Mazzino Montinari (4 April 1928 – 24 November 1986) was an Italian scholar of

Germanistics The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...

. A native of

Lucca Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957. Lucca is known as one ...

, he became regarded as one of the most distinguished researchers on

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ca ...

, and harshly criticized the edition of '' The Will to Power'', which he regarded as a forgery, in his book ''The will to power does not exist''. After the end of fascism in Italy, Montinari became an active member of the

Italian Communist Party The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy. The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). ...

, with which he was occupied with the translation of German writings. During 1953, when he visited

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In t ...

for research, he witnessed the Uprising of 1953. Later, after the suppression of the

1956 Hungarian Revolution The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hung ...

, he drifted away from orthodox

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialec ...

and his career in party organizations. He did however keep his membership in the Italian Communist Party and stayed true to the aims of socialism. At the end of the 1950s, with Giorgio Colli, who was his teacher in the 1940s, Montinari began to prepare an Italian translation of Nietzsche's works. After reviewing the contemporary collection of Nietzsche's works and the manuscripts in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbourin ...

, Colli and Montinari decided to begin a new, critical edition. This edition became the scholarly standard, and was published in Italian by Adelphi in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city ...

, in French by

Éditions Gallimard Éditions Gallimard (), formerly Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française (1911–1919) and Librairie Gallimard (1919–1961), is one of the leading French book publishers. In 2003 it and its subsidiaries published 1,418 titles. Founded by ...

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, in German by

Walter de Gruyter Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. History The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...

and in Dutch by Sun (translated by Michel van Nieuwstadt). Of particular help for this project was Montinari's ability to decipher Nietzsche's nearly unreadable handwriting, which before had only been transcribed by Peter Gast (born

Heinrich Köselitz Johann Heinrich Köselitz (10 January 1854 – 15 August 1918) was a German author and composer. He is known for his longtime friendship with Friedrich Nietzsche, who gave him the pseudonym Peter Gast. Life Köselitz was born in Annaberg, Sa ...

). In 1972, Montinari and others founded the international journal ''Nietzsche-Studien'', to which Montinari would remain a significant contributor until his death. Through his translations and commentary on Nietzsche, Montinari demonstrated a method of interpretation based on philological research that would forgo hasty speculations. He saw value in placing Nietzsche in the context of his time, and to this end, Colli and he began a critical collection of Nietzsche's correspondence. Montinari died in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

in 1986.

Works

* ''Reading Nietzsche'', trans. Greg Whitlock,

University of Illinois Press The University of Illinois Press (UIP) is an American university press and is part of the University of Illinois system. Founded in 1918, the press publishes some 120 new books each year, plus 33 scholarly journals, and several electronic project ...

, 2003, * "' The Will to Power' does not exist" edited by Paolo D'Ioriobr>
(a book criticizing ''The Will to Power'' as a forgery, ill-assembled by

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche Therese Elisabeth Alexandra Förster-Nietzsche (10 July 1846 – 8 November 1935) was the sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the creator of the Nietzsche Archive in 1894. Förster-Nietzsche was two years younger than her brothe ...

) * The

Stanford University Press Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It was among the presses officially ...

is in the midst of publishing 'the first complete, critical, and annotated English translation' of Nietzsche's works, which will be based on the Colli-Montinari edition

External links

Biography of Mazzino Montinari (Adelphi.it)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Montinari, Mazzino 1928 births 1986 deaths Writers from Lucca Italian philologists Italian Communist Party politicians 20th-century Italian politicians 20th-century Italian translators Nietzsche scholars Translators of Friedrich Nietzsche 20th-century philologists