Or would it be proper to count such dilettanti and old maids as the mawkish apostle of virginity, Mainländer, among the genuine Germans? After all he was probably a Jew (all Jews become mawkish when they moralise). Neither Bahnsen, nor Mainländer, nor even Eduard von Hartmann, give us a reliable grasp of the question whether the pessimism of Schopenhauer (his frightened glance into an undeified world, which has become stupid, blind, deranged and problematic, his honourable fright) was not only an exceptional case among Germans, but a German event: while everything else which stands in the foreground, like our valiant politics and our joyful Jingoism (which decidedly enough regards everything with reference to a principle sufficiently unphilosophical: “Deutschland, Deutschland, ueber Alles” consequently sub specie specie, namely the German species, testifies very plainly to the contrary. No! The Germans of today are not pessimists! And Schopenhauer was a pessimist, I repeat it once more, as a good European, and not as a German.
Aqui deve-se dizer que Nietzsche ofereceu uma de suas mais irreflectidas boutades, pois Mainländer não era judeu (seu verdadeiro nome era Philipp Batz), o que o próprio Nietzsche confessa ter descoberto mais tarde.
Winfried H. Müller-Seyfarth (2000) Mainländer und Nietzsche. Ein Nachtrag zu Max Seilings Replik auf eine der „unüberlegtesten Boutaden“ Nietzsches. In: Nietzsche-Studien. Internationales Jahrbuch für die Nietzsche-Forschung, Band 28, hgg. v. G. Abel/W. Stegmaier u.a., Berlin/New York 2000, S. 323-335.