The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche became one of the most influential thinkers of the nineteenth century. Nietzsche's utterance 'God is dead', his insistence that the meaning of life is to be found in purely human terms, and his doctrine of the Superman and the will to power were all later seized upon and unrecognisably twisted by, among others, Nazi intellectuals. The works of Friedrich Nietzsche have fascinated readers around the world ever since the publication of his first book more than a hundred years ago.