Nietzsche's Sister and the Will to Power

by Carol Diethe

"Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche was two years younger than her brother, Friedrich Nietzsche, and outlived him by thirty-five years. In 1901, a year after Nietzsche's death, she published The Will to Power, a hasty compilation of writings he never intended for print. In Nietzsche's Sister and the Will to Power, Carol Diethe contends that Forster-Nietzsche's own will to power and her desire to place herself, not her brother, at the center of cultural life in Germany are responsible for Nietzsche's reputation as a belligerent and proto-Fascist thinker." "During the latter part of her life, Forster-Nietzsche propagated and presided over a Nietzsche cult in Weimar, Germany. Many intellectuals believed she had abetted her brother's legacy by bringing his publications to print.^ But, as Diethe claims, Forster-Nietzche's well-known Fascist and anti-Semitic ties, as well as her declaration that her brother would have supported the Germans in World War I, have marred Nietzsche's legacy and linked h