Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche: The Search for Elizabeth Nietzsche [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This is one of the most curious books I have ever read: on the one hand, there is the story of a failed 19th C German colony in Paraguay, founded on eugenic principles that would be echoed in Hitler's time; on the other hand, there is the biography of one of the most overlooked figures in 19th C philosophy - Elisabeth Nietzsche, sister of the famed philosopher, and apparently the one who twisted her brother's ideas to conform to her own concept of racial purity (and a woman who Hitler courted in his early years of power).
The author, Ben Macintyre, does an admirable job of bringing these two stories together: Elizabeth and her husband, "professional anti-semite" Bernhard Forster, attempt the Paraguayan colony as `New Germany' (Nueva Germania); this colony was designed to appeal to `true' Germans who wanted to establish not only an ideological power base, but flee economic problems at home. The colony does not succeed, as Macintyre discovers when he journeys there in 1991: there are a few of the old families around, and the dangers of inbreeding, according to one recent German immigrant doctor, are becoming noticeable, heralding the inevitable decline of what Elisabeth envisioned as her own pure, private kingdom.
As the parallel story of Nietzsche develops, we see perhaps Elisabeth's real impact on history: her reinterpretation - or even reinvention - of her brother's theories. Macintyre makes an excellent case for Elisabeth's "mythologizing" of her brother and his works to further her own agenda (and help set the stage for Hitler and company's racial programs of the 1930s): although Nietzsche himself was "anti-anti-semitic", during his insanity and after his death, Elisabeth shamelessly made herself the custodian - and editor - of many of his works, linking her brother to an ideology he actually despised. It is no wonder that Nietzsche's named became philosophical "mud", as Macintyre recounts. This part of the book is worth reading for the blatant rewriting of history done by a woman who would not apologize for her views or actions (and whose death in 1935 prevented her from seeing the result of racist views she helped promulgate).
Macintyre's physical investigation of what happened to New Germany is entertaining, and provides a respite from the depressing - but riveting - narrative of the rest of the book. His concern with becoming a `stud' to a colony of desperate young German colonists is hilarious, as are his equestrian, translating, and lodging adventures. When he finds the remnants of New Germany, the book seems to lack content - until you realize, as Macintyre does -- that the colonists' dreams for a racially `pure' paradise is exactly what will cause them to disappear. The lack if information on the descendents of the original colonists seems to be because they either won't talk, or avoid talking by hiding in the forest. The pictures included in the book provide a great backdrop to what the colony wanted, and what it actually received. The book also relates a brief history of Paraguay and several colorful characters (some not even connected with the events the book is about), that put the whole thing in an understandable historical context.

I should get one thing taken care of right off the bat: The author's trip to an Aryan colony in Paraguay is only a pretext for a larger discussion of the rather interesting dynamic between the philosopher Nietzsche, his strong-willed if intellectually mediocre sister, and the rather tumultuous events swirling around fin de siecle Germany. This has its good points and it bad points. The bad first: From the blurbs on the book one expects the author to recount a journey of unremitting horror, fascination and farce as he discovers the depraved Ubermen who still people a failed and fading 19th Century experiment in Aryan race politics gone awry. This isn't what one finds. In fact, the colony of Nueva Germania really acts only as an incidental prop or set-up for the real meat of the story: What happens to Nietzsche the man, the myth and the philosophy under the willing and able hands of his manipulative and single-minded sister. So, like a reviewer below, I would that the author had spent a bit more on the colony and its people and indeed his adventure and misadventures as he made his way to them and lived amongst them for a month. I suspect that the author chose not to do this not only because he had a bigger fish to fry, but also because he is a bit lacking in the skills that the best travel writers possess which allow them to really string an audience along over every rut in the road, sore belly and improbable situation. On the other hand, I believe that the author does an excellent job of describing the political foment that overtook Germany and eventually produced the Holocaust. Before reading this book, for instance, I had no idea how prolonged and widespread was the phenomenon of active, political anti-semitism and what it meant for the likes of people such as these. Furthermore, as I have never actually read the works of Nietzsche, but have been bombarded by incessant and inane references to most of his more quotable nostrums, I felt a definite familiarity with, albeit mixed with a strong dose of repugnance toward, his philosophies. As such, after reading this book, I am definitely open to and perhaps a little eager to read his works and also thanks to the author am forewarned about what to watch out for. This is to say that, and I don't want to ruin the story for you, it is a supreme irony that it appears that much of what is worst about the uses to which Nietzsche's writing have been put may be attributed to his sister's meddling but also that were it not for her monomaniacal quest to bring her brother and, by association, herself to glory, Nietzsche might have gone down in the annals of history as just another mad philosopher. A note about the criticism made by a reviewer below about the author's interpretation and defense of Nietzsche's philosophical intent: I believe that a closer reading of the present text will produce answers to these objections. Of course, this begs the question of defining that shadow line between reality and insanity in the context of Nietzsche's works, but that is for another time and a different essay. I think that you will enjoy this book if you fall into the following categories: You enjoy voyeuristic travel journals/personality characterizations; you are interested in Nietzsche the man; you are interested in Nietsche-Forster the woman; you have an affinity for the cultural history of Paraguay/South America. I don't recommend this to anyone else.

MacIntyre's book casts a light over a little known part of our history from the end of the last century over the the Weimar republic (1918-33) and onwards. It also shows how a philosopher's work can be totaly misused in order to fit other purposes; in this case the furthering of nazi theories still, unfortunately, not dead.