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The longevity and hardiness which marked the stock of Nietzsche's ancestors does away with the theory, often advanced, that his sickness and final mental breakdown were the outcome of hereditary causes. Out of his eight great-parents only two failed to reach the age of seventy-five, while one reached the age of eighty-six and another did not die until ninety. Both of his[Pg 21] grand-fathers attained to the age of seventy, and his maternal grandmother lived until she was past eighty-two. Furthermore, the Nietzsche families for three generations had been very large and in every instance healthy and robust. Nietzsche's grandmother Nietzsche had twelve children, and his grandmother Oehler had eleven children—both families being strong and free from sickness. Nietzsche himself, so his sister tells us in her biography, was strong and healthy from his earliest childhood until maturity. He participated in outdoor sports such as swimming, skating and ball playing, and was characterised by a ruddy complexion which in his school days often called forth remarks concerning his evident splendid health. It seems that only one physical defect marked the whole of his younger life—a myopia inherited from his father. This impediment, though slight at first, became rapidly aggravated by the constant use to which he put his eyes in his sedulous application to study.

Nietzsche, the most terrible and devastating critic of Christianity and its ideals, was the culmination of two long collateral lines of theologians. His grandfather Nietzsche was a man of many scholarly attainments, who, because of his ecclesiastical writings, had received the degree of Doctor of Divinity. His second wife, the mother of Nietzsche's father, came from a whole family of pastors by the name of Krause. Her favourite brother was a preacher in the Cathedral at Naumburg; and of the other two one was a Doctor of Divinity and one a country clergyman. The father of Nietzsche's mother was also a pastor by the name of Oehler, and had a parsonage in Pobles. Likewise Nietzsche's father, Karl-Ludwig Nietzsche, was a pastor in the Lutheran[Pg 22] church; but he possessed a greater culture than we are wont to associate with the average country clergyman, and was a man looked up to and revered by all those who knew him. In fact, his appointment to the post at Rcken was an expression of appreciation paid his talents by the Prussian King. He was thirty-one years of age and had been married only a year when his son Friedrich was born. Though in perfect health, he was not destined to live more than five years after this event, for in 1848 he fell down a flight of stone stairs, and died after a year's invalidism, as a result of concussion of the brain.

The event cast a decided influence on the Nietzsche household and altered completely its plans. After lingering eight months at the parsonage, the family left Rcken and moved to Naumburg-on-the-Saale, there establishing a new domicile in the home of the pastor's mother. The household was composed of the two children, Friedrich and Elizabeth, their mother, then only twenty-four, their grandmother Nietzsche, and two maiden sisters of the dead father. This establishment was run on strict and puritanical lines. All the women were of strong theological inclinations. One of the maiden aunts, Rosalie, devoted herself to Christian benevolent institutions. The other aunt, Augusta, was not unlike the paternal grandmother—pious and God-fearing and constantly busied with her duties to others. The widowed mother carried on the Christian tradition of the family, and never forgot that she was once the wife of a Lutheran pastor. Daily prayers and Biblical readings were fixed practices. The young Friedrich was the pet of the household, and there were secret hopes held by all that he would grow up in the footsteps of his father and[Pg 23] become an honoured and respected light in the church. To the realisation of this hope, all the efforts and influences of the four women were given. Such was the atmosphere in which the early youth of the author of "The Antichrist" was nurtured.

Soon after the family's arrival at Naumburg, Friedrich, then only six years old, was sent to a local Municipal Boys' School, in accordance with the educational theories of his grandmother, who believed in gregarious education for the very young. But she had failed to count upon the unusual character of her grandson, and the attempt to educate him at a municipal institution resulted in failure. His upbringing had made him somewhat priggish and hypersensitive. He was ridiculed by the other boys who taunted him with the epithet of "the little minister." He refused to mingle with the riff-raff which composed the larger part of the pupils, and held himself isolated and aloof. Consequently, before the year was up, he was withdrawn from the school and entered in a private educational institution which prepared the younger students for the Cathedral Grammar School. Here he was in more congenial surroundings. He had for schoolmates two youths whose families were friends of the Nietzsche household—young Wilhelm Pinder and Gustav Krug, who later were to influence his youth. Nietzsche remained at this school for three years.

As a boy Nietzsche was always thoughtful and studious. He was a taciturn child and took long walks in the country alone, preferring solitude to companionship. He was sensitive to a marked degree, polite, solicitous of all about him, and inclined to moodiness. As soon as he could write he started a diary in which he included not only the external events of his life but his thoughts and[Pg 24] ideas and opinions. The pages of this diary, partially preserved, make unique and interesting reading. At a very early age he began writing poetry. His verses, though conventional in both theme and metre, reflected a knowledge of contemporary prosody unusual in a boy of his years. He had ample opportunity in his home of hearing good music, and he manifested a great love for it in very early youth. He devoted much time to studying the piano, and not infrequently tried his hand at composing. Later in his life we still find him writing music, and also publishing it. In deportment Nietzsche was a model child. He was thoroughly imbued with the religious atmosphere of his surroundings, and was far more pious than the average youth of his own age. For a long while he gave every indication of fulfilling the ecclesiastical hopes which his family harboured for him. Consequently there was no lack of encouragement on the part of his guardians toward his first literary efforts which reflected the piety of his nature.

After a few years in the Naumburg school, where he distinguished himself as a model student and incidentally impressed the visiting inspectors by his quickness and brilliance in answering test questions, Nietzsche took the entrance examinations for the well-known Landes-Schule at Pforta, an institution then noted for its fostering and promotion of scientific studies. The vacancy at Pforta had been offered Nietzsche's mother by the Rector who had heard rumours concerning the intellectual gifts of the young "Fritz." The examinations were passed successfully, and in October, 1858, after a tearful leave-taking, he entered the Lower Fourth Form. Pforta, at that time, was an institution of considerable eminence, with a tradition attaching to it not unlike that of Eton. It was[Pg 25] a hot-bed of academic culture, and the professors were among the most learned in the country. The school had been founded as a monastery in the twelfth century by the Cistercian monks. In the sixteenth century it had fallen under the rule of the Duke Moritz of Saxony, who turned it into a secular educational academy, making way for the advance of the newer ideals.