Abstract

Which Books by Teichmüller Did Nietzsche Have Access to? An Attempt at a Reconstruction. The question of which books by Gustav Teichmüller Nietzsche had available has not been satisfactorily clarified to this day. Drawing on sources not considered so far, including the correspondence between Teichmüller and Franz Overbeck and a list that Teichmüller kept about copies of his writings he had sent to colleagues and friends found in his Nachlass, I conclude that Nietzsche only had four books by Teichmüller at his disposal (apart from the opusculum Ueber die Reihenfolge der platonischen Dialoge). Three of these were loans: Aristotelische Forschungen I from the University Library of Basel in the summer semester of 1870, Die Wirkliche und die scheinbare Welt, from Overbeck between late summer 1882 (at the earliest) and November 1885, and the Neue Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe III also from Overbeck from October 1883 to November 1885. Only the Aristotelischen Forschungen II seem to have been Nietzsche’s personal property (since 1869). Although it is often assumed that Nietzsche also read other books by Teichmüller – e. g., the Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe, the Neue Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe II, and the two volumes of the Literarische Fehden im vierten Jahrhundert v. Chr. – they were most likely not available to Nietzsche.