Ben Macintyre - Forgotten fatherland: the search for Elisabeth Nietzsche

Elisabeth and Friedrich Nietzsche, posing for their confirmation photographs. he always laid stress upon his being much older than I was and used to call me a little girl, although there was only two years difference between us, Elisabeth later wrote.

The composer Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima, on whose life Elisabeth modelled her own. Nietzsche visited the Wagners home at Tribschen on Lake Lucerne twenty-three times and declared at no price would I relinquish from my life the Tribschen days.

Friedrich Nietzche while a young professor of Classical Philology at Basle University. Elisabeth would spend at least half the year tending to her sickly brother and acting as his housekeeper.

Bernhard Frster, a professional antisemite and devoted follower of Richard Wagner, who married Elisabeth Nietzsche on 22nd May 1985, Wagners birthday. Elisabeth was captivated by his views on race, vegetarianism and culture, and helped him to collect signatures for an anti-semitic petition they presented to Bismarck.

Lou Salom, Paul Re and Friedrich Nietzsche pose for a photograph to celebrate their Holy Trinity, 13 May 1882. Elisabeth deeply disliked both Paul Re (who was Jewish) and Lou Salom, whom she accused of trying to seduce her brother when exactly the reverse was true.

Elisabeth Nietzsche at around the time she left for Paraguay.

The Rio Aguarya-um, the larger of the two rivers marking the boundaries of the German colony.

The Blanca Doa (White Lady) stopped regularly on the journey upriver to take on more cargo including an oil tanker, a gas-powered fridge and a live puma.

The first colonists of Nueva Germania, c. 1886. Our mission is the purification and rebirth of humanity, and the preservation of human culture, they were told.

Elisabeth (second from left) at a morning meeting with the chief colonists. With her husband sinking deeper into depression and debt, she increasingly took over the running of what she referred to as her colony.

Main Street, Nueva Germania, 1890.

Main Street, Nueva Germania, 1991.

Frsterhof, the large colonial mansion which Frster built for Elisabeth in 1888. I never imagined it to be half so magnificent, she told her mother.

The ruins of Frsterhof, 1991, with a street sign in memory of the colonys founder. What remains of the building is used as a pig sty.

The Schweikhart brothers, Nueva Germania, 1991. Their Paraguayan neighbours refer to them as gente perdita, the lost people.

Rolfe Richter, Colonia Independencia, 1991. Under President Stroessner, Paraguay became a haven for fugitive Nazis and ex-combatants, including Josef Mengele, the doctor of Auschwitz.

The Germans of Nueva Germania have become as addicted to yerba mat, or Paraguayan tea, as the Paraguayans themselves.

Heinrich and Martha Schtte with their grandchildren, Nueva Germania, 1991. His grandfather travelled on the steamer Uruguay with the first group of settlers.

Pablo Flascam plays The Mennonite Waltz on a squeeze-box brought by his grandfather from Chemnitz in 1886.

Magdalena and Bernhard Fischer, Nueva Germania, 1991. We are dying out, the pure Germans, she says.

The grave of Bernhard Frster in the overgrown cemetery at San Bernardino near where he poisoned himself in 1889. In 1934 Hitler sent a package of German soil to be strewn on the grave, in honour of a fallen martyr to the anti-semitic cause.

The insane Nietzsche on the balcony at Villa Silberblick in Weimar, shortly before his death in 1900. From time to time Elisabeth would dress him up to be exhibited to special guests.