1844 Born 15th October in Rocken, a village in Prussian Saxony. His father a Lutheran pastor, as were his male ancestors on both sides for several generations. The Nietzsches were supposedly descended from Polish nobles. The Polish name was later identified as Nicki, though the whole story is now discredited.
1846 10th July, birth of sister Elisabeth.
1849 His father dies insane following a brain injury the previous year. Family move to mediaeval walled town of Naumberg where the gate is locked at 10 pm every night. Brought up by mother, grandmother and two maiden aunts.
1858 Wins scholarship to Pforta, most famous Protestant boarding school in Germany.
1864 Enters Bonn University. Reads philosophy under Professor Ritschl.
1865 Ritschl leaves for Leipzig University following clash with another professor. Nietzsche is one of a group of students who follow him to Leipzig.
1866 Attracts Ritschl’s attention as a brilliant scholar and becomes a close friend.
Discovers second-hand copy of Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Idea. Becomes an enthusiastic Schopenhauerian.
1867 Military service, cut short through serious injury following fall from horse.
1868 Meets Richard Wagner through Ritschl’s wife.
1869 Appointed Extraordinary Professor of philology at Basle.
First of happy days with Wagner and Cosima at Triebschen near Lake Lucerne. Becomes an enthusiastic Wagnerian.
1870 As full Ordinary Professor his post made permanent.
Responds patriotically to outbreak of Franco-Prussian war. As a Swiss citizen he cannot join the army. Becomes a volunteer medial orderly. Seriously ill with dysentery. To this his sister attributed all his later illness.
1872 The Birth of Tragedy from the spirit of music
1873-1876 Thoughts out of Season (David Strauss, the Use and Abuse of History, Schopenhauer as Educator, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth).
1876 Disillusion with Wagner (and Schopenhauer).
1878 Human all too Human, a book for free spirits, seals break with Wagner.
1879 Resigns professorship on grounds of ill health. Agonising headaches and eye trouble torment him for the next few years. Also stomach problems.
For the next nine years he wanders alone, living in hotels, largely in Switzerland and Italy, writing his books. Spends several summers in Sils Maria “2600 feet above men and time”. He lives on a pension from the university, added to a small private income from inherited capital.
1880 The Wanderer and his Shadow (2nd part of Human all too Human)
1881 Daybreak.
1882 The Joyful Wisdom (1st four books)
In love with Lou Salome.
Begins taking chloral to help him sleep.
1883 Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book for everyone and no one, parts 1 & 2
Death of Wagner
1885 Sister Elisabeth, to her brother’s great displeasure, marries Bernhard Forster, a leading antisemitic politician, the son of a friend of her mother.
1886 Beyond Good and Evil.
1887 Genealogy of Morals
1888 Georges Brandes gives first ever lectures on Nietzsche in Copenhagen.
Nietzsche feels at the height of his powers.
Case of Wagner
The Antichrist
1889Twilight of the Idols
Goes insane. Last letter to Jacob Burckhart:- "Dear Professor, in the end I preferred being a Basle professor to being God. But I did not dare carry on my private egoism so far that for its sake I should omit the creation of the world.”.
3rd Janaury. Incident in public square in Turin involving carthorse. Friends come to take him away. Never recovers his mental powers. First mother then sister look after him.
1900 Dies 25th August in Weimar
Brandes writes “In the course of five or six years, Nietzsche’s intellectual tendency, now more or less understood, now misunderstood, became the ruling intellectual tendency of a great part of the literature of France, Germany, England, Italy, Norway, Sweden and Russia”.
1908 Ecce Homo
1910 The Will to Power ( published by Elisabeth from notes).
SOME KEY CONCEPTS
Affirmation or Amor Fati
Antichrist
God is dead
Eternal Recurrence
Good European
Last man
Morality of the weak
Master morality
Slave morality
Transvaluation of values
Ubermensch (superman)
Will to power
