The Antichrist, 1888

Abstract

In a letter to Heinrich Köselitz, dated June 20, 1888, five days after the death of Emperor Friedrich III, Nietzsche writes: ‘The death of Emperor Friedrich moved me; in the end he was a little shimmering light of free thought, the last hope for Germany. Now begins the rule of Stöcker; I am drawing the consequences and know already that my Will to Power will now be confiscated in Germany.’¹ For liberals of the era, the death of the Emperor after a brief reign of just three months ended all hope for a less repressive political climate in the Reich, for the Emperor had wished to strengthen the parliamentary system. Although anti-liberal, Nietzsche had similar concerns about increasing political repression, but his principal target was the ‘Christian state’ which had recently re-emerged in Germany after nearly half a century in abeyance. Thus Nietzsche’s final year of intellectual activity is marked by his unprecedented ‘Curse on Christianity’,² including a continuing critique of the political ideologies that share its ‘ancestry’: democracy, socialism, anarchism.³