Nietzsche, the most terrible and devastating critic of Christianity and its ideals, was the culmination of two long collateral lines of theologians. His grandfather Nietzsche was a man of many scholarly attainments, who, because of his ecclesiastical writings, had received the degree of Doctor of Divinity. His second wife, the mother of Nietzsche's father, came from a whole family of pastors by the name of Krause. Her favourite brother was a preacher in the Cathedral at Naumburg; and of the other two one was a Doctor of Divinity and one a country clergyman. The father of Nietzsche's mother was also a pastor by the name of Oehler, and had a parsonage in Pobles. Likewise Nietzsche's father, Karl-Ludwig Nietzsche, was a pastor in the Lutheran church; but he possessed a greater culture than we are wont to associate with the average country clergyman, and was a man looked up to and revered by all those who knew him. In fact, his appointment to the post at Röcken was an expression of appreciation paid his talents by the Prussian King. He was thirty-one years of age and had been married only a year when his son Friedrich was born. Though in perfect health, he was not destined to live more than five years after this event, for in 1848 he fell down a flight of stone stairs, and died after a year's invalidism, as a result of concussion of the brain. The event cast a decided influence on the Nietzsche household and altered completely its plans. After lingering eight months at the parsonage, the family left Röcken and moved to Naumburg-on-the-Saale, there establishing a new domicile in the home of the pastor's mother. The household was composed of the two children, Friedrich and Elizabeth, their mother, then only twenty-four, their grandmother Nietzsche, and two maiden sisters of the dead father. This establishment was run on strict and puritanical lines. All the women were of strong theological inclinations. One of the maiden aunts, Rosalie, devoted herself to Christian benevolent institutions. The other aunt, Augusta, was not unlike the paternal grandmother--pious and God-fearing and constantly busied with her duties to others. The widowed mother carried on the Christian tradition of the family, and never forgot that she was once the wife of a Lutheran pastor. Daily prayers and Biblical readings were fixed practices. The young Friedrich was the pet of the household, and there were secret hopes held by all that he would grow up in the footsteps of his father and become an honoured and respected light in the church. To the realisation of this hope, all the efforts and influences of the four women were given. Such was the atmosphere in which the early youth of the author of "The Antichrist" was nurtured.