Nietzsche Archiv EN

Henry van de Velde: entrance portal of the Nietzsche-Archiv

NIETZSCHE-
ARCHIV
Edited by Klassik Stiftung Weimar
With contributions by
Alexandra Bauer, Helmut Heit, Katrin Junge,
Jonah Martensen, Franziska Rieland,
Christoph Schmälzle, Corinna Schubert
and Sabine Walter

CONTENTS
6 Preface
32 Round Tour of the Nietzsche-Archiv
48 Friedrich Nietzsche
50 Nietzsche’s Philosophy as the Core of the Nietzsche-Archiv
60 Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche
62 The Nietzsche-Archiv as a Home
82 Heinrich Köselitz, alias Peter Gast
84 Rudolf Steiner
86 The Nietzsche-Archiv as a Research Centre
94 Henry van de Velde
96 The Nietzsche-Archiv as a Gesamtkunstwerk
106 Count Harry Kessler
108 The Nietzsche-Archiv as Salon
116 Dora Wibiral and Dorothea Seeligmüller
118 The Nietzsche-Archiv as the Centre of the Nietzsche Cult
130 History of the Archive at a Glance
134 Literature
135 Image Credits

Nietzsche-Archiv with portal by Henry van de Velde

North side with garden

ROUND TOUR OF
THE NIETZSCHE-ARCHIV
Fig. 1 | View of
Weimar from
Humboldtstraße
The Nietzsche-Archiv is situated to the
south-west of Weimar on an elevation
charmingly named Silberblick (lit. ‘silver
view’). From here, it commands
views of both Weimar, the seat of German
Classicism (fig. 1), and the iconic
“Bell Tower” of the Buchenwald Memorial
on the Ettersberg to the north-west.
The Nietzsche-Archiv can therefore be
said to occupy one corner of a historically
and symbolically charged topological
triangle. Surrounded by lush
greenery, tall trees and evergreens, the
villa stands in an attractive residential
neighbourhood with some very fine
examples of Jugendstil architecture
dating from the 1890s. The two-storey
brick building built by district chief
August Meisezahl in 1889/90 was
grandly named Villa Silberblick, although at the time it was more
like a large detached house than a villa.
The Architecture
A wrought-iron gate on Humboldtstraße opens onto the driveway
leading up to the gravel forecourt in front of the Nietzsche-Archiv.
The gate and gateposts are not original; they were added in the
1980s, emulating the style of the Belgian art reformer Henry van
de Velde (figs. 2 and 3). The gravel forecourt is sufficiently large
32

for the impressive vestibule and portal to make an impact on anyone
approaching it. This porch, which was built onto the east facade
in 1903, was designed by Van de Velde himself, who retained
the colour scheme of the red brick walls and pale sandstone reveals.
The tall, solid-oak double door, which as in a temple can be opened
only from within, instantly catches the eye. Especially striking are
the brass fittings, whose sweeping organic lines flow into an angular
spiral motif, which Van de Velde also used for his cutlery and
lamp designs (fig. 4). Below the fanlight, the doors rise up into an
arch, whose downward slant is taken up by the windows on either
side. The portal is flanked by strips of red sandstone. These decorative
elements are abstracted pilasters and capitals whose fluting is
maintained in the wooden doors and window frames.
A slab of red sandstone bearing the name NIETZSCHE-ARCHIV
in Antiqua script identifies what was
once a private residence as a public
place and serves as a label literally set
in stone. The original nameplate was
removed in 1956, nine years after the
archive closed, but was reconstructed
for its reopening in 1990. The wroughtiron
railing on the roof of the vestibule
echoes and inverts the arch motif, its
vibrant linearity making for a pleasing
contrast with the geometric shapes
dominating the portal.
To accommodate the sloping terrain,
the north side facing the city has
a somewhat higher basement with an
arcaded avant-corps to support a twostorey,
now glazed-in veranda (fig. 5).
Fig. 2 | The
Nietzsche-Archiv
with the entrance
gate from the
1980s
Fig. 3 | The
Nietzsche-Archiv
in c. 1905 with the
original fence
Fig. 4 | Henry van
de Velde: door
handles, 1902/03
33

Fig. 5 | The north
side facing the
town
The transom windows with their sandstone and beige plaster reveals
lend rhythm to the plain brick facade, and only the ground
floor’s easternmost window breaks with the symmetry. With its unusual
dimensions and its mullions, it indicates an interior design
diverging from the building’s historicist architecture. The west
side of the villa that faces onto the garden has a bricked-up window
in the middle that again hints at the remodelling of the room
within (fig. 6). That this garden facade was considered less important
for the overall impression is evident from the retrofitted window
that lacks a lintel and the ill-fitting extension built onto its
southern end. Instead of brick, this side of the building was rendered
in mud-coloured plaster with a grid of green wooden battens.
Moreover, a simple back entrance with coal scuttles disrupts the
semi-basement. The south side of the villa facing uphill is nowadays
comparatively close to the wall of the Nietzsche Memorial
Fig. 6 | The west side
facing the garden
Fig. 7 | The south side facing
the Nietzsche Memorial Hall
34

Hall erected in 1936 on what was then part of the property. As with
the west facade, the original symmetry of the south side of the
building was impaired by the later extension (fig. 7). Iron bars on
the ground-floor windows prevent unlawful entry, while the upper
storey has the same wide transom windows as the portal attached
to the front of the villa.
The Vestibule with Porch
The Nietzsche-Archiv is entered through a porch with red sandstone
steps and wood-panelled walls that are painted brown (fig. 8).
The steps lead up to a glazed swing door, whose fanlight has a
remarkable lamp built into it. This rhomboid lantern made of
plate glass and brass rods was originally a petroleum lamp and
was electrified only in 1930. Its light amplifies the daylight streaming
in through the fanlight above the front door and illuminates
the vestibule beyond. The glass doors’ brass fittings with their
three concentric arches are just as much an eye-catcher as those
on the outside of the solid-oak double door. Having once arrived
at a pleasing design, Van de Velde would frequently reuse it for
all sorts of projects, which is why both the wall lamp and the door
handle models are to be found not only
in the Nietzsche-Archiv, but also in the
Trebschen Sanatorium in the now Polish
town of Trzebiechów.
After crossing the porch and entering
the vestibule, the visitor cannot help
but be impressed by Van de Velde’s
Ge samtkunstwerk, whose many colours
and shapes are perfectly harmonised in
a “unity of style” such as Nietzsche himself
had propagated. This interior space,
which is through-composed down to the
tiniest detail, makes for an elegant connection
between the original house and
the vestibule built onto it. Its simplicity
and finesse generate just the kind of solemn
and dignified atmosphere in which
Fig. 8 | Henry
van de Velde:
entrance with
porch and adjacent
vestibule
35

Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844 Röcken – 1900 Weimar)
Born on the same day as the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV,
and named after him, Nietzsche grew up in a pious Protestant
household in the village of Röcken near Leipzig, where his father
was a pastor. When the latter died after a severe illness in 1849, the
family moved to nearby Naumburg, where the semi-orphaned
Nietzsche was awarded a scholarship, enabling him to receive an
excellent education at the Pforta school. At the age of only twentyfour
and before having finished his doctoral dissertation, he was
appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of
Basel. As meritorious as his works in this field were, his enthusiasm
for the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and the music of
Richard Wagner prompted him to realign and change over to philosophy.
His first philosophical treatises were written in support of
Wagner’s ambition to reform German culture. In 1878, however,
Nietzsche broke with Wagner and turned his back on the Bayreuth
project. After relinquishing his professorship for health reasons in
1879, he lived the life of an itinerant philosopher with no fixed
abode. It was in Italy, Switzerland and Germany that he wrote his
books on moral, religious, linguistic and cultural criticism for
which he is best known today, though they did not attract much attention
among his contemporaries. It was only after his mental
breakdown in Turin in January 1889 that he was recognised as one
of the most influential thinkers of the day. By the time of his death
in Weimar on 25 August 1900, he was world-famous. People all
over the world are still fascinated and provoked by his writings to
this day.
HH
48

Friedrich Nietzsche, portrait photograph
by Gustav Schultze, 1882
49

NIETZSCHE’S PHILOSOPHY
AS THE CORE OF THE
NIETZSCHE-ARCHIV
Friedrich Nietzsche spent only the last three years of his life at the
Villa Silberblick in Weimar, and by then his dementia was so far
advanced that he was utterly dependent on the care of others. He
neither registered that there was now an archive bearing his name,
nor could he have any say in the interiors and furnishings of his
new home, still less work at the desk in his study. The Nietzsche-
Archiv as a cultural and academic institution is not his work, but
rather the creation of his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. That
such an institution was possible at all, however, was thanks only
to the texts of unparalleled significance that Nietzsche wrote. The
core of the Nietzsche-Archiv is thus Nietzsche’s philosophy.
Born in the village of Röcken in Prussia on 15 October 1844,
Friedrich Nietzsche was the son of a pastor and a pastor’s daughter,
who spent his childhood and youth firmly rooted in Germany’s
Fig. 1 | Friedrich Nietzsche’s father
Carl Ludwig Nietzsche (1813 – 1849),
1852, chalk drawing on paper
Fig. 2 | Friedrich Nietzsche’s mother
Franziska Nietzsche, née Oehler
(1826 – 1897), c. 1840, oil on canvas
50

Protestant heartland (figs. 1, 2, 3). His extended
family included some genuine natives of
Weimar: his grandmother Erdmuthe Krause
(1778– 1856), for example, who lived there at
the height of German Classicism, and her
older brother Johann Friedrich Krause (1770–
1820), who as General Superintendent of
Weimar’s parish church of St Peter and St Paul
held a position that Johann Gottfried Her der
had once held. On Boxing Day in 1873,
Nietzsche watched a performance of Richard
Wagner’s Lohengrin at Weimar’s Grand Ducal
Court Theatre, an opera that had premiered in
Weimar in 1850 under the baton of Franz Liszt.
After meeting Richard and Cosima Wagner in
1868, Nietzsche became a close friend of theirs,
as well as corresponding with Cosima’s father
Liszt from time to time. As to the other great
heroes of Weimar Classicism, however, Nietzsche tended to be
dismissive. Wieland had “nothing new” to say and Herder was
“dated”, he said, while he disliked Schiller with all his patriotic enthusiasts
and followers for being the “moral trumpeter of Säckingen”.
Only Goethe did he deem worthy of his unbroken respect.
That Nietz sche himself would one day take his place in the rollcall
of Weimar’s notabilities was unimaginable at that stage.
His rise to a philosophical phenomenon of world-wide magnitude
essentially took place in three stages: a philological, a Wagnerian
and a philosophical. After the sudden death of his father
Carl Ludwig Nietzsche in 1849, his widowed mother Franziska
moved to Naumburg (Saale), taking Friedrich and his younger sister
Elisabeth, two aunts, her mother-in-law and a servant with her.
In Naumburg the young Friedrich attended the Domgymnasium,
and thanks to a scholarship awarded to him as the child of a deceased
public servant was able to become a boarder at the prestigious
Pforta School. It was there that Nietzsche’s remarkable gift
for ancient languages became apparent. He left school as the best
of his year and in the winter semester 1864/65 began the study of
Fig. 3 | Friedrich
Nietzsche at the
time of his confirmation
in March
1861
51

THE NIETZSCHE-ARCHIV
AS A GESAMTKUNSTWERK
The story of Henry van de Velde’s design of the Nietzsche-Archiv
in Weimar as a Gesamtkunstwerk begins in 1897 with Count Harry
Kessler’s dismay at the stylistic eclecticism of the Villa Silberblick
(fig. 1). Kessler, a cosmopolitan connoisseur of European
avant-garde art, had made the acquaintance of Elisabeth Förster-
Nietzsche in Naumburg two years earlier, when they met to discuss
the publication of Nietzsche’s compositions in the art magazine
PAN. His advice had since become indispensable to
her, and he was the first guest to be invited to the archive’s
new premises in Weimar. Describing it later in
his diary, he compared the disappointingly banallooking
setting chosen to house his great idol with the
stylishly staged Goethe Residence on the Frauenplan
that he had likewise just visited: “In the reception room
on the ground floor there is red velvet furniture and
framed family photographs mixed with mementos
from Paraguay, lace veils, needlework, Indian majolica.
Every thing is displayed above all for the interest of its
content and not to evoke an aesthetic impression, like
the home of a prominent university professor or civil
servant.” Since Förster-Nietzsche had confidence in
his sense of style, Kessler suggested that she commission
the pioneer art reformer Henry van de Velde
– then barely known in Germany – with the graphic
design of the planned luxury edition of Also sprach Zarathustra
(Thus Spoke Zarathustra). To give her a foretaste
of Van de Velde’s modern aesthetic vision and
forge a personal bond between them, Kessler invited
Fig. 1 | Edvard Munch: Portrait of
Count Harry Kessler, 1906, oil on
canvas, Nationalgalerie Berlin
96

her to meet up with Van de Velde and
his wife personally in Berlin in January
1901, where they visited Van de Velde’s
lectures as well as soirées and exhibitions
(fig. 2).
The Belgian artist’s own business
named Henry-van-de-Velde-GmbH had
recently been forced into liquidation,
prompting him to leave Brussels and
move to the booming Prussian metropolis
to design interior furnishings for the
Hohenzollern-Kunstgewerbehaus and
promote his concept of “rational form” (fig. 3). Animated by Kessler’s
enthusiasm and sensing an affinity between Van de Velde’s
aims as a designer and her brother’s views and preferences, Elisabeth
Förster-Nietzsche also recommended the Belgian artist for
an employment in Weimar, where he would be able to dedicate
himself to the development of modern, low-cost objects of everyday
use. It was in August 1901 at the memorial event held to mark
the first anniversary of Nietzsche’s death that Kessler, Van de Velde
and Förster-Nietzsche first floated their vision of a “New Weimar”
as a meeting place for Europe’s avant-garde with the Nietzsche-
Archiv at its centre. The “New Weimar” movement gained momentum
in the spring of 1902 when almost simultaneously with Van de
Velde’s commencement of duties the impressionistic painter Hans
Olde was appointed director of the Grand Ducal
Saxon Art School in Weimar. Olde had attracted
notice in 1899 with some sensitively done portraits
of Nietzsche on his sickbed, and
Förster- Nietzsche held him to be the artist
“best suited to work alongside Van de
Velde”. Emboldened by his success, Kessler
began to dream of “a kind of supreme
directorate of all artistic endeavours in the
grand duchy”, and in 1903 accepted the
honorary position of director of the Grand
Ducal Museum for Arts and Crafts, for the
Fig. 2 | Théo van
Rysselberghe:
Portrait of Henry
van de Velde,
1900, graphite
and red chalk,
private collection
Fig. 3 | Henry van de
Velde: armchair,
1898 (design), oak,
Bauhaus-Universität
Weimar
97

Fig. 4 | Opening of
the Rodin exhibition
at the Grand
Ducal Museum for
Arts and Crafts
with Elisabeth
Förster-Nietzsche
(seated at right)
and Henry van de
Velde (standing
next to her), 1904
sake of which he dispersed the existing Permanent Art Exhibition
(now the Kunsthalle Harry Graf Kessler). Curated by Kessler, a series
of barnstorming exhibitions of European modernism opened
in Weimar in the spring of 1903 (fig. 4).
Simultaneously with the arrivals of Van de Velde, Olde and
Kessler as representatives of the “New Weimar” project, the plans
to lend the Nietzsche-Archiv a more modern look were becoming
ever more concrete. Förster-Nietzsche acquired the property from
her cousin Adalbert Oehler in April 1902 and entrusted the – originally
small-scale – remodelling of the bel étage to Van de Velde.
Her choice of a known stylistic reformer signalled her intention
to transform an otherwise bourgeois-looking home into the site of
the Nietzsche cult. In his memoirs, Van de Velde recalled
feeling as if he were living “in the philosopher’s spirit”
throughout the planning phase. The reverence for
Nietzsche of all those involved became apparent in
the remodelling of the interior as a sacred space, a
“consecrated temple” with a “sacred and monumental
treasury”, even if the private apartments upstairs
were left unchanged, on grounds of both piety and
cost. Kessler likewise made his contribution to the
memorial by commissioning Max Klinger with a marble
herm bearing a portrait head of Friedrich Nie -
tzsche to be set up in the “hall”, as the library
was now called (fig. 5).
Fig. 5 | Max Klinger: Portrait of
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1905, marble
98

Van de Velde designed a stylish architecture
that accorded with his understanding of
Nietzsche’s philosophy as well as with the ambitions
of Nietzsche’s sister, who intended to
create a Nietzschean equivalent to the Villa
Wahnfried in Bayreuth and with it a space that
might be used for both social functions and
private tea parties. Indeed, the new beginning
signalled by the choice of Van de Velde was
not just aesthetic and social; it was also one of
content. From now on, every detail right down
to the door handles was to convey modernity
(fig. 6). The resulting Gesamtkunstwerk with its aspirations to a
stylistic unity defined by the artist also meant that Förster-
Nietzsche had to dispense with many personal items. Confronted
with her “horror” at these radical changes, Kessler assured her
“that the renewal symbolises, as it were, the stripping away of all
things random and banal from your brother’s person and surroundings
and the forming of the imperative and the eternal living
within him”. True to Nietzsche’s spirit, the archive was to become
culturally productive and to bring forth “people of the utmost
inner and outer perfection”.
Ever since the late 1880s, it had been Van de Velde’s mission to
have a hand in the shaping of modernity. After training as a paint -
er (fig. 7), he suffered a crisis of creativity during which he engaged
with various strands of social critique. In addition to socialism
and anarchism, these included the
aesthetic innovations of the English
Arts and Crafts movement inspired by
John Ruskin and William Morris, and
the years 1886 – 90 had seen him
studying Nietzsche’s visions of modern
life as well. Absorbed by the idea of designing
stylish everyday objects that
would modernise the ambient living, he
abandoned painting and began designing
furniture, eventually shifting to the
Fig. 6 | Henry van
de Velde: door
handle, 1902/03,
brass
Fig. 7 | Henry van de Velde: Winter Sun, 1892,
oil on canvas
99