1844 Born October 15th, at Röcken in Prussian Saxony. His father, Ludwig, a Lutheran pastor, died in 1849 and Nietzsche was brought up in Naumburg by his mother, Franziska Oehler Nietzsche, his sister, his grandmother and two aunts

1854-1858 Studied at the local Gymnasium; 1858-1864 A pupil at the celebrated boarding school at Pforta. Plato and Aeschylus were his favorite authors

1864 Goes to the University of Bonn, with Paul Deussen, his school friend and later an orientalist and philosopher, to study theology and classical philology (linguistics).

1865 Moves to Leipzip to continue his studies under Friedrich Ritschl. Discovers Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea here, attracted by Schopenhauer's aethism.

1869 After publishing some papers in Rheinisches Museum, the university of Basel asks Ritschl if Nietzsche was a suitable candidate for the chair of philology. Ritschl recommends him unqualifiedly and unhesitatingly, and Neitzsche becomes a university professor without even taking the doctorate (Leipzig conferred the degree immediately without examination). His inaugural lecture was Homer and Classical Philology. He was promoted to full professor within a year.

1870 At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, Nietzsche joins the ambulance corps of the German army. Illness forces him to quit, and after a short and insufficient period of convalescence, he returns to Basel. At Basel, Nietzsche often visits Richard Wagner's villa on the lake of Lucerne.

1872 Nietzsche publishes The Birth of Tragedy from the spirit of Music, in which he argues, among other things, that contemporary German culture could be saved if it were permeated with the spirit of Wagner. This caused Nietzsche to lose credit in the world of classical scholarship.

1873-6 Untimely Mediations or Considerations (Thoughts Out of Season). Attacked David Straus as the representative of German Cultural philistinism, attacked the idolization of historical learning as a substitute for living culture, extolled Schopenhauer, and finally Wagner as the rebirth of Greek genius.

1878-9 Human, All-Too-Human. Advocated a positivistic outlook, attacked metaphysics

1879 Resigns his chair at Basel because of bad health and dissatisfaction. Spends the next ten years leading a "wandering" life, seeking health in various places in Switzerland and Italy.

1881 The Dawn of Day. "Campaign" against the morality of self-renunciation. Advocates "eternal recurrence"—a test a strength, of Nietzsche’s own power to say "yes" to life instead of Schopenhauer’s "no."

1882 Joyful Wisdom. Christianity is hostile to life. God is dead.

1883, 4, & 5. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Doctrine of the "Superman" and the "Transvaluation" of Values.

1886 Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. 1887, A Genealogy of Morals. Both "calmer" statements of Nietzsche’s ideas in Zarathustra.

1889 Case against Wagner. Twilight of the Idols, The Anti-Christ. Ecce Homo. Suffers a mental breakdown, collapsing in the streets of Turin. Taken to a clinic in Basel, but released after treatment, not really recovered, and sent to his mother’s home in Naumburg. After her death he lived at Weimar with his sister. Died in 1900.