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Back to Podcast EpisodesFriedrich Nietzsche, Both Man and Dynamite
Friedrich Nietzsche: I am not a Man! I am Dynamite!
Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Rocken, Germany on October 15, 1844. In July of 1849, Nietzsche’s father, a thirty-five year old minister, died of an indeterminate brain condition, forcing the family to move to the nearby town of Naumburg. Both of these locations are in the Saxony region, former German Democratic Republic, approximately thirty miles southwest of the city of Leipzig.
Ree and Salome quickly began to discuss establishing their own intellectual cadre with the participants literally living together in a bohemian utopia, this in an era where a male and female living under the same roof for any reason would be considered scandalous. Into this intrigue, Friedrich Nietzsche finally arrived and a meeting with the couple ensued at St. Peter’s Basilica. His alleged greeting to Lou Salome while Ree was preoccupied with recording his impressions of the cathedral was “From what stars have we fallen here to meet?”
In her self serving memoir written many years later, Lou Salome would claim that in Lucerne, Nietzsche would make his second marriage proposal, the type of awkwardly unrealistic action that probably guaranteed Nietzsche lifelong bachelorhood. Realistically, since Lou Salome’s only income came from her inheritance, a small amount meant only until she married, she wasn’t going to marry anybody, at least not then. From this afternoon also emerged a famous photograph of Lou Salome with a whip of lilacs driving the two philosophers who are tethered to a make believe cart. From there, this strange group scattered, Nietzsche to his home in Naumburg, Ree to his family home near Berlin and both Salome’s to Zurich