Zwischen fatalistischer Ergebenheit und dem „Glück des Einsamen“. Friedrich Nietzsche und Lou von Salomé

Abstract In his encounter with Lou von Salomé, we see Nietzsche as a thinker who is ready to subordinate himself unwillingly to the needs of the young student. In the summer of 1882 in Tautenburg, he experienced Lou not as a student, but as a partner on an equal footing and always emphasized the equal value of their intelligence. Never before had there been such philosophical openness as between them. Lou, for her part, discovered the religious genius in Nietzsche. She saw his aphoristic style of writing as a makeshift solution due to his illness. In fact, it was after his encounter with Lou that he wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra , a work of which Nietzsche himself says that he was only ready for it after his contact with Lou. At the same time, Nietzsche fears being too close and is afraid of his own insatiability, so that at the end of this intensive exchange with Lou, he retreats alone to the south again.