Nietzsche-Forum-München

The Nietzsche-Forum-München e.V. reflects a long history and tradition in Munich, in which the tragedies, fortunes, and revolutions of the twentieth century in Germany and Europe have left their significant vestiges.

History

At precisely 5:00 p.m. on December 10, 1919, at Königinstraße 15, on the border of the famous English Garden in Munich,¹ the society was founded with the first entry of the registry, which reads, “Nietzsche-Gesellschaft e.V.” The administrative board is recorded as the founding members: Dr. Friedrich Würzbach, Thomas Mann, Professor Heinrich Wölfflin, Dr. Richard Oehler, Dr. Ernst Bertram, and Dr. Hugo von Hoffmansthal (who was also the founder of the Salzburg Festival).² Records indicate a total of ninety founding members, some of whose names are only partly known.³ As far as we know, this Munich society was the first ever established Nietzsche Society in the world.

In 1920, Friedrich Würzbach, a well-known Nietzsche-connaisseur, was commissioned by Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche to produce with her cousins Richard and Max Oehler an edition of Nietzsche’s complete works and Nachlass together. Würzbach sent that work to the Musarion Publishing House in Munich, which then published the twenty-three-volume Musarion-Ausgabe. Mounting differences between Würzbach and Förster-Nietzsche concerning inconsistencies and manipulations of editorial practices finally led to the break between the Munich Society and Elisabeth’s Weimar Archive in the autumn of 1929. A legal dispute ensued, as did Würzbach’s abdication of responsibility for the Musarion-Ausgabe and Richard Oehler’s exit from the Nietzsche-Gesellschaft e.V. in Munich.⁴

With his own publication in 1940, Das Vermächtnis Friedrich Nietzsches—aus dem Nachlaß geordnet, Würzbach also publicly expressed his interpretive focus.⁵ His text was reprinted in 1969, by Heinz Friedrich’s newly founded Deutschen Taschenbuch Verlag (dtv), as Friedrich Nietzsche: Umwertung aller Werte. Aus dem Nachlaß zusammengestellt und herausgegeben von Friedrich Würzbach, mit einem Nachwort von Heinz Friedrich.

The Nietzsche-Gesellschaft e.V. was formally dissolved by the Geheime Staatspolizei (GeStaPo) on March 19, 1943.⁶ A truckload of files, documents, manuscripts of lectures, and letters was confiscated: in short, the entirety of the archive and library at that time was thought to be lost. It was not until the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall that at least part of the confiscated archive was discovered to have been given to the Weimarer Archiv of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche.⁷

The multifaceted ingratiation of the Weimar Nietzsche Archive into the National Socialist regime is well known today. The Nazis’ reference and abusive quoting of Nietzsche, as well as his subsequent suppression (out of inadequacy, manipulation, or ignorance), finally led to a general feeling of taboo toward Nietzsche and his philosophy in both West and East Germany after the catastrophic defeat in 1945.

By 1950, Würzbach considered the refounding of the Nietzsche Society premature due to the widespread misuse of Nietzschean slogans.⁸ With considerable private support, he finally ventured to establish a new foundation on June 4, 1956, thereby explicitly re-forming the society that had been dissolved by the GeStaPo in 1943.⁹

After Würzbach’s death in 1961,¹⁰ and with him the waning of its spiritus rector, the society went into a period of abatement until 1964.¹¹ Without the official qualifier of “e.V.” (registered association), however, the Nietzsche-Gesellschaft carried on under the administration of a couple of its members. From 1969 to 1987, under the directorship of Albert Kopf, the society persisted under the name “Nietzsche-Kreis.”¹² Despite difficult cultural and political conditions—lacking university support and even a permanent home for presentations—the commissioned task of discussing the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche continued without interruption under Kopf’s meritorious leadership, at least in the sense of a heartfelt and personal duty to further the noble goals of Würzbach’s first Nietzsche Society.

In 1987, Dr. Beatrix Vogel (initially with Dr. Wolfgang Class) took director-ship of the Nietzsche...