Friedrich Nietzsche and Cosima Wagner

Author: By German Uwe Johnson
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-03-01
Features: Friedrich Nietzsche and Cosima Wagner, two vastly different personalities on the cultural stage of the 19th century: one the prophet of the "übermensch"; the other a serious guardian of the sacred hearth. Everything they did was influenced by their idol, Richard Wagner. This shared passion for the third party led to a relationship between them that most literature has remained silent about to this day. Uwe Johnson is the first to describe this moving and true story: how Nietzsche and Cosima, from a young age, became utterly obsessed with Wagner as their idol, how Wagner's mistress drew him, the rising academic researcher and genius propagandist, into the labyrinth of Bayreuth, how Nietzsche joined their cultural struggle and incorporated their nihilism into his own writings, and finally—as he himself put it—how he was betrayed by Wagner. However, after Wagner's death, Cosima became incompatible with Nietzsche.