Books like Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche

Now I have a better idea why I've never really gotten a handle on Nietzsche. As Ben MacIntyre makes clear in this book, the taint of Nazism that clings to the philosopher's name is largely due to the machinations of his odious sister, Elizabeth, who dominated her mentally ill brother in his last years and then took control of his work afterwards, even going to far as to cobble together one of Nietzsche's "masterpieces," Will to Power, using bits and pieces that Nietzsche had discarded and probably never meant for publication. She also wrote a hagiographic and self-serving biography of her brother, which cast her in a far more favorable light than her brother ever perceived her. (In fact, the two had a complex and contentious relationship, and Nietzsche found her politics and beliefs highly objectionable.)The title refers to a German colony that Elizabeth had previously tried to establish in Paraguay. The colony was a failure, but it was Elizabeth's second act, as keeper of the Nietzsche archives and all-around fascist toady, that is most fascinating. As she worked ceaselessly to build a cult around her brother, she also imposed her own anti-Semite and pro-Nazi views upon her brother's legacy. Yet as MacIntyre notes:"His works do not support Nazism or anything like it, and Nietzsche himself, I feel certain, would have looked with horror on what was done in his name. He opposed German nationalism and every mass movement; he distrusted ideologues; and he loathed anti-Semitism."Part biography, part travelogue, and part intellectual history, Forgotten Fatherland didn't bring me much closer to understanding Nietzsche's philosophy, but it certainly made me understand how his philosophy was unjustly appropriated by others. As a bonus, I learned quite a bit about Paraguay's colorful and tragic history. The end of the book, which details what finally became of Elizabeth's German colony, provides an edifying example of the folly of notions of racial "purity."