Herrakansa viidakossa

by Ben Macintyre, Jelena Vallenius (Translator), Pirkko Talvio-Jaatinen (Translator)

Elizabeth Nietzsche purjehti vuonna 1886 Saksasta Paraguayhin mukanaan joukko sinisilmäisiä ja vaaleatukkaisia keskieurooppalaisia. Hän perusti viidakkoon miehensä kanssa arjalaisen siirtokunnan, Nueva Germanian. Miehensä kuoltua Elizabeth Nietzsche palasi Saksaan ja keskittyi tekemään veljensä, Friedrich Nietzschen, kirjoitukset tunnetuiksi. Elizabeth muokkasi veljensä tekstejä natsien ideologialle otollisiksi, vaikka Friedrich ei jakanut sisarensa innostusta rodullisen jalostuksen aatteisiin.

Sata vuotta myöhemmin englantilainen toimittaja Ben MacIntyre matkusti Paraguayhin ja löysi ensimmäisten siirtolaisten jälkeläiset, jotka elävät yhä kartoittamattomassa viidakossa uskollisina perustajiensa aatteille. Herrakansa viidakossa on kiehtova matkakertomus, jossa kuljetaan eurooppalaisen pimeyden ytimeen Paraguayn maaperällä. Se on myös elämäkerta Elizabeth Nietzschestä, merkittävän filosofin vaarallisesta sisaresta.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Travel, Philosophy, Germany, Politics

Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (U.K.) and the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now I have a better idea why I've never really gotten a handle on Nietzsche. As Ben MacIntyre makes clear in this book, the taint of Nazism that clings to the philosopher's name is largely due to the machinations of his odious sister, Elizabeth, who dominated her mentally ill brother in his last years and then took control of his work afterwards, even going to far as to cobble together one of Nietzsche's "masterpieces," Will to Power, using bits and pieces that Nietzsche had discarded and probably never meant for publication. She also wrote a hagiographic and self-serving biography of her brother, which cast her in a far more favorable light than her brother ever perceived her. (In fact, the two had a complex and contentious relationship, and Nietzsche found her politics and beliefs highly objectionable.)

The title refers to a German colony that Elizabeth had previously tried to establish in Paraguay. The colony was a failure, but it was Elizabeth's second act, as keeper of the Nietzsche archives and all-around fascist toady, that is most fascinating. As she worked ceaselessly to build a cult around her brother, she also imposed her own anti-Semite and pro-Nazi views upon her brother's legacy. Yet as MacIntyre notes:

"His works do not support Nazism or anything like it, and Nietzsche himself, I feel certain, would have looked with horror on what was done in his name. He opposed German nationalism and every mass movement; he distrusted ideologues; and he loathed anti-Semitism."

Part biography, part travelogue, and part intellectual history, Forgotten Fatherland didn't bring me much closer to understanding Nietzsche's philosophy, but it certainly made me understand how his philosophy was unjustly appropriated by others. As a bonus, I learned quite a bit about Paraguay's colorful and tragic history. The end of the book, which details what finally became of Elizabeth's German colony, provides an edifying example of the folly of notions of racial "purity."

[Nick Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ben Macintyre writes some fine books on recent history. His research is wide-ranging and thorough, and yet he doesn't insist on putting every scrap of it on the page. I've come to expect great writing from him, and this was no exception.

Elisabeth was the forward-thinking sister of Friedrich Nietzsche. She wasn't content to be decorative and delicate, like many women of her time and class. She loved her philosophising brother, but not enough to accept his dire warnings of the consequences should she follow the path she'd chosen, and marry and support professional anti-Semite Bernhard Forster. Forster had no talents in particular, and nothing to offer except the negativity of his hatred for the Jews of Germany, and of the world in general. He hatched his crazy plan to settle in a part of the world where there were no Jews, and chose Paraguay as the place. There were, of course, good reasons why there were no Jews in the Paraguayan jungle: nobody of any race of sound mind would choose to uproot themselves from their lives elsewhere and go to live in an inhospitable environment of jungle dankness and decay, plus hostile terrain, wildlife and, to the extent that there were any, native peoples. What could possibly go wrong? Forster and Elisabeth attracted other anti-Semites - mostly hard-working but down-at-heel peasants from the furthest reaches of Germany - called their new home Nuevo Germania, then proceeded to build themselves a mansion in the jungle, and to lord it over the peasants until they all began to hate one another.

The book is partly about Friedrich Nietzsche, and is a gentle introduction to a man who was driven by his love of enquiry. It was Elisabeth who was mainly responsible for transforming his work into something that the growing anti-Semitic powers in Germany felt comfortable in taking up. Nietzsche himself hated anti-Semitism, and viewed anybody's racial origin as neither a recommendation nor a denunciation. Elisabeth stole her brother's work, and, once he had died, presented it to the Nazis as their own.

She was a sad and deluded figure, and Ben Macintyre tells her story very entertainingly.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

To paraphrase what Bismarck once said about Romania, "Paraguay is not a place or a people. It's a condition." As I illustrated in my review of YO, El SUPREMO, this land-locked South American nation has engendered dreams among both natives and foreigners that anything can happen and even the most horrific fantasies can come true, for a spell. In the late Nineteenth century Friederich Nietzsche's sister Elizabeth and her new husband, Herr Foster, Germany's leading anti-semite (yes, I know the competition for that title is fierce) set out for Paraguay to construct an "Aryan colony", Nova Germania, of German immigrants deep in the jungle. Once they interbred, a new generation of supermen and women would be born, and then another ad infinitum. Problem was, over half the expedition was lost to disease or drowning on the way to the proposed settlement site and the immigrants expected to come from Germany never showed up. Journalist Ben Macintyre set out to find the lost colony and if there were any living descendants. (Foster committed suicide in a hotel room in Asuncion while Elizabeth returned to Germany.) All of this would be comical except that it foreshadowed Hitler's own experiments with eugenics and pure breeds. So, what did happen to the survivors and their offspring? Remember that scene in THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL where Dr. Josef Mengele injects Indian boys and girls with a serum that turns them into blue-eyed mestizos? That's what happened, though through Germanic cross-breeding with the Guarani Indians, not chemical experiments. This is a gripping, strange fable of a madwoman, sister to a genius, who failed at "Aryanization" yet lived long enough to become an acolyte of Hitler.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a delightful discovery. I've been a fan of Nietzsche since college and had, during the course of my studies, often heard of his Aryanist sister and her racist utopia in Paraguay. I hadn't known, however, that there were any books in English about all of this.

What Macintyre offers herein is a biography of Elisabeth Nietzsche, emphasizing her relations with her two-year-older brother, Friedrich; with her husband, Bernhard Foerster; with the Wagners and with the Nazis. Herein also is the story of New Germany, the colony founded by her husband, taken through to the year of this book's publication in 1992. Along the way are a number of side stories, mostly short biographies related to the main subject matter. Overall, the book is a real hoot, its main characters, all quite eccentric, handled with a breezy sense of humor.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

'A mad curiosity carries an apparently sane young man to a lost German colony in Paraguay. In the picaresque romp that ensues, Macintyre, former foreign correspondent for Britain's Sunday Correspondent, discovers a forgotten people, exonerates Friedrich Nietzsche, and manages to piece together a rather chilling portrait of the troubled philosopher's far more dreadful sister. Not that Elisabeth Nietzsche was all that obscure to begin with: As editor and executrix of her brother's works, she was responsible for misshaping an entire generation of Nietzsche scholarship through a series of blatant misreadings aimed at serving the Nazi cause. A thoroughgoing racist and anti-Semite, she became convinced early on that the purity of the German nation was under siege, and, with her husband Bernard Fîrster, concocted the idea of an elite German settlement abroad that would eventually replenish and invigorate the downtrodden Aryan blood at home. Paraguay—of all places—was chosen as the most propitious site, and a small band of pioneers set sail in 1886 for what shortly became an unmitigated disaster. The land turned out to be untillable; the climate was deadly; and the finances were mismanaged from the start. Within a few years, Fîrster killed himself, and Elisabeth returned to Germany to care for her brother (who had lapsed into his final madness). Incredibly enough, the colony managed to survive precariously on its own and maintains itself to this day as a surreal Bismarckian outpost in the Paraguayan jungle. Macintyre weaves together several stories here- -Nietzsche's stormy relations with Wagner; Elisabeth's influence on the Nazis; the fate of the colonists left behind—without weakening the central narrative of his own journey to Nueva Germania and its gente perdita, a journey that was both the impetus and agent for this weird and marvelous tale. Lurid and delightful: Rider Haggard couldn't ask for more.'

From Kirkus Review in 2013

[Andi · Rating 1 out of 5]

True story: Nietzsche's sister and her anti-Semite husband founded an Aryan colony in Paraguay in the 1880s. In 1991, the author tracked down the remains of the colony and found a small group remaining; inbred, insane, destitute.

Schadenfreude.

The problem is that only handful of the book's pages are dedicated to the colony's beginning and present. The vast majority of the book is an essay on Nietzsche and his sister. Boring.

[Kevin A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book, but an odd one. It starts out as a travelogue heading deep into Paraguayan jungle to find traces of Nueva Germania, founded in 1886 by Friedrich Nietzsche's sister and her husband as an Aryan utopia. Then most of the remainder of the book is a discussion about Elisabeth Nietzsche hijacked her brother's legacy for anti-Semitic and ultimately Fascist ends. There is also a discussion of Paraguayan history.

It's all quite interesting, but the long digression on Elizabeth's post-colonial career robs the final section, in which we meet the straggling descendants of the original German settlers, of most of its power.

[Romina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of the book is a bit misleading as it makes one think that this story is only about Elizabeth Nietzsche and what happened in Nueva Germania, Paraguay, where she tried to set up a sort of Nazi colony 50 years before Hitler. However, I think it's more accurate to state that it's really about E.N. relationship with her famous brother, Frederick Nietzsche, and how she shaped her life around his. The author's main focus is Nietzsche himself and his downward spiral into insanity, which his sister took advantage of.

The story of Paraguay and the creation of the new colony is a secondary story, in which the author includes himself in most of his findings since Elizabeth's story in Paraguay is briefly narrated. Granted, there is a lot of interesting information that I wasn't aware of, concerning Nazis in Paraguay and the way Nietzsche was falsely set up to be a Nazi ideologist for propaganda reasons, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The information on Forster, Elizabeth's husband, was also compelling, so I'll definitely want to go to San Bernardino to visit his grave some time soon as it is only about 30 km from Asunción.

What draws my attention though is that the two most important men in Elizabeth's life went mad for different reasons, as well as the fact that she threatened her mother to put her in an institution if she didn't give her full access to Nietzche's works... so it makes me wonder who the real insane person was and if she didn't have a hand in making them insane. She was one strong and monstrous woman!

In terms of writing, in the beginning and the end of the book, it was quite gripping, but it sort of dragged on in the middle as it seemed MacIntyre was lecturing to a Philosophy class at university and not trying to grab and keep the reader's attention. As a complete package, the book fell a bit flat and it was somewhat boring, truly nothing in comparison to the eccentric 'Tomb of the Inflatable Pig,' which one couldn't put down.

All in all, I'm glad I read it, I would recommend it to those highly interested in Philosophy and Nietzsche, but not particularly to those who want to find deep information about the 'lost colony' in Paraguay.

[Mender · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, as expected from the author who does have an excellent way of presenting material. I felt less connection than I did to the last book I read of his, possibly because he wrote this when he was younger, or more likely because the subject matter dealt with here is so much darker.

It is a triumph of putting together sources to create a full picture of the happenings in Nietzche's time, and sifting through Elisabeth's propaganda to show the story going on outside of her militant self-beliefs. She was one determined, effective, energetic and terrifying lady.

It's a thought provoking book too, making you wonder how many people of our time are happily going around promoting themselves a certain way through a PR war, whose beliefs will be remembered as truth because any objectors just gave up fighting. Rationality really is no weapon against fanaticism and energy.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the late 1880s, Elisabeth Nietzsche, sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, together with her husband, Dr Bernhard Forster, sailed to Paraguay to set up New Germany, a colony for the pure Aryan race. The land they traveled to was ill-suited for the immigrants and the colony did not thrive. Some years after, Elisabeth returns to Germany.

While Friedrich Nietzsche abhorred anti-Semitism, Elisabeth embraced it, but following her brother's death, she promoted him through segments of his writings and established the Nietzsche Archives. Distorting his philosophy to suit her Anti-Semitic beliefs, she joins the Nazi party and eventually became adviser to Hitler.

McIntyre weaves humor into his adventurous travels to South America. His interviews with survivors of the colony in Nueva Germania and his research on Elisabeth make for exceptionally interesting reading.

[Marty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book very interesting in that it was two true stories in one. It is the authors search for signs of life left over from the attempted colonization of a German town in Paraguay, and also the story of Elizabeth Nietzche and how she controlled her brothers legacy to inspire Nazi Germany. It was Elizabeth who went with her husband to Paragguay to startNueva Germania in the middle of no where.
The authors treck to the location of her town was one I would not want to attempt.

[Max Williamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved it, perhaps even as much as operation mincemeat

[Tatiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating subject but not nearly as readable as Macintyre's more recent books, like Operation Mincemeat and Agent Zigzag.

[Ryan Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

First book on my e-reader!

[Wendy Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a random pick at the library, and it appealed because it was one of those non-fiction books that seem to provide further evidence that truth is always stranger than fiction. The book is mainly about Nietzche's sister Elisabeth, a rather unlikeable person who - in short - spends earlier years of her life trying to establish a German colony in Paraguay that is based on anti-Semitism / German nationalism, and the later years of her life misrepresenting and capitalising on her brother's writing and philosophy. Major kudos to the author, who kept me interested despite my total antipathy toward the main character. As an aside, I knew nothing about Paraguay before reading this book, but now feel I must read more so my association of it is not with weird, Nazi-hiding failed colonies.

[Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember reading this years ago, and I was reminded of it again after reading Fordlandia, which I reviewed here as well. This book does two things. It gives you a biography of Elisabeth Nietzsche, sister of the philosopher. Two, it gives you the story of the Aryan community her husband and her established in the middle of the Paraguayan jungle. The author went there to find the few remaining descendants of that community. I remember liking the book, and this was probably one of my first reading forays into that subgenre of books some people call micro-histories. This is one book I would recommend if you like the lesser known parts of history.

[Gwen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Usually I enjoy Ben Macintyre's books, but this one just didn't grab my attention like his others. I wanted more from this book than a combined rehashing of F. Nietzsche's biography with old travelogues of Paraguay. I wanted to learn more about the interplay between German immigrants and the Paraguayan government, especially as the years passed. I enjoyed Macintyre's own journey to Nueva Germania, but it fell flat--where was the analysis of what Elisabeth's experiment actually achieved (if anything)?

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A SELDOM-DISCUSSED ASPECT OF NIETZSCHE'S SISTER'S LIFE

Ben Macintyre is writer-at-large and associate editor of the Times of London; he has written other books such as 'For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond,' 'Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory,' 'Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal,' etc.

He wrote in the Foreword to this 1992 book, "The story of Elisabeth Nietzsche is important partly because of the effect she had on her brother and his philosophy, both during his life and most emphatically after his death. She made him famous... She died just at the moment when people who shared many of her views were about to plunge Europe into devastating war and unleash the Holocaust... Most fascinating of all to me was the unwritten story of New Germany, the facist colony Elisabeth helped to found in the middle of South America over a century ago... This is rather the story of a journey in search of a singular, if singularly nasty, woman." (Pg. x-xii)

He notes, "Was there something incestuous in their relationship? Something, perhaps, certainly nothing provable, but enough for at least some people to go to remarkable lengths to establish this as fact. In 1951, a book was published ... 'Nietzsche: My Sister and I' which purported to be the last book written by Friedrich Nietzsche... It is seamy in the extreme... [it] is full of such soft-core pornography and would radically affect any consideration of Nietzsche's relationship with his sister if there was any reason to believe that Nietzsche wrote a word of it." (Pg. 88-89)

He states, "while at Leipzig Nietzsche made another, far more awful discovery: he had contracted syphilis... he himself stated he had caught the disease in 1866. He had certainly visited a brothel... Freud and Jung helped to spread a rumor that he had caught the disease in a Genoese male brothel, for which there is no evidence. Elisabeth claimed he never had syphilis... The progressive paralysis which killed him and drove him made may, conceivably, have been contracted some other way, but the point is that he THOUGHT he had syphilis." (Pg. 91-92)

When the fascist colony they tried to found in South America failed, Elisabeth's husband, Bernhard Förster "poisoned himself, using a deadly cocktail of strychnine and morphine... There is further evidence that Elisabeth's story of 'death by nerves' was a lie... Förster had confided to a German doctor... that 'he and his wife would simply take poison if the colonial project failed.'... His suicide note clearly indicated that it was not remorse or an admission of guilt that drove him to kill himself..." (Pg. 139)

Macintyre recounts that Elisabeth "was not above plain forgery, if it would help to burning the image of her relationship with her brother. On more than one occasion, if she found a particularly complimentary passage in a letter written by Nietzsche to someone else, she would burn their name off the top, insert her own and pretend it had been sent to her." (Pg. 163)

He says, "Less than a fortnight after the Nazis came to power, Elisabeth met the Führer again... he and his 'cultural advisers' turned to Elisabeth Nietzsche... and she welcomed them with open arms... the Nazis contrived, with Elisabeth's help, to entwine the tendrils of Nazism around Nietzsche's name." (Pg. 183)

This is a fascinating (if repelling) book, and will be of considerable interest to anyone wanting to know more about Nietzsche's sister and thus about him.

[Zach · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is an interesting premise for a book, but it wasn't executed terribly well.

There was simply not enough relevant material for Macintyre to write an entire book. Instead the book proceeds in a desultory manner, dedicating an odd amount of time to Guaraní mythology & how (Friedrich) Nietzsche would have loved them, (Friedrich) Nietzsche's relationship with Wagner, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche's fascination with Mussolini and Hitler (mind you, after she had been back in Europe for about 30 years), and how Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche became "editor" of Friedrich Nietzsche's work and corrupted his legacy (again, this occurred in Europe in the early 20th century). In between this, Macintyre managed to squeeze in some actual information about the Aryan colony in Paraguay that Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche and her husband founded in the 1880s.


Another annoyance:
Macintyre goes on and on about how Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche completely corrupted her brother's legacy due to her aggressive misreading of the works and selective omission of parts of the texts that do not lend themselves to her interpretation. Fair enough, but Macintyre then goes on to rave about how Nietzsche would have loved the Guaraní tribesmen, how horrified Nietzsche was about every aspect of his sister's colony (while he does cite Nietzsche giving his sister the excuse for his non-investment in the colony was that as a Swiss professor, he wasn't allowed to invest in foreign land. That sounds like an awfully meek stance for how Macintyre claims Nietzsche felt. Macintyre also is aggressive about claiming that Nietzsche hated all nationalism and cites a quotation of Nietzsche being proud of not fitting in with Germans and being proud of his Polish (szlachta) heritage. (Macintyre seems to define liking nationalism as solely liking modern German nationalism. I guess Polish nationalists are off the hook...) Nietzsche certainly did not heartily approve of the colony, but Macintyre massively distorts the textual evidence and wants Nietzsche to be exactly how Walter Kaufmann "redeemed" Nietzsche in the 1950s. Looking at Macintyre's footnotes, it is clear he got that interpretation from Kaufmann. Fine, but the irony is rich about his disgust with someone who distorts Nietzsche's corpus. I guess it's just bad if you disagree with Macintyre's viewpoints...)


When Macintyre finally reaches the area in Paraguay where the colony was supposed to be, be found the remnants. Other than the surprise that the descendants are still there, the rest can easily be guessed. There is a small population of the descendants of the original colonists. The colony is quite decrepit. The first three or so generations remained "pure German" and by the 1990s the younger generations have begun intermarrying with the local population. The German language is dying out amongst the younger population. Interesting, but it really isn't enough info to justify a book.



How Macintyre wrote it, the actual, relevant information could have been covered in a long magazine article.

[Aleksandar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part biography, part travelogue the book explores the German colony in Paraguay - and this is the book's biggest weakness. Only in the last chapter does the book actually gives an account of the colony, or rather what remained of the colony at the time of writing. The remainder of the book looks at the biographies of the Nietzsche siblings (as well as a plethora of supporting characters) and the personal intricacies and power-play between them. Personally, I expected more focus on the history and development of the Nueva Germania from its establishment to the present, which is not to say that there isn't focus, but it's rather brief and dispersed through different chapters.

That being said, the book is thoroughly researched, containing a lot of material from personal letters which was very interesting to read. It gave a new perspective on the relationship between the brother and sister, one based very much in a common human experience of a sort of sibling rivalry, though confined in a different context. And Elisabeth was not content to play second fiddle, even though she sincerely admired her brother. Also, this book is a rare exploration of the life of Elisabeth Nietzsche, at least in English, which is certainly of value.

Finally, it's a sort of personal pet-peeve of mine when authors give value judgements on their research subjects. It is the task of any researcher to maintain personal distance from the research subject that one is researching, no matter the level of agreement/disagreement, and remain objective throughout, as to allow the readers to make-up their own mind. Using terms such as hideous, deplorable, etc. when describing your research subject gives off a sort-of "Friedrich - good; Elisabeth - bad" vibe to the book, which in a way distracts from the many obvious qualities of the book, especially in terms of the thoroughness of the research done.

All in all, I would recommend this book, as it is a fast and interesting read, with a lot of interesting material, not only for Nietzsche scholars, fans, detractors, but also for anyone interested in intellectual history.

[Mur McEwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd recently read the author's 2022 book Colditz:Prisoners of the Castle. Rewind back 30 years to 1992 and we have this, his (I think) first book, Forgotten Fatherland. It wasn't quite what I had expected. I had expected an account of the Forgotten Fatherland, a "racially pure" German colony established in the Paraguayan jungle in the 1880s, and it's progress (or not) in the intervening 100 years before the author's journey there in 1991. The book does indeed start with the author's journey there, and a history of the establishment of the colony; but the substantive middle part of the book covers the life and times of Elisabeth Forster-Nietzche's long and eventful life. No shrinking violet, she is a lifelong manipulative opportunist, Machiavellian, and ardent National Socialist long before Hitler's rise to power. Towards the end of the book, after Elisabeth's death in 1935, we are taken back to Paraguay and learn some of what happened to the colony, some of its inhabitants, and some conjecture on the likes of Josef Mengele and Martin Bormann post WW2.

As an historian I feel Ben Macintyre overdoes his own personal opinions on his dislike of Elisabeth; he should be more objective, leaving it to others to form their opinions. She was certainly highly talented in her own way. The interests of pretty much everyone else, including her philosopher brother Friedrich Nietzsche, being manipulated to suit and enhance her own agenda / ambitions.

An interesting account of an interesting person; a somewhat niche jigsaw piece in history. However, I'm not really any the wiser in understanding Friedrich Nietzsche's true philosophy, unadulterated by Elisabeth's "interpretations" of it to embrace the National Socialist cause.

[Susan Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up because I'd read a number of Macintyre's other books and thoroughly enjoyed them. He does fabulous research and I like his writing.

This one was not about spies, as were the other books I'd read, but something altogether different. As the title suggests, it has to do with a "utopian settlement", a little Germany that Nietzsche's sister created in Paraguay in the 1880s. She was a driven, idealogical, anti-Semite who wanted to create a "pure" (read non-Jewish) enclave where "true German values" could thrive.

Nietzsche shared none of his sister's sentiments at all. He was the older sibling, by 2 years, yet died many years before she did. His decline happened to coincide with his sister's return from Paraguay - the settlement was a disaster for all the reasons you can imagine, although a number of people who had come with her from Germany could not afford to return to Germany. Her mission then became to craft her brother's legacy and writing to coincide with her beliefs.

Macintyre actually travelled to Paraguay in the early 1990s to find the remains of the settlers. Their location is remote and isolated. The remaining settlers are inbred, damaged, and simply weird.

The material in the book that deals with the colony in Paraguay was of interest to me. There is a long-ish section dealing with Elizabeth and her corruption of Nietzsche's works and crafting his legacy based entirely on lies she weaves. She was an avowed Nazi who counted Hitler as her friend. I found this section too long and certainly skimmed through it. Perhaps it would appeal more to a real Nietzsche fan, which I am not.

Interesting read though.

[Jena · Rating 2 out of 5]

"La Patria Olvidada", es una narración muy desigual. La primera parte es la crónica de una expedición a Paraguay en tiempos modernos en busca de la colonia "Nueva Germania", fundada por Elisabeth Nietzsche, hermana del filósofo, y su marido el reverendo luterano Bernhard Förster.
Si el autor se queja de tener que hacer la jornada a caballo, desde Asunción a San Pedro el lugar más cercano a la colonia por aquellos caminos pantanosos, con indios come cristianos, animales salvajes, enfermedades, calor y mosquitos ( ¿dónde he oído antes estas 2 palabras?), podrán imaginarse lo que sufrieron aquellos "arios" rosados como cerditos, en aquellos lugares olvidados por los Dioses.
La segunda parte es un poco más interesante, porque se refiere a la vida social de Fritz Nietzsche en el círculo formado alrededor de Cósima y Ricardo Wagner. Círculo de adoradores del gran músico que permitió a Elisabeth conocer al reverendo, dándose cuenta que coincidían en varios temas: luteranismo, vegetarianismo, nacionalismo y, el principal, antisemitismo, asunto muy de moda a fines del siglo XIX.
Del nacionalismo surge la idea de fundar una colonia libre de judíos y en donde se preservará la pureza de la "raza aria" germana. El autor cuenta cómo era la colonia en su origen y qué encontró a su llegada (¡todavía existe!). Y si también se quiere saber cómo y cuándo se volvió loco Fritz, aquí lo encontrará.

[Frida Dillenbeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting history of the Nietzsche siblings Fredrich and Elizabeth, only two years apart in age with a mother who was less than twenty years older. Many of Nietzsche’s philosophical quotes are still heard and applied in today’s culture.

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering”

“He who has a why to live can bare almost any how”

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster”

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger”

The book focuses on Elizabeth and her quest for importance that she knows must be gotten through a man, either her brother or husband. She did not love her husband but found him to be an opportunity to facilitate her quest.

Her unchanging opinions she forced to be her truth as hypocritical as ever. What she told her self about the Jewish community in making money from others, she did herself but never acknowledged what she was doing. Her single-mindedness brought her to become engaged with Nazi leadership, specifically Hitler. Together Elizabeth and Hitler twisted Fredrich’s philosophy to support racism, fascism and nationalism which Nietzsche deplored with his who being. He rejected Elizabeth’s opinions at every turn until he became so mentally unstable to be permanently mentally insane and died at 55 years old.

A really interesting read as I knew nothing of Nietzsche before reading this book.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Macintyre's book chronicles his journey to Paraguay in South America as he searched for the colony of New Germany established by Elisabeth Neitzsche and her anti-semitic husband, Bernhard Forster in the 1880s. Using the story of the establishment of the colony as a structural framework, Macintyre also details the lives of everyone who intersected with Elisabeth, her brother Friedrich, the Wagners and Hitler and Mussolini. These stories are woven together with his own journey to discover the remnants of the colony who still live separate lives today. A curious and forgotten story that needed to be told.

"Forster was motivated by what Nietzsche would have called Resentment, a combination of envy, jealousy and revenge. A morality defined by contrast to other moralities, which it labelled evil." 15

"For much of the next sixty years, Robert Bontine Cunninghame Grahame wandered through South America living dangerously..." 17 (biography?)

"Colonisation fever had gripped Germany, itself caught in the depths of economic depression; colonial societies mushroomed, catering to thousands of disillusioned and often poverty-stricken would-be emigrants. By the early 1880s several hundred thousand Germans had taken ship for South America, usually destined for Brazil and Argentina." 110

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting story.

In the 1880's Elisabeth Nietzsche, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's sister, and husband traveled to Paraguay to found a colony of Aryan colonists. After a few years the husband committed suicide and Elisabeth returned to Germany. Whatever happened to the colony: Author Ben Macintyre travels to Paraguay following Elisabeth's husband's original instructions. Along the way he tells the life story of Friedrich Nietzsche and of his philosophy and of his mental collapse and death. Elisabeth believes in the strength of the Aryan race. She misconstrues Friedrich's writings and writes that he, too, supports the Aryan cause. Later, Nazis used this same misconception.

There were about 100 people who believed in the cause enough that they paid for their travel to Paraguay. They did not have an easy life. It was not the promised land that Elisabeth and her husband promised. At the time of the author's travels, there are remnants of the original colony still standing and some local farmers who claim they are descendants to the original colonists.

This is also a history of Paraguay. Prior to the colonists arrival, Paraguay was in war called the Paraguayan War or War of the Triple Alliance against Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil which Paraguay lost. The Paraguayans were led by Francisco Solano Lopéz who was an interesting character. Later in the 1950's Paraguay was led by President Stroessner. The author spends a lot of time discussing these two leaders.

There's a lot of history and biographies in this book - almost too much. However, it does give a good background to what the colonists had to deal with. I enjoyed it.

[Elijah Lais · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my personal #RulesToLiveBy is to read a book about a place before visiting it, (fiction, non-fiction, whatever--just something that puts the place in context). So, as I will be moving to Paraguay shortly, this book was intended to do just that... And it did so in heaps.

Part biography, part travelogue, and part intellectual history, it shed light on Paraguay's rich, colorful, and tragic history, in addition to discussing in depth one of my favorite philosophers of all time, all while regaling Macintyre's ventures across one of the most overlooked countries in LatAm. For me, that ricks every box! A super interesting read, especially the parts about Nietzsche's sister manipulated his work for bigoted purposes following his death. And while I am no nearer understanding the body of work that Nietzsche produced, I certainly have a clearer idea of what to expect when I arrive in Paraguay in a few short months, and for that, I am thankful.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a bit of a mixture but as always with Ben Macintyre, it makes for compulsive reading. It is partly about Nietzsche; partly about his demented racist sister and her equally demented husband, who together tried to set up a German colony in Paraguay in 1886; partly about the sister's return to Germany where she re-interpreted Nietzsche's writings in a way he would have abhorred in order to serve the Nazi cause; and partly about the sad twilight of the colony which the author visited 30 years ago and which now (according to information on the internet) is becoming healthier through intermarriage with local people.
It all makes for a bit of a mish-mash but it is very informative and fascinating throughout.

[Leena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Luettuani kaksi loistavaa Ben Macintyren kirjaa, tartuin tähän varhaisteokseen, joka on 30 v vanha ja käännetty 20 v sitten.
Ihan ei ole Benin tarinankerronta parhaimmillaan ja vähän liikaa on mutujuttuja, joita ei myöhemmissä teoksissa ole.

Annan silti hyvät pointsit rohkeudesta matkustaa Paraguayn viidakon uumeniin sekä mielenkiintoisesta näkökulmasta Nietzscheen, natsismiin ja eurooppalaisen yläluokan ajatusmaailmaan. En tiedä, oliko kokonaan Macintyren ansiota, mutta joka tapauksessa Nietzsche paljastetaan antisemitismin vastustajaksi ja hänen röyhkeä, pöyristyttävä sisarensa varsinaiseksi valheiden alkuäidiksi ja Nietzschen ajatusten ja tuotannon väärentäjäksi.

[Inquisitive Voyager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Todella mielenkiintoinen matkakertomus Nueva Germaniasta ja samalla ikään kuin yleistajuinen tutkielma siitä, miten Nietzschen kirjoituksia väärennettiin yhteensopiviksi natsismin kanssa. Teoksen kannessa mainitaan, että matkakertomus on samalla elämäkerta Friedrich Nietzschen siskosta Elisabeth Försteristä, mutta toisaalta filosofin omasta elämästä löytyy tässä kirjassa paljon sellaisia yksityiskohtia, jotka olivat itselleni tuntemattomia. Kaiken kaikkiaan teos myös vahvisti ymmärrystäni siitä, miten suuressa ristiriidassa Nietzschen filosofia on antisemitismin tai minkään muunkaan rasismin muodon kanssa. Rasismissa vastustetaan kaikkea elämälle tervettä, luonnollista ja hyödyllistä.