Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

Independent activity 1846–1935 ○ Natural causes

Nietzsche’s sister, founder of the Nietzsche Archive and compiler of The Will to Power, who steered his name towards the Nazis

Born in 1846, two years younger than her brother Friedrich Nietzsche, she married the antisemitic agitator Bernhard Förster in 1885 and in 1887 founded with him the German colony of Nueva Germania in Paraguay, which failed; after his suicide she returned in 1893. Taking charge of her mentally broken brother and his papers, she founded the Nietzsche Archive (in Weimar from 1897) and with Peter Gast put out The Will to Power (1901, enlarged 1906), a selection from his notebooks, as if it were his main work; she also rewrote some of his letters. She joined the German National People's Party in 1918, admired Mussolini and received Hitler at the Archive several times in 1932–1934, lending her brother's prestige to the Nazi regime; Hitler attended her funeral in 1935. Her forgeries came to light in the 1950s.

Also known as: Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche · Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche