ABSTRACT
In early January 1889, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a professor of philology in early retirement from the University of Basel, sent several obscure letters to his friends and colleagues from Torino signed “Dionysos,” “Nietzsche Caesar” or “The Crucifi ed.”1 When his alarmed friend Franz Overbeck from Basel arrived in Torino on 8 January he found Nietzsche out of his mind, crying, screaming and playing the piano naked, so he decided to take him back to Basel’s asylum, the fi rst station of Nietzsche’s eleven-and-a-half-year twilight in madness. Yet in the aftermath of Nietzsche’s breakdown, his manuscripts, as well as his letters and parts of his library remained in Torino and scattered at various places of his unsteady life between cheap hotels in Italian cities and alpine villages, and visiting friends in Basel and family in Naumburg. With the ebbing hope for Nietzsche’s mental recovery, the question arose of what to do with his literary remains, especially since the last months of his conscious life in fall 1888 were extraordinarily productive.
