 Nietzsche’s enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, his studies in classical philology, his inspiration from Wagner, his reading of Lange, his interests in health, his professional need to prove himself as a young academic, and his frustration with the contemporary German culture, all coalesced in his first book—The Birth of Tragedy (1872)—which was published in January 1872 when Nietzsche was 27. Wagner showered the book with praise, but a vitriolic, painfully-memorable and yet authoritative critical reaction by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff—who later became one of Germany’s leading philologists—immediately dampened the book’s reception, not to mention Nietzsche’s class enrollments in Basel.