Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on October 15th 1844,the son of a lutherian minister in a small German town southwest of Liepzig. He was named after the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, and known as Fritz by his family. Nietzsche had two younger siblings, Joseph, who died at age two, and Therese Elisabeth, who outlived him by 35 years.

When Nietzsche was four years old, his father, Karl, died as a result of brain injuries sustained after a fall about a year previously, leaving young Fritz and Therese to live with their mother, paternal grandfather and two aunts. They moved to Naumburg an der Saale, quite close to his birthplace. Here Nietzsche lived until he left for boarding school at age 14.

Schulpforta¹, a boarding school set up in 1543 on the site of a former monastery is where Nietzsche spent the next five years of his life, studying towards going to university. His best friend was Paul Deusson, later to become a reknowned philosophical historian and the founder of the Schopenhauer Society. The teenaged Nietzsche emersed himself in the music of Wagner and the writing of romantics such as Hölderlin and Richter. He developed a passion for philology - the interpretation of Biblical and classical writings, helped along, no doubt, by Strauss' Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet². However, young Nietzsche was not happy at Schulpforta, developing an aversion to the piety and nationalism he saw in the school atmosphere. He began to suffer migraines, possibly related to his poor eyesight. These conditions affected him for the rest of his life.

Nietzsche began to study Theology and Philology at Bonn University in the autumn of 1864. His lecturers included Ritschl, a philologist who concentrated on the Roman poet Plautus. In 1865 Nietzsche followed Ritschl to the University of Liepzig, a location much closer to his birthplace and family. Here he could concentrate on philology, leaving the theology he no longer loved to rest. His reputation was quickly established through his essays on greek philosophers, including Aristotle and Simonides. At 21 he discovered Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation in a bookshop, a finding that was to change his way of thinking forever.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Schopenhauer glorified music as the ultimate art form, and his atheistic view of the world was incredibly attractive to Nietzsche. Having discovered this way of thinking, Nietzsche moved on to Lange, and his theories of metaphysics. Lange's criticism of metaphysics and view that the peculation of metaphysics is a form of poeticism continued to permeate Nietzsche's thinking well into his adult life.

At 23 Nietzsche entered compulsory military service, but only lasted a year before being sent home with a chest wound that would not heal. He returned to Liepzig University, and in 1867 he met Richard Wagner, sparking a somewhat familial relationship that would endure for years. Well into the 1880s Nietzsche was still trying to assess Wagner's cultural significance - a sign that this meeting had enormous effect on him.

Around this time, Ritschl recommended Nietzsche for a position at the University of Basel, teaching philology there. At the age of 24, with no degree³, Nietzsche began teaching there. In Switzerland, he cultivated his friendship with Wagner, visiting him often in his home. He went into national service again, working as a hospital attendant in autumn of 1870. Being in such close contact with sick and wounded soldiers led to his contracting diphtheria and dysentery, causing him health problems that would plague him until his death 30 years later.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy, Out of the Spirit of Music⁴ was published in 1872, when he was 28 years old. In this book he explored the ideas he had picked up from Wagner and Lange, as well as his philological studies and his dissatisfaction with German culture at the time. While Wagner was delighted with Nietzsche's book and praised it highly, its reputation was somewhat damaged by the criticism of young scholar Wilamowitz-Möllendorff.

Nietzsche continued teaching at Basel until 1879, and during this time wrote two more books, The Untimely Meditations⁵, and Human, All too Human. He also made an unsuccessful proposition of marriage to a young Dutch student, Mathilde Trampedach. Despite the respect he gained in his position at the University, Nietzsche was forced to retire due to ill health in June of 1879.

For the nest ten years, Nietzsche wandered around western Europe, moving cyclically between various cities in France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and returning often to his Mother's house in Naumburg, Germany. In Rome, in 1882 Nietzsche fell in love with Lou Salomé, a twenty one year old Russian. He proposed marriage which she declined. This, understandably enough, caused a rift in their friendship. During this time, Nietsche wrote most of his well known works, including The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Ecce Homo.