Im Fokus: The Nietzsche Archive in Weimar

Villa Silberblick where a mentally deranged Friedrich Nietzsche spent the final years of his life, was originally a middle-class home. Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche not only looked after her ill brother but also exploited the cult-like admiration the philosopher enjoyed for her own ends and installed the Nietzsche Archive in the building. Initially very popular amongst Europe’s avant-garde later Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche allowed the archive to be instrumentalized by the National Socialists before it became a taboo topic in the GDR. Featuring many colored illustrations, the book relates the turbulent history of a memorial that reflects the ambivalence of modernism.