Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

Therese Elisabeth Alexandra Förster-Nietzsche (10 July 1846 – 8 November 1935) was the sister of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In 1894, she created the Nietzsche Archive, which collected and promoted his work.

She was two years younger than her brother. Their father was a Lutheran pastor in a small German village. As children and young adults, they were close. However, in 1885, they grew apart when Förster-Nietzsche married Bernhard Förster, a former teacher who strongly supported German nationalism and antisemitism. Nietzsche did not attend their wedding.

In 1887, Förster-Nietzsche and her husband moved to Paraguay to start a German colony called Nueva Germania. The colony failed, and her husband took his own life in 1889. She stayed for a while but returned to Germany in 1893. When she came back, she found that her brother was very ill, but his books were becoming well-known in Europe. Adolf Hitler attended her funeral in 1935.

In the 1950s, some scholars, like Walter Kaufmann, claimed that Förster-Nietzsche had changed her brother’s writings to make them seem more racist and supportive of eugenics. However, more recent research has questioned this idea. Some experts believe that the Nazis, not Förster-Nietzsche, were responsible for twisting Nietzsche’s ideas.

 References 

Category:1846 births
Category:1935 deaths
Category:Friedrich Nietzsche
Category:German people
Category:Emigrants