American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

F. C. S. Schiller, a noted British-and American-trained German pragmatist who was a major early reviewer of Nietzsche, thought his claims to Polishness were plausible, given Nietzsche’s“obviously Slavonic name (niëzky)” and the significant population of people of Slavonic origins in eastern Germany where Nietzsche grew up. He also found it useful for explaining why “Nietzsche’s mind and temper” exhibited such passion and histrionics. It could only be due to his “undeniably Slavonic” inheritance.78 Others agreed, suggesting that Nietzsche’s philosophy bespoke the intellectual distemper of Polish nobility, unable to find their way, like the Anglo-Saxons, to a healthy balance between liberty and order.79 Nietzsche’s exotic “Polishness” took on a special significance for reviewers who were eager to show that Nietzscheism would not, and should not, flourish in America.