Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

Therese Elisabeth Alexandra Nietzsche (Röcken, July 10th, 1846 - Weimar, November 8th, 1935) is the sister of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Sister loving and anxious to preserve the memory of her brother, it was nevertheless at the origin of the falsification of the work of the Philosophe starting from her intellectual death. She is known also under her married name: Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

Biography

Younger sister two year old of Friedrich Nietzsche, it receives same education Lutheran as her brother. She loses her father (Pasteur) at the three years age.

Elisabeth venerated her brother as of more the young age, at the point to reproach him her first loves. She dealt with her household with Basle, and was close to him when it fell sick. There was between them a sometimes made complicity of secrecies which escaped their mother. She was thus her first confidante. This brotherly love was so strong that towards the 8 years age, Elisabeth and Friedrich declared that they would marry together when they would be large.

The biographers estimate that the brother and the sister started to move away one from the other about 1878, when Nietzsche, whereas the disease had plunged it in violent physical sufferings and morals, publishes Humain, too human . The book, designed with the contact and with the assistance of Paul Rée, is disapproved by all the close relations of Nietzsche, and his/her sister is shocked remarks anti-Christians of her brother, matter which she considers vulgar and inhuman.

In 1882, Elisabeth draws aside Lou Andreas-Salome of her brother who in is passionately in love. Then, in 1885, with the great despair of her brother, she marries an agitator of extreme right-hand side, anti-semite and former professor, Bernhard Förster. The couple wishes to found a colony of pure Aryan race to the Paraguay of the name of Nueva Germania which will be born thanks to the immigration of ten German families. But the failure of the establishment of the colony will lead her husband to the suicide in 1889. Elisabeth thus decides to return definitively to Germany to deal with her brother who falls ill the same year. With the mother of the philosopher, it takes the supervision of Nietzsche which is nothing any more but the shade of itself. It should be recalled that the mother of Nietzsche reproached her son “for having killed Christ”.

In 1894, whereas his/her brother lives in a vegetative state, it created the Nietzsche files which will be at the origin of the falsification of the work of his/her brother. It will be at the origin of a large promotion campaign of the work of her brother and it will organize the pilgrimages from all Europe with Sils-Maria to come to see her brother, who becomes thus a tourist attraction that one visits to be made take in photograph.

But it will remain especially in the history to have handled until in the Thirties the writings of her brother in order to supporting the ideologists néo-conservatives then Nazis. In 1930, it adheres to NSDAP. It will serve the mode so well that in 1935, Hitler will make displacement for its funeral.

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