Aufsätze und Vorreden aus dem Nachlaß

A posthumous gathering of Nietzsche's essays and prefaces from the early 1870s — pieces he drafted, set aside, and never shaped into a book himself.

by Friedrich Nietzsche632 passages held

German, the original language

First published: 1873(aged 29)
Original language: German

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Overview

This is not a book Nietzsche assembled; it is a container someone else made. Editors at the Kröner Verlag collected it in 1921 from his literary remains — early-1870s essays and drafts written in the years around The Birth of Tragedy. At its centre are the "Five Prefaces to Five Unwritten Books," which Nietzsche wrote in 1872 as a private gift: introductions, exactly as the title says, to books that were never written, among them "Homer's Contest" and "The Greek State." Each opens a line of thought — on the uses of a warlike culture, on truth, on the Greek city — that he carried into his later work and left here in miniature. What a reader meets, then, is a workshop rather than a finished argument: the preoccupations of the young philologist, before the aphorist of the 1880s existed. Because both the selection and the title belong to his editors, the volume records what a later archive chose to keep as much as anything Nietzsche set out to say.

Key concepts

What does Nachlass mean?

Nachlass is the German term for the literary remains a writer leaves unpublished at death — notebooks, drafts, letters and unfinished pieces. This whole volume is Nachlass: essays and drafts from the early 1870s that Nietzsche never shaped into a book. His editors gathered and titled them in 1921, so the selection reflects the archive's later choices as much as anything Nietzsche set out to say.

What are the Five Prefaces to Five Unwritten Books?

They are five short introductions Nietzsche wrote in 1872, each opening a book he never went on to write — among them Homer's Contest and The Greek State. Given privately as a gift, each preface sketches in miniature a line of thought he later developed. They sit at the centre of this volume as finished openings onto books that stayed unwritten.

What is Homer's Contest about?

Homer's Contest is one of the unwritten-book prefaces, and it argues that the Greeks drew their cultural greatness from institutionalised rivalry — the agon, the contest — and even from a controlled cruelty and warlike spirit that a comfortable modern age has disowned. It is an early sketch of Nietzsche's lifelong claim that struggle, not peace, breeds excellence.

What is The Greek State about?

The Greek State is another of the 1872 prefaces, and its argument is deliberately harsh: that high culture and art rest on the leisure of a few, bought by the labour and slavery of the many. Nietzsche presents this not as an ideal to celebrate but as a truth the Greeks saw plainly and the modern age hides from itself.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Prefaces to Books Never Written

What did the young philologist think before the aphorist existed? These gathered papers open lines on the warlike uses of culture, on truth, and on the Greek state, each a seed carried into the later work and left here in miniature.

Assembled by editors in 1921 from Nietzsche's early-1870s remains, the volume centres on the Five Prefaces to Five Unwritten Books, introductions he wrote in 1872 as a private gift to works that never came, among them Homer's Contest and The Greek State. A reader meets a workshop rather than an argument: the preoccupations that surround The Birth of Tragedy, set down before the aphoristic voice of the 1880s existed. Because both the selection and the title belong to the archive, the book records what a later hand chose to keep as much as anything Nietzsche set out to say.

education
culture
aesthetics
metaphysics
genius
art
music
truth
metaphor
becoming

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Within this work

passages held: 632
distinct concepts: 700
by passages held, corpus-wide: #41

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: culture with education.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 9 pairings. 114 shared passages in all. 91 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
culture	education	31
education	pedagogy	28
aesthetics	music	19
logic	metaphysics	11
culture	philosophy	8
aesthetics	education	6
education	philosophy	5
aesthetics	culture	3
aesthetics	pedagogy	3

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1873 Aufsätze und Vorreden aus dem Nachlaß you are here DE
1873 On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne)
An essay he left in manuscript in 1873; its picture of truth as forgotten metaphor did its real work a century later.
DE
1881 The Dawn of Day (Morgenröte)
The book Nietzsche later marked as the start of his campaign against morality — the least read of the mature works, and the seed of the Genealogy.
DE
1882 The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza)
Aphorism 125 gives us the madman and "God is dead"; aphorism 341, the eternal return — the most personal of the mature books.
DEEN
1883 Thus Spake Zarathustra (Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen)
His one work of fiction and his most famous, written across 1883–85; the fourth part he withheld from the public entirely.
DEEN
1889 Twilight of the Idols (Götzendämmerung)
A short, savage précis of his whole philosophy, written in a week in 1888 as his last lucid year ran out.
DE
Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits Von Gut Und Böse)
The 1886 prelude to his late assault on morality, arguing in the open what Zarathustra had delivered in parable.
DE
Ecce Homo (Ecce Homo: Wie Man Wird Was Man Ist)
His last book, a self-portrait written weeks before the collapse and kept from print by his sister until 1908.
DE
Homer and Classical Philology (Homer Und Die Klassische Philologie)
His inaugural lecture at Basel, given at twenty-four — the philologist's public debut, and already the argument that would raise art above scholarship.
DE
Human, All Too Human (Menschliches Allzumenschliches Ein Buch Fuer Freie Geister)
The turn from Wagnerian metaphysics to the cool aphorist — the book in which the "free spirit" first speaks in his own voice.
DE
Nietzsche contra Wagner (Nietzsche Kontra Wagner)
A montage of passages taken from his own earlier books, put together at the very end to show he had judged Wagner rightly all along.
DE
The Antichrist (Der Antichrist)
Intended as the first book of the "revaluation of all values" he did not live to finish — his fiercest word on Christianity, held back until 1895.
DE
The Birth of Tragedy or Hellenism and Pessimism (Die Geburt Der Tragödie)
His first book, and the one that cost him his standing among classicists; its discursive prophecy he would spend the next decade outgrowing.
DEEN
The Case of Wagner (Der Fall Wagner)
His settling of accounts with the composer he had idolised, written in the same 1888 burst as Twilight of the Idols.
DE
The Genealogy of Morals (Zur Genealogie Der Moral)
Three treatises, written quickly in 1887 as a "supplement" to Beyond Good and Evil — his most sustained argument and his most studied book.
DEEN
The Will to Power (Der Wille Zur Macht)
The most notorious book under his name, and one he never assembled: his sister and Peter Gast made it from his notebooks after his collapse.
DE
We Philologists (Wir Philologen)
The scholar's turn against his own discipline: notes for an "untimely meditation" on philology that he abandoned around 1875.
DE

— or open another of their works