ABSTRACT
I THE real cause of the malady which eventually drove Nietzsche into insanity still remains somewhat obscure. His father, the Roecken pastor Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, died in 1848 from inflammation of the brain; but this does not help us much, since the pastor’s illness and death are supposed to have been due to a fall when little Friedrich was already in his fourth year. A rather unexpected verdict is given, however, by Dr. Gaston Vorberg in his book ‘Ueber Nietzsches Krankheit und Zusammenbruch’ (Nietzsche’s Illness and Collapse) published in 1933. Dr. Vorberg attributes both Nietzsche’s illness and his final catastrophe to syphilis. Among the records of the Jena lunatic asylum, where Nietzsche stayed for a while as a patient, the following laconic entry can be read: ‘1866. Syphilitische Ansteckung’ (syphilitic infection).
