("Nietzsche" redirects here. For other uses, see Nietzsche (disambiguation).) Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (/ˈniːtʃə/; German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈniːtʃə]; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, philologist, Latin, and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and a complete loss of his me