Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in Rocken, Germany, where his father served as a Lutheran pastor. Friedrich’s father’s death, when he was four years old, was distressing, which he often referred to in his later writings. Soon after, his youngest brother died, resulting in his mother moving her family in with her mother and two sisters. The death of both his father and his brother left Nietzsche in a household of woman including his sister, Elizabeth. After attending local schools in Naumburg, in 1858 Nietzsche won a scholarship to Pforta, one of the best boarding schools in Germany. Here he received a thorough training in the classics and acquired several life-time friends. At the end of this period of schooling, Nietzsche, who had earlier shared the Lutheran religion of his family, found that he had ceased to accept Christianity-a view that soon hardened into outright disbelief in any God. With the highest recommendations of his Pforta...