Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.
Nietzsche in Basel, Switzerland, c. 1875
Young Nietzsche, 1861
Young Nietzsche
Arthur Schopenhauer strongly influenced Nietzsche's philosophical thought.
The University of Basel is a public research university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universities. The university is traditionally counted among the leading institutions of higher learning in the country.
The old main building of the University of Basel, which with its arcades in the middle takes up the lines of the first Italian university in Bologna.
Inauguration ceremony of the University of Basel, 1460 (modern fantasy illustration redrawn from the Wurstisen-Chronik)
Institute of Musicology
Faculty of Law