My wife, Carol Diethe, who has died aged 81, had an unusual academic career: in the 1970s she initially taught German language and literature at Middlesex Polytechnic (later University), but after its German department collapsed, taught the history of ideas on a literature-based course devised entirely by herself. Her PhD was on German expressionism, and she wrote on 19th-century German women’s literature, including the work of the novelist and poet Louise-Otto Peters, who is thought of as the first German feminist. But Carol’s main area of authorship and research was Friedrich Nietzsche, whom she also translated. As she discovered, the famous misogynist managed to gain the friendship and loyalty of intellectual women, and with the biography of Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth, Nietzsche’s Sister and the Will to Power (2003), Carol contributed to salving his reputation. After Nietzsche’s mental collapse Elisabeth looked after her brother for 10 years until his death, and was able to edit and manipulate his works so that they more closely reflected her own antisemitic and nationalist ideas, and in her own writings later claimed that he had been close to Nazi thinking. Carol also wrote – single-handedly – a Nietzsche dictionary, published in 1999. She was a founder member in 1990 of the Nietzsche Society of Great Britain, and served as its first secretary, and editor of its journal. Her fluent style was anything but “dry academic”. Carol was born in Macclesfield in Cheshire, one of the five children of Edith and Geoffrey Parker, who ran a radio rentals business, and she grew up happily on a farm just outside the town. She married early, and spent the first few years after that in Saudi Arabia, where her fighting spirit manifested itself doing an external German degree under extremely difficult circumstances. After a spell in Lagos, during which time a daughter, Rachel, was born, in the early 1970s she lived in London and began teaching at Middlesex. After her divorce Carol and I married in 1976 – we went on to have a son, Thomas. She took early retirement in 1997, after which we started settling in Scotland, with initially a second home in the village of Ardersier near Inverness, where Carol founded a still existent environmental society, which brought her a place on the community council. In 2001, we finally settled in the ancient Royal Borough of Fortrose, also near Inverness, while keeping a London base until 2016. Some of Carol’s most important works were written there, and her easygoing nature, sociability and cheerfulness made integration easy. It was tragic that Carol’s lively mind was gradually destroyed by dementia, which began by affecting her speech and understanding. She spent her last three-and-a-half years in a care home in Inverness, which she lit up with her infectious smile. Carol is survived by me, Rachel and Thomas, three granddaughters and her sisters, Vivien and Patricia.
Author: Jürgen Diethe