The publication of Section IX signifies the completion of the Critical Edition of Friedrich Nietzsche's Complete Works. With the manuscripts to Der Wille zur Macht this section contains the original philosophical background to a book which has gone down as one of the most influential forgeries in the history of philosophy. Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster had compiled this alleged major work using unpublished writings from the 1880s and 1890s and published it in 1901.
With the edition of the unpublished manuscripts from 1885 to 1889, the editors and publishers are entering virgin territory. The edition contains Nietzsche's notes from the period after the publication of Also sprach Zarathustra. The texts Nietzsche wrote during that time into his notebooks and exercise books, are now to be published in their entirety, and the edition will be completed with the inclusion of other notes from his last creative period found in other, older, notebooks or notes now collected in folders. Thus for the first time a complete and edited documentation of Nietzsche's unpublished material will be presented in a manner which preserves its typical note-like character. Whereas earlier complete editions used to divide the notes into preliminary versions and fragments in order to create a smooth readable text, the present complete edition preserves the original appearance of the notes.
Section IX will be published from Autumn 2001, probably in 13 parts. In order to reproduce the deletions and different strata of the originals, five-colour printing will be used. Thus as far as possible, Nietzsche's numerous overwritings, corrections and deletions will be reflected typographically.
This edition of the manuscripts will conclude the editorially most demanding section and, from the point of view of its reception, philosophically most powerful part of the KGW. The publication of the mss. from 1885 to 1889 will provide Nietzsche scholars with a reliable and transparent basis for interpretation, and the connectivities in the author's thought, writing and works will become visible. In addition, the representations of the unpublished manuscript facsimiles from Section IX are provided on CD-ROMs.
The edition of the manuscripts is being undertaken by a team of editors in Berlin, Basle and Weimar working within the project on The late Nietzsche overseen by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy.