Abstract

Malwida von Meysenbug was among the most faithful of Nietzsche’s companions on his untimely journey through life. A student of the human soul, a theorist of self-improvement, a pedagogue animated by a strong social afflatus, dedicated to the betterment of the least, and among them women, Malwida von Meysenbug earned a place in the history of Western culture independently of her long friendship with Nietzsche. The life trajectory of this ‘idealist’ of iron rigour and intellectual honesty spans almost a century of political, social and cultural revolutions, in which her figure is anything but peripheral. Close not only to Nietzsche, but to leading figures of the century, from Wagner to Mazzini, from Garibaldi to the anarchist Herzen, Malwida is a Person in the truest sense of this term. ‘Voilà un homme’ one might say of her, if it were not odd to refer to the theorist of the ‘superior woman’ in this way. In this article, an attempt will be made to account for the originality of Malwida von Meysenbug’s thought and to highlight the influence, not only human but above all intellectual, that she had on Nietzsche’s thought.