Abstract

“One repays a teacher poorly, if one always remains only a student”: A New Look at Gast’s Relation to Nietzsche. It is widely known that Heinrich Köselitz was a loyal and close friend throughout Nietzsche’s life, symbolizing the so-called “Versüdlichung der Musik”. It is surprising, however, that a careful consideration of their mutual intellectual influence has largely been lacking. Gast is often considered intellectually inferior to Nietzsche, although very dedicated to the latter’s work. As a consequence, most studies tend to foreground Gast’s editorial work on Nietzsche’s writings but generally ignore how Gast shaped Nietzsche’s concepts. In order to better understand their theoretical exchange, it is necessary to widen our hermeneutic horizon beyond Nietzsche’s published works, focusing instead on the edition of Nietzsche’s notebooks in KGW IX, on the correspondence between Gast and Franz Overbeck, but also on Gast’s musical compositions and aesthetic writings. This approach highlights that Gast was not merely an enthusiast of Nietzsche’s ideas, and Nietzsche’s occasional secretary, but directly influenced and shaped the development of Nietzsche’s intellectual world.