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Nietzsche's View of Luther and the Reformation in Morgenröthe and Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Heinz Bluhm*
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

Extract

This paper is a continuation of two earlier articles on Nietzsche's attitude toward Luther. In his first creative period ending with Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, Nietzsche had sung the praises of Luther and the Reformation. Martin Luther was one of his proudly acknowledged heroes, together with such men as Richard Wagner and Arthur Schopenhauer. Nietzsche chose to see in Luther one of his spiritual forebears and in the Reformation a definite harbinger of modern culture. Strongly opposed to Roman Catholicism, young Nietzsche let all the light fall on Protestantism and especially upon its fountainhead, Martin Luther. He was convinced that a progressive spirit manifested itself in sixteenth-century Protestant Germany. He thoroughly approved of it and admonished his contemporaries to ally themselves with the mind that was in Martin Luther and to hold fast to the heritage of the German Reformation.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 1953 , pp. 111 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1953

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References

1 Heinz Bluhm, “Das Lutherbild des jungen Nietzsche,” PMLA, rviii (1943), 264-288, and “Nietzsche's Idea of Luther in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches,” PMLA, lxv (1950), 1053-68.

2 x, 62-65. All references are to Nietzsche's Gesammelte Werke (Milnchen: Musarion Verlag, 1921-29).

3 Jahrbuch der Luther-Gesellschaft, ii-iii (1920/21), 61-106.