S.L. Frank in the F. Nietzsche archives: A 1932 lecture in Weimar

Appendix: S. L. Frank’s correspondence with E. Förster-Nietzsche; S. L. Frank. Nietzsche und ihm verwandte russische Geister (S. L. Frank. Nietzsche and Russian thinkers related to him)

Abstract

The article reconstructs the general historical and philosophical background of the talk “Nietzsche and Russian thinkers related to him” (“Nietzsche und ihm verwandte rus­sische Geister”) given by S.L. Frank at the Nietzsche Archive on February 25, 1932. On the basis of the archival material from the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar, the correspondence between Frank and Friedrich Nietzsche’s sister, Elisabeth Förster-Niet­zsche is analyzed and the list of guests invited to Frank’s lecture is examined. A special at­tention is dedicated to a general reconstruction of the life and creative path of Carl August Emge, one of the first German professors of philosophy who voluntarily joined the National Socialist Party in December 1931, but who, at the same time, was a friend of Frank’s and the organizer of his lecture at the Nietzsche Archive in 1932. The appendix also presents two pieces of archival material: Frank’s letter to Förster-Nietzsche dated February 18, 1932 (repository: Goethe and Schiller Archives; signature GSA 72/BW 1458); the response letter from Förster-Nietzsche from February 22, 1932 (repository: fourth inventory of S.L. Frank Papers at the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad); two incomplete German abstracts of Frank’s talk at the Nietzsche Archives and their translation into Russian (reposi­tory: 12th box of S.L. Frank Papers at the Bakhmeteff Archives).