72 Nietzschenewspapers reported from Paris in May 1871 that insurgents had pil-
laged and destroyed the Louvre (in actual fact, there had only been a fire
in the Tuileries). Nietzsche interpreted the event as a beacon of impend-
ing barbarism. On May 27, 1871, he wrote to Councillor Wilhelm
Vischer-Bilfinger in the context of excusing his absence from a univer-
sity meeting: 'The reports of the past few days have been so awful that
my state of mind is altogether intolerable. What does it mean to be a
scholar in the face of such earthquakes of culture! One feels so atom-
istic! You use your entire life and the best of your power to deepen your
understanding of and learn to explain a period of culture; how does this
profession seem if a single unfortunate day reduces to ashes the most
precious documents of these periods! It is the worst day of my life" (B
3,195).
Nietzsche regarded the fire in Paris as a precursor of major crises to
come. He attributed these social conflicts to an increase in demands
owing to a heightened awareness of suffering among the masses rather
than to any deterioration of their standard of living. He watched the
masses stepping onto the political arena, with incalculable repercus-
sions. When he learned in the fall of 1869 that a convention of the
International Workers Association was being held in Basel, of all cities,
Nietzsche was filled with alarm. A few years later, he was seized with the
suspicion that the "International" was scheming to prevent the Bayreuth
Festival He considered efforts to solve the "social question" with refer-
ence to the workers a threat to culture. He accused "democrats" of
wanting to emancipate the masses and leading them to believe in the
"dignity of labor" and the "dignity of man" (1,765), with the result that
the masses only then would perceive their situation as a flagrant injustice
and demand equity. They would compare their depressed circumstances
to the glitter of high culture, which they abhor because it is not intended
for them and because they do not figure in it, although they have
wrought the material preconditions for it with the labor of their own
hands. But are the claims to social justice and liberation from exploita-
tion not justified, and is it not understandable to hate a culture that the