In september 1858 Franziska Nietzsche received a letter from the rector of Pforta boarding school offering Fritz a scholarship at the best and most famous secondary school in Germany. According to Elizabeth, news of the outstanding academic promise he had shown at the Cathedral Grammar School had reached the rector's ears via Naumburg relatives. Fritz had wanted to go to Pforta since the age of ten, expressing his desire in something less than magnificent verse:

And since the scholarship would secure his financial future for the next six years it was an offer Franziska – though bitterly regretting severance from the child of her heart – could not refuse. The following month Fritz became a Pforta pupil and would remain one until September 1864.

Originally a Cistercian abbey called Porta Coeli (Gate of Heaven), Pforta (‘Gate’ – now to education rather than heaven) had been transformed into a school in 1543 by the Prince-Elector Moritz of Saxony, a ‘dissolution’ and recycling of the monasteries that was a major plank of the Protestant Reformation. (Ten years later Edward VI, in a similar spirit, founded Christ's Hospital on the site of the former Greyfriars friary in the City of London.) Pforta, or Schulpforte (Pforta School), as it is known today, is about an hour's walk from Naumburg – Fritz sometimes walked home for the holidays.