Nietzsche-Forum-München

Abstract

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.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.4With 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.7The 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 1943.9After 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 directorship of the Nietzsche-Kreis and later the Nietzsche-Forum-München e.V. and single-handedly took responsibility for the society from 1988 to 2012. Through the dynamic efforts of Dr. Vogel, the Nietzsche-Forum-München e.V. found a new home in 1991, in the newly renovated Seidlvilla (north of the Munich city center, just west of the famous English Garden), the place of founding and original home of the very first Nietzsche Society.The “Förder- und Forschungsgemeinschaft Friedrich Nietzsche e.V.” (Association for Support and Research of Friedrich Nietzsche e.V.), which was founded in Halle directly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was formally reconstituted under the name “Nietzsche-Society e.V.” on the one hundredth anniversary of Nietzsche's death, October 14, 2000.13 Prior to that, on June 13, 2000, the Munich society had relinquished its legitimate claim to the reuse of this name expressly for the sake of the Naumburg initiative. This was proper since now the city of Naumburg and the state of Sachsen-Anhalt could undertake the preservation of Nietzsche-relevant sites in Röcken, Naumburg, Schulpforta, and Weimar, as well as the tasks of insuring, maintaining, documenting, editing, archiving, collecting, and researching their holdings, memorabilia, and memories.Under the dynamic patronage and honorary presidency of Professor Heinz Friedrich, the Munich society was re-formed again under the leadership of Dr. Beatrix Vogel as an association with legal capacity under a new name: “Nietzsche-Forum-München e.V.–Denken mit Friedrich Nietzsche” (“The Nietzsche Forum of Munich e.V.–Thinking with Friedrich Nietzsche”). Among the founding members was the noted Nietzsche biographer and longtime president of the German Goethe Institut, Professor Werner Ross, as well as Professor Heinz Friedrich, the president of the Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste (Bavarian Academy of the Fine Arts) and founder and publisher of the publishing house Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag–dtv.14 Apart from the above-mentioned publication of the Würzbach book, as well as his own Nachlass edition,15 Professor Friedrich was above all the project initiator and ushered in the publication of the definitive and indispensable paperback Nietzsche editions realized by dtv: Kritische Studienausgabe Werke (KSA), Kritische Studienausgabe Briefe (KSB), and Ausgabe Jugendschriften (BAW). On June 13, 2012, the twelfth anniversary of the founding of the “Nietzsche-Forum-München e.V.,” Dr. Elke A. Wachendorff assumed the chair of the society.The first Nietzsche-Gesellschaft e.V. of 1919 stated its mission as follows: “The support of a thoroughly unpolitical but truly European spirit in the sense of Friedrich Nietzsche”16 in order to “combat the uncritical Nietzsche-cult”17 and to save the work from polemical exploitation.By unanimous resolution on January 23, 1931 (after a dispute with Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche's archive and their editorial practices), the general assembly reconfirmed its task: “The assembly expects that the executive board continues to advocate a philologically-correct and complete edition of Nietzsche's Nachlaß.”18A thirty-year plan, “The Tasks of the Nietzsche Society,” was recommissioned on October 13, 1965;19 the plan included biographical, bibliographical, editorial, and organizational assignments with historical-critical standards, including the establishment of a foundation and the creation of its own library and documentation center. Viewing the achievement of these goals at that time as impossible—especially concerning the motivation of “the leading minds in philosophy, science, art and literature and their corresponding research and support, such as those Dr. Würzbach could rely on at the time,”20 not to mention finding the required financial support—Albert Kopf re-formed the society as the more humble Nietzsche-Kreis. As Max Werner Vogel wrote in his chronicle of the cultural situation of the time, “Redressing the allegation that Nietzsche was a trailblazer for National Socialism was the main concern of Albert Kopf's ‘Nietzsche-Kreis’ for many years after the Second World War. For at that time one hardly dared speak the name ‘Nietzsche.’”21For that reason, the decades-long firm and constant commitment of the entire society—to esteem and respect the philosophy of Nietzsche—deserves admiration today, especially in its aims to 1.Above all protect Nietzsche against the forgeries of his opportunistic sister, so as to2.Resist its exploitation by National Socialism, and in so doing,3.Overcome the stigmatization and subsequent taboo-ization as the “philosopher of the [Nazi] movement.” The city of Munich nurtures in its heart an inheritance and tradition whose inestimable worth it admittedly does not quite seem to have realized yet.Against “cultification” and “exploitation” and instead in favor of a true “European spirit,” the society, in all its different phases and reconstitutions, remains true to this early mission statement and goal. Indeed, to this day making the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche fruitful for the present and future, leading the renewal and rebirth of the expressly Nietzschean orientation of a philosophy of the future out of the diffusion and indeed overcoming of nihilism, and initiating new approaches and new beginnings are still considered the society's imperative tasks. “Denken mit Friedrich Nietzsche” indicates the present motto and task of the Nietzsche-Forum-München e.V.: more than that, the society's goal is to set free the creative impulses and potential of the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche so that it can remain fruitful.Professor Heinz Friedrich rendered an inestimable service for the worldwide reception of Nietzsche and Nietzsche studies in both their influence and their meaning as the publisher of the dtv paperback edition of the new critical edition of Nietzsche's works and letters (KSA and KSB, 1980–) as well as the early writings and the exemplary yet prohibitively expensive first edition (1967–), thus making Nietzsche teachings and research available to a worldwide audience and thereby reaching the minds of hundreds of thousands. Due to the tireless collaboration of the editors Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Nietzsche's work has been propagated worldwide especially in the form of the three affordable “Studienausgaben,” enabling today's undeniable and overflowing reception, exploration, and elevation of Nietzsche as the “philosopher of the century.”Thus Professor Heinz Friedrich finally realized the central point of the mission set by the first Nietzsche-Gesellschaft of Munich: the once lofty goal of doing justice to Nietzsche's thought. Thus the circle is complete.For decades, the Nietzsche-Forum-München e.V. has regularly hosted evening lectures on questions of interpretation, reception, and historical ramifications of the philosophy of Nietzsche. It has featured symposia and colloquia on vital and contemporary problems. Special consideration and emphasis are given to Nietzsche's philosophy in its interdisciplinary, intercultural, and in particular comparative dimensions insofar as it fosters discourse for the present and future. In the course of these presentations, different perspectives and disciplines are given an audience. Special attention has always been paid to providing a platform for the audience and guests to discuss their unique perspectives and theses.Thus, the Nietzsche-Forum-München e.V. sees as its central task, expressly in accordance with the first constitution of the Nietzsche-Gesellschaft e.V. to be the invitation and coordination of people for the sake of “thinking with Nietzsche” about philosophy, science, and art in an open agora of discourse. Herein it provides a place for stimulating ideas that allow new concepts and interpretations to emerge, a place to open up experimental perspectives and to offer theses. All presentations and lectures from 1965 to 2012 have been thoroughly documented (see the website and Chronik) and are also published in the yearbooks and special volumes (“Denken mit Nietzsche—Publications of the Nietzsche-Forum-München e.V.”; see the website for further information).Expressly supported are projects directed toward young people, with the aim of encouraging them to engage and wrestle with Nietzsche's philosophy. Examples are the essay competition “Mein Nietzsche” (2008) and the student project “SINNeszauber, WAHRnehmung, und Philosophie” in 2010 in cooperation with the Turmdersinne GmbH and Virtuelle Schule e.V.Thanks to generous private donations, the Nietzsche-Forum-München e.V. is able to offer a yearly research stipend/scholarship. The award is in memory of Professor Werner Ross, the longtime director of the German Goethe Institute, and author of the comprehensive Nietzsche biography Der ängstliche Adler, as well as other works on Nietzsche and his context.The society also operates a continuously updated website with comprehensive materials that address our history, chronology, presentations and activities, research themes, specific projects, and stipends/scholarships. In addition, most presentations are offered in a digitized version on CD. The use of these CDs must, however, be limited to the circle of members, due to copyright laws. More precise information with respect to bylaws, contact information, and membership applications can be found at www.nietzsche-forum-muenchen.de.We look forward to hearing from you!