Nietzsche became insane quite suddenly, and it was years after his break with Wagner.
In fairness, he had been sickly all his life, spent about a third of his pre-breakdown life in bed due to vomiting and severe headaches. That he had neurological problems seems much more likely than the common and scurrilous rumor that he had tertiary syphillis.
Anyway: on 3 January 1889, Nietzsche was walking along in the streets of Turin, when he saw a man flogging a horse, and threw his arms around the animal's neck to protect it, then collapsed to the street. In the next few days, he sent some very strange letters to a number of people, mostly signed "Dionysus", though a few are signed "The Crucified One (der Gekreuzigte)". These letters caused two of his friends to come to Turin and bring him "home" to Basel, where they took him to a psychiatric clinic. Some of his most extreme books - "The Antichrist", "Ecce Homo", and "Nietzsche Contra Wagner" come from the period shortly before his breakdown, but it should be noted that this last mostly consisted of quotations from earlier works.
As a side note, Nietzsche is often accused of being anti-Semitic. And, while he did say some nasty things about "the Jews", he said much more and much, much worse about Christians*: but more than either of these, he utterly scorned anti-Semites. (One of the "delusion notes" written after his breakdown commanded that all anti-Semites be eliminated. On the other hand, another ordered that the German Emperor report to Rome to be shot...)
* But not Jesus: he blamed Paul for what Christianity became.
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Date: 2021-06-24 11:19 pm (UTC)In fairness, he had been sickly all his life, spent about a third of his pre-breakdown life in bed due to vomiting and severe headaches. That he had neurological problems seems much more likely than the common and scurrilous rumor that he had tertiary syphillis.
Anyway: on 3 January 1889, Nietzsche was walking along in the streets of Turin, when he saw a man flogging a horse, and threw his arms around the animal's neck to protect it, then collapsed to the street. In the next few days, he sent some very strange letters to a number of people, mostly signed "Dionysus", though a few are signed "The Crucified One (der Gekreuzigte)". These letters caused two of his friends to come to Turin and bring him "home" to Basel, where they took him to a psychiatric clinic. Some of his most extreme books - "The Antichrist", "Ecce Homo", and "Nietzsche Contra Wagner" come from the period shortly before his breakdown, but it should be noted that this last mostly consisted of quotations from earlier works.
As a side note, Nietzsche is often accused of being anti-Semitic. And, while he did say some nasty things about "the Jews", he said much more and much, much worse about Christians*: but more than either of these, he utterly scorned anti-Semites. (One of the "delusion notes" written after his breakdown commanded that all anti-Semites be eliminated. On the other hand, another ordered that the German Emperor report to Rome to be shot...)
* But not Jesus: he blamed Paul for what Christianity became.