“The Misbegotten”: Fritz Koegel and His Family

As a talented editor, Fritz Koegel found his calling at the Nietzsche Archive. He became embroiled in a conflict with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, a conflict Rudolf Steiner was also drawn into. Career setbacks, artistic endeavors, and a family life overshadowed by depression lead to early tragedies.

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When Rudolf Steiner visited the Nietzsche Archive in Naumburg for the first time on May 26, 1894, along with his colleagues from the archive and the poet Gabriele Reuter, he also met Fritz Koegel. The newly appointed editor of Nietzsche’s works read passages from Der Antichrist to the visitors—one of the posthumous writings of the philosopher, who was becoming increasingly famous at the time and who, though present under the same roof as them, was no longer conscious of himself.

Koegel was born on August 2, 1860—about half a year before Steiner. He was the eldest of a pastor’s fourteen children. He studied history, German literature, and philosophy in Munich, Halle, and Göttingen, but never had any real goal for his career. “A man like me is not cut out to be a scholar; as a poet, this or that is lacking; what, then, is he to become?”¹ In 1883, he wrote a dissertation on “The Embodied Forms of Poetry” [Die körperlichen Gestalten der Poesie], took up the editorship of an encyclopedia, and authored essays and books. He was also very active in sports. He loved hiking and climbing in the Alps and was an early and enthusiastic cyclist. When his cousins, the Mannesmann brothers, asked him in 1886 to assist them in setting up their pipe rolling mills, he started working in technical and commercial sectors, and, in 1890, he even became managing director of the German-Austrian Mannesmann Pipe Works [Deutsch-Österreichischen Mannesmannröhren-Werke]. But when the company ran into difficulties, he lost his job in 1893. He then saw his future career in diplomacy until he received a request from Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche to publish her brother’s works. He accepted the task.

Koegel had already discovered Nietzsche’s writings for himself by the late 1880s. He gave a lecture on Nietzsche and anonymously published a collection of aphorisms inspired by him, Vox humana. Auch ein Beichtbuch [The human voice. Also a book of confessions]. He hoped the book would make the poet-philosopher more accessible to the public. “That I found Nietzsche is the lucky stroke of my life, and that I did not need to turn back on my path but could turn my steps onto his path and ascend upon it to the heights toward which I, too, was striving—that is what gave me the courage to follow him and to speak openly in his manner and speech, insofar as it is also my manner and speech.”²

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche was initially quite enthusiastic about Koegel and wrote to Gustav Naumann, her publisher’s nephew, “Dr. Koegel’s vast knowledge, his talent for organization, his capacity for work, his precision down to the smallest details, his robust health, and above all his truly astounding understanding of Nietzsche, his ability to grasp even the finest nuances, and his literary tact—I tell you, it is downright without compare!! You and I have bagged the bird by securing such an eminent editor.”³ Of all people, she found Koegel to be the most “congenial” to her brother. Others, such as Kurt Eisner and Steiner, also regarded him as the ideal editor for Nietzsche.

Pretentious Display

Rudolf Steiner was a frequent visitor to the Nietzsche Archive in 1895 and 1896 and became friends with Koegel who often sought his advice regarding the publication of the volumes belonging to the literary estate. But the Nietzsche editor was strong-willed—two co-editors had already left after a short time because they could not find their place alongside or between Koegel and Förster-Nietzsche. Koegel’s relationship with the archive director became increasingly strained. He could scarcely bear her presence any longer and wrote to an acquaintance on May 2, 1896, “She lacks any intellectual finesse and the most elementary feeling for literary form: in tone, style, and personal undertones, everything she writes herself is out of place, wrong, and almost physically painful to me. But on top of that, she speaks, hastily judging and condemning, about things for which she has not the slightest feeling (not to mention knowledge). [. . .] It outrages me every day to have to witness and listen to this insincerity, this pretentious display.”⁴

When a romantic relationship developed between Koegel and Emily Gelzer—the 19-year-old daughter of a family friend of Förster-Nietzsche—the tension between Nietzsche’s sister and her editor became unbearable. Steiner, who—since the Nietzsche Archive had moved to Weimar in August 1896—had been giving Förster-Nietzsche philosophy lessons on her express wish, “found this rift becoming more noticeable and more awkward with each passing day.”⁵ He wrote to Anna Eunike about it in late November 1896: “It only needs a spark, and the most beautiful story can unfurl.”⁶ A few days later, the story did indeed unfurl—and Steiner was right in the middle of it even though he actually had nothing to do with it.

Throughout the whole of 1896, Förster-Nietzsche had been working to win over Steiner as co-editor of the Nietzsche edition. He tried to fend off her advances, partly because he realized that, given the atmosphere he perceived in the archive, he would not be able to work productively there. After a philosophy lesson in early December—at a time when the situation was already rather stormy due to Koegel’s scheduled engagement to Emily Gelzer—Förster-Nietzsche again tried urgently to persuade Steiner. He himself found the situation extremely embarrassing because he feared that it would escalate irrevocably if Koegel learned of their conversation. So, Steiner requested a promise from the archivist, which she gave: not to mention this conversation to anyone; it had, as it were, never happened. Förster-Nietzsche, however, broke her word in triplicate: she recounted the conversation to a friend of Koegel’s, to his sister, and to his future mother-in-law in a way that served her own purposes. Koegel, who received reports from three different sources, was furious and wrote an indignant letter to Steiner. Steiner had great difficulty calming his friend down. He reported to Eunike on December 10, 1896, “The things Mrs. Förster is doing are simply outrageous. She wants to play with people as she pleases. Because she doesn’t have the courage to tell Koegel directly what she intends to do with him, she has his sister tell him that I said I would be willing to publish the edition together with him. This is not true. Moreover, she speaks to everyone in such a way that they are bound to have ideas that I want to oust Koegel and am conducting things behind his back. Koegel has written me an impertinent letter about this.”⁷

On December 11, 1896, a discussion took place between Förster-Nietzsche, Koegel, Steiner, and two witnesses. Afterward, Koegel wrote to his friend Gustav Naumann, “St[einer] is completely in the right. The scene in the archive ended [. . .] with Mrs. Förster being completely unmasked. After much twisting and turning, she had to admit, rather brusquely, that she had placed St[einer] in a compromising situation.”⁸ After discovering all the intrigues the archive director was plotting against him, Koegel then embraced Steiner as his confidant once more.

A Kindred Destiny

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche was now on bad terms with both gentlemen and tried to get rid of her editor as quickly as possible. The final break came in June 1897. Koegel left the archive and returned to the world of business. He accepted the role of managing director of the Ernst Sieglin chemical works in Düsseldorf. And he was successful there as well, but the work did not fulfill him in soul or spirit. Shortly before joining the Nietzsche Archive, he had discovered a passion for composing. He pursued this intensively in his spare time, and he was also active in the Düsseldorf Independent Literary Society [Freier Literarischer Verein].

Emily Gelzer had since become his wife. She had studied singing before their marriage and so the couple often made music together. And not only that—they wrote children’s poems together, which they published in 1900 under the title Arche Noah [Noah’s Ark].⁹ Their son Wolfgang was born in 1899 and twin daughters Eva and Susanne in 1901. But Emily Koegel’s tendency for depression cast a shadow over the family and led to two suicide attempts.

After a few years, Koegel had again grown weary of factory work and longed for a more creative occupation. Together with the architect and health reformer, Paul Schultze-Naumburg, he founded the Saalecker Werkstätten [Saalecker workshops] in the summer of 1904, a society dedicated to the design of home furnishings, houses, and gardens. But shortly before the family’s move to their new home in Bad Kösen, Koegel suddenly fell ill and, on October 20, 1904, he died in his wife’s arms in Jena, at the age of only 44. Earlier, in 1898, he had written to a friend that he had a strong feeling his life would be short. The young widow resumed her vocal studies in Berlin and met the poet Gustav Kühl there in 1906. The two planned to marry in September and were already furnishing their apartment. When the furniture arrived from Düsseldorf in August, Emily Koegel again fell into a deep depression, which led the 29-year-old to throw herself out of the apartment window. Barely two months later—exactly on the second anniversary of Fritz Koegel’s death—her fiancé died during an appendectomy.

What a destiny this exceptionally gifted couple had! “The two of them are truly kindred spirits to Nietzsche; they really have a Nietzschean destiny,” Emil Bock observed.¹⁰ This destiny inspired their poet friend Wilhelm Schäfer to write a novella about them in 1909, which he entitled Die Missgeschickten [The misbegotten].¹¹ They were richly gifted personalities who, however, were never quite “born” into their circumstances in the right way and whose lives ended prematurely.

The three children were raised by their grandmother, Clara Gelzer. The two daughters trained to become nurses. Eva Koegel joined the Christian Community in 1951. But like her mother, she suffered from depression and, like her, took her own life in 1955. Her twin sister Susanne joined the Christian Community on July 8, 1957, “and experienced this as a healing process in her destiny.”¹² This is how Bock recorded it; he had gotten to know both sisters and thus gained insight into the Koegel letters and documents, from which he made copies.¹³

But there was a second connection between the Koegel family and anthroposophy. Koegel’s youngest brother, Martin, married the teacher Hertha Garbe in 1905. She found anthroposophy through her family doctor, Ludwig Noll, and became one of the first Waldorf teachers in Stuttgart. Her two children, Irene and Fritz, naturally attended the Waldorf School as well. When little Fritz first met Steiner, the latter said, “So, you’re Fritz; I knew your uncle, Dr. Fritz Koegel, quite well.”¹⁴ Unfortunately, Hertha Koegel soon fell seriously ill and died in 1923. Rudolf Steiner arranged for the children to be taken in by the del Monte family. When the daredevil Fritz came home in December 1922 with a complicated fracture of the elbow joint, Steiner happened to be present. He “palpated the fractured bones, carefully set them, splinted them with wood and bandages, and sent him for an X-ray to check the alignment. There, the treatment was praised, and nothing was changed in the professional bandaging.”¹⁵ Later, the second Fritz Koegel (d. 1997) became a Waldorf teacher and co-founder of the Kräherwald Waldorf School in Stuttgart.

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Translation Joshua Kelberman
Image Fritz Koegel and Emily Gelzer, presumably around the time of their engagement in November/December 1896, Source: Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Wilhelm Schäfer, Die Missgeschickten [The misbegotten], edited by C. Knüppel & C. Lüttke (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2011 [1909]), 139.
2. Anonymous [Fritz Koegel], Vox humana. Auch ein Beichtbuch [The human voice. Also a book of confessions] (Berlin: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1892), XI f.
3. David Marc Hoffmann, Zur Geschichte des Nietzsche-Archivs. Chronik, Studien und Dokumente [On the history of the Nietzsche Archive. Chronicle, studies, and documents] (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1991), 188.
4. Fritz Koegel to Kathinka Travers, May 2, 1896, transcript from the Bock estate, Rudolf Steiner Archive, Dornach.
5. Rudolf Steiner, “Frau E. Förster-Nietzsche und ihr Ritter von komischer Gestalt. Eine Antwort auf Dr. Seidls ‘Demaskierung’” [Ms. E. Förster-Nietzsche and her knight of strange appearance: A response to Dr. Seidl’s ‘Unmasking’], Die Gesellschaft XVI, vol. II, no. 4 (May 1900); today, in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kultur- und Zeitgeschichte 1887–1901 [Collected essays on cultural and contemporary history], GA 31, 3rd edn., (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1989), 577 f.
6. Rudolf Steiner, Sämtliche Briefe, Band 2: 1890–1897 [Collected letters], GA 38/2 (Basel: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 2023), 813.
7. Ibid., 831 f.
8. See footnote 3, p. 221. The exact sequence of events in this story is documented there and is also described in detail in chapters 17 and 19.4 of my book Rudolf Steiner. Die Weimarer Jahre [The Weimar years] (forthcoming in 2026).
9. Fritz and Emily Koegel, Die Arche Noah. Reime (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1901).
10. Emil Bock, The Life and Times of Rudolf Steiner, vol. 1: People and Places (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2008), 138; first published in German, 1961.
11. See footnote 1.
12. Bock estate, Rudolf Steiner Archive, Dornach.
13. Today, the Koegel estate is housed at the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar.
14. Fritz Koegel (the younger), Über sein Leben, nach einer Ansprache zu seinem 80. Geburtstag, 21.Dezember 1987 [On his life, based on a speech given on his 80th birthday], manuscript in private collection, 7.
15. Frank Teichmann, “Totengedenken: Koegel, Fritz” [Obituary], Mitteilungen aus der anthroposophischen Arbeit in Deutschland, no. 205 (Michaelmas 1998), 251. Rudolf Steiner mentions the incident in his letter to Edith Maryon dated Dec. 5, 1922; see Rudolf Steiner/Edith Maryon, Briefwechsel [Correspondence], GA 263/1 (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1990).