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Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche-Archiv | 07.2013 Audioguide for English adults NIETZSCHE ARCHIVE

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Page 1: NIETZSCHE ARCHIVE

1 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Audioguide for English adults

NIETZSCHE ARCHIVE

Page 2: NIETZSCHE ARCHIVE

2 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Inhalt

TITLE ...................................................................................................... AUDIOGUIDE-NUMBER

Welcome ................................................................................................................................... 325

Exterior design (portal) .......................................................................................................... 326

Former dining room

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche ........................................................................................... 327

Second level ................................................................................................................. 12

Cultural and political change .......................................................................................... 328

The work of the Archive ................................................................................................. 329

Second level ................................................................................................................. 13

Library and lecture room

Interior design ................................................................................................................. 330

Second level ................................................................................................................. 14

Room use ........................................................................................................................ 331

Second level ................................................................................................................. 15

The philosopher Nietzsche ............................................................................................. 332

Second level ................................................................................................................. 15

Study for archivists

Interior design ................................................................................................................. 333

The Nietzsche family ...................................................................................................... 334

Page 3: NIETZSCHE ARCHIVE

3 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Welcome to the Villa Silberblick!

The renowned German philosopher Frie-

drich Nietzsche spent the last three years

of his life in this house, until his death in

summer 1900.

Until the end of the Second World War,

this was also the home of the Nietzsche

Archive – which, for nearly forty years,

was run here by Nietzsche’s sister, Elisa-

beth.

Today, the former Archive rooms on the

ground floor are open to the public.

The tour leaflet also includes the numbers

for the audio guide. Simply key in the

number and press play to hear the com-

mentary. The audio tour lasts approximate-

ly twenty minutes. If you listen to all the

background commentaries as well, the tour

takes around half an hour.

Before we go into the rooms, though, let’s

start by taking a look at this impressive

entrance.

It’s best viewed from outside – so when

you are in front of the house, just key in

326.

325: Welcome

Page 4: NIETZSCHE ARCHIVE

4 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Portal

326 Exterior design

Villa Silberblick – named after the hill

above Weimar – was given its present

form between 1902 and 1903.

The refurbishment included adding on

this distinctive entrance, designed by the

Belgian architect Henry van de Velde.

The attractive bronze handles on the en-

trance door are a fine example of his love

of dynamic sinuous lines.

The work on the house was commis-

sioned by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche,

sister of the renowned philosopher Frie-

drich Nietzsche. She had moved into the

house together with her Nietzsche Ar-

chive some years before, in 1897. The

house had been bought as a venue for the

Archive’s work by Meta von Salis, a

wealthy benefactor from Switzerland

who also wrote one of the first books

about Friedrich Nietzsche.

The inscription over the entrance – also

designed by van de Velde – is rather mis-

leading today, since the Nietzsche Archive

as such no longer exists.

At the end of the Second World War, Ger-

many was divided into four Allied zones,

and Weimar was in the Soviet zone of oc-

cupation. Since the entire East Bloc regard-

ed Nietzsche as a proponent of an

‘irrational’ philosophy paving the way for

the rise of the Nazis, the Soviet administra-

tion were quick to shut the Archive. After

further discussion, they also removed the

inscription.

During the East German era, the villa was

refurbished a number of times and used as

a guest house for the “National Research

and Memorial Institutions in Weimar“, the

predecessor of today’s Klassik Stiftung

Weimar.

Only after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 was

the lower floor restored to its condition in

1903 and opened as a museum – and the

inscription replaced over the entrance.

Since 1999, the upper floor has housed the

Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche, an institution

for philosophical and academic research.

Every year, the Kolleg invites well-known

intellectual figures here – such as Peter

Sloterdijk or Slavoj Žižek – to reflect on

present and future philosophical issues.

Page 5: NIETZSCHE ARCHIVE

5 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Former Dining Room

327: Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

The photo on the first exhibition panel

shows, on the right, a mature woman in a

black dress looking directly into the cam-

era. This is Elisabeth-Förster Nietzsche,

Friedrich Nietzsche’s sister. For over forty

years, she was not just the head of the Nie-

tzsche Archive, but its life and soul.

The founding of the Archive is closely

linked to the dramatic development of Nie-

tzsche’s illness.

On 3 January 1889, Nietzsche suffered a

mental collapse in Turin. Afterwards, his

mental and physical state was so unstable

that he required care for the rest of his life.

On the next panel, there are, at the top left,

two photos of Nietzsche taken during his

illness. He spent over year in a clinic in

Jena before, in May 1890, his mother Fran-

ziska took him to her home in Naumburg

to look after him herself.

Some years later, Elisabeth-Förster Nie-

tzsche founded the Nietzsche Archive, and

took over the management and conserva-

tion of Nietzsche’s papers. She collected

Nietzsche’s manuscripts, numerous note-

books and loose papers, as well as over a

thousand letters.

Such was her zeal for collecting her broth-

er’s papers that today there is hardly any

other 19th century figure in Germany

whose work and life has been so thorough-

ly documented and researched. The Ar-

chive had the exclusive rights to publish

Nietzsche’s works until 1930, when the

copyright expired.

In Wilhelminian Germany, Elisabeth

Förster-Nietzsche was one of the few

women in such an influential position –

only comparable to Cosima Wagner in

Bayreuth.

However, there are a number of issues con-

nected to her earlier life – and to find out

more, just key in 12.

Page 6: NIETZSCHE ARCHIVE

6 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Second level 12: Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and ‘Nueva Germania’

In her late thirties, Elisabeth Nietzsche

married Bernhard Förster, a high school

teacher. Förster professed radical national-

ist beliefs, and was fanatically anti-Semitic

– so much so that he even claimed that

Christ, as the Son of God, must have been

a ‘pure’ Aryan.

One year after their marriage, Elisabeth

and Bernhard Förster moved to Paraguay

to found a colony with a small group of

like-minded supporters. Their ‘Nueva Ger-

mania’ – ‘New Germania’ – colony was

supposed to be a refuge for members of the

so-called ‘Aryan race’. From the outset,

Friedrich Nietzsche took a very critical

view of his brother-in-law. In 1887, he

wrote from Venice to his mother in Naum-

burg:

“The news from Paraguay is really very

cheering; but I still have not the slightest

wish to settle in the vicinity of my anti-

Semitic brother in law. His views and mine

are different: – and I do not regret this.”

When the colony was facing financial ruin

in 1889, Bernhard Förster committed sui-

cide. For a time, Elisabeth Förster-

Nietzsche tried to raise the funds to save

‘Nueva Germania’. But four years later,

she returned to Europe, where an entirely

new ‘project’ was now waiting for her. In a

letter in 1894, she wrote:

“And so I must bid farewell to these colo-

nial affairs – from now on, another great

task in life will be commanding all my

time and energy, namely, caring for my

dear and only brother, the philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche, protecting his works

and the description of his life and thought.”

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7 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Former dining room

328: Cultural and political change

The history of the Nietzsche Archive was

strongly influenced by a radical change in

its political and cultural direction.

The third information panel displays a pho-

to of the opening of a Rodin exhibition in

Weimar in 1904. Rodin was then part of

the avant-garde movement, and pushing

back the boundaries of sculptural works.

The guests at the exhibition included Elisa-

beth Förster-Nietzsche, third from the left,

wearing a hat and dark dress. From around

1900, she succeeded, together with friends

such as Harry Graf Kessler, in attracting

European avant-garde art to Weimar. Now,

a steady stream of the pioneering writers

and artists of their age passed through the

Nietzsche Archive, from Rainer Maria Ril-

ke to Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann,

Max Klinger and Edvard Munch.

Thirty years later, the picture is very differ-

ent. Those who then met in these rooms

were vehemently opposed modernist art –

and democracy. As early as the mid-1920s,

the Archive cultivated contacts to Benito

Mussolini, an enthusiastic reader of Nie-

tzsche. And in 1932, Elisabeth Förster-

Nietzsche also got to know Adolf Hitler,

who was a welcome guest over the next

years. The display case on the opposite

wall shows three photos of Hitler visiting

the Archive in 1934.

At that time, the Nazis were determined to

reinterpret Nietzsche as the Third Reich’s

intellectual mentor, and enthusiastically

adopted individual words and phrases from

his works which fitted their new ideology,

whether the ‘will to power’, the

‘Übermensch’ or ‘master morality’. After

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche’s death in

1935, the Archive was managed by Max

Oehler, who unequivocally shaped it to

buttress Nazi propaganda – even though

scholars believe that Hitler had hardly read

any of Nietzsche’s writings.

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8 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Former dining room

329: The work of the Archive

On the wall in the small niche to the left of

the windows, you can see a copy of a draft

letter that Nietzsche wrote in Venice in

1884. In it, he expressed his concern over

how his intellectual legacy would be treat-

ed:

“Who knows how many generations will

have to pass to produce a few human be-

ings who will recapture in feeling, in all its

depth, what I have done! And even then,

the thought still terrifies me how unquali-

fied and totally unsuited people will one

day invoke my authority.”

Nietzsche wrote these lines to a good

friend, the Swiss writer Malwida von Mey-

senbug. But take a closer look at this dupli-

cate – and especially the salutation at the

top. This does not read ‘Liebe Malwida’,

but ‘Liebe Schwester’ – ‘Dear Sister’!

In other words, Elisabeth-Förster Nie-

tzsche manipulated the letter to make it

look as if Nietzsche had written to her –

turning the letter into the alleged proof that

she was the sole legitimate custodian of

Nietzsche’s literary estate.

This manipulated letter was also included

in the first major edition of Nietzsche’s

complete works, compiled here in the Ar-

chive in 1913. This letter stands as one of

the many examples of how uninhibited

Elisabeth-Förster Nietzsche was in manip-

ulating her brother’s papers – first and

foremost, his letters. In the five volumes of

Nietzsche letters published under her aus-

pices, not only did she change the name of

the person her brother wrote to, but reor-

dered or shortened the content of many

individual letters – or left letters out alto-

gether.

The best known example of Elisabeth-

Förster Nietzsche’s very questionable ap-

proach to her work in the Archive is a

book entitled The Will to Power. This col-

lection of aphorisms was compiled posthu-

mously from Nietzsche’s notebooks – and

to find out more, just key in 13.

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9 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Second level 13: “The Will to Power”

Around 1885, Nietzsche began to draw up

his plan for a larger systematic work. His

working title for it was The Will to Power,

and Nietzsche made drafts and notes for it

until 1888, when he finally gave the project

up. Some of these writings were integrated

into his later works, primarily The Twilight

of the Idols and The Antichrist. The rest of

his preparatory notes were scattered

throughout his papers.

After Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche founded

the Archive, one of her main aims was to

ensure the publication of this ‘major work’

which, she felt, clearly showed how her

brother had developed a major philosophi-

cal system.

Nietzsche himself would hardly have sub-

scribed to his sister’s goal. Even in The

Twilight of the Idols in 1888, he noted:

“I mistrust all systemizers and avoid them.

The will to a system is a lack of integrity.”

Nonetheless, from 1901, the Nietzsche Ar-

chive published various books under the

title The Will to Power. These were always

collections of texts and aphorisms from

Nietzsche’s unpublished notebooks and

papers. The best-known edition was is-

sued in 1906, and contained over 1000

aphorisms in four volumes – and here be-

low there is a facsimile of an early edi-

tion. Today, scholars do not regard these

compilations as genuinely part of Nie-

tzsche’s own oeuvre. They only follow

Nietzsche’s own documented plans to a

limited extent, have been manipulated by

the editor’s additions to and reorganiza-

tion of the texts. In places, they even pre-

sent Nietzsche’s lecture notes as apho-

risms.

This situation is serious enough in itself,

but is further heightened by the profound

influence of the different editions of Will

to Power on the reception of Nietzsche

down the years. Moreover, even today,

there is no exact critical comparison of

the Nietzsche Archive editions and Nie-

tzsche’s original plans.

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10 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Library and lecture room

330: Interior design

The main library and lecture room – the

room you are now in – was in a part of Vil-

la Silberblick extensively refurbished by

Belgian architect Henry van de Velde in

the years between 1902 and 1903. Here,

van de Velde created a Gesamtkunstwerk -

a synthesis of the arts – where every artis-

tic detail of the room is harmonised: the

built-in shelves and furniture, the fabric

covers, the stove, the vases, the piano –

everything was designed by van de Velde

himself. The elegant lines and curves char-

acteristic of his style are evident, for exam-

ple, in the sofa and display cabinet above

it. For van de Velde, the line was:

“…a vital force spontaneously breaking

out of us, soaring and sinking back, gliding

and coiling forwards, raising us up and

transporting our soul into a state only oth-

erwise awakened by singing and dancing.”

The wall directly opposite the sofa is deco-

rated with a massive golden ‘N’ – and the

same logo was emblazoned on the station-

ary and matchboxes laid out for the use of

visitors: an early example of ‘corporate

identity’.

The monumental Nietzsche bust is one of

the few objects not designed by van de

Velde. The bust, emerging from a soaring

square base, is the work of the Leipzig

sculptor Max Klinger. This style of bust

was often used in ancient Greece to portray

the gods. This large-than-life portrait im-

pressively illustrates just how much, in

around 1900, Nietzsche was stylized as a

prophet of new age. Elisabeth Förster-

Nietzsche skilfully promoted the cult

around her brother by making the Archive

a pilgrimage site for his numerous disci-

ples.

This was also why she wanted to have the

modern, sophisticated interior designed by

Henry van de Velde – and if you would

like to know more about this multi-talented

Belgian artist, just key in 14.

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11 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Second Level 14: Henry van de Velde

Henry van de Velde was born in Antwerp

in Belgium in 1863. He was a multi-

talented artist whose designs embraced all

areas of life, from houses to furniture,

clothing, jewellery and lamps – and even

interiors for large steamers and railway

carriages. His credo was that high quality

art and craftwork could positively influ-

ence both individuals and everyday life.

Originally, van de Velde studied painting

but, from 1892, increasingly turned to the

applied arts. In particular, the houses and

interiors he designed proved very popular

with intellectuals and artists in Germany.

Thanks to his success there, he moved to

Berlin in 1900. But van de Velde only

stayed for eighteen months in the German

capital, then a booming city of two million

people.

In 1902, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and

Harry Graf Kessler were instrumental in

bringing van de Velde to Weimar – as the

Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar’s artistic ad-

visor for the trades and industry. Van de

Velde’s remit was to support businesses in

the region in all design issues with the aim

of increasing sales. His work was a re-

sounding success. By 1915, he had negoti-

ated contacts for several million gold

marks for businesses in Thuringia, and es-

pecially in Weimar.

In Weimar, van de Velde enjoyed the most

productive period in his life, and was not

only much in demand as a designer and

architect, but also as a teacher. In 1906, he

founded the School of Arts and Crafts –

whose successor organisation, some years

later, was the famous Bauhaus school of

design.

But with the outbreak of the First World

War, the mood in Weimar changed dramat-

ically. As a Belgian, van de Velde was re-

garded as an ‘enemy alien’ and was the

subject of such hostility that he left Wei-

mar in 1917, emigrating to Switzerland.

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12 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

The end wall of the new library and lecture

room – designed by van de Velde – con-

tains the heart of the Archive – a safe. The

fireproof and theft-proof safe is set behind

the desk, elegantly integrated into the over-

all design of the room. This is where Nie-

tzsche’s original handwritten manuscripts

were stored. The built-in shelves next to it

primarily displayed Nietzsche’s personal

reference library. Today, Nietzsche’s man-

uscripts and his personal collection of

books are in the Goethe and Schiller Ar-

chive, and the Duchess Anna Amalia Li-

brary.

At the same time, this room also became

the venue for an exclusive salon – perfectly

reflecting Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche’s

own idea of a ‘living Archive’. Innumera-

ble lectures, literary teas and matinees

were held here. There were also musical

soirees, with concerts given on the piano

designed by van de Velde. The season’s

highlights included the annual festivities to

mark Nietzsche’s birthday and the day of

his death.

The circle brought together by Nietzsche’s

charming sister in these rooms was a very

select group. It may have only included

carefully chosen friends and a few mem-

bers of court society, but they regularly

welcomed renowned guests – for instance,

with Gerhart Hauptmann and the poet Stef-

Library and lecture room

331: Room use

an George reading from their latest works.

The composer Richard Strauss also paid his

respects after he had finished his 1896 tone

poem Also sprach Zarathustra – Thus

Spoke Zarathustra.

Finally, the Archive also served as the

main meeting point for a group of friends

intent on turning Weimar into a centre for

modern art. The two leading figures in this

group were Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

and Harry Graf Kessler – and for more on

this circle and the idea of a ‘New Weimar’,

just key in 15.

.

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13 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

Harry Graf Kessler, the wealthy and cos-

mopolitan son of a banker, was a particu-

larly frequent visitor to Villa Silberblick.

He was one of the most colourful figures

in Imperial Germany, and not only a diplo-

mat, writer, art collector and art patron, but

also one the very early Nietzsche disciples.

It was his idea to turn the little town of

Weimar into a flourishing European cul-

tural centre for a third time – after Weimar

Classicism and the age of Wagner and

Liszt.

While Förster-Nietzsche initially sought to

have her Archive build on the fame and

glory of Weimar’s Goethe and Schiller

Archive, the objective was now to trans-

form the town itself into a centre for the

artistic avant-garde. This was also intended

as an answer to Berlin. There, cultural pol-

icy around 1900 was very restrictive, with

Emperor Wilhelm II firmly rejecting all

modern art of whatever kind.

To support their ‘New Weimar’ project,

Kessler and Förster-Nietzsche invited the

Belgian artist Henry van de Velde to the

town in 1902. Through his work in Wei-

mar, van de Velde’s innovative style came

to have a profound and broad artistic im-

pact.

Kessler himself took up an appointment as

the director of the Grand Ducal Museum of

Arts and Crafts in 1903. Thanks to Kess-

ler’s excellent contacts, the museum could

show a series of artists now recognised as

seminal in modernism’s development, in-

cluding, for example, Cézanne, Gauguin,

Monet, van Gogh and Kandinsky.

In this way, Weimar genuinely did become

a centre of artistic renewal in Germany.

But Kessler’s all too ambitious plans soon

had conservative circles in Weimar up in

arms – protesting, above all, against his

programme of exhibitions. In 1906, he was

attacked in the press for allegedly obscene

nude studies by Rodin. As a result, Kessler

exasperatedly resigned from his position in

Weimar. For the time being, the dream of a

‘New Weimar’ was over.

Second Level AG-Nr. 15: New Weimar

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14 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

In redesigning the house with the Archive,

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche also wanted to

create a showcase for her brother. For that

reason, van de Velde built numerous dis-

play cases here in the library and lecture

room. In this rather museum-like space,

the cases with their photographs and mem-

orabilia commemorating Nietzsche’s life

and death, elevate the room to a memorial

for this great philosopher.

In the little gallery over the sofa, for exam-

ple, the second photo from the right shows

Friedrich Ritschl, Professor of Philology.

Ritschl and Nietzsche first met in autumn

1864, when Nietzsche started to study

classical philology and theology in Bonn.

But after just one semester, Nietzsche gave

up theology – he had actually already fin-

ished with Christianity while still at

school.

After just one year in Bonn, Nietzsche fol-

lowed Ritschl to Leipzig and became

Ritschl’s most gifted and favoured student.

And Ritschl also then supported Nie-

tzsche’s appointment to the chair of classi-

cal philology at the University of Basel in

1869. At that point, Nietzsche had only just

turned 25! On the left of the safe, you can

see the doctoral degree certificate he re-

ceived then – even though he had not actu-

ally taken a Ph.D.

In Basel, Nietzsche’s interests increasingly

led him to philosophy and away from phi-

lology. In his view, humankind’s develop-

ment from the ancient world was a history

of the slow decay of western civilization

culminating in the decadence of modern

society. In his view, this decline was due to

centuries of the weak spirit of the west, a

spirit informed by precisely the wrong val-

ues – and here, Nietzsche was thinking

above all of Christianity, which he regard-

ed as an ailing and life-denying value sys-

tem. Fighting decadence, he maintained,

was only possible by a radical renewal of

culture – and initially, Nietzsche put great

hopes in Richard Wagner.

To find out more about Nietzsche and

Wagner, just key in 16.

Library and lecture room

332: The philosopher Nietzsche

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15 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

While still a student in Leipzig, Nietzsche

came to know Richard Wagner, who was over

30 years older. The fourth photo on the left in

the portrait gallery over the sofa is the last por-

trait photo of Wagner. Nietzsche was fascinat-

ed by Wagner and his totally innovative style

of opera. From 1869 on, the young Nietzsche

travelled from Basel over 20 times to visit

Wagner in his villa on the shores of Lake Lu-

cerne. The close friendship they developed is

evident in the moving tribute Nietzsche pays in

a letter written for Wagner’s 60th birthday:

“Beloved Master, It is now really two genera-

tions that the Germans have had you – and

there are certainly many who, like […] me,

will celebrate the next Ascension Day as the

day of your descent to earth.”

In 1872, Nietzsche published his first key

work, entitled The Birth of Tragedy. On the

right in the table display case over the safe, you

can see the first two pages of the original man-

uscript. The text is dedicated to Richard Wag-

ner, and opens with a preface to the composer.

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche writes, only

Wagner’s music is capable of reviving the vi-

tal, mythical perspective on the world found

among the ancient Greeks, and overcoming the

all too rational and lifeless culture in the 19th

century.

Only a few years later, though, there was a

break between Nietzsche and Wagner, and Nie-

tzsche’s admiration turned into enmity. Above

all, he accused Wagner of returning to Christi-

anity in his late work ‘Parsifal’ – the Christiani-

ty which Nietzsche vehemently rejected. Even

after Wagner’s death in 1883, Nietzsche still

continued to write, almost neurotically, about

his former ‘Master’. Even shortly before Nie-

tzsche’s mental breakdown in 1888, he re-

mained unforgiving, and wrote:

“Is Wagner a person at all? Isn’t he rather a

disease?”

Second Level 16: Nietzsche and Wagner

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16 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

In 1903, Henry van de Velde also com-

pletely designed the study for the archi-

vists, right down to the last detail – not

only the desk, chairs and cupboards, but

also the leather-covered doors, the wallpa-

per and even the stucco on the ceiling. The

furniture was made by the court master-

joiner Hermann Scheidemantel. Incidental-

ly, during his Weimar years, van de Velde

had all the pieces of furniture he designed

made by Scheidemantel.

In his work, van de Velde sought to create

a total unity of the arts – as is impressively

evident here from the way that even the

picture frames fit perfectly into the room’s

overall design.

Only the bench next to the window was

not part of van de Velde’s original interior

design. Instead, it belonged to Elisabeth

Förster-Nietzsche’s initial furniture in the

house. Van de Velde had it reworked by

Scheidemantel so that it fitted in with the

new style of the furnishings.

Förster-Nietzsche’s friend Harry Graf

Kessler, one of the first visitors to the Villa

Silberblick, had already bemoaned her lack

of a sense of style. He found the house was

decorated in a relatively affluent style, but

without any real sophistication. The red

velvet furniture, family photos, embroidery

work and majolica pottery from South

America were all mixed together, without

any attempt to create an overall aesthetic

impression. It was also Kessler who urged

Förster-Nietzsche to have this mansion

house refurbished by van de Velde. In the

end, the refurbishment cost 43,000 marks –

more than the original cost of the entire

house and garden just a few years earlier.

Study for Archivists

333: Van de Velde design

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17 Klassik Stiftung Weimar | Nietzsche -Archiv | 07.2013

The portraits next to the stove show Frie-

drich and Elisabeth Nietzsche’s parents.

Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, their father, was a

Lutheran pastor, and began working in

Röcken, a small village south of Leipzig,

in 1842. He died in 1849, only just 35

years old, from a painful brain ailment. His

widow Franziska Oehler moved with her

two children into the nearby town of

Naumburg. For the next seven years, Frie-

drich Nietzsche grew up in a household of

women, with his mother, sister, grand-

mother and two unmarried aunts.

Throughout his life, Nietzsche had an am-

bivalent relationship to his sister. They had

fierce arguments, but always reconciled

afterwards. His letters to Elisabeth are of-

ten marked by his concern and fondness

for her. But Ecce Homo, his autobiography

written shortly before his mental collapse,

contains some very negative remarks about

her.

When Nietzsche’s mother died in 1897,

Elisabeth took over the care of her brother.

Nietzsche, who was very seriously ill,

spent his last three years in this house, liv-

ing on the upper floor of Villa Silberblick

until his death in summer 1900. Elisabeth

only allowed selected guests such as Ru-

dolf Steiner or Harry Graf Kessler to visit

her mentally deranged brother. In addition,

she was more than meticulous in ensuring

that a worthy image of Nietzsche the phi-

losopher was propagated in public. To sup-

port this image, she also commissioned

portraits of her brother by renowned paint-

ers and sculptors. The famous etching by

Hans Olde on the opposite wall shows Nie-

tzsche a year before his death.

Study for Archivists 334: Nietzsche’s family / Nietzsche iconography