Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

In 1905 the Stockholm banker Ernest Thiel wrote to Edvard Munch asking for a portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche, who had died five years earlier. The idea came from the philosopher's sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who ran his archive in Weimar and brought the two men together. Munch visited her there and painted her as well, full-length and standing. Thiel was the archive's great patron. He gave it 300,000 marks and translated Nietzsche into Swedish himself. Elisabeth, unlike her brother, was an antisemite who later welcomed the Nazis, and Thiel, whose mother came from a Jewish family, broke off contact with her after they took power. Munch painted her twice, and the larger version is in the Munch Museum in Oslo. This one went to Thiel's house on Djurgården, which the Swedish state bought in 1924 together with his collection, the Nietzsche portrait included.