Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth. 35

Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth. 35 letters. 29 dictation letters by secretary's hand with handwritten signature, 26 of them with handwritten greeting, 7 with additional handwritten postscript, furthermore 3 handwritten letters with signature and 3 handwritten postcards (2 preprinted), 2 of them with signature. With one exception Weimar, 1908-1935. 112 p., the letters mostly on double sheets with printed head of the Nietzsche Archive (25) or the personal one of the writer (6), one long dictation letter from Breitbrunn without head. Approx. 23 x 15 cm. The addressed envelopes to 17 letters preserved. Friendly series of letters to the painter Gertrud Overhof née Mögling (25), now forgotten but highly esteemed by Förster-Nietzsche, and her husband, the theologian and poet Otto Overhof (9), one of the postcards to both. The counter letters are preserved in the Nietzsche Archive Weimar (signatures GSA 72/BW 4008 and 4010). After that, the contact between the two women began in 1906. The first testimony preserved here is a handwritten postcard from September 16, 1908 to Gertrud, whose life data cannot be determined for us. Förster-Nietzsche thanks her for "your delicious studies from Röcken" (the birthplace of the Nietzsche siblings) and chooses a leaf as a gift. Overhofs (married 1905) lived in Berlin since 1906, Otto (Wanne-Eickel 1880-1957 Rome) after giving up the pastor's profession as a teacher and writer (cf. Brümmer and Kosch). On February 18, 1911, Förster- Nietzsche read Overhof's autobiographical first book 'Du und ich' "with warmest sympathy and delighted me with excellent details". Overhof's interest in Rome is mentioned, he was then among the guests invited by Kaiser Wilhelm II to the Villa Falconieri in Frascati, which was given to him by Ernst von Mendelssohn in 1907. - On February 8, 1914, Förster-Nietzsche thanked him from Breitbrunn "in my wintry solitude" for "your book, so congenial to me ... with its tender and fine thoughts and beautiful descriptions with emotion ... even if I would find fault with the fact that this wonderful, high and subtle heroine should not voluntarily depart from life" (probably the novel 'Love for Love', 1913). Furthermore, in detail on a memorial plaque that Overhof would like to put up in a room in Turin allegedly inhabited by Nietzsche. She advises against it in view of the "fantastic Italians": "In Ruta and Rapallo I have heard complete nonsense and in Ruta there is a commemorative plaque with completely wrong dates - my brother had been in Ruta in the fall of 1886 and the plaque speaks of two stays in the year 1890-91 when my poor brother had already long since stayed in the north as a mental paralytic ... Have you spoken with my brother's former landlord in Turin? From him I still have relatively correct statements of the first time after the catastrophe". - Otto Overhof seems to have spent the First World War at the front, Gertrud lives 1915-19 in the sanatorium Inner-Arosa, Tübingen and Herrenchiemsee. A work from Graubünden calls back to Förster-Nietzsche "all the hours of mourning and remembrance that I spent there, and it does me good that just by the hand of such a faithful Nietzsche admirer this picture has been painted" (May 27, 1915). On August 12, 1919, Förster-Nietzsche complains that "Germany is now a very unhappy country, having sunk back into a disgusting barbarism, with miserable liars and talkers in the government that leads us and with the loss of all German virtues in the people". Her next letter goes to Overhof's new address on 5.6.1920: Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati. On the occasion of the "20th anniversary of the death of my dear brother ... we would now like to distribute some scholarships to such scholars and artists who have been in the war, and we also thought of your dear husband". In an enclosed handwritten letter, the mayor of Weimar and chairman of the foundation (Adalbert) Oehler announces the granting of this scholarship in the amount of 1500 Marks on August 2, 1920. - In the following letters, Förster- Nietzsche complains about the inflation, "especially for writers and artists, it is now terribly difficult", however, he adds in his own hand in the margin: "But the Nietzsche Archive does not suffer any distress yet! On December 7, 1921, she reports in detail about her 75th birthday, for which she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Jena. In September 1922, "everything is going well in the archive, despite the dreadful present, which I consider a true miracle. The interest in my brother's works is extraordinary and one can only assume that in this rabble-rousing present there are still aristocratic people who want to strengthen themselves by his works". On January 19, 1924, due to inflation, "the assets of the foundation and my own ... have been lost, but the present fees