water, I must playto be it. There is also a very similar remark with Nietzsche that no one has really realized a personality, but that we are all just actors of a certain ideal.¹⁰

And that's also where you see what significance the other person has for existentialist individualism: Because who am I playing this for? Who do I have to convince that I'm a politician, that I'm a philosopher, that I'm an artist, whatever? Ich need the others. I have to convince the others, the others look at me, but of course I never know what the others are really thinking when they see me. When they smile, it can be an appreciative smile, an admiring smile, maybe a mocking smile, an ironic smile and they don't believe me at all... I always run after other people, so to speak, to get my identity from them. When the others confirm to me: “Yes, you are a great politician”, “You are a great philosopher”... then I can also believe it myself. But of course I'm never as philosopher as a hare is a hare. Only wooden and marble saints are true saints who are what they are. It can't be us humans, we always design ourselves, we trying To be it, but it only ever succeeds in the eyes of other people.

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PS: I think Nietzsche already has this idea: “The gentleman is a force of nature like Napoleon, he stands above the others, so he doesn't need their gaze. The others are just scum to him and he stands there like a self-contained statue that only confirms himself, which doesn't need any outside confirmation at all.” — Sartre would just say: “No, that's just imagination. Just like in the famous fairy tale, a child just needs to come along and say: “The emperor is naked after all,” and everything falls apart and you are completely thrown back to your physicality. ”

I've always liked that about Sartre, this topic of others, which is often forgotten in superficial presentations, so I think it's good that we're talking about it now. For Sartre, there is not only society and the individual, but also this intermediate level of intersubjectivity. And that is one of his great philosophical merits, to have focused so strongly on this topic in Being and nothingness. Of course, this topic also appears in Nietzsche, but not on this fundamental ontological level.

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JB: That I actually need the other person for self-realization, because I can actually only realize my identity through acting in the eyes of others. Whether that's the excellent politician or simply the good person. If I want to believe that I'm a good person, then I have to convince others of that. That is an important idea with Sartre and it goes down a bit because, of course, when it comes to intersubjectivity in Sartre, you always think of this famous sentence from the play Closed society (1944): “Hell, it's the others.” And of course Sartre also says yes in Being and nothingness: “Conflict is the normal case of being for others.” So the other person objectifies me and then I want to free myself from it, then I now objectify the other person for myself. The well-known phenomenologist Bernhard Waldenfels once spoke of “hell scenarios of intersubjectivity.” But I am of course also objectified by the look of admiration. If I am an object of admiration, an object of love — that sometimes falls a bit under the table in Sartre's examples, but that is not ruled out. And he has already seen himself as someone who needs his audience. Part of the quote from The words, which you have just read out, ties in with these aesthetic considerations, which are also described in The disgust take place. In his debut novel in the 1930s, Sartre had the idea: “Actually everything is pointless, everything is contingent, but writing about contingency just isn't.” So I can justify my life by becoming a writer. He calls that in The words then his “art religion.” He doesn't believe in God anymore, God doesn't save us, but art can save us. I am then the one who wrote this or that great novel, wrote this or that play. And that is then this consecration, this justification. However, the late Sartre describes this as a neurosis — and he claims that he is now finally free from it.

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PS: Yes, you also talked about this at the conference mentioned above. And I also wrote on this blog a short article written, where I also argue that this famous final scene of The disgust, where a jazz song is played and Roquentin is then prompted to this existential turn, this conversion, through which he overcomes resentment against contingency, spoken with Nietzsche, in artistic creation, in which something necessary is created, is extremely Nietzschean. Nietzsche also speaks of this: Only through art, “only as aesthetic phenomenon Is existence and the world eternal warranted”¹¹. The late Sartre sees himself more as a craftsman and writing as a craft to serve the general, to help society understand itself better, in the spirit of Hegel. That is, of course, a much more humble understanding of philosophy and literature.

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VII. It is About Realism

JB: However, I see a big difference with Nietzsche, especially with early Sartre, which is noticeable when you The disgust read more carefully. And that is his understanding of reality. At Nietzsche, we have an interpretationism: The world is always an object of interpretation and that can be done in different ways. The famous chestnut root scene in The disgust However, that is actually an experience in which the world shakes off our interpretations of it. So when Sartre says, “Yes, I know it's a tree root — but that doesn't work anymore.” The terms slip away and we have nothing but a raw, naked, unfathomable fact. We can't believe it anymore. In other words, the idea that we can summarize everything we see and then derive from this concept everything that makes up this thing is exactly this idea in The disgust denied. I don't know whether Nietzsche has something similar to this realism, that's what you can actually call it, i.e. the recognition that the things of the world are more than objects of knowledge; the failure of idealism. There is also this description at the end of the book when such a bloody heap of meat suddenly jumps at us. Or we look in the mirror and our tongue has turned into a millipede. We're trying to rip out the millipede, but it's our tongue. So this unpredictability, unfathomability of the world, that is a really profound experience that Sartre describes there and it is of course also connected with contingency: If we could deduce the world from a subjectivity — be it the discerning person or be it a divine one — then it would have a meaning, then it would be justified, i.e. especially from divine subjectivity: Everything that would then be and also I, I am there because God wants me — but because that is not the case, because objectivity, reality always More than any subjectivity, knowledge only ever scratches the surface. It is not that there is something behind the insight, but it is always more, the reality is always more than I can recognize of it.

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PS: I really wouldn't see the biggest contrast between Sartre and Nietzsche. So there are already very similar passages in Nietzsche where he says that you can't really believe life.¹² — Good, then he suddenly says again:”This world is the will to power — and nothing else!”¹³ There is such a very funny paradox in his late work, which also cannot be resolved, which simply manifests an inner conflict, perhaps also on the part of Nietzsche's person. But in principle, this realism can also be found in Nietzsche.

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JB: If you now look at Sartre's early work, Being and nothingness, then, especially in early reception, you often read, which would actually be very similar to Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762—1814), subjective idealism, but it is the decisive difference that Fichte says: “The ego sets the not-ego.” So we have an act of Setzens, while Sartre says: “Subjectivity obtains yourself on the objectivity that independently consists of it. “It is therefore not the subject that is there first and the object is then derived from the subject as something that is set, but the subject presupposes that the object is already there so that the subject can distance himself from it. So the first thing Sartre does is actually to assert reality, the independence of the object from the subject, and thus to deny subjective idealism

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VIII. The Perspective of Liberation

PS: These are definitely all really important insights that help us in our time, that we should remember, such as the contradictory relationship between individual freedom, society, the other... All these topics are actually still ours Topics, which is why I personally find it a bit of a shame that Sartre has now moved a bit into the second row.

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JB: If anything, you want to be afraid.

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PS: Of course, there are still many who The disgust or the plays, but now, I think, it's more Nietzsche who you would use as a layman, isn't it?

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JB: Yes, I actually believe that too. Above all: If you read famous central phrases of existentialism — “I create myself” and so on — you can read that in the advice literature today, that has already become such managerial jargon. “Personal responsibility” — anyone who says “personal responsibility” today wants to dismantle the welfare state is more likely to have such ideas. — The only decisive factor is that Sartre never meant this in the sense of such a psychotechnical self-objectification program, i.e. that you somehow make yourself attractive on the labor market through such strategies. Sartre would say yes: We not only choose specific strategies to achieve goals, we also choose the goals ourselves. The main character from the play The dirty hands (1948), Hugo, she shouts at the end: “I am not usable, I refuse” when the captors arrive, the assassins, and threaten to shoot him: “You cannot use me.” So Sartre is precisely resisting such interpretations of existentialism as self-optimization in the sense of predetermined social goals. We also choose our goals.

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PS: And society is also decisive. So especially when you read Sartre's second major work, the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), so there you are really partly, when you come from the early Sartre, downright astonished, because it is actually the case that this idea of “individual freedom” is ultimately a petty-bourgeois illusion for him, which actually only serves to maintain the great social machine.

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JB: Yes, in Being and nothingness There is still talk of the fact that I can exceed and overcome what is given through my designs. But you actually have to be careful about that, because Sartre has the example: I am born and only have one arm — then one-arm is my factuality, and I must now react to it in some way in freedom. So I can either despair of it, I can just take it over in defiance or as an incentive now straight To do something, I can use that as an excuse and an excuse for my passivity... So I have a whole variety of options, but none of them is ever able to really overcome uniformity. I can choose myself again and again, but I have to choose my own arms, says Sartre. In this example, you can see very clearly how he thinks of the relationship between facticity and freedom, i.e. that freedom does not mean that I no longer have facticity at all. My factuality doesn't determine me, I have to give it meaning in freedom, but I can't avoid relating to it.

Nevertheless, liberation from social conditions is on the individual path in Being and nothingness Still possible. — In the Critique of Dialectical Reason On the other hand, is there the example of the worker, where Sartre says: Whether the worker is now taking any courses to further her education, buying a moped, getting married or divorced, having an abortion — they are actually just different ways of realizing her being a worker. So you don't have the impression of how in Being and nothingnessthat it is possible to blow up the cage. In the Critique of Dialectical Reason It seems that you only have the choice of which corner of your cage you want to sit down in. So really blowing up the cage, changing the circumstances, is actually in the Critique of Dialectical Reason No longer possible for the individual. But there is still an explosion in the group. Sartre is thinking of a spontaneously merging group, and he certainly also has in mind the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution. It is possible that such a group can overcome the petrified conditions. But — and that's actually what she does Critique of Dialectical Reason to a very disillusioned, sad book: This group then tries to strengthen their group base and tends to petrify themselves. So you actually want to overcome the “steel-hard case” that Max Weber spoke of, and that also works, but you can only ensure the continued existence of the revolutionary group by setting yourself on the path to becoming part of the steel-hard case. In this respect, the liberating group immediately becomes a terrorist group again, contributes itself to strengthening the situation, a new group emerges, and so on and so forth. This short summer of revolution, which Sartre describes there with the merging group, always comes to a very early end. So when you read this, you get the impression that Sartre's Marxism doesn't really provide a perspective of liberation.

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PS: You could then perhaps even connect this with Nietzsche's idea of “eternal return.” But the “eternal return,” which I shouldn't despair of, but should still stick to this idea of liberation and try again and again — or is there perhaps still some kind of progress even happening for Sartre? Or is the struggle for liberation actually an end in itself? Or is it perhaps like this: We can't help but, if we understand the ontological idea of freedom correctly, can't help but fight for liberation over and over again?

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JB: That is difficult to answer. So the Critique of Dialectical Reason It is more like this internal law of the formation of groups. Groups form spontaneously under the pressure of social conditions. They overcome these conditions and then have to change themselves: They must organize themselves, they must then suddenly educate and produce their group members themselves. It is a relationship of brotherhood and terror. And then the group itself is transformed into a form of “seriality,” as Sartre calls the anonymous structures of societies as opposed to the specific personal structures of the group. And then it redevelops again. I found it interesting that you spoke of the “eternal return of the same thing.” As far as social practice is concerned, it looks completely like that. — In terms of content, it is of course the question: It could be that the social situation after the group's action is more humane than before.

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PS: So is there some progress? If you have driven the German occupiers out of France, for example, Charles de Gaulle may be quite good, even though Sartre hates him.

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JB: But Sartre would say that every revolutionary group turns to terror. He would almost establish this as a social law.

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PS: But he doesn't mean that morally. Perhaps that would be another connection to Nietzsche. For example, there is also this famous preface by him to Franz Fanon's main work The damned of this earth (1961), which is accused of him by philosophers who are more oriented towards Habermas to this day, where he actually speaks out very clearly and clearly for violence. The colonized people, the “damned of this earth,” have only one way of becoming subjects, of liberating themselves: They must use violence against the Europeans, against us, which is of course very provocative, a very immoral, a very radical view. But maybe it's true, maybe you just have to admit that it's not all that wrong on a purely descriptive level.

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JB: Sartre, however, already makes the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence and he would say that the violence that he rejects makes a person a master and another person a servant. And the power that Sartre affirms makes a man out of the master and a man out of the servant. This means that it creates a relationship of reciprocity and would therefore be a force that abolishes violence. But of course it's a game with fire, of course.

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IX. Nietzsche vs. Sartre

PS: And then you might be more interested in Camus and his critique of revolutionary violence in Man in revolt (1951)... But to round things off a bit, I would like to ask you another question at this point: We have now talked a lot about gaps in Nietzsche, which Sartre perhaps covers better. Would you say the other way around that there might be something about Nietzsche that Sartre did not articulate or see? Or would you say that although Nietzsche is an important mastermind of Sartre, he is actually “abolished”, abolished in the Hegel sense — i.e. preserved, exceeded and overcome — in Sartre and that you really don't even have to read Nietzsche anymore?

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JB: No, absolutely not. I would say that, by comparison, Nietzsche is probably the richer philosopher after all, so he deals with many more topics and has a much wider perspective. This is, of course, also based on the fact that Nietzsche does not shy away from contradictions, and yet Sartre always claims to philosophize systematically. And then, of course, you have the tendency to want to bring everything together. With Nietzsche, you can go on a journey of discovery a lot more. I am thinking in particular of the middle Nietzsche now, so Human, all-too-human, Morgenröthe, The happy science. You can simply leaf through it and you are always surprised. When I leaf through Sartre, I think: “Yes, it is Sartre. ”

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PS: With Nietzsche, it starts with the fact that the question of what his basic ideas actually are is not easy to answer; no one can actually do that in two sentences with a clear conscience. While with Sartre, as we've seen, it actually works quite well, even though you might have to make a few internal differences after all.

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JB: And in Nietzsche, you would find a philosophy of nature, you won't find that in Sartre. He says himself: I don't like nature. So a fascination for forces of nature, forces of nature and the idea that this also prevails in us in some fateful and profound way, that would dismiss Sartre everything. After all, he wants to have created everything out of himself. That is not the case with Sartre, because he simply thinks it is wrong. That we must see ourselves as part of nature and that our self-image is shaped by the fact that we are, is an idea that you will certainly find in Nietzsche and not in Sartre at all.

PS: Yes, humans are more likely to be singled out of “creation” if you want to speak that way.

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JB: Sartre also has no sense of natural beauty. I don't think that would necessarily rule Nietzsche out, would it? Fascination for nature?

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PS: There are always these mountain areas near Nietzsche. So for me, Sartre has simply grown together with the city of Paris. Sartre only exists in Paris and maybe Paris only because of Sartre, at least in my opinion. While everything in Nietzsche takes place at the sea, in the mountains, in the forest, these are more the landscapes in which he locates himself. The city — Nietzsche only fits into the city as a madman.

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JB: This is also closely related to the common idea that the philosopher is a great lonesome person. Nietzsche stands for that, of course, but Sartre doesn't at all. Sartre is not lonely. No, not really. He sits in a coffee house, he is surrounded by people, he demonstrates, he publishes a newspaper. He is not that big lonely person like Nietzsche who turns away from everything with disgust.

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X. A “Call to Life”

PS: In the end, both attitudes have something for themselves. In the spirit of both Sartre and Nietzsche, it will not be possible to make a clear verdict at all now. Perhaps it is simply a matter of your own experience, of your own taste, which you now find more plausible. Nietzsche and Sartre are in complete agreement that such basic philosophical questions can actually never be resolved objectively, that a thinker always depends on his subjectivity, his living environment and his experience how he would decide.

We have not yet touched on the question of exactly how Sartre read Nietzsche. We would probably have to negotiate them in a sequel if there is interest in doing so.¹⁴

At the very end, I would like to draw the link back to the beginning of our conversation and read out the very last sentences of Cohen-Solal's great biography, which once again summarize Sartre's basic attitude and perhaps also what connects him to Nietzsche:

“I don't think about death,” he had said two years earlier [before he died; PS]. “He is not in my life, he will be outside. One day my life is going to stop, but I definitely don't want it to be burdened by death. I want,” insisted the philosopher, “that my death does not invade my life, does not define it, I always want to be a call to life. ”¹⁵

I think “a call to life,” Sartre and Nietzsche are definitely shaking hands with each other — even though they may understand something a bit different by these terms.

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JB: I think that, despite all the attention they paid to the gloomy side of life, they both had a life-affirming attitude overall.

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PS: Exactly, you shouldn't give up. You shouldn't be intimidated by these hardships, these abysses, but you should just make something out of your life.

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JB: What a final word!

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Jens Bonnemann, apl. Prof. Dr. phil., studied philosophy, German and communication studies at the universities of Essen and Bochum, received his doctorate at the University of Ruhr-Universität Bochum and completed his postdoctoral qualification at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. He was a research assistant and academic advisor there and worked as a chair representative and visiting professor at several universities. He is chairman of the Sartre Society in Germany. His main topics include the philosophy of perception, philosophy of life, social philosophy, aesthetics and film theory. His most important publications are the monographs The scope of the imaginary. Jean-Paul Sartre's theory of imagination and its significance for his phenomenological ontology, aesthetics and theory of intersubjectivity (Hamburg: Felix-Meiner-Verlag 2007), The aesthetic interaction between text and reader. Wolfgang Iser's implicit reader in the Hearts of Konrad von Würzburg (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin & Bern: Peter Lang 2008), The physical experience of perception. A phenomenology of the body-world relationship, (Münster: Mentis 2016) and Film theory. An introduction (Berlin: Metzler 2019).

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Literature

Betschart, Alfred, Andreas Urs Sommer & Paul Stephan (eds.): Nietzsche and French existentialism. Berlin & Boston 2022.

Camus, Albert: The person in revolt. essays. Transacted by Justus Streller. Reinbek near Hamburg 2009.

Cohen-Solal, Annie: Sartre 1905—1980. Transacted by Eva Gröpler. Reinbek near Hamburg 1988.

Eluard, Paul: Poetry and Truth 1942. Paris 1942.

Fanon, Frantz: The damned of this earth. Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. About Traugott König. Frankfurt am Main 1994.

Sartre, Jean-Paul: Considerations on the Jewish Question. In: Three essays. Berlin, Frankfurt am Main & Vienna 1975, pp. 108—190.

Ders. : Being and nothingness. Attempt at a phenomenological ontology. About Traugott König & Hans Schöneberg. Reinbek near Hamburg 2010.

Ders. : The disgust. novel. Transacted by Uli Aumüller. Reinbek near Hamburg 2004.

Ders. : The Idiot of the Family: Gustave Flaubert 1821 — 1857. 5th vol.E. Über. v. Traugott König. Reinbek near Hamburg 1977-1980.

Ders. : The devil and the good god. Three acts and eleven pictures. Transacted by Uli Aumüller. Reinbek near Hamburg 1994.

Ders. : The dirty hands. A piece in seven pictures. Transacted by Eva Gröpler. Reinbek near Hamburg 1995.

Ders. : The words. Transacted by Hans Mayer. Reinbek near Hamburg 1983.

Ders. : Blueprints for a moral philosophy. Transacted by Hans Schöneberg & Vincent von Wrobleswky. Reinbek near Hamburg 2005.

Ders. : Closed society. Play in one act. About Traugott König. Reinbek near Hamburg 2002.

Ders. : Critique of dialectical reason. Vol. 1.: Theory of Social Practice. About Traugott König. Reinbek near Hamburg 1978.

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Footnotes

1: Paul Eluard: Poetry and Truth 1942, p. 5 (trans. PS).

2: What is meant is Sartre's unfinished late work The idiot of the family, a multi-volume monumental existential biography by French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880).

3: Cohen-Solal, Sartre 1905—1980, p. 781 f.

4: The conference was included in the anthology Nietzsche and French existentialism documented, edited by Alfred Betschart, Andreas Urs Sommer and Paul Stephan. Recordings of the presentations can also be watched on YouTube become.

5: Paul Stephan wrote one of them himself for us. You can find it on X, facebook or instagram Read up. A lengthy obituary written by our regular author Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann was also broadcast on Deutschlandfunk (link).

6: Cf. Of redemption.

7: See e.g. Beyond good and evil, Aph 12.

8: On student Sartre's bias in Nietzschean aristocratism, paradoxically paired with “a vague concept of equality in a non-existent society,” cf. Cohen-Solal, Sartre 1905—1980, p. 109; Sartre's own words).

9: Sartre, The words, P. 159.

10: “How? A big man? I only ever see the actor of his own ideal” (Beyond good and evil, Aph 97).

11: The birth of tragedy, paragraph 5.

12: For example, see very clearly The happy science, Aph 109. According to his long-time companion Raymond Aron, the student Sartre derived his harsh dualistic position and his view of contingency even decisively from Nietzsche (see Cohen-Solal, Sartre 1905—1980, P. 124 & 161).

13: Subsequent fragments No. 1885 38 [12].

14: Feel free to let us know. On Sartre's intensive Nietzsche reading as a student, see Cohen-Solal, Sartre 1905—1980, P. 133 & 160.

15: Ibid., p. 782.

On Life in Freedom

A Conversation with Jens Bonnemann about Sartre and Nietzsche

On April 15, 1980, one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Jean-Paul Sartre, died at the age of 74. Paul Stephan spoke with Jens Bonnemann, chairman of the German-speaking Sartre-Gesellschaft, about his basic ideas, his relationship with Nietzsche and his significance for our time. What does it mean to live in freedom after the “death of God”? What are the limits of individual freedom? What are the differences and similarities between Sartre and Nietzsche?

You can also view the unedited version of the conversation, in German, on YouTube and listen to it on Soundcloud.

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He is the face of the German music world: pop titan Dieter Bohlen [...] he has repeatedly reinvented himself over the course of his career [...] not only a talented musician and producer, but also a captivating TV personality [...] a truly exceptional artist.²

If you believe this and other media voices, we lived in the Bohlenocene of German cultural history. Who is this fascinating “titan”? Is he a revenant of the deities of giants in human form who, according to Greek mythology, once lived in a legendary Golden Age? The Titan Bohlen had become popular among mortals as a member and producer of the pop duo “Modern Talking.” He had previously composed songs for various German pop singers very modestly in secret. With singer Thomas Anders at his side, the Golden Age of the Titan began in 1984. The “biggest German pop duo of all time”³ reached with unforgettable world hits such as You're My Heart — You're My Soul, You Can Win If You Want or Cheri Cheri Lady number one in the German single charts several times and also excelled in other European and Asian (!) and African (!) hit parades.

I don't know how to make tears and make music, I know the luck [...] not to think without a shiver of anxiety.⁴

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In the Bohlenocene of German Cultural History

In addition to Modern Talking, Bohlen produced other terrific Eurodisco and Eurodance hits with “Blue System” and “C.C. Catch”. His musical style was of the genre Italo Disco inspired and was characterized by high vocal performances, catchy rhythms and idiosyncratic poetic English lyrics. The Titan's titles always seemed to be made of one piece, based on, for example, the mega hit Brother Louie on catchy drum machine and bass rhythms, which were combined with keyboard and piano inserts as well as synthesizer sounds and fuelled with “cool” electric guitar or synthesizer riffs.

While Thomas Ander's singing spread a numbingly powerful fluid — “he even fused lard”⁵ — Titan stood out due to its high, almost screamed falsetto insoles.

When does sound become music? Especially in the highest states of pleasure and agitation of will, as cheering will or fearful of death, briefly in Noise of emotion: in yell.⁶

During live performances by Modern Talking, the Titan's godlike abilities could occasionally be admired, for example when he clapped his hands and continued playing his electric guitar at the same time.

On the outside, Anders showed an androgynous long-hair look with make-up, while the titanium had golden chains strumming golden chains in the wide shirt neckline. Both loved pastel-colored overalls, and both were unmistakably excessive tanning enthusiasts, so that ill-intentioned chroniclers complained that they had “become more and more brown and faggy. ”⁷ But no matter what the critics want to object to — with around six million records sold, the duo Modern Talking is one of the biggest revenue players in the German music industry. By 2010 alone, they sold 20 times as much internationally: around 120 million records, CDs and downloads,⁸ They achieved outstanding success in the Soviet Union and in the CIS countries. As part of the glasnost policy of cultural openness, Modern Talking 1986 was the first western band whose records were sold freely in the USSR. They appeared modern, lively, polyglot, apolitical to Soviet citizens — they provided a kind of door opener product that opened up the post-Soviet cultural space for Western global pop. As a duo and alone, Bohlen and Anders completed numerous concerts in Russia. The audience was not bothered by the ominous fact that “Dieter Bohlen” in Russian sounds exactly like “Dieter is ill” (Diter Bolen). Thomas Anders appeared ten times in the Kremlin Palace, the sick Dieter was decorated as a “Hero of Russian Youth” and Anders received an honorary professorship in Kiev on the grounds that Modern Talking had shaped the musical taste of an entire generation — and rightly so: The popularity of Modern Talking in Russia and in Ukraine is still very high, especially among the boomer generation, so that both musicians are without exaggeration the most successful cultural export in the recent German-Russian relationship history since Richard Wagner may apply.

And so I ask myself: What wants Actually my whole body of music anyway? I think his easement: as if all animal functions should be accelerated by slight bold, exuberant self-assured rhythms; as if the brazen, the leaden life should be gilded by good tender harmonies.⁹

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How the Titan Became a Beast

As if all that wasn't enough, the Titan underwent a metamorphosis as a mature man and transformed himself from musician to judge of music. This second career removed him from mortals even further than before, but brought him new prominence in younger years: He became a jury member of the casting broadcasts Germany is looking for the superstar (DSDS) and The super talent. He was a juror at DSDS until 2024 — for a good 20 years — and in 2026 he will be there again after a short interruption. ”His hard-hitting sayings, which were always mercilessly honest and mercilessly entertaining, made him the face of the show,” the TV journalists praised.¹⁰ Like Nietzsche once upon a time, Bohlen tried his hand at being a “master of short form”: razor-sharp judgments, pointed aphorisms, provocative, witty and so good that they had to be published again in book form.¹¹ He graciously produced pleasing pop ballads with several American Idol winners, but the role he played in the jury was more important. Here he figured as an unpredictable predatory figure who sometimes hissed at the candidates benevolent, sometimes devastating judgments. His “awesome sayings,” often garnished with fecal humor, seemed to ignore all rules of politeness and fairness. The more or less appraisal candidates had to confirm the verdicts in front of the cameras running. In the dazzling light of the television arena, in front of millions of viewers, they were at the mercy of the beast Bohlen, who sometimes played moquant with them before tearing them apart.

At the bottom of all noble races is the predatory animal, the magnificent wandering for prey and victory blonde beast Unmistakable; this hidden reason requires unloading from time to time, the animal must come out again...¹²

Can it be that Bohlen — as well as the erratic “Don the Con” Trump or the apocalypse-believing “contrarian” Peter Thiel — is one of those “blond beasts” who renew civilization from time to time through disruptive and brutal interventions?¹³ Those seductive “New Barbarians” who are now arriving everywhere, all “The Cynics. [...] The Tempters.”¹⁴?

People with a still natural nature, barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, predators, still in possession of unwavering willpower and desire for power, threw themselves at weaker, more well-behaved, more peaceful, perhaps trading or cattle-breeding races, or at old grubby cultures in which the last life force of spirit and corruption flared up in brilliant fireworks.¹⁵

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Bohlen's barbaric “judging with the hammer,” his attitude of preaching diligence, toughness, assertiveness and willpower to the candidates, wasn't that the overdue attack of the blond beast on our “old grumpy culture”?¹⁶ Unfortunately, after his metamorphosis to the beast, Bohlen no longer wore the characteristic lion-like mane that had been his trademark at a young age: that subtly backed-on, highly-bleached and casually blow-dried mullet masterpiece. Now the Beast appeared with a gelled and re-bleached short hair, no longer clenched his fist as in the best modern talking times, but spread out his arms dominating the room, stabbed the air with his finger excited or slowly shook his head, which amounted to a wordless execution for displeased candidates.

Perhaps that even our last music, as much as it reigns and is domineering, has only a short period of time ahead of it: because it originated from a culture whose soil is rapidly sinking — one immediately sunken Culture.¹⁷

On the occasion of the publication of the autobiographical work The Bohlenweg In an interview with The Beast, the magazine “Stern” suggested that some passages in the book read “like Nietzsche” and continues: “Do you still have enough chaos in yourself to 'give birth to a dancing star”? To which the blonde author replies: “Wow, cool saying! It could be from me! “But it's from Nietzsche,” says the reporter, as the beast suddenly recognizes an equal giant in Nietzsche:

Hammer guy! I'm always amazed that other people also think of great things.¹⁸

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Article Image

The Titan at a Young Age. Pastel drawing on paper (2025). From Nelly.

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Literature

Bohlen, Dieter: My awesome sayings. Munich 2006.

Bohlen, Dieter & Katja Kessler: Behind the scenes. Munich 2003.

Spoecker, Christoph: Dieter Bohlen. Little anecdotes from the life of a pop titan. Munich 2019.

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Footnotes

1: About truth and lies in an extra-moral sense, paragraph 2.

2: https://www.gala.de/beauty-fashion/beauty/von-modern-talking-bis-pop-titan--so-sehr-hat-sich-dieter-bohlen-im-laufe-der-jahre-optisch-veraendert-24182340.html (14/5/2025).

3: Christoph Spöcker, Dieter Bohlen, P. 43.

4: Nietzsche versus Wagner, Intermezzo.

5: Dieter Bohlen & Katja Kessler, Behind the scenes, P. 66.

6: The Dionysian worldview, paragraph 4.

7: Spöcker, Dieter Bohlen, P. 52.

8: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/dsds-neues-modern-talking-mit-medlock-und-bohlen-1.854734 (17.5.2010).

9: The happy science, Aph 368.

10: https://www.tvspielfilm.de/news/stars/aus-dsds-und-supertalent-dieter-bohlens-100-heftigste-sprueche,10500354,ApplicationArticle.html (6/4/2026).

11: planks, My awesome sayings.

12: On the genealogy of morality, paragraph I, 11. — In the case of the figure of the “blond beast,” Nietzsche may have been inspired by traditions of the appearance of blond and red-haired Germanic and Celtic warriors in the Roman Empire. At times, Roman women even dyed their hair blonde to appear “wild” and “barbaric.”

13: See the discussion by Tobias Kurpat, The superman in the hamster wheel. Nietzsche between Silicon Valley and New Right, on this blog: “Are the new tech CEOs really the barbarians Nietzsche was hoping for — or a post-ironic simulation of the same idea? ”

14:Subsequent fragments, No. 1885 35 [28]. On Nietzsche's figure of the barbarian, see Marion Friedrich's article The barbarians of the 21st century. Narcissism, Apocalypse, and the Absence of Others on this blog.

15: Beyond good and evil, Aph 257.

16: This role is a bit contradictory The interview with gold trader Dominik Kettner in autumn 2025 granted. Here, the now 71-year-old blond beast presents himself as an exponent of “old grumpy cultures”: disappointing culturally pessimistic and old-fashioned populist. Perhaps old age is already taking its toll here, the powers of the beast are weakening.

17: Nietzsche versus Wagner, Music without a future.

18: https://www.stern.de/lifestyle/leute/dieter-bohlen--selbstzweifel-sind-nur-was-fuer-weicheier--3748176.html (11/10/2008).

The Blond Beast and the “Hammertyp”

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How Dieter Bohlen Finally Discovered a Titan of Equal Rank

At first glance, Dieter Bohlen and Friedrich Nietzsche have as little connection as Marie Antoinette with Rosa Luxemburg or Napoleon with Angela Merkel — but a second reveals greater affinities than one might suspect. In any case, this unlike synopsis enables a new perspective — on Bohlen and on Nietzsche in equal measure. “Pairing the strangest and separating the next”¹, in the following text, our regular author Christian Saehrendt undertakes a truly Nietzschean search for clues on the tracks of the “titan” of German pop, which to this day polarizes like only a few celebrities in the German-speaking world — this, too, a line of connection between philosopher and musician.

I. The Orgies Mysteries Theatre

Bodies covered in blood and the orgy as the ultimate form of meaning and communion with the deity.²

Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch, born 1938, creates cross-border contemporary art with his concept of the “Orgies Mystery Theatre” (hereinafter abbreviated as O.M. Theatre), which had been constantly developed since the early sixties. Based on ancient tragedy, his action art is intended to trigger deep, lasting feelings about the moment of Rausch. In addition to Jesus Christ and Oedipus, the Greek god Dionysus is at the center of the mythological concept of the actions.

The O.M. Theatre has no stage and no actors in the usual sense. Game participants do not fictionalize; rather, the representative element of art is overcome in favor of direct experience. The realisation of the O.M. Theatre is expressed in action work lasting six days and six nights. Sexual and religious taboos and their obscene violations are dramatically staged, while holistic sensory perceptions are intended to culminate in a new experience of reality. Beauty as a singular object of art is negated. The instincts released include the slaughter and removal of animal bodies, their crucifixion and mauling, as well as the baring of the sexual organs of the game participants, rubbing them with blood and entrails of the animal victim. Until his death in 2022, Nitsch carried out O.M. Theatre events every year. Activities continue to be carried out even after his death, most recently from June 7 to 9, 2025 at Prinzendorf Castle in Austria.

In Nietzsche's early writing The Birth of Tragedy (1872; short: BT), he formulates his basic theory of ancient tragedy, at the core of which he locates the tension between the Apollinian (Apollo: God of measure, form, clarity) and Dionysian (Dionysus: god of intoxication or Rausch, ecstasy, dissolution). Nietzsche sees the Apollinian and the Dionysian as forces of nature on the one hand and as aesthetic categories or principles on the other. Art is created between two poles. The Apollinian describes a measured, distant beauty and serenity. The Dionysian describes Rausch as instinctive vitality. In the moment of Dionysian Rausch, Nietzsche recognizes an indispensable physiological requirement for the creation of art. Dionysian gives rise to an art that speaks the truth in its Rausch.³

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II. The Cry of Dionysus (ecstatic)

Dionysus is lying naked on the ground, his genitals are pelted with fresh, wet flesh. Accompanied by a screaming choir, sound orchestra and trombone players, he is showered with a bucket of slaughter-warm blood. Dionysus runs ecstatically screaming to a slaughtered ox, eviscerates it and rummages in its intestines.⁴

During the actions of the O.M. Theatre, Dionysian Rausch rages between extreme affirmation of life and deadly destructive power. Nitsch's Rausch is noticeably torn. In the cry of Dionysus, everything inside tears apart the outside. This is what Nitsch wrote in his book Das Orgien Mysterien Theater (“The Orgies Mysteries Theatre”), published in 1990:

A philosophy of intoxication, ecstasy, delights, as a result of the fact that the innermost part of living is intensely vital, intoxicating excitement, orgiasm, which represents a constellation of existence in which pleasure, torment, death and procreation approach and permeate each other. (P. 8 f.)

In scream, a celebration of existence that drives itself into torment. It is possible that the body of Dionysus in the O.M. Theatre lets exactly that penetrating cry come out, which Nietzsche had described as the height of pleasure and suffering as well as an insight into the excess of nature.⁵

In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche describes the ancient Dionysus festivals (those festivals in honor of the god Dionysus and the origins of Greek tragedy) as a “hideous mixture of lust and cruelty.”⁶ Art is created between two poles. In the O.M. Theatre between the pleasant scent of roses, the sweet taste of red wine, and the abysmal sight of blood and slime. In Nietzsche's words: An artistic game which, even in ugly and disharmonious ways, plays with itself in the eternal fullness of its pleasure.⁷ Nitsch's intoxication is noticeably torn. Nietzsche describes the power of Rausch with its inherent duality particularly clearly in Twilight of the Idols:

For there to be art, so that there is some kind of aesthetic doing and looking, a physiological precondition is essential: Rausch. Rausch must first have increased the excitability of the entire machine: sooner there will be no art. All types of Rausch, however different, have the power to do so: in particular the Rausch of sexual stimulation, this oldest and most original form of Rausch. Similarly, the Rausch that comes in the wake of all great desires, all strong affects; the Rausch of celebration, competition, bravura, victory, all extreme movement; the Rausch of cruelty; the Rausch of destruction; the Rausch under certain meteorological influences, for example the Rausch of spring; or under the influence of narcotics; finally, the Rausch of will, the Rausch of an overwhelmed and swollen will.⁸

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III. The Abreaction

No. 0 grabs the genitals of No. 6 (reach out) several times, No. 6 screams almost parodically like a pig to be slaughtered. (castration [pubic fury]). At the moment when No. 0 touches the genitals of No. 6, penetrative noise from the orchestra sets in, and the screaming of the choir increases with every new touch to an extreme cheer of ecstasy.⁹

Between theatre and festival, Nitsch equates the Dionysian with his instinct for abstinence. Since its beginnings, theatre has been characterized by a collective need for reaction. Nitsch is not just about overcoming it, but rather about generating energy through the reaction of the unconscious mind. Nietzsche recognizes in the tragedy both a purifying as well as an unloading force and writes of that pathological discharge of Aristotle's catharsis,¹⁰ on which Nitsch's concept of abreaction is also based. Using the moment of violence, Nitsch aims to ensure that participants experience catharsis within the protected frame of the theatre and that the person is cleansed of affects that would otherwise uncontrollably and violently discharge in everyday life.

The next level of Rausch, then. And so, on the third day of the action, the Rausch of the Dionysian orgy is intended to complete the reaction which, for Nitsch, represents the fulfillment of sublimated instinct satisfaction. According to Nitsch, the reaction reaches its peak here, “reaches sado-masochistic excess, turns into destructive, to destroy the body.”¹¹ The resulting ecstatic sensory experience should function as a medium for breaking through instincts and enable the release and awareness of repressed psychological content. Cleaning and unloading.

The tearing side of the Rausch develops its inner potential in a reaction that wants to purify and discharge. The moment of violence is not only important as a pole in the duality of Rausch, but also stands for the regenerating claim of action art. BLOOD IS SPILLED FROM THE CASTLE WINDOWS. Sperm, as warm as the body, is spread over the bodies.¹²

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IV. The Sense of Unity

At night, his mouth opened like a red fruit.¹³

The sun rises and falls six times as the festival progresses. Rausch requires participants in the O.M. Theatre to dissolve the limits of their own body, to relinquish control over themselves — to step out of themselves. A sense of unity. You feel yourself in everything, you are a stone, grass, tree, animal, fellow human being. A feeling of being absorbed within the whole. Divinity, be absorbed in God.¹⁴

The mystical sense of unity in Rausch that seeks to destroy and redeem the individual¹⁵ is also recognized by Nietzsche as the “next effect of the Dionysian tragedy,” in which “state and society, in general the gap between man and man gives way to an overwhelming sense of unity, which leads back to the heart of nature.”¹⁶ Nietzsche goes so far as to talk about “breaking the individual apart and becoming one with the original being.”¹⁷ The mystery theory of tragedy is “the basic knowledge of the unity of everything that exists, the consideration of individuation as the root cause of evil, art as a joyful hope that the spell of individuation should be broken, as the idea of a restored unity.”¹⁸

Unity means resolution of opposites. In theatre, Nitsch wants to reveal that everything is interdependent; that everything is one. Eating and drinking together, incorporating, all sensory experiences (smells, sounds, colors) penetrate from outside to inside, become part. In the interexchange of Rausch penetration takes place in all directions — we remember the cry of Dionysus (from the inside towards the outside).

And perhaps Nietzsche's poles will eventually dissolve when he writes: “Dionysus speaks the language of Apollo, but Apollo finally the language of Dionysus: with which the highest goal of tragedy and art is achieved in the first place.”¹⁹ Unity means resolution of opposites: pleasure and suffering. The human and the other animal. Me and You. Me and God. Being and nothing. Apollo and Dionysus.

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V. Epilogue. Or: The Rebirth of the Dionysian Spirit

The last morning, 5:30 a.m. Expect sunrise, players hug and kiss each other, drink wine and eat bread.²⁰

Have we experienced the reawakening of the Dionysian spirit and the rebirth of tragedy in the spirit of Nietzsche? Nitsch follows Nietzsche in an understanding of art that combines Rausch, dream, play, and celebration. They both see art as part of life, in terror and pain, in beauty and joy. In Nitsch's O.M. Theater, participants experience the Dionysian Rausch as a complex act of contemplation and reaction. In this sense, the O.M. Theatre can be regarded as the scene of the rebirth of the Dionysian spirit. Nitsch wants to revive that spirit of tragedy and keep it alive, even after his own death. Perhaps Nitsch's radicalism consists in taking Nietzsche literally. Because Nitsch does not radically develop Nietzsche further, the excess has already been written down— Nitsch implements it performatively. And this is how Nietzsche's voice permeates the O.M. Theatre:

I want to be happy, I want to race ecstatically with happiness, I want an exceptional state of being, I don't want to vegetate, I don't want to be afraid of living and dying, I want to be there and even look into the abyss of existence when you want and even step into it. That is something extremely important. For me, art is about intoxicating yourself, realizing intensity and realizing creation.²¹

In the O.M. Theater, participants experience the Dionysian Rausch in scream, in reaction, in unity. Art abolishes two poles.

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Article Image

100th action, 1998. Photo: Cibulka-Frey Archive

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Literature

Martin Poltrum im Gespräch mit Hermann Nitsch. In: Hermann Nitsch zu Gast im Salon Philosophique des Anton-Proksch-Instituts, Spectrum Psychiatrie 3/2010, S. 70.  

Nitsch, Hermann: Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. Manifeste, Aufsätze, Vorträge. Salzburg 1990.

Idem: Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. Partituren aller aufgeführten Aktionen. Band 10: Das 2-Tage-Spiel des Orgien-Mysterien-Theaters. Prinzendorf a. d. Zaya 2004.

Idem: O.M. Theater-Lesebuch. Vienna 1983.

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Footnotes

1: Cf. Nitsch, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater, p. 85. All translations are our own unless stated otherwise.

2: Cf. Nitsch, O.M. Theater-Lesebuch, p. 240.

3: Cf. BT, § 4.

4: Cf. Nitsch, O.M. Theater-Lesebuch, p. 398.

5: Cf. BT, § 4.

6: BT, § 2.

7: Cf. BT, § 24.

8: Twilight of the Idols, Skirmishes, § 8.

9: Nitzsch, O.M. Theater-Lesebuch, p. 567.

10: Cf. BT, § 22.

11: Nitsch, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater, p. 37.

12: Nitzsch, O.M. Theater-Lesebuch, p. 549.

13: Georg Trakl, Poems.

14: Nitzsch, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater, p. 55.

15: Cf. BT, § 2.

16: BT, § 7.

17: BT, § 8.

18: BT, § 10.

19: BT, § 21.

20: Cf. Nitzsch, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. Partituren aller aufgeführten Aktionen. Band 10, p. 207.

21: Martin Poltrum im Gespräch mit Hermann Nitsch, p. 70.

Aesthetics of Rausch

Reading Nitsch with Nietzsche

In its early publication The Birth of Tragedy (1872) Nietzsche formulated his basic theory of ancient tragedy. The moment of Rausch — a term which often translated as “intoxication” but refers not just to states of intoxication caused by the use of intoxicating drugs — is just as fundamental here as it is for Nietzsche's understanding of art in general. Emma Schunack investigates how the Dionysian intoxication of ancient tragedy is reflected in Hermann Nitsch's contemporary art. Between bloody animal pelts on purple, vermilion and lemon-yellow colored sheets + candied white violets.¹ To what extent can the concept of Dionysian Rausch in Nitsch's “Orgies Mystery Theatre” be understood as a contemporary continuation of Nietzsche's understanding of art? An attempt to read Nitsch with Nietzsche.

Before AI, i.e. artic intelligence, starts writing new texts by Nietzsche (like the psychics and spiritists who continued the works of Conan Doyle and Joseph Conrad, or Schubert's Unfinished finalized) or even invent further exegetes (from Guatemala, Puerto Rico or the Vatican), it is time to rescue and examine the last castaways in the analog world. In other words, there are still a number of completely lost Nietzsche commentators who have worked intensively on Nietzsche away from the mainstream, often not only by studying him but also by studying him lived have. If you look at France, you should not recite the same mantras of Derrida, Foucault or Deleuze, but also consider Jacques Bouveresse (1940-2021), who played Nietzsche against Foucault as an anti-relativist and played Nietzsche against Foucault in his last book (Les foudres de Nietzsche¹), scourging the delusion of the French Nietzsche followers.

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I. A Life between Tango and Taxi

Jean-Baptiste Botul is also one of these French Nietzsche experts. Botul shared his birthday, August 15, 1896, with Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), an Indian politician, mystic and philosopher who repeatedly referred to Nietzsche, and the Day of Indian Independence 49 years later. There is only sparse information about his parents: The father ran a lottery shop on the Loire, the mother sewed uniforms for the military. One can only speculate about Jean-Baptiste's early years. One of his followers, the Irish philosopher Frederick de Selby, appears to have used the art of speculation in his rather thin biography of Botul, making a distinction between euphoria and outright lies. It was published in 1953 under the title Biographical Extravagancies. The Life of J.-B. Botul and can only be viewed in special libraries. (The German interlibrary loan service that I wanted to use unfortunately completely failed.) Since this work appears to be quite unreliable, that might not be a bad thing.

Let us therefore stick to the undeniable facts that Frédéric Pagès strings together in his edition (2004) of Botul's main work: In 1894, Botul met the founder of the scouting movement, the British cavalry officer Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941), but it was not founded until 1907. So there should be in his Memories of an eclectique (1934) have postponed the memory somewhat. He certainly wanted to highlight similarities between himself and Baden-Powell: searching for clues, observing wild animals in the jungle, moral principles, idealistic activism. The first engagement with Marthe Betenfeld failed. In 1914, Botul evaded mobilization by fleeing to Argentina. At the same time, the kindred boy Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) moved from Buenos Aires to Switzerland to learn the language of Heine and Schopenhauer. Meanwhile, Botul is dedicating himself intensively to tango and will soon be offering courses in this discipline. In particular, he is now a taxi driver. A first philosophical attempt is taxi analysis, which we only know combines tracking (worthy of Holmes) with logical-analytical thinking (Bouveresse says hello!). But he doesn't yet leave any traces himself. He now becomes a representative of the French government on a Mexican atoll — unknown why there and anyway. From 1919, correspondence with the serial killer Henri Désiré Landru, the so-called “Bluebeard from Gambais,” presumably out of an interest similar to Musil's in his Man Without Qualities harbored opposite Moosbrugger.

Botul begins a proper study of philosophy at the Sorbonne. Pagès writes of a brief relationship with the noble Marie Bonaparte (1882-1962), “Freud's Princess” and girlfriend of Rilke, as well as author of a three-volume analysis by Edgar Allan Poe. The same, and this is important now, from a brief liaison with Lou Andreas-Salomé, who belonged to the same circle around Freud. This can be dated to 1923, but it was only around 1930 that an erotic correspondence can be found, hitherto unedited, as the legal issues in this delicate matter remain unresolved. The brief affair with Simone de Beauvoir, as she suggests to Pagès, seems doubtful to me. Botul had the tendency to interpret taxi rides with celebrities as friendship or even as an affair.

A visit to Röcken — Nietzsche's birthplace and burial ground — appears to have taken place in the 1930s. A letter about this to Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche is preserved in the Botul archive, which is located in the castle of the Baron de La Cuisse-Este-Maison, Indre-Loire. In this letter, he writes (without date) about his planned visit to “Recken.” There is no sign of this in the guest books or similar documents in skirts or sützen. But it is possible that the horse on the goat stable at the rectory in Röcken was drawn with brown lines by him, as it is signed with JBB. The Nietzsche-Verein Röcken has the firm intention of having the picture dated exactly once. A Leipzig sepulchral researcher is in the starting blocks. In any case, this strange image has the potential to become a magnet for tourism in the Lützen area in addition to the graves of Gustav Adolf and Nietzsche.

Botul spent the last decade until his death in 1947 (also on August 15) as a taxi driver in Paris. He claims to have driven Stefan Zweig once.

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II. The Nietzsche Pendulum

Let us turn to his Nietzsche studies, which, however, appear less academic, but they are closer to Nietzsche than those of established philosophers because they bring Nietzsche into life or describe him in an experience of life. The correspondence with psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé led to this. In the Botul Archive, we learn more, even though the archive manager there, the named Baron, had a somewhat opaque relationship with Botul and does not want to make the letters available to the public because they are banned from publishing until 2044. His suggestions, however, give an idea of the dimensions of thinking of “JBB,” as he always abbreviates it.

According to this, Botul has in his Memoirs of a Forgetful (published posthumously, Les Éditions de la Quinzaine, Paris 2023, in which his works were published in their entirety, by the way) wrote about a taxi ride that changed his life. One evening, it is February 6, 1937, in front of the Paris Opera House, the streets shining with rain, a customer gets into a taxi, a young lady who, when asked “Where? “only “Cours Désir” stated what he probably misunderstood, because he was currently working intensively on psychoanalysis (he also called it “taxi analysis”). The young lady is a student at a strict Catholic institute on Rue de Rennes, which bears this very associative name.

What exactly happened that night remains in the shadow of history. In any case, she only arrived home early in the morning, causing her parents' anger. She did not want to give any information. Botul stated that Daemon of Noon I forced him to talk to the young woman about Nietzsche all night, i.e.: He saw in the lady an embodiment of the recently deceased Lou Andreas-Salomé, a demon with whom he had so much in common. As a result of this suspicious trip, the dreaded “taxi court” was convened, and numerous taxi drivers also gathered to interrogate Botul. Botul presented his understanding of German philosophy to this committee for about twelve hours. Here he called it Nietzsche's “taxography” for the first time, which was to become the title of his seven-volume major work. The success among his colleagues was that during his nine-hour presentation, most of them had left the hall, or the chairman threatened him that there would soon be a fight if he did not immediately leave this German philosopher. Botul hurried home and began to write down his work as if in a trance.

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He described the conversations with taxi customers as “taxography,” which, while accepting many detours, he unerringly engaged in thoughts about Nietzsche. After arrival, customers were unable to complain about the fare because they had experienced a certain mental uplift; some compared it to a near-death experience. But let us be careful because many did not want to provide any information. Even as the “botulism” was already becoming a phrase in the Latin Quarter, no one wanted to admit that they had received their survey in this taxi. In any case, “elevation” is a correct word, because, as from taxography III (§ 8), Botul always developed his thoughts on Nietzsche in terms of two dualities: Up vs. Down and Easy vs. Heavy; Exaltation and Humiliation, Aggravation and Relief. A pendulum law. Botul wanted to wrest the hammer from Nietzsche and equip him with a shovel instead. While the hammer destroys or nails down, the shovel is mobile; it is also an instrument of archaeology (here first echoes of Foucault, who unfortunately discovered Botul too late), a child's tool and a symbol of construction. Your movement is versatile. You can excavate thoughts, yes, even as Nietzsche knew, poems that are also trees.² This is how Botul named him Elevateur de la poésie, which, by the way, was supposed to come as a “poem lifter” in the German translation, but unfortunately became “weightlifter” due to a typographical error. Not a good omen for German reception. The shovel, however, combines the top and bottom as well as the light and the heavy, a quality that Botul thought of. Time was neither cyclical nor linear for him, but he saw with Nietzsche in time a sphere on which the lines from above and below, from East and West intersected without interruption. Superhumans can arise at any of these intersections. They are not the product of breeding or the future, but are the result of pure chance. According to JBB, this is what Nietzsche meant with the preposition “on the way to the superman.”³.

Botul often brought taxi customers into his car, his “Frédéric Mobile”, with the help of a calendar and detailed observations of their steps through Paris. Some traces of them could be reconstructed in his writings. It should be noted that he hated quotation marks above all else. In taxography IV, § 37, we find a text in which every word is provided with quotation marks — in retrospect an early parody of postmodernism, which was intended to put its “Nietzsche” on the sign.

A trace may be mentioned as an example. He was a great admirer of composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) and was also able to steer him into his taxi one day, in front of the famous cabaret, of course Le Chat noir. The gymnopedist quickly got into the old, well-known taxi. Although he had never read it, he liked to be engaged in a conversation about Nietzsche's pendulum thinking. In the notes of Satie's friend Contamine de Latour (1867-1926), we read about Satie's difficulties with music. Botul seems to have adopted the text with minor modifications:

He [Botul writes about himself in the memoirs always in the third person, sometimes singular, sometimes plural; just Nietzschean] created a personal philosophy. His philosophical education was very incomplete, so he gathered together the elements he had mastered and made a special recipe from them, declared the rest to be non-existent and even harmful to a good philosophical way of thinking. He was in the situation of a person who only knew thirteen letters of the alphabet and decided to create a new philosophy with this material instead of admitting his lack of skill.

His motto: In any moment, you can be a superman. But this is only possible with the complete map of Paris in mind. He was a great admirer of the French writer Marcel Schwob (1867-1905), who unfortunately died early. His dream would have been to have driven him in a taxi and then to have been drawn by him as a literary portrait. The trip with Stefan Zweig was too short for such a result. He was able to bring the legendary Pierre Menard to a Spanish archive, where he was currently carrying out his monumental studies on the geology of La Mancha.

In his later years, Botul turned to Asian thought without giving up Nietzsche. “Nietzsche would have done that too,” he used to say, “unless he would have become a Jesuit, maybe even a taxi driver if his eyes had allowed it.” One of his last words was: “It's a shame that the term 'Zen. ' ”

May there finally be a renaissance, also here in the German-speaking world. After all, Bernard-Henri Levy has his Kant critique with the help of Botul's brilliant analyses of Kantian sex life (La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant, ed. F. Pagès, posthumously 1999).

Unfortunately, flat spirits keep trying their hand at JBB, this mountain range of a thinker, and, up to this day in 2026, often with the accusation of having led a dubious existence that Nietzsche research did not advance, but did not advance at all: on the contrary.

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Elmar Schenkel, Anglist and author, read Nietzsche at the age of 16 in his Catholic village in Westphalia. As a German teacher in France, he became aware of the importance of Nietzsche. Member of the board of the Nietzsche-Verein Röcken since 2015. Publications about Nietzsche: 101 letters to Friedrich Nietzsche about his 175th birthday (Edited by Fayçal Hamouda); Ed.: Nietzsche: The happy science (Kröner Verlag 2023); as author: True stories about Friedrich Nietzsche (Tauchaer Verlag 2024) and Nietzsche globally. Around the World in 80 Supermen (Kröner 2025).

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Article Image

Undated portrait of Botul, probably created around 1905, which is attributed to the young Pablo Picasso, but could possibly also be by Paul Klee. It is the only surviving authentic pictorial representation of Botul, who was hostile to photography and had a strict aversion to painters. Used with permission from Archive Botul, Inv. -No 13.

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Literature

Botul, Jean-Baptiste: taxography I-VII. Paris: Editions naufrages 2025.

Bouveresse, Jacques: Les foudres de Nietzsche et l'aveuglement des disciples. Marseille: Hors d'atteinte 2021.

From Selby, Frederick: Biographical Extravagancies. The Life of J.-B. Botul. Dublin: Dalkey Publishers 1953.

Pages, Frederic: Nietzsche et le Demon de Midi. Paris: Editions Mille et Une Nuit. 2004.

Wehmeyer, Grete: Erik Satie. Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt 1998.

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Footnotes

1: Editor's note: The title of this untranslated work is ambiguous; it can be translated both literally as “Nietzsche's Lightning” and translated as “Nietzsche's Wrath.”

2: “And indeed! Where such trees stand next to each other, there are Blissful islands! But one day I want to dig them and set everyone alone: that they learn loneliness and defiance and caution” (So Zarathustra spoke, From the blissful islands).

3: Cf. So Zarathustra spoke, On human intelligence.

Jean-Baptiste Botul, a Forgotten Nietzschean from France

Time and again, our blog is dedicated to overlooked figures from the Nietzscheverse. The Leipzig Anglist Elmar Schenkel went deep into the archives for us in order to introduce you to an almost unknown figure of French-language Nietzsche reception: the “taxi philosopher” Jean-Baptiste Botul, who lived from 1896 to 1947 and not only came into contact with numerous prominent figures of his time on his trips through Paris, but developed also, in conversations with them, his very own Nietzsche interpretation, which, due to its subversive explosive power, has been stored in the poison cabinet by the mainstream of Nietzsche research to the present day. If Nietzsche was, in his own words, “dynamite,” then Botul is a rocket of the Force de frappe, still awaiting detonation — a stroke of luck?

I have followed Alexander Kluge's films, his writings, theories and food for thought intensively since the mid-1970s. He was one of the great universal and lateral thinkers between art, literature, film, philosophy, science, history and politics. His death opens a huge gap, if not an abyss. And that in these times!

My favorite movie was always The Patriot (1979), I've certainly seen it twenty times. Cult! Strangely enough, the equally cumbersome and poetic film, with Hannelore Hoger in the lead role, is rarely mentioned or shown today. Because it is about Germany. Back then shared. today Thinking about it can easily get you sidelined. Really? One of the intertitles states: THE CLOSER YOU LOOK AT A WORD, THE FARTHER IT LOOKS BACK: GERMANY. How could there be or have been misunderstandings? And that a decade before the fall of the wall? The words clever exemplify the critical self-reflection that he wanted to initiate in us, the 1968 and post-68 generations. I, then a teacher training student, remember the scene with history teacher Gabi Teichert, who researches and digs for the source material for German history, who personally goes to the Bonn Bundestag to question members of parliament: “Don't you also think that the source material for the history books in the Federal Republic of Germany must be changed? “So the story? How should you change them? One of Kluge's typical ideas that led to mental hiccups. You had to digest that first. Because back then, in the 1970s, we left-wing intellectuals in old West Berlin and in West Germany were all thinking about the revolutionary change in history forward. Of course, history cannot be changed retrospectively, but looking at it can. With this trick, the word and visual artist Kluge succeeded almost incidentally in installing a Nietzschean, i.e. perspective view of history and also of the concept of truth. Because didn't we think that what was written in the history books of the Gabi Teichert generation was “truth”? It was just one of many. Like today. There have been many more in the post-factual age, but there is no one left to sort them for us, like Alexander Kluge.

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He was a great individual, like Nietzsche, but he also had allies and co-thinkers such as scientists, writers, and artists. The start was made by Oskar Negt (1934-2024), with whom he in 1972 Publicity and experience wrote and wrote the tremendous mammoth work in 1981 History and self-will presented. In the former, the organization of the bourgeois and proletarian public sphere was analysed by Negt and Kluge examining the connections between social experiences and structures of public spheres, it was then, more pragmatically, a “book of use.” “We are interested,” wrote the authors, “what does material-altering work in a world in which it is obvious that disasters occur. These are the historical working capacity: Born from separation processes and armed with self-will that defends itself against separations.”¹. On the other hand, Kluge chose the category of connection throughout his life. Against Negt's political-sociological, purist view, Kluge became aware of personal, real human experiences in order to enable a new, autonomous public sphere. This required insight into the connections, ultimately the old Faustian question of what holds the world together on the inside. But Kluge wanted the “sensuality of connection.”². He was driven by a tremendous interest in knowledge and by a passion for communication that is unparalleled at a time when everyone is next to themselves. He cleverly knew how to turn the capitalist category of “self-interest” from head to toe: He challenged his audience, reading and seeing, to pick out from the big picture of history the things, messages, examples and experiences that have to do with their own life. His films and books were offers of inner insights, calls for individual resistance, emancipation assistance from a late enlightenment who wants to help out of immaturity. But there was no longer a consistent narrative thread, just collages and fragments, which nevertheless had a lot to offer and remained in the memory. He did not want a “reader” from A to Z, but wanted a selective dive, in a sense by jumping head into the cold water, with permanent repeatability in individual reception: “There is no book more than the opportunity to behave independently” (ibid.). That also required courage, but you could learn that from him as a reader, and you could become addicted to it just like swimming once you got used to cold water.

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Later, there were other allies who joined Kluge or that he found: the writer Ferdinand von Schirach or the artists Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter. They all embodied what he was looking for: the sensuality of connection. Because Kluge had long since experienced that language alone was not enough. He was not only a collector of stories, but also of pictures, newspaper and advertising photos, which he processed into image-text collages and interspersed into his films and books, sometimes confusing and irritating, seemingly incoherent. Work of discovery, ordering and structuring came to the reader, whom Kluge wanted to empower him to become independent, as did Nietzsche his audience.

Like Nietzsche, Alexander Kluge was a word and image artist. Both spoke in metaphors and fragments whose meaning one had to evoke or which one had to recompose. Both made use of the full range of literary and visual options. At Kluge, the media and the confident use of photo and film were added. Like Nietzsche, he understood how to use words to create images in front of our inner eye and Vice Versa To put pictures into words that actually contained the ineffable and outrageous, showed the incomprehensible, such as episodes of the Second World War that Kluge, born in Halberstadt, had witnessed and repeatedly recalled from memory, called upon, presented in his short stories and films and established as lessons. In the movie The Patriot Kluge does this with the help of the artificial figure “The Knee” from Christian Morgenstern's poem A knee goes alone around the world, which personifies Kluge and makes him a participating observer of the events of the World War, allows him to fight against the “quarrelsome brain.” In this way, he succeeded in describing or filming the incommensurable as that “depiction of the unrepresentable” (Jean-François Lyotard). He had internalized and authentically transformed the pathetic “never again” worn out in post-war Germany as his own life experience, but exaggerated linguistically and visually and impressively made comprehensible for the next generation.

Kluge was an excellent philosophical and scientific thinker and author, but he was also a talented storyteller and storyteller. “Whoever laughs at fairy tales was never in need,” says the screenplay for patriot, and he masterfully understood how to extract emancipatory and utopian content and potential from the traditions of myths, legends and fairy tales collected since time immemorial, to blend into his films as subtitles or to intersperse subheadings in his treatises. The fairy tale of stubborn child The Brothers Grimm is one such example. Disobedience is punished and leads to death, but self-will still emerges from the grave, as the dead child keeps sticking his hand out of the ground. Grimm's fairy tales — for Kluge an example of the trench in German history: “They dug and dug and found the fairy tales. Its content: How a people worked on their wishes for over 800 years”³.

I always liked to listen to Kluge when I was able to see him “live” or during interviews on television (he was never in the picture himself). Once I dared to call him myself, it was in the early 80s. Back then, there was a strange atmosphere of fear and hopelessness in all discourses in the old Federal Republic; there was a vital and not just virtual peace movement against the impending US medium-haul deployment in Europe. What could art do about it? That was the big question. Could it change political consciousness or even reality? I was just curating an exhibition of politically critical art in Berlin and wanted to invite Alexander Kluge to a panel discussion, but he said both dryly and politely: “I am a lawyer and unfortunately have no time to come to Berlin.” But he sent me a portrait of himself, signed, which I kept. Of course, this did not show him as a lawyer, but as an author. He had many roles and was present at countless events and forums. So he could hide behind one or the other when needed.

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On December 6, 2016, I saw Kluge “live” again at the Babelsberg Film University, where he gave a presentation on DADA and then received a prize from the students. It was an experience to listen to him — brilliant speaker with the voice of a storyteller that he was — but it was also funny with the rocking horse on stage and other bits and bobs that were standing around there. Students then showed a film about Nietzsche with a character hitting another on the head with a hammer, accompanied by weird music. The whole thing as a stick figure aesthetic against the backdrop of the Nietzsche museum room in Sils Maria, where not only So Zarathustra spoke But so did the idea of eternal return. The film was entirely in the style of clever, black and white, fragmentary subheadings filling with screen. That's when the hammer came into the picture. It was Nietzsche and Kluge's symbolic tool. How could you have better clarified what Nietzsche into On the genealogy of morality With his saying he meant: “[N] ur that doesn't stop Woe zu tun“Remains in memory”? Kluge quotes him more completely, in typical discomfort, as early as 1979 in a draft text The Patriot: “'It was never without blood, torture, sacrifices when people felt it necessary to remember! Ah, reason, seriousness, control over affects, this whole gloomy thing that means thinking, all these privileges and showpieces of man: how expensive have they paid off! How much blood and horror is at the root of all good things. '” — Our beautiful Germany, adds Kluge, “is a 'tremendous collection' of such 'good things.' They are the commodity that history deals with, that good thing in people that continues incessantly.”⁴.

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All images used in the article are photographs taken by the author during the mentioned presentation on 6/12/2016 in Babelsberg.

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Barbara Straka, born 1954 in Berlin, studied art education/German literature and art history/philosophy in West Berlin. As a curator and art mediator, she has initiated exhibitions and major projects of contemporary art in Germany and abroad since 1980. She was director of the 'Haus am Waldsee Berlin — Place of International Contemporary Art, 'President of the Lower Saxony Art University HBK Braunschweig and consultant for cultural and creative industries and international affairs at the Berlin Senate. She is the author and editor of numerous publications on art after 1945 (www.creartext.de).

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Literature

Kluge, Alexander: The patriot. Texts/images 1 — 6. Berlin 1979.

Kluge, Alexander & Oscar Negt: History and self-will. Historical organization of work assets — Germany as a production public — Contextual violence. Berlin 1981.

Höhne, Petra & Michael Kötz: The sensuality of context. On Alexander Kluge's film work. Cologne 1981.

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Footnotes

1: Kluge & Negt, History and self-will, P. 5.

2: Petra Höhne & Michael Kötz, The sensuality of context.

3: The Patriot, ibid., p. 123.

4: Alexander Kluge, The patriot. Texts/images 1 — 6, P. 26.

“A Question of Context”

Thoughts and Memories of Alexander Kluge

The filmmaker, writer, lawyer, and philosopher Alexander Kluge, born in 1932, died on March 25. Kluge, who became known to a large audience not least through his films and his artistic television interviews, was repeatedly inspired by Nietzsche. In his diverse work, he not only dedicated himself decisively to him, but also followed a profoundly Nietzschean, perspectivist approach throughout his life. That should be reason enough to dedicate an obituary to him on our blog, which art historian and curator Barbara Straka thankfully wrote for us.