Nietzsche rejected the age-old academic standard of comprehensive philosophical systems purporting to illuminate "reality" but resulting only in metaphors; the will to systematize, he said in his typically succinct style, shows a lack of integrity. After a hundred years of debate in a variety of disciplines, Nietzsche's mastery of language and his psychological insights continue to fascinate commentators and expand the horizons of art and theory.
Born on 15 October 1844 in the small town of Rocken, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (he was named for the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV, whose birthday he shared) was expected to follow in the footsteps of his father, the Lutheran pastor Karl Ludwig Nietzsche. The father's death in 1849 at thirty-five, due to a condition diagnosed as Gehirnerweichung (softening of the brain), left Nietzsche with his mother, Franziska (nee Oehler); his younger sister, Elisabeth; and a brother, born in 1848, who died in 1850. The family resettled in 1850 in nearby Naumburg, where they lived with Nietzsche's grandmother Erdmuthe Nietzsche and two maiden aunts. In Naumburg, Nietzsche was tutored along with two other boys; one of them was Gustav Krug, whose father was a music patron and a friend of the composer Felix Mendelssohn- Bartholdy.
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