Basel in 1870

Nietzsche arrived at Basel's central railway station on April 19, 1869, to take up his new position at the university. The city that greeted him was in the slow, and somewhat reluctant, process of opening itself up to the modern world by demolishing its medieval wall. In 1844 a new gate had been cut into the wall to allow a railway connexion to Strasbourg – Switzerland's first railway line. But it was closed at night so that, as the city council put it, free of the judder of trains, ‘the citizens could continue to sleep the sleep of the just’. Further gates were cut over the next twenty years to allow more rail connexions, but they remained closed at night and were manned by police during the day. In 1868, however, over the protests of small businessmen who feared that an open city would ruin their business, the demolition of the entire wall began, until only three of the medieval gatehouses remained, preserved as memorials.

With 30,000 as opposed to Leipzig's 100,000 inhabitants, Basel must have struck Nietzsche as a small town, which would have pleased him given his preference for small, medieval towns over large, modern cities. And even though Basel was in the process of modernising, the medieval town was still very much in evidence. Elizabeth reports: