Nueva Germania, Paraguay

                             Nueva Germania (Paraguay, January, 1997)

   Ever since I’ve been interested in Nietzsche, I’ve tried to visit places that were important in his life. Nietzsche never went to Paraguay, but his younger sister Elizabeth did. And her adventures there form an important part of the incredible story of the way in which she constructed an image of her brother that was to have far-reaching and disastrous consequences.

   I met Blanca in Asuncion on December 24. We then went on by bus to Brazil, where we visited the magnificent Iguaçu Falls) and then to Buenos Aires. After Blanca flew back to Spain, I returned to Asuncion from Buenos Aires by bus (18 hours; $50).

Wednesday, January 7.

   I got into Asuncion early, and I checked in again at the Hotel Nanduti ($14 per night, w/o air-conditioning). I wandered around town in a rather unsuccessful attempt to do some errands.

   I went down to the docks to check out boats up river. The Crucero evidently no longer exists. No naval boats either. One hulk was about ready to leave for Antequera (20 hours), and I’m sure glad I missed it. I had lunch (rice, meat, batata, and a large beer) at the docks.

   I passed by the tourist office, and found a pamphlet with the following sentence:

“No further than 34 km, at the other side of the ‘Puente de la Amistad’, the 275 waterfalls of Yguazu let the visitors speakless by its majestic ness” [sic].

   I ate at the restaurant “Asuncion.”

   The city is not impressive, although it once might have been. The streets are filled with potholes and most of the buildings are in an advanced state of decay. The stores are sparsely stocked with nondescript merchandise. The total effect was rather pathetic.

Thursday, January 8.

   Today, I’d go to Nueva Germania, a small village in the middle of nowhere. Why? Here’s where Elizabeth Nietzsche comes into the picture.

   In 1885, Elisabeth had married Bernhard Forster, a prominent anti-Semitic agitator and nationalist. There seems little reasonable doubt that Nietzsche was opposed to anti-Semitism and to his sister’s marriage. This comes out most clearly in some of his letters. Consider the following letter, written to his sister in Paraguay, 1887:

"One of the greatest stupidities you have committed--for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti-Semitic chief expresses foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me ever again with ire and melancholy . . . . It is a matter of honor to me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal regarding anti-Semitism, namely opposed, as I am in my writings" (quoted by Kaufmann, p.45).

   After getting into trouble for his provocative behavior, Forster hit upon a plan of founding a colony in Paraguay. He traveled to South America in order to explore the possibilities. And he wrote a book about his researches.

   In 1886, he and Elizabeth led a founding party of colonists to the spot about 150 miles north of Asuncion, which they christened Nueva Germania.

   Forster had made a deal with the Paraguayan government that involved his pledge to settle a large number of families in the colony before the title to the land was granted. This he was not able to do. And it turned out that he had lied to the colonists about this and about many other facets of the colonial enterprise. Things began to close in on Forster as he sank deeper into debt. He lapsed into despondency, and poisoned himself in the Hotel Del Lago, in San Bernardino, near Asuncion.

   After Forster's suicide, Elisabeth returned to devote full time to her brother.

   The Nietzsche “legend.” Once back home. Elisabeth began to use her energy and talents for propaganda to shape what has come to be known as the “Nietzsche legend.”

   When Nietzsche went insane (in January, 1889), his writings were at last beginning to attract attention in academic circles. E.g., Georg Brandes (1842-1927) lectured on him in 1888 in Copenhagen; Nietzsche’s fame began to spread.

   Elisabeth realized this and attempted to use her brother to further her own ends (nationalism, anti-Semitism). Her attempt to graft her brother’s philosophy onto her late husband’s anti-Semitic nationalism is nicely symbolized by her changing her name to “Forster-Nietzsche.”

   With her brother insane, she became the self-appointed guardian of his thought. She obtained copyrights for N.'s works and letters. She founded the Nietzsche Archiv, her "official" institution to guard her brother's thought. She thus established herself in a position where her authority as an interpreter of her brother's thought was hard to challenge; after all, she had access to documents that no one else had. She wrote several popular biographies of her brother as well as a flood of articles. (She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times.)

   Elisabeth's shaping of the public image of her brother was perhaps accomplished most successfully by her handling of Nietzsche's Nachlass, the unpublished mass of notes and manuscripts that him left behind when he died. She held back important material. E.g., she did not publish Ecce Homo until 1908.

   Most important in this regard was her creation (1901, 1904, and 1906), out of notes and incomplete sketches, of what she announced as N.'s magnum opus: the so-called The Will to Power. She arranged N.'s notes according to a 4 line draft that N. had in fact discarded.

   It was Elisabeth who later attempted to persuade Hitler that Nietzsche was an important philosophical precursor of Nazism. And it was she who persuaded Hitler to visit the Nietzsche Archiv (where H. posed by a bust of N. in a famous picture). The Nazis appointed several scholars [Oehler, Baumler] to "interpret" Nietzsche, which they often did by quoting him out of context and by excising words without indicating that this is what they were doing. It was by such unscholarly methods that the claim that Nietzsche was a German nationalist and racist was supported.

   Nueva Germania is still there. I visited Paraguay during the Christmas break. From Asuncion, I took a five hour bus ride to the small village of Santa Rosa, on the road to the Brazilian border. From there another bus took me 20 kilometers to Nueva Germania.

   The place is extremely attractive, despite the often stupefying heat; it is framed by two beautiful rivers. And it is filled with Germans. When I got into town, I poked around looking for a place to sleep. I stopped at a Brigett Kuch’s general store to inquire, and the first thing I encountered was an old woman giving German lessons to a young boy.

   Most of the current inhabitants—some of whom I met and talked with--are descended from immigrants that came after Forster, although there are several descendents of original colonists left.

   There seems to be little precise memory about the origins of the colony, although they have instituted an annual celebration of the colony’s foundation, part of which involves the submission of historical essays by school children. I got my hands on one, and it still associates Forster with Nietzsche’s ideas. Elisabeth had, after all, done a superb job. It’s a shame that it was a lie.

   The trip turned out to be agreeable experience.I got a bus to the terminal and then another to Santa Rosa (5 ½ hrs; $6). Then I got a local bus to Nueva Germania (27 kms from Santa Rosa).

   Nueva Germania has a pleasant appearance, although the people are obviously quite poor.

   In the first place I stopped, I ordered a beer from a boy about 12, who was talking with an older woman, presumably his grandmother. When I sat down, I realized that the woman was helping the boy with his German lesson. It turned out that the owners of the place were all German.

   I had a long talk with Carlotta (74 years old). Her father had come from Germany in 1929. She had been to Germany. She complained about the poverty and the crime in Paraguay.

   The place I stayed is was a grocery store, with several small rooms off to the side. Children, cats, chickens, dogs crawl indiscriminately over the dirt floor.

   I took a walk about town. Lush vegetation; red dirt streets.

   I ate next door (a milanesa) in the store of a man named Neuman, who descended from an original colonist. His daughter, Lisa (16) was obviously interested to learn that I wan an American.

   I had a beer and turned in early. I’ve had better nights. I’d developed a terrible itch on my arms and legs, and it was driving me crazy. The “bed” was a wooden slab filled with holes. The fan didn’t work, and it was extremely hot. The WC was a dirty hole out back. All night various animals kept up a constant din.

Friday, January 9.

   When I got up, I went into the store, where Carlotta, her daughter-in-law, and a third woman and a young man were all jabbering away in German. Another blond man entered and entered the conversation. No one seemed to pay much attention to me.

   I paid for my room ($6 for two nights). Frau Fischer sent me over to her aunt, Flora Fischer. She in turn sent me to her brother Juan, who in turn recommended that I go to Tacuruty.

   I went to Dr. Shubert’s hospital, but he hadn’t yet arrived. I walked abound and found a cemetery on the outskirts of town. Most of the graves were unmarked, but I found several Neumans and a Fischer. I bought a beer at a store and talked with a Paraguayan woman who produced her father-in-law, Helmut Lange, who was personable, but didn’t know much. (I took several photos of him.) He and his son (also a German with a Paraguayan mother) recommended Don Ricardo Kuchenmeister.

   I went back to the clinic. After al long wait (along with some Mennonites) I got to see Dr. Schubert ($2 for the visit). He diagnosed my skin problem as an allergy, and he prescribed shots and pills ($25 and $2 for the application). He was friendly enough, although he appeared rushed. He recommended Alberto Kuck in Teracuty (about 8-10 kms, depending on who you ask). I had a couple of beers and lunch and a nice siesta. I got the fan going and had a shower in the disgusting outhouse.    

   The poverty here is evident, although the town itself is very clean, green, and generally pleasant.

    I walked down to the river, a km from town. It seemed quite clean. I ate at Neumann’s. I then sat out with a beer and watched the stars.

   Not a bad day. I seemed to have solved my skin problem and I got somewhat of a feel for the place.

Saturday, January 10.

   I started out for Tacarcty. At the beginning of the path that takes off from the main road I asked some workers if the path would take me there. They said it would. I walked through lush fields and finally arrived at a cluster of houses where the path seemed to peter out. I asked a barely intelligible peasant if I was going right for Tacuruty and he said that I wasn’t. There was evidently a way to get there, but it involved wading along the river. He told me, however, that the Flascams lived near by. After a while I finally found them and talked with an old woman. Her grandson Christian took me to his home where we waited for his mother, who never showed up. Then I went to a house where I talked to a pleasant Frau Fischer. Another house with pleasant old woman. Her son, Humberto Cardenas said his brother had a whole history of Nueva Germania written out and who would be there in the afternoon. I went to the river and took a pleasant swim.

   I read an essay by a school child that got 2nd prize in the annual town history contest.

   I left with mixed feelings, as I suspect Nietzsche himself would have.

Note:

  I very closely follow Kaufmann (Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, Princeton, 1968), who was responsible for debunking the legend. For a full treatment of N.'s influence, see S. Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany 1890-1990 (1992). R.J. Hollingdale discusses the legendary aspects of Nietzsche's reputation in "The Hero as Outsider" (in the CCN).

   Ben MacIntyre's Forgotten Fatherland (New York: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1992) is a fascinating account of the Forsters' colony in Paraguay and of the role that Elizabeth played in attracting the Nazis and Fascists to her brother.

                                                     Selected Bibliography

Duffy, Michael, and Willard Mittleman. “Nietzsche’s Attitudes Towards the Jews.” Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988): 301-17.

Gilman, Sander.  Conversations with Nietzsche, a Life in the Words of His Contemporaries (1987).

Hayman, Ronald. Nietzsche: A Critical Life. New York: Penguin Books, 1984.

Hollingdale, R.J., Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985.

Kuenzli, Rudolf. “The Nazi Appropriation of Nietzsche.” Nietzsche Studien 12 (1983): 428-35.

Peters, H.F. Zarathustra's Sister. New York: Crown Publishers, 1977. [UMD: B 3316 P17 1977]

Pletsch, Young Nietzsche: Becoming a Genius. New York: Free Press, 1991.

Santaniello, Weaver. Nietzsche, God, and the Jews. Albany: State University of New York Press,1994.

Y. Yovel, "Nietzsche, the Jews, and Ressentiment" (in NGM, pp.214-236).