The room located at the back of the ‘Professor’s Study’ is devoted to the Nietzsche translator and editor Oscar Levy. Born in Stargard, Pomerania in 1867, Oscar Levy left Germany as early as 1894, in protest against the growing nationalism of his homeland, emigrating to England to work as a medical doctor. A passionate reader of Nietzsche, Levy published and financed the first complete English edition of Nietzsche’s works in 18 volumes between 1909 and 1913. He was an extremely attentive and exacting intellectual, who spoke out about current political events in a number of publications. In 1921, he was banned from the UK with his wife and daughter as a “former alien enemy” and then lived in Germany, France and Switzerland. He was only allowed to return to the UK in 1938, and he died there in 1946.
In 2004, Oscar Levy’s daughter, Maud Rosenthal-Levy, decided to leave her father’s valuable library with a focus on ‘pre-fascism’ to the Nietzsche House, where it is now exhibited with some of the furnishings from Levy’s study. Visitors will also find documents, photos and objects about Oscar Levy’s life and career, including his text “Die Exkommunizierung Adolf Hitlers – Ein Offener Brief” (The Excommunication of Hitler – An Open Letter) from June 21, 1938.