Nietzsche´s Sister and the Will to Power: A biography of Elisabet

In 1901, a year after her brother Friedrich´s death, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche published The Will to Power, a hasty compilation of writings he had never intended for print. In Nietzsche´s Sister and the Will to Power, Carol Diethe contends that Förster-Nietzsche´s own will to power and her desire to place herself--not her brother--at the center of cultural life in Germany are centrally responsible for Nietzsche´s reputation as a belligerent and proto-Fascist thinker. Offering a new look at Nietzsche´s sister from a feminist perspective, this spirited and erudite biography examines why Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche recklessly consorted with anti-Semites, from her own husband to Hitler himself, out of convenience and a desire for revenge against a brother whose love for her waned after she caused the collapse of his friendship with Lou Salomé. The book also examines their family dynamics, Nietzsche´s dismissal of his sister´s early writing career, and the effects of limited education on intelligent women. Diethe concludes by detailing Förster-Nietzsche´s brief marriage and her subsequent colonial venture in Paraguay, maintaining that her sporadic anti-Semitism was, like most things in her life, an expedient tool for cultivating personal success and status.