About Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher and writer, author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He began his academic career as a classical philologist and was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at age 24. Persistent ill health forced him to resign in 1879, after which he lived and wrote independently while moving among Switzerland, Italy, and the south of France. The following decade was his most productive, during which he completed much of his major work. In 1889, at 44, he suffered a neurological breakdown that left him unable to think clearly and caused paralysis and vascular dementia. He spent his final eleven years under the care of his mother and later his sister.
