Bernhard Förster

For other people named Förster, see Forster (surname).
Bernhard Förster

Bernhard Förster
Born (1843-03-31)March 31, 1843
Delitzsch, Province of Saxony
Died June 3, 1889(1889-06-03) (aged 46)
San Bernardino, Paraguay
Cause of death Suicide
Known for Nueva Germania
Spouse(s) Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

Bernhard Förster (March 31, 1843 – June 3, 1889) was a German teacher. He was married to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, the sister of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Bernhard Förster (2nd left) among other German antisemitic writers, ca. 1880

Biography

Förster became a leading figure in the anti-Semitic faction on the far right of German politics and wrote on the Jewish question, characterizing Jews as constituting a "parasite on the German body".[1] In order to support his beliefs he set up the Deutscher Volksverein (German People's League) in 1881 with Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg.[2]

He left Germany in 1886 to emigrate to Paraguay and the following year he set up a colony known as "Nueva Germania". However, as this initiative was a failure, he eventually committed suicide by poisoning himself with a combination of morphine and strychnine in his room at the Hotel del Lago in San Bernardino, Paraguay on June 3, 1889.

Bernhard Förster was laid to rest in San Bernardino.[3]

References

  1. Hannu Salmi (1994). "Die Sucht nach dem germanischen Ideal" (in German). Also published in Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 6/1994, pp. 485-496
  2. Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship, 1970, pp. 59-60
  3. Kracht, C., & Woodard, D., Five Years, Vol. 1 (Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2011).
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