Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born on the 15th of October 1844, in the town of Röcken, Prussia. Nietzsche owes his name to being born on the 49th birthday of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia. His father, a Lutheran pastor, died of encephalomalacia, in 1849, when Nietzsche was four years old. In the following year, the family to Naumburg, where he lived for the next eight years before attending one of the most famous and demanding boarding schools, Schulpforta. After graduating, in 1864, he continued his studies at the University of Bonn. He was a brilliant scholar, and at the young age of 24 became special professor of classical philology at the University of Basel in 1869. Plagued by poor eyesight and migraine headaches, he was forced to retire in 1879.
Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy, Out of the Spirit of Music, was published in 1872. His most famous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was published in four parts, stretching from 1883 till 1892. Near the end of his life he suffered a mental breakdown, and was housed in an asylum, but was later put in the care of his family. He died in Weimar on the 25th of August 1900.