Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl - Recommendation of Nietzsche

Recommendation of Nietzsche

Ritschl recommended that his student, Friedrich Nietzsche, be considered for the position of professor. He described Nietzsche in the following words.

"However many young talents I have seen develop under my eyes for thirty-nine years now, never yet have I known a young man, or tried to help one along in my field as best I could, who was so mature as early and as young as this Nietzsche. His Museum articles he wrote in the second and third year of his triennium. He is the first from whom I have ever accepted any contribution at all while he was still a student. If — God grant — he lives long enough, I prophesy that he will one day stand in the front rank of German philology. He is now twenty-four years old: strong, vigorous, healthy, courageous physically and morally, so constituted as to impress those of a similar nature. On top of that, he possesses the enviable gift of presenting ideas, talking freely, as calmly as he speaks skillfully and clearly. He is the idol and, without wishing it, the leader of the whole younger generation of philologists here in Leipzig who — and they are rather numerous — cannot wait to hear him as a lecturer. You will say, I describe a phenomenon. Well, that is just what he is — and at the same time pleasant and modest. Also a gifted musician, which is irrelevant here. ... Nietzsche is not at all a specifically political nature. He may have in general, on the whole, some sympathy for the growing greatness of Germany, but, like myself, no special tendre for Prussianism; yet he has vivid feeling for free civic and spiritual development, and thus certainly a heart for your Swiss institutions and way of living. What more am I to say? His studies so far have been weighted toward the history of Greek literature (of course, including critical and exegetical treatment of the authors), with special emphasis, it seems to me, on the history of Greek philosophy. But I have not the least doubt that, if confronted by a practical demand, with his great gifts he will work in other fields with the best of success. He will simply be able to do anything he wants to do."

Walter Kaufmann described the unusual situation as follows. "But Nietzsche had not yet fulfilled his residence requirement and hence had no doctorate. So Ritschl expected the case to be hopeless, 'although in the present instance,' he wrote, 'I should stake my whole philological and academic reputation that the matter would work out happily.' It is hardly surprising that Basel decided to ignore the 'formal insufficiency.' Ritschl was delighted: 'In Germany, that sort of thing happens absolutely never.'."

Nietzsche was beginning to lose interest in philology at the time, due to his intense interests in science, Wagner's music, and Schopenhauer's philosophy. Kaufmann continued: "His call to the university of Basel came as a surprise to Nietzsche, who had not yet received his doctorate though he had published some fruits of his research in a scholarly journal. He had actually considered giving up philology for science when, on Ritschl's recommendation, he was appointed a professor of classical philology at Basel, and Leipzig hurriedly conferred the doctorate without examination."

Nietzsche's consuming interest in philosophy, however, soon overcame his work in philology. His first published book, The Birth of Tragedy, effectively ended his career as professor. "...Ritschl dismissed the book as geistreich Schwiemelei, clever giddiness..." Few students attended Nietzsche's classes, and he retired due to physical disability at the age of thirty five. Ritschl's prophecy had been the direct opposite of the course of events.