system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
To what extent was Nietzsche familiar with the work of Marx & Engels?
gpt
If the question were "Can Nietzsche be seen as in dialogue with Marx and Engels?", the answer is "certainly not". However, if the question were "Why might Nietzsche seem to be addressing positions that Marx and Engels assume or defend?", the answer is that Marx and Engels were part of two overlapping intellectual movements, one of post-Hegelians and one of socialists.  With respect to the post-Hegelians, Nietzsche read DF Strauss (the primary inspiration for N's friend Overbeck), almost certainly read Stirner and Hartmann, and he associated with Wagnerians who had been personally close to Feuerbach or to Stirner.  (In fact, parts of Wagners *On State and Religion* are cribbed from Feuerbach.) With respect to socialists, he definitely read FA Lange, Philipp Mainländer, and Dühring.

This is not to say that he did not read any *other* Young Hegelians or socialists: socialism was strong in the political drama at the end of Nietzsche's life, and students of Hegel were everywhere when he was younger. But there are clear sources for various lines of thought that a 21st c. undergraduate would probably *only* encounter in Marx and Engels, but which Nietzsche would have encountered everywhere *but* in Marx and Engels.