History and self-creation

The book asks what could have made the somewhat forgotten cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt so impressive to the much more famous and well-known Friedrich Nietzsche. The first section maps the possibility of conceptual and biographical proximity. He then attempts to prove Burckhardt's fundamental influence on Nietzsche's quarrel with Richard Wagner. The second section moves on to the method of Burckhardt's cultural history, which in many ways foreshadowed Nietzsche's genealogy and thus established the basis for his conception of morality. According to Burckhardt, the Italian Renaissance begins with the preference for self-creation over obedience. The main thesis of the book is: From the moment Nietzsche saw this possibility of bringing the Renaissance form of virtue (without moralin) and the resulting concept of plastic force, he made Burckhardt his model reader, i.e. to whom he addressed his writings as a model for all future readers. Jacob Burckhardt thus assumes epochal significance, for he embodies the image of humanity that Nietzsche assumed in everyone who picks up his books.