The German Online Editions of Nietzsche’s Works: A User’s Perspective

This article considers the two most important German online editions of Nietzsche’s works, Nietzsche Source and Nietzsche Online, from a user’s perspective. After a description of the print editions on which they are based (KGW and KGB), an assessment is made of their completeness, their textual reliability, the usefulness of their navigation menus and the usefulness of their search functions. The article finds that there are noteworthy differences in completeness and reliability, that the accessibility of the posthumous notes could be improved in both cases, and that Nietzsche Source has a better search function than Nietzsche Online. The ideal online edition would be an augmented mixture of both editions.