Human, All Too Human

Germany, 1900. The Second Reich, led by the bellicose Kaiser Wilhelm, is hard at work preparing the country to fight a “good war.” The first step? Create a propaganda campaign that convinces the German population of its “rightful place under the sun.”

German Foreign Secretary Bernhard von Bulow sets the campaign in motion by enlisting Dr. Albert Scheler of the Weimar Sanatorium to revise the physical and psychological profile on the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The Reich intends on using Nietzsche’s ideas of the Superman and the "will to power" to bolster its case for war and needs the philosopher’s image to be sanitized for the public.

But Scheler quickly makes an unsettling discovery: Nietzsche is not a good fit for the Reich’s campaign. In fact, he’s an ardent foe of Germany. Scheler thus faces a moral dilemma: tell the truth and risk the Reich’s funding of the Sanatorium and jeopardize his own promising career. Or compromise his own ethical standards and present Nietzsche as the government would wish.

Narrated by Scheler, von Bulow, Nietzsche’s sister, Elisabeth, as well as by luminaries such as Cosima Wagner and Lou Andreas Salome, Human, All too Human is a page-turning examination of moral choices, and their consequences, that unfolds in the heightened and martial landscape of prewar Germany.