Friedrich NIETZSCHE longs to find his childhood friend.

Friedrich NIETZSCHE (1844.1900)

Autograph letter signed Fritz Nietzsche and Fr. Wilhelm Nietzsche to Wilhelm Pinder.

One page in-8° in German. Autograph address.

[Naumburg, between Leipzig and Jena, end of August 1857].

“I have just been alone again for a while, while mother stayed with Elisabeth in Eilenburg. »  

Very rare letter from the German philosopher, then aged twelve, to his childhood friend Wilhelm Pinder, expressing his desire to see him again as quickly as possible in order to persevere in their path of wisdom and knowledge.

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“Dear Wilhem! I wanted to write to you again before your return from the seaside. Because it has been a long time since we separated and last saw each other! – From what I have heard, everything is going very well for you and your dear mother. You will certainly enjoy it there and I have often wished to be with you. I am looking forward to thinking that you will tell me everything in detail. I have just been alone again for a while, while mum stayed with Elisabeth in Eilenburg.

So I often thought of you and greatly regretted your absence. I gave your homework to MD Silber, who in front of the whole class praised you highly. We are not yet at the time of individual oral exams, nor have we yet had to submit Hannibal. I have now completed the Dion and am starting the Chabrias. In the Alcibiades we have reached chapter 7. In general, we now always have enough work and I have no time for our projects. You will also, for sure, prefer to stay in the fresh air.

Come back to us in perfect health, we will then have many things to tell each other , but in the meantime we will think well of each other and maintain our affection. Your friend who loves you Fritz Nietzsche.

NB: Mom has just tasked me with all sorts of things for your dear mom and for you. I sincerely await your return. Wilhelm Nietzsche »

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It was in Naumburg, where he came to live in 1849 with his family, just after the sudden deaths of his father and his younger brother, that Friedrich Nietzsche met Wilhelm Pinder who became one of his closest friends. The two young men attended the Naumburg college together until 1858 and Nietzsche left for the princely Protestant school in Pforta.

Their friendship developed through their shared tastes for literature and poetry: they wrote three plays together, and Nietzsche dedicated a poem to him, while they founded in 1860, with Gustav Krug (cousin of Wilhelm Pinder), a literary and musical society named Germania.

Friedrich Nietzsche evokes Carl Silber, his teacher at the college of Naumburg, whom he loved very much, and who introduced him to Latin and Greek. The ancient stories mentioned here as school readings, concerning Hannibal, Diôn, Chabrias and Alcibiades, are perhaps found in the Hellenics of Xenophon, or, more certainly in the Lives of the Great Captains of Cornelius

Orphaned by his father at the age of 5, then struck by the death of his younger brother Joseph – these two tragic deaths having occurred in July 1849 and then January 1850 – Nietzsche lived his young years alongside the two female figures of his mother and his young sister. Elizabeth.

A brilliant student with multiple passions and an abundant mind, Nietzsche was interested from his earliest years in literature, European languages, theater, music (he composed several mazurkas before he was ten), the arts, architecture, and of course in the sense of existence and in the place of an omnipotence which he himself denounced later in Le Gai Savoir : “ God is dead! God remains dead! And we killed him! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of murderers? »

The letter that we present here is chronologically the fifteenth known in the vast Nietzschean correspondence published by Gallimard. The spectacular writing of these lines, written by a young man of twelve, augurs the exceptional destiny of this extraordinary philosopher.

Bibliography:

. Friedrich Nietzsche, Correspondence, Volume I, pp 29-30. Gallimard.

. Friedrich Nietzsche, Briefwechsel, W. de Gruyter, 1975, vol. I-1, No. 15.

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Original version: “Doch noch einmal wollte ich dir schreiben, ehe du vom Ufern [sic] des Meeres zurückkehrst. Now we're still here and we're here and there we don't know what to do! – Wie ich gehört habe, befindest du dich mit deiner lieben Mamma recht wohl. It's the time when you sleep and fall, and you'll be there. Ich freue mich schon darauf, wenn du mir alles recht genau erzählen wirst. Ich habe jetzt auch wieder einige Zeit lang allein gelebt während die Mamma mit Elisabeht [sic] sich en Eilenburg aufhielt. Da habe ich oftmals an dich gedacht und dich sehr entbehrt. Deine Arbeiten habe ich an Hr D[r] Silber abgegeben. Er lobte deßhalb dich vor der ganzen Klasse sehr. The private money is not yet allowed, but Hannibal has no money. Den Dion habe ich nun vollendet und mange den Chabrias an. Im Alcibiades sind wir bis zu den 7ten Cap[itel] gekommen. Overhaupt haben wir jetzt immer genug zu thun, und ich cann keine Zeit auf unsre Pläne verwenden. If you do not know what to do with it, you will not be able to stop it. Komm nur recht gesund wieder zurück, dann wollen wir uns viel erzählen, jetzt aber wollen wir recht an einander gedenken und uns lieb behalten. Diese wünscht dein dich liebender Fritz Nietzsche. NB: Even if it's not the case that Mamma is the same, it's the same as Mamma and other things. Ich freue mich herzlich Ihrer Rückkehr. Wilhelm Nietzsche »