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The question of whether Friedrich Nietzsche was a German arises with some frequency. On Wikipedia. It is not a question that generates discussion anywhere else. This is because Nietzsche was a German.

A Wikipediast's fetish

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The question of whether to call Nietzsche a German has acted the squatter on the Nietzsche talk page for most of Wikipedia's history. It was first mentioned in the summer of 2004, where Nietzsche's assertions that he was Polish were quoted extensively in German. Fortunately, this drew no response. Then, in February 2006, there was an attempt to call Nietzsche "German-Polish," which was rebutted on the talk page, prompting a minor edit war.

The question lay dormant for a couple of months, until December 2006. Despite Chef aka Pangloss's remark that the question had been discussed extensively on both the English and German Wikipedias (here, here, here and here), not three months later the question arose again.

This was nothing. The best was yet to come. More than half of the tenth talk page archive discusses whether we can call Nietzsche a German, given that there was no "Germany" at the time he was born and he renounced his citizenship. All of Archive 11 is devoted to this discussion. It continued through the start of Archive 12. This single, long discussion lasted from 31 July 2007 through 8 May 2008. To repeat, that was 31 July 2007 through 8 May 2008.

This became something of a joke. The title of a discussion section in August 2008 was "Nietzsche as German Philosopher (The "German" Issue...Yes...Again)." This discussion went on for another month. A truce of a sort was called: Nietzsche would be called a German in the lede, but we would allow a section to sit awkwardly in the body of the article explaining why some people find it more complicated than this.

Not that this ended things, of course. It came back again in October 2009, and then the Polish myth resurfaced in July 2010, resulting in an RfC. This is the issue that refuses to die, hence the need for a centralized essay on the matter.

But there was no Germany!

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Nietzsche was born in 1844; the German empire was not proclaimed until 1871. Therefore, how could he have been German?

Simple: the German nationality predated the German state. Nietzsche spoke German; his ancestors were German; when German nationalists spoke of Germany before the empire was proclaimed, they included people like Nietzsche; and Germany was created by Prussia, the German emperors just being the Prussian kings writ large. Petrarch is called an Italian, despite the fact that there was no Italian state; Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Engels are all called German; Nietzsche is no different.

But he said he was Polish!

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Nietzsche claimed he was Polish. "My ancestors were Polish noblemen (Nietzky); the type seems to have been well preserved despite three generations of German mothers."[1] "I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood."[2] "Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins [...] I am proud of my Polish descent."[3] "I was taught to ascribe the origin of my blood and name to Polish noblemen who were called Niëtzky and left their home and nobleness about a hundred years ago, finally yielding to unbearable suppression: they were Protestants."[4] How can we not take that as the most authoritative source? Max Oehler's denial of Nietzsche's ancestry was Nazi agitprop!

The myth about Nietzsche's Polish roots has been dealt with extensively. The evidence is summarized here. In short, the critical editions of Nietzsche's works and Janz's biography of Nietzsche claim that the Polish ancestry bit is a foundationless myth.

Max Oehler was not the only person to draw Nietzsche's "Polish" ancestry into question. Hans von Müller wrote a manuscript entitled "Nietzsches Vorfahren" in 1935-37 which debunked the myth.[5] Müller attacks Nietzsche's sister's account. For example, she speaks of a "Niëtzky" ancestor in 1716, yet the records show him living in Germany as "Nietzsche," i.e., without the Polish spelling. And so far from being a noble, that ancestor's father (baptized in 1662, also using the German spelling of "Nietzsche") was a butcher. It is possible that the 1716 ancestor married a Polish woman. Even Oehler was willing to admit some non-German ancestors, being criticized by other scholars just for refusing to admit that they might be Polish. But a Nietzsche's marrying a Pole is quite different from Nietzsche being a Polish family.

Looking to what the editor of the Kritischen Gesamtausgabe of Nietzsche's letters has to say, his comment on "my ancestors were Polish nobility; even my grandfather's mother was Polish" is that this was a Fehlmeinung, a mistaken belief.[6] To Nietzsche's claim that "my ancestors were Polish nobility (Niezky)," the editor comments that diese von N gepflegte Legende entbehrt jeder Grundlage, "this legend cultivated by Nietzsche is without foundation."[7]

Pia Daniela Volz comes to the same conclusion,[8] as does Nietzsche's biographer, Curt Paul Janz.[9]

References

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  1. ^ Hollingdale, R.J: Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 1999. p.6
  2. ^ Some recently translations use this latter text. See: Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings: And Other Writings. Translated by Judith Norman, Aaron Ridley. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 77.
  3. ^ Henry Louis Mencken, "The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche", T. Fisher Unwin, 1908, reprinted by University of Michigan 2006, pg. 6.
  4. ^ Letter to Heinrich von Stein, December 1882, KGB III 1, Nr. 342, p. 287; KGW V 2, p. 579; KSA 9 p. 681
  5. ^ Reprinted in Nietzsche-Studien Band 31 (2002), pp. 253-275.
  6. ^ to Heinrich von Stein, December 1882, KGB III 7.1 p. 313.
  7. ^ to Georg Brandes, 10. 4. 1888, KGB III 7.3/1 p. 293.
  8. ^ Volz, Nietzsche im Labyrinth seiner Krankheit (Königshausen und Neumann, Würzburg 1990).
  9. ^ Janz, Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München 1981).
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