Friedrich Nietzsche remembered with Google Doodle Nietzsche, also known for his insistence "what does not kill me, makes me stronger," was awarded a scholarship at 14, excelling in religious studies, German literature and classical studies before going on to study theology and classical philology at the University of Bonn then left to study philology at the University of Leipzig. Nietzsche, whose work has remained influential, argued that the will to power, characterised by achievement and ambition, was a driving force of the human character, and Christianity was harmful to society because it allowed the weak to rule the strong. He argued that an ideal society should form its own morality outside of religion, suggesting the traditional foundations of European society, based upon Christianity, had irreparably dissolved. The failure to live, take risks and decisive actions, often caused by Christianity, was a failure to realise actual human potential because nothing exists beyond life, Nietzsche argued. BUt his work was cut short when he suffered a mental breakdown in 1889, after seeing a coachman whipping his horse, and was taken to the mental asylum before being cared for by his family. Nietzsche, who had struggled with ill health and migraines since his teenage years, then suffered a number of strokes which left him unable to walk or speak before he died on August 1900 in Weimar, aged 55. His work has influenced, among others, Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, Sigmund Freud, and Jean Paul Sartre.