Ernst Müller’s Reflections on Judaism and Friedrich Nietzsche

In 1900, the year of Friedrich Nietzsche’s death, three ambitious intellectuals honoured his literary work in three different ways. First, Rudolf Steiner, who later became known as the founder of the Anthroposophical Society, gave a memorial lecture on Nietzsche at the library of the German Theosophical Society in Berlin. Second, Martin Buber, who developed into the leading figure of the Jewish cultural renaissance, chose a eulogy on Nietzsche as his own first German publication. Third, the still lesser-known Austrian teacher and librarian Ernst Müller (1880–1954), who met Buber and Steiner in his youth, provided the insights he gained into Nietzsche’s alternating tone of either blaming or praising the Jews in the form of twelve short paragraphs. Müller’s German reflections, titled “Thoughts on Nietzsche and His Relation to the Jews,” which was published in Theodor Herzl’s weekly newspaper Die Welt (5 October 1900), will be analyzed in my lecture in due consideration of both Buber’s early enthusiasm for and Steiner’s ambivalent attitude towards Nietzsche’s work. Müller, then a twenty-year-old student in Vienna, appreciated the famous philosopher, but showed quite mixed feelings in his obituary revolving around the correlation between ethics, individualism, social responsibility, and Nietzsche’s views of Jews and Judaism. Finally, Müller’s relationship to Nietzsche will be discussed in the broader perspective of his particular commitment to Zionism and his strong interest in mysticism on the one hand and the role he played in the emerging anthroposophical movement on the other.