ZGram - 5/6/2003 - "Cause of Nietzsche's death revised"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

May 6, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

As you can see, smear-mongering is not a new phenomenon:

[START]

Subject: 'Madness' of Nietzsche was cancer, not syphilis

By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent, The Telegraph

(Filed: 04/05/2003)

[START]

Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher thought to have died of syphilis 
caught from prostitutes, was in fact the victim of a posthumous smear 
campaign by anti-Nazis, according to new research.

A study of medical records has found that, far from suffering a 
sexually-transmitted disease which drove him mad, Nietzsche almost 
certainly died of brain cancer.

The doctor who has carried out the study claims that the 
universally-accepted story of Nietzsche having caught syphilis from 
prostitutes was actually concocted after the Second World War by 
Wilhelm Lange-Eichbaum, an academic who was one of Nietzsche's most 
vociferous critics. It was then adopted as fact by intellectuals who 
were keen to demolish the reputation of Nietzsche, whose idea of a 
"Superman" was used to underpin Nazism.

The new research was carried out by Dr Leonard Sax, the director of 
the Montgomery Centre for Research in Child Development in Maryland, 
America. Dr Sax made his discovery after studying accounts of 
Nietzsche's collapse with dementia in 1889. He was admitted to an 
asylum in Basle, Switzerland, and was initially diagnosed as being in 
the advanced stages of syphilis. According to Dr Sax, however, 
Nietzsche's notes show no signs of the symptoms which are now 
regarded as evidence of this disease, such as an expressionless face 
and slurred speech.

"Nietzsche exhibited none of these symptoms," said Dr Sax. "His 
facial expressions remained vivid, his reflexes were normal, tremor 
was not present, his handwriting after his collapse was at least as 
good as it had been in previous years - and his speech was fluent."

Dr Sax added that in the late 19th century more than 90 per cent of 
those with advanced syphilis rapidly declined and died within five 
years of diagnosis. Nietzsche, in contrast, lived for another 11 
years.

Nietzsche's physicians, according to Dr Sax, suspected that he may 
not have had syphilis, but were unable to suggest an alternative. 
Reporting his findings in the current issue of the Journal of Medical 
Biography, Dr Sax argues that a more plausible diagnosis would have 
been that the philosopher was suffering from a slowly-developing 
brain tumour. This would account for both Nietzsche's collapse and 
the migraines and visual disturbances he suffered.

In the decades following his death in 1900, Nietzsche's ideas of the 
Ubermensch (the Superman) - a new kind of human driven by the "will 
to power" - was adopted by the Nazis. Following the Second World War, 
however, Nietzsche's ideas were attacked and his later writings 
dismissed as the work of a diseased mind.

According to Dr Sax, the suggestion that Nietzsche caught syphilis 
from prostitutes arose in 1947. In a book condemning Nietzsche's role 
in Nazi philosophy, Lange-Eichbaum alleged that a Berlin neurologist 
had once told him that the philosopher "had infected himself with 
syphilis in a Leipzig brothel during his time as a student there, and 
that he had been treated for syphilis by two Leipzig physicians".

Despite the lack of documentary or medical evidence, the allegation 
has since been repeated without question by generations of academics, 
said Dr Sax. "Extraordinarily, this single passage in 
Lange-Eichbaum's obscure book is the chief foundation, cited again 
and again, that Nietzsche had syphilis."

Nietzsche scholars welcomed the new findings and said that they would 
help in the rehabilitation of the philosopher. "Nietzsche was not 
anti-semitic or a nationalist, and hated the herd mentality," said 
Prof Stephen Houlgate, a Nietzsche scholar at Warwick University. "If 
this new research gets rid of another misconception about him, I'm 
delighted."

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( Source: 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$S0FNCH3KNYZQFQFIQM
FCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2003/05/04/wniet04.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/05/04/ )