Search: nietzsche
Why: In Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell (which I bought last night at Hudson News and is really great, btw):
Apparently we've used up every nurse in the Caribbean, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia, and now we're most of the way through Eastern Europe. When the white supremacist cult Nietzsche's sister founded in Paraguay reemerges from the jungle, at least its members will be able to find work.Answer: Yes! In February 1887 - 16 years after the War against the Triple Alliance - Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and her fanatic anti-semitic husband Bernhard Förster persuaded 14 mostly impoverished German families to move with them to the Paraguayan rainforest to start Nueva Germania, a "pure" Aryan colony. The initiative was a failure due to the harness of the wild environment, and Förster committed suicide there in 1889. Elisabeth left in 1893.
The colonials that remained soon had forgotten the original Aryan ideals of its founders and ended up completely integrating to the Paraguayan culture. Dr. Mengele spent some time in Nueva Germania while on the run after WWII.
Today, Nueva Germania is a quiet community of San Pedro dedicated to agriculture, specializing in the cultivation of yerba mate.
The More You Know: Don't worry - Nietzsche wasn't a Jew-hater. In fact, he:
- Broke with his editor, Ernst Schmeitzner, disgusted by his anti-Semitic opinions. Nietzsche saw his own writings as "completely buried and unexhumeable in this anti-Semitic dump" of Schmeitzner—associating the editor with a movement that should be "utterly rejected with cold contempt by every sensible mind."
- Criticized and mocked his sister and Bernhard for their plans for Nueva Germania. (He wrote to her, "I am now in a position of emergency defense against your spouse's Party. These accursed anti-Semite deformities shall not sully my ideal!!'')
- Wrote several criticisms of both anti-semitism and German nationalism, in Beyond Good and Evil, Ecce Homo, and The Gay Science.
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