Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART ONE Youth
- PART TWO The Reluctant Professor
- Chapter 6 Basel
- Chapter 7 Richard Wagner and the Birth of The Birth of Tragedy
- Chapter 8 War and Aftermath
- Chapter 9 Anal Philology
- Chapter 10 Untimely Meditations
- Chapter 11 Aimez-vous Brahms?
- Chapter 12 Auf Wiedersehen Bayreuth
- Chapter 13 Sorrento
- Chapter 14 Human, All-Too-Human
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Chapter 6 - Basel
from PART TWO - The Reluctant Professor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART ONE Youth
- PART TWO The Reluctant Professor
- Chapter 6 Basel
- Chapter 7 Richard Wagner and the Birth of The Birth of Tragedy
- Chapter 8 War and Aftermath
- Chapter 9 Anal Philology
- Chapter 10 Untimely Meditations
- Chapter 11 Aimez-vous Brahms?
- Chapter 12 Auf Wiedersehen Bayreuth
- Chapter 13 Sorrento
- Chapter 14 Human, All-Too-Human
- PART THREE The Nomad
- Chronology
- Notes
- Bibliography of Secondary Literature
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
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:
My brother always expressed his delight at having known good old Basel; he declared that by this means he had been afforded a deeper insight into the Middle Ages.[…]
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- Friedrich NietzscheA Philosophical Biography, pp. 99 - 111Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010