1844Born in Röcken, a small village in the Prussian province of Saxony, on 15 October.
1846Birth of his sister Elisabeth.
1848Birth of his brother Joseph.
1849His father, a Lutheran minister, dies at age thirty-six of ‘softening of the brain’.
1850Brother dies; family moves to Naumburg to live with father’s mother and her sisters.
1858Begins studies at Pforta, Germany’s most famous school for education in the classics.
1864Graduates from Pforta with a thesis in Latin on the Greek poet Theognis; enters the University of Bonn as a theology student.
1865Transfers from Bonn, following the classical philologist Friedrich Ritschl to Leipzig where he registers as a philology student; reads Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation.
1866Reads Friedrich Lange’s History of Materialism.
1868Meets Richard Wagner.
1869On Ritschl’s recommendation is appointed professor of classical philology at Basle at the age of twenty-four before completing his doctorate (which is then conferred without a dissertation); begins frequent visits to the Wagner residence at Tribschen.
1870Serves as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war; contracts a serious illness and so serves only two months. Writes ‘The Dionysiac World View’.
1872Publishes his first book, The Birth of Tragedy; its dedicatory preface to Richard Wagner claims for art the role of ‘the highest task and truly metaphysical activity of his life’; devastating reviews follow.
1873Publishes ‘David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer’, the first of his Untimely Meditations; begins taking books on natural science out of the Basle library, whereas he had previously confined himself largely to books on philological matters. Writes ‘On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense’.
1874Publishes two more Meditations, ‘The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life’ and ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’.
1876Publishes the fourth Meditation, ‘Richard Wagner in Bayreuth’, which already bears subtle signs of his movement away from Wagner.
1878Publishes Human, All Too Human (dedicated to the memory of Voltaire); it praises science over art as the high culture and thus marks a decisive turn away from Wagner.
1879Terrible health problems force him to resign his chair at Basle (with a small pension); publishes ‘Assorted Opinions and Maxims’, the first part of vol. II of Human, All Too Human; begins living alone in Swiss and Italian boarding-houses.
1880Publishes ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’, which becomes the second part of vol. 11 of Human, All Too Human.
1881Publishes Daybreak.
1882Publishes Idylls of Messina (eight poems) in a monthly magazine; publishes The Gay Science (first edition); friendship with Paul Ree and Lou Andreas-Salomé ends badly, leaving Nietzsche devastated.
1883Publishes the first two parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra; learns of Wagner’s death just after mailing part one to the publisher.
1884Publishes the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
1885Publishes the fourth part of Zarathustra for private circulation only.
1886Publishes Beyond Good and Evil; writes prefaces for new releases of: The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human vols. I, 11, and Daybreak.
1887Publishes expanded edition of The Gay Science with a new preface, a fifth book, and an appendix of poems; publishes Hymn to Life, a musical work for chorus and orchestra; publishes On the Genealogy of Morality.
1888Publishes The Case of Wagner, composes a collection of poems, Dionysian Dithyrambs, and four short books: Twilight of Idols, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, and Nietzsche contra Wagner.
1889Collapses physically and mentally in Turin on 3 January; writes a few lucid notes but never recovers sanity; is briefly institutionalized; spends remainder of his life as an invalid, living with his mother and then his sister, who also gains control of his literary estate.
1900Dies in Weimar on 25 August.