Bernhard Förster was a nineteenth century German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 teacher. He was married to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche

Therese Elisabeth Alexandra Förster-Nietzsche , who went by her second name, was the sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the creator of the Nietzsche Archive in 1894....

, the sister of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

.

Förster became a leading figure in the anti-Semitic faction on the far right

Far right

Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...

 of German politics and wrote on the Jewish question

Jewish Question

The Jewish question encompasses the issues and resolutions surrounding the historically unequal civil, legal and national statuses between minority Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jews, particularly in Europe. The first issues discussed and debated by societies, politicians and writers in western and...

, characterizing Jews as constituting a "parasite on the German body". In order to support his beliefs he set up the Deutscher Volksverein (German People's League) in 1881 with Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg

Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg

Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg was a German officer who became noted as an anti-Semitic politician and publisher...

.

He left Germany in 1886 to emigrate to Paraguay

Paraguay

Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...

 and the following year he set up a colony known as "Nueva Germania

Nueva Germania

Nueva Germania is a district of San Pedro Department in Paraguay. It was founded as a German colony on August 23, 1887 by Bernhard Förster, who was married to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, sister of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche...

". However, as this initiative was a failure, he eventually committed suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 by poisoning himself with a combination of morphine

Morphine

Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...

 and strychnine

Strychnine

Strychnine is a highly toxic , colorless crystalline alkaloid used as a pesticide, particularly for killing small vertebrates such as birds and rodents. Strychnine causes muscular convulsions and eventually death through asphyxia or sheer exhaustion...

 in his room at the Hotel del Lago in San Bernardino

San Bernardino, Paraguay

San Bernardino is a town and distrito in Paraguay, located on the shores of Ypacarai Lake in the Cordillera Department...

, Paraguay on June 3, 1889.