(1884-1900)
Friedrich Nietzsche was born in the small village
of
Röcken bei Lützen, Germany, on October 15, 1844.
His father was a Lutheran minister at the local town parish.
Nietzsche's grandfather had also been the local minister, and it was assumed that Nietzsche, himself, would later take command
of the parish; however,
that would never come to pass.
Nietzsche endured much sorrow as a young child.
When he was but four years old, his father died from
a
brain ailment and left him to live with his mother,
whom he disliked.
Only a few months later, Nietzsche suffered the death
of his two-year old brother, Joseph.
Shortly after the death of his brother, Nietzsche's mother
enrolled him at Schulpforta, a prestigious boarding school in Naumburg, Germany.
He graduated from Schulpforta in 1864 and went on to attend
the University of Bonn
where he majored in philology and theology.
After graduating from the university,
Nietzsche began to construct his own philosophical concepts.
Today, Nietzsche's ideals of the destruction of God,
epistimological failure, and value destruction are referred to in term as 'Nihilism'.
At the time of his existence, Nihilism was not widely accepted.
In today's society,
there is remains much opposition to this belief system.
During the 1880's things began to deteriorate for Nietzsche.
He lost the teaching job he had taken at the
University of Leipzig in 1882 and then transformed his
lifestyle into one that resembled that of a wandering gypsy.
He aimlessly wandered the German countryside until he suffered
a mental breakdown on January 3, 1889.
He was confined to a mental institution and died
eleven years later on August 25, 1900 from a combination of
a stroke and pneumonia.
