Birth of Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on 15 October 1844 in Röcken. A German philosopher and classical philologist, Nietzsche became a professor at the University of Basel at the age of twenty-four, but resigned for reasons of health. Writing as a private scholar, he produced books such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals, in which he criticised traditional morality and religion, announced that God is dead and explored ideas such as the will to power and the Übermensch. In 1889 he suffered a mental collapse, and he lived under the care of his mother and sister until he died. His works have been highly influential and often misused.

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