330 Epilogue
The free man is a warrior" (6,139f.; 77 "Skirmishes of an Untimely
Man" § 38).
Nietzsche was hardly a standard-bearer for jingoist attitudes, but dur-
ing the period of the conservative revolution, military adventurers with
a literary bent found enticing ideas in his writings. They were especially
taken with his conviction that the meaning of batde, and of life in gen-
eral, was not any goal and purpose it might achieve but a heightened
intensity of life. Anyone seeking or envisioning nihilistic ecstasy in bat-
de could find guidance in Nietzsche's Zarathustra: "You say it is the good
cause that hallows even war? I say to you: it is the good war that hallows
any cause" (4,59; Ζ First Part, "On War and Warriors"). Ernst Jünger
and Oswald Spengler were both nihilistic ecstatics who felt a strong
affinity with Zarathustra's conviction that "courage is the best slayer—
courage that attacks: because in every attack there is fife and drum"
(4,199; Ζ Third Part, "On the Vision and the Riddle" § 1).
Hermann Hesse's "Zarathustras Wiederkehr" (Zarathustra's Return,
1919), demonstrates that Nietzsche's Zarathustra lent itself to a very dif-
ferent interpretation. Hesse emphasized the outrageous abuse to which
Nietzsche, and in particular his Zarathustra, had been subjected. After
all, Nietzsche was a foe of "herd mentality," was he not? In pondering
this question, Hesse had Zarathustra return once again to address the
men coming home from war. The lesson of Zarathustra's reappearance
is a variation on Nietzsche's call become who you are!" The will to be
true to oneself was now mobilized against any form of obsequiousness,
even in a military or heroic guise, and Nietzsche was cited as an author-
ity. Hesse defended him against the songs of rancor of his militant
admirers: "Haven't you noticed," Hesse has his Zarathustra say, "that
wherever this song is struck up men reach for their pockets; it is a song
of self-interest and self-seeking—alas, not the noble self-seeking that
elevates and steels the self, but the self-seeking that hinges on money
and money-bags, vanities and delusions" (Hesse 384).
Ernst Bertram's Nietzsche was published just after World War I. This
work was unquestionably the most influential interpretation of