'Madness' of Nietzsche was cancer not syphilis

By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent

12:01AM BST 04 May 2003

Comment
Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher thought to have died of syphilis caught from
prostitutes, was in fact the victim of a posthumous smear campaign by anti-Nazis,
according to new research.
A study of medical records has found that, far from suffering a sexually-transmitted disease
which drove him mad, Nietzsche almost certainly died of brain cancer.
The doctor who has carried out the study claims that the universally-accepted story of
Nietzsche having caught syphilis from prostitutes was actually concocted after the Second
World War by Wilhelm Lange-Eichbaum, an academic who was one of Nietzsche's most
vociferous critics. It was then adopted as fact by intellectuals who were keen to demolish
the reputation of Nietzsche, whose idea of a "Superman" was used to underpin Nazism.
The new research was carried out by Dr Leonard Sax, the director of the Montgomery
Centre for Research in Child Development in Maryland, America. Dr Sax made his
discovery after studying accounts of Nietzsche's collapse with dementia in 1889. He was
admitted to an asylum in Basle, Switzerland, and was initially diagnosed as being in the
advanced stages of syphilis.
According to Dr Sax, however, Nietzsche's notes show no signs of the symptoms which are
now regarded as evidence of this disease, such as an expressionless face and slurred
speech.
"Nietzsche exhibited none of these symptoms," said Dr Sax. "His facial expressions
remained vivid, his reflexes were normal, tremor was not present, his handwriting after his
collapse was at least as good as it had been in previous years - and his speech was
fluent."
Dr Sax added that in the late 19th century more than 90 per cent of those with advanced
syphilis rapidly declined and died within five years of diagnosis. Nietzsche, in contrast, lived
for another 11 years.
Nietzsche's physicians, according to Dr Sax, suspected that he may not have had syphilis,
but were unable to suggest an alternative. Reporting his findings in the current issue of the
Journal of Medical Biography, Dr Sax argues that a more plausible diagnosis would have
been that the philosopher was suffering from a slowly-developing brain tumour. This would
account for both Nietzsche's collapse and the migraines and visual disturbances he
suffered.
In the decades following his death in 1900, Nietzsche's ideas of the Ubermensch (the
Superman) - a new kind of human driven by the "will to power" - was adopted by the Nazis.

Following the Second World War, however, Nietzsche's ideas were attacked and his later
writings dismissed as the work of a diseased mind.
According to Dr Sax, the suggestion that Nietzsche caught syphilis from prostitutes arose in
1947. In a book condemning Nietzsche's role in Nazi philosophy, Lange-Eichbaum alleged
that a Berlin neurologist had once told him that the philosopher "had infected himself with
syphilis in a Leipzig brothel during his time as a student there, and that he had been treated
for syphilis by two Leipzig physicians".
Despite the lack of documentary or medical evidence, the allegation has since been
repeated without question by generations of academics, said Dr Sax. "Extraordinarily, this
single passage in Lange-Eichbaum's obscure book is the chief foundation, cited again and
again, that Nietzsche had syphilis."
Nietzsche scholars welcomed the new findings and said that they would help in the
rehabilitation of the philosopher. "Nietzsche was not anti-semitic or a nationalist, and hated
the herd mentality," said Prof Stephen Houlgate, a Nietzsche scholar at Warwick University.
"If this new research gets rid of another misconception about him, I'm delighted."