Friedrich Nietzsche was born in Saxony in 1844 to a devout Lutheran family, which was filled with suffering and pain, his father became insane and died in 1849, and his brother died in 1850. He studied classical philology at the universities of Bonn and Leipzig and became a full professor at age twenty-four. He taught at the University of Basel from 1869-1879. He was profoundly influenced by Schopenhauer and Wagner, and their impact upon showed in his use of Greek myth, i.e., Dionysus and Apollo, in his early writings. Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown in 1879, on account of which he retired from his professorship and spent the remaining years of his life residing in Italy and Switzerland pursuing better health. Nietzche's writing is challenging, often employing aphorisms as a "hammer" to deconstruct and destroy previous philosophical dogma. Three of the most influential themes in his philosophy are the Will to Power, The Death of God, and the Übermensch, the best possible response to nihilism. These motifs were almost prophetic conjectures of the fate of the Western world in the 20th century and laid significant groundwork for later emphases in the post-modern philosophical agenda.