Following his inaugural lecture on Homer, Nietzsche settled in to his professorial duties: to his teaching, his research, and to socializing with his university colleagues, including the philologists Jacob Mähly and Hermann Usener. His lecture on Homer had made a favorable impression, or so Nietzsche initially thought (see his letters to Erwin Rohde of 29 May 1869 and to Franziska Nietzsche of mid-June 1869; KSB 3, 13 and 15). Writing to Rohde a few months later, however, in mid-July 1869, Nietzsche sounded more cautious: “With my ‘colleagues’ I am having a strange experience: I feel among them as I used to feel among students: entirely without any need to get to know them more closely, but also without any envy” (An meinen “Collegen” mache ich eine seltsame Erfahrung: ich fühle mich unter ihnen, wie ich mich ehedem unter Studenten fühlte: im Ganzen ohnes jedes Bedürfniß mich mit ihnen näher abzugeben, aber auch ohne allen Neid); and Nietzsche went so far as to admit: “In fact, to be truthful, I feel a small grain of contempt for them in me, with which very polite and obliging intercourse goes indeed quite well” (ja genau genommen, fühle ich einen kleinen Gran von Verachtung gegen sie in mir, mit dem sich ja ein sehr höflicher und gefälliger Verkehr ganz gut verträgt; KSB 3, 28).

One of Nietzsche's coping strategies was his status as a guest at Tribschen, where he regularly visited Richard Wagner — and Cosima, too. The proximity of the Wagners was, he told them, his “comfort” (Trost; KSB 3, 17).