Naumburg Sachsen-Anhalt Germany

Laon Cathedral’s towers are copied also in Naumburg at St. Peter and Paul's Cathedral (known in German as the Naumburger Dom), an impressive Cathedral in the late Romanesque and Gothic style, on which construction begins in about 1237.

Frederick II is the eldest of the seven children of Frederick I, Elector of Saxony, and Catherine of Brunswick and Lunenburg.

After the death of his father in 1428, he had taken over the government together with his younger brothers William III, Henry and Sigismund.

In 1433 the Wettins had finally concluded peace with the Hussites.

In 1438, in what is considered the first federal state parliament of Saxony, the parliament receives the right to find together in case of innovations in fiscal matters, also without summoning by the ruler.

After Henry's death in 1435, and after Sigismund is forced in 1440 to renounce his claim and become a bishop, Frederick and William divide their possessions.

In the Division of Altenburg in 1445, William III had received the Thuringian and Frankish part, and Frederick got the eastern part of the principality.

The mines remain common possessions.

Disputes over the distribution had led, however, in 1446 to the Saxon Fratricidal War, which finds an end only on January 27, 1451, with the peace of Naumburg.

In the Treaty of Eger in 1459, elector Frederick, Duke William III and the king of Bohemia George of Podebrady will fix the borders between Bohemia and Saxony, at the height of the Ore Mountains and the middle of the Elbe.

The border, which still holds today, belongs therefore to the oldest extant borders of Europe.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s illness drives him to find climates more conducive to his health.

He travels frequently, and will therefore live until 1889 as an independent author in different cities.

He spends many summers in Sils Maria, near St. Moritz in Switzerland, and many winters in the Italian cities of Genoa, Rapallo and Turin and in the French city of Nice.

In 1881, when France occupied Tunisia, he had planned to travel to Tunis to view Europe from the outside, but later abandoned that idea (probably for health reasons).

While in Genoa, Nietzsche's failing eyesight had prompted him to explore the use of typewriters as a means of continuing to write.

He is known to have tried using the Hansen Writing Ball, a contemporary typewriter device.

Nietzsche occasionally returns to Naumburg to visit his family, and, especially during this time, he and his sister have repeated periods of conflict and reconciliation.

He lives on his pension from Basel, but also receives aid from friends.

A past student of his, Peter Gast (born Heinrich Köselitz), has become a sort of private secretary to Nietzsche.

In 1876, Koselitz had transcribed the crabbed, nearly illegible handwriting of Nietzsche for the first time with Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.

He has gone on to both transcribe and proofread the galleys for almost all of Nietzsche's works.

On at least one occasion, February 23, 1880, the usually broke Koselitz had received two hundred marks from their mutual friend, Paul Ree.

Koselitz is one of the very few friends Nietzsche allows to criticize him.

In responding most enthusiastically to Zarathustra, Koselitz does feel it necessary to point out that what ware described as "superfluous" people are in fact quite necessary.

He goes on to list the number of people Epicurus, for example, had to rely on—even with his simple diet of goat cheese.

To the end of his life, Gast and Overbeck will remain consistently faithful friends.

Malwida von Meysenbug remains like a motherly patron even outside the Wagner circle.

Soon Nietzsche had made contact with the music-critic Carl Fuchs.

Nietzsche stands at the beginning of his most productive period.

Beginning with Human, All Too Human in 1878, Nietzsche will publish one book (or major section of a book) each year until 1888, his last year of writing, during which he will complete five.

In 1882, Nietzsche publishes the first part of The Gay Science.

This year he also meets Lou Andreas Salomé, through Malwida von Meysenbug and Paul Rée.

Nietzsche and Salomé spend the summer together in Tautenburg in Thuringia, often with Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth as a chaperone.

Nietzsche, however, regards Salomé less as an equal partner than as a gifted student.

Salomé reported that he had asked her to marry him and that she had refused, though the reliability of her reports of events has come into question.

Nietzsche's relationship with Rée and Salomé breaks up in the winter of 1882/1883, partially because of intrigues conducted by Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth.

Amidst renewed bouts of illness, living in near isolation after a falling-out with his mother and sister regarding Salomé, Nietzsche flees to Rapallo.