Friedrich Nietzsche's (1844–1900) work was falsified by his sister Elisabeth Förster Nietzsche, two years his junior; he never wrote the posthumously published book The Will to Power. But it was this text, among others, that drove his entire oeuvre into the hands of the National Socialists, who used it as if it were a modular system.

Nietzsche, on the other hand, was concerned with something else, namely overturning the traditional structure of philosophy of his time and replacing it with a new concept. ‘I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus; I would rather be a satyr than a saint.’ The god of intoxication is the true philosopher; for him, the essence of life is that it is lived.

For Nietzsche, the history of civilisation represents a tremendous aberration, whereas the Dionysian world of ideas is a force that dissolves norms and frees us from Christian ‘slave morality’. Thus, the ‘superhuman’ can be conceived as a distant utopia: a human being who transcends himself, conscious of his higher reason but also of his own cruelties, and who can therefore attain a true state of humanity.

The production focuses on Nietzsche and his ideas as a clairvoyant frenzy that still points to the future today: ‘One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.’
 

On 20 February, the premiere party will take place after the play.

On 21 March, 22 March and 24 March, we cordially invite you to a post-performance discussion after the show.

"Eva Mattes, who does not come across as prima donna in the slightest, takes on the role of Elisabeth Förster without “playing” her; at one point, dressed in matronly costume, she throws herself onto her brother's bed, languishing incestuously. Nietzsche's terrible misogyny is suspended in Mattes' character, in the best sense of the word. [...] But the most powerful image is the appearance of the cab horse that the philosopher embraced on the street in Turin. The rain is pouring down, the horse's head is strapped to a player's back, and now it is not Nietzsche who looks at and comforts the horse, but vice versa, the horse that looks at the madman with compassion. [...] ‘We Ciulli,’ one almost wants to sigh afterwards. The ‘profound Italian,’ to stay with Nietzsche's sound, has once again surpassed himself. May he still be directing at 100."

Martin Krumbholz, nachtkritik

"Here, Nietzsche is honoured as someone who defends Jesus against the Christians, and as someone who shows himself to be anti-Semitic in the clearest possible terms (and thus also sharply condemns his sister and her husband). He is also honoured as someone who rails against German nationalism and wants to save reason by enriching it with comedic unreasonableness:The quotations that bear witness to this flow into vivid, sometimes surreal images, such as the four mimes with grotesquely exaggerated Nietzsche moustaches. Maria Neumann plays the philosopher, who is increasingly clouded by madness and whose lantern metaphorically goes out at some point.” 

"Ciulli has recently fixed two other iconoclasts, Antonin Artaud and Pier Paolo Pasolini, as living guiding stars in the theatrical firmament in scenes that intensely interweave their lives, works and significance. For Nietzsche, the third in this series, the veteran director, who will celebrate his 92nd birthday in a few weeks, has once again been able to win Eva Mattes for a production. She now stands out from the eight-member ensemble as the incarnation of the intellectual poisoner Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche." 

"The extent of Nietzsche's sister's manipulative role in this is the focus of Roberto Ciulli's "Wir Nietzsche" evening, which was celebrated with cheers, bravos and standing ovations at its premiere on Friday at the Theater an der Ruhr."

Jens Dirksen, WAZ

"In the main part of the evening, Roberto Ciulli finds associative visual solutions that refer partly to the respective texts and partly to biographical details. He has brilliant actors at his disposal: Maria Neumann, for example, has a haunting scene in which she searches for God with a lantern and then laments desperately that he has been killed by us humans. Or Mohammad Saado Kharouf, who encounters the mad Nietzsche with a horse's head strapped to his back. Fabio Menéndez is brilliant as Groucho Marx, Kara Schröder as Lou von Salomé. Long-time Zadek actress Eva Mattes fits brilliantly into the Ciulli ensemble as the imperious but also grotesque Elisabeth."

Klaus Stübler, Ruhr Nachrichten