Reikoku wrote:If Förster-Nietzsche had been trying to make her brother look like an Anti-Semite, then why did she unequivocally state that he was not?My brother was never an Anti-Semite, in addition, he was never completely convinced that Germany should be placed above everything; he always recognized that the Jews had done a great service for the intellectual movements in Germany, especially at the beginning of the century.
Perhaps you will wish to tell me where I said she was trying to make him look like an antisemite?
She was trying to turn his philosophy into something antisemites would like, however.
There were actually instances in Nietzsche's life where it would have been easy to construe him as Anti-Semitic, even one of his close friends (Franz Overbeck) regarded him as Anti-Semitic to some degree. But his sister always insisted that this was due to Wagner's influence at the time, rather than what Nietzsche himself actually believed. What she wrote in personal correspondence also doesn't make her sound like an Anti-Semite.Only the persecutions of the Jews that Minister Goebbels is wrenched from our excellent Chancellor seems to me a bad blunder and is very unpleasant for me. I am certain that it has not been pleasant for our splendid Chancellor Adolf Hitler, and that he will do everything to ameliorate this mistake of his fellow party members.
It seems more likely that she was just a spineless opportunist who went with the prevailing winds of the time, erasing and rewriting her history as it suited her. Or, to quote NIetzsche on her, "I have no strength to defend myself against such poisonous insects."
