Heidegger and Nazism
Encyclopedia
The relation between the philosopher Martin Heidegger
and the Nazi Party is a controversial subject.
Martin Heidegger joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) on May 1, 1933, nearly three weeks after being appointed Rector of the University of Freiburg. Heidegger resigned the Rectorship about one year later, in April 1934, but remained a member of the NSDAP until the end of World War II
. His first act as Rector was to eliminate all democratic structures, including those that had elected him Rector. There were book burnings on his campus, some of which he successfully stopped, as well as some student violence.
Since the book Heidegger and Nazism (1987) by Victor Farias
, who had access to many documents, in particular some preserved in the STASI archives, no one denies Heidegger's historical involvement with Nazism and support of Hitler's policies and person. However, philosophers disagree on the consequences of this historical responsibility on his philosophy. His critics, such as Jürgen Habermas
, Theodor Adorno, and Hans Jonas
, claim that his historical engagement for the Nazi party derived from his philosophical conceptions.
twenty years later. Faye also claims that Heidegger said of Spinoza that he was "ein Fremdkörper in der Philosophie", a "foreign body in philosophy" — Faye notes that Fremdkörper was a term which belonged to Nazi vocabulary, and not to classical German.
The widow of Ernst Cassirer
claimed she had heard of Heidegger's "inclination to anti-Semitism
" by 1929. In June 1933, Karl Jaspers
criticized The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
, a propaganda book supporting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Jaspers recalled much later that Heidegger had responded: "But there is a dangerous international alliance of Jews."
There were "rumors" that Heidegger was anti-semitic already in 1932, and he was aware of them, and vehemently denied them, calling them "slander".
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Adolf Hitler
was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Heidegger was elected rector of the University of Freiburg
on April 21, 1933, and assumed the position the following day. On May 1 he joined the Nazi Party. He sent a public telegram to Hitler on May 20, 1933.
While he was rector, Heidegger implemented the Gleichschaltung
totalitarian policy, suppressing all opposition to the government. According to Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger, along with Ernst Krieck and Alfred Baeumler
, spearheaded the "conservative revolution" promoted by the Nazis.
However, Heidegger's tenure as rector was fraught with difficulties. Some National Socialist education officials viewed him as a rival, while others saw his efforts as comical. Some of Heidegger's fellow National Socialists also ridiculed his philosophical writings as gibberish. He finally offered his resignation on April 23, 1934, and it was accepted on April 27. Heidegger remained a member of both the academic faculty and of the Nazi Party until the end of the war.
Philosophical historian Hans Sluga
wrote:
In 1945 Heidegger wrote of his term as rector, giving the writing to his son Hermann; it was published in 1983:
In this speech, Heidegger declared that "science must become the power that shapes the body of the German university." But by "science" he meant "the primordial and full essence of science", which he defined as "engaged knowledge about the people and about the destiny of the state that keeps itself in readiness [...] at one with the spiritual mission."
He went on to link this concept of "science" with a historical struggle of the German people:
Heidegger also linked the concept of a people with "blood and soil" in a way that would now be regarded as characteristic of Nazism:
The speech ended with a call for the German people to "will itself" and "fulfill its historical mission":
, in which he gave clear form to his views on the need for state control of the university, "in the National Socialist spirit" and free from "humanizing, Christian ideas":
On September 29, 1933, Heidegger leaked information to the local minister of education that the chemist Hermann Staudinger
had been a pacifist during World War I. Heidegger knew this would cost Staudinger his job. The Gestapo investigated the matter and confirmed Heidegger's tip. Asked for his recommendation as rector of the university, Heidegger secretly urged the ministry to fire Staudinger without a pension.
Heidegger also denounced his former friend Eduard Baumgarten in a letter to the head of the organization of Nazi professors at the university of Göttingen, where Baumgarten had been teaching. In the letter, Heidegger called Baumgarten "anything but a National-Socialist" and underlined his links to "the Heidelberg circle of liberal-democratic intellectuals around Max Weber
."
The Catholic intellectual Max Müller
was a member of the inner circle of Heidegger's most gifted students from 1928 to 1933. But Müller stopped attending Heidegger's lectures when Heidegger joined the Nazi party in May 1933. Seven months later, Heidegger fired Müller from his position as a student leader because Müller was "not politically appropriate." Then in 1938 Müller discovered that Heidegger had blocked him from getting a teaching position at Freiburg by informing the university administration that Müller was "unfavorably disposed" toward the regime.
After 1933, Heidegger declined to direct the doctoral dissertations of Jewish students: he sent all those students to his Catholic colleague Professor Martin Honecker. And in his letter denouncing Baumgarten, cited above, Heidegger wrote that "after failing with me" [not as a student but as a friend!], Baumgarten "frequented, very actively, the Jew Fränkel" -- i.e. Eduard Fränkel
, a noted professor of classics at Freiburg.
Nonetheless, Heidegger also intervened as rector to help several Jewish colleagues. He wrote appeals in defense of three Jewish professors, including Fränkel, all of whom were about to be fired for racial reasons. Heidegger also helped certain Jewish students and colleagues to emigrate, including his assistant Werner Brock, who found a position in England with Heidegger's assistance.
championed Heidegger's work, and helped him secure the retiring Husserl's chair in Philosophy at the University of Freiburg.
On April 6, 1933, the Reichskommissar
of Baden
Province, Robert Wagner, suspended all Jewish government employees, including present and retired faculty at the University of Freiburg. Husserl, who was born Jewish and was an adult convert to Lutheran Christianity, was affected by this law. But Heidegger did not become Rector until April 22, so it was Heidegger's predecessor as Rector who formally notified Husserl of his "enforced leave of absence" on April 14, 1933. Then, the week after Heidegger's election, the national Reich law of April 28, 1933 came into effect, overriding Wagner's decree, and requiring that all Jewish professors from German universities, including those who had converted to Christianity, be fired. The termination of Husserl's academic privileges thus did not involve any specific action on Heidegger's part.
Heidegger had by then broken off contact with Husserl, other than through intermediaries. Heidegger later claimed that his relationship with Husserl had already become strained after Husserl publicly "settled accounts" with Heidegger and Max Scheler
in the early 1930s.
There is no truth to the oft-repeated story that during Heidegger's time as Rector, the University denied Husserl access to the university library. However, in 1941, under pressure from publisher Max Niemeyer, Heidegger did agree to remove the dedication to Husserl from Being and Time
. The dedication was restored in post-war editions.
Heidegger did not attend his former mentor's cremation in 1938.
" for Germany as early as 1918. In a number of speeches in November 1933, Heidegger endorsed the Fuhrerprinzip
("leader principle"), i.e., the principle that the Führer is the embodiment of the people - a kind of absolute monarch. For example in one speech Heidegger stated:
In another speech a few days later Heidegger said:
In late November Heidegger gave a conference at the University of Tübingen, organized by the students of the university and the Kampfbund, the local Nazi party section. In this address he argued for a revolution in knowledge, a revolution which would displace the traditional idea that the university should be independent of the state:
Heidegger addressed some of these remarks in the 1966 "Der Spiegel" interview, "Only a God Can Save Us" (see section below). In that interview, he stated: "I would no longer write [such things] today. Such things as that I stopped saying by 1934."
However Hans Jonas
, a former student of Heidegger's, argues in a recent book that Heidegger's endorsement of the "Fuhrer principle" stemmed from his philosophy and was consistent with it:
In a 1935 lecture, Heidegger referred to the "inner truth and greatness of this movement" - that is, of National Socialism. This lecture was published in 1953 under the title An Introduction to Metaphysics
. In the published version, Heidegger added a parenthetical qualification: "(namely, the confrontation of planetary technology and modern humanity)". However, Heidegger did not mention that this qualification was added at the time of publication, and was not part of the original lecture. This raised concerns in post-Nazi Germany that Heidegger was distinguishing a "good Nazism" from a "bad Nazism", a contention supported by his philosophical opponents, including Bauemler . The controversial page of the 1935 manuscript is missing from the Heidegger Archives in Marbach
. In this same course, Heidegger criticized both Russia and the United States for "the same dreary technological frenzy," calling Germany "the most metaphysical of nations."
Heidegger defended himself during the denazification
period by claiming he had opposed the philosophical bases of Nazism, especially biologism and the Nazi interpretation of Nietzsche's The Will to Power
. However, in a 1936 lecture, Heidegger still sounded rather ambiguous as to whether Nietzsche's thought was compatible with Nazism, or at least with that hypothetical "good Nazism": "The two men who, each in his own way, have introduced a counter movement to nihilism
— Mussolini
and Hitler — have learned from Nietzsche, each in an essentially different way. But even with that, Nietzsche's authentic metaphysical domain has not yet come unto its own."
In private notes from 1939, published recently, Heidegger took stronger exception to Hitler: under the heading "Truth and Usefulness", he critiqued Hitler's statement, "There is no attitude, which could not be ultimately justified by the ensuing usefulness for the totality." Heidegger's notes record the following critical comments:
However, in a 1942 lecture (published posthumously), Heidegger was once again ambiguous on the subject of Nazism. During a discussion of recent German classics scholarship he said: "In the majority of 'research results', the Greeks appear as pure National Socialists. This overenthusiasm on the part of academics seems not even to notice that with such "results" it does National Socialism and its historical uniqueness no service at all, not that it needs this anyhow.
In the same lectures he commented on America's entry into World War II, in a way that seems to identify his philosophy with the Nazi cause:
was a student of Heidegger's, and in 1933 Heidegger helped him to obtain a fellowship to study in Rome, where he lived between 1934 and 1936. Heidegger visited Rome in 1936 to lecture on Hölderlin, and had a meeting with Löwith. In an account set down in 1940 and not intended for publication, Löwith noted that Heidegger was wearing a swastika pin, even though he knew that Löwith was Jewish. Löwith recounted their discussion about editorials published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung
:
Löwith went on to say:
For commentators such as Habermas
who credit Löwith's account, there are a number of generally shared implications: one is that Heidegger did not turn away from National Socialism per se but became deeply disaffected with the official philosophy and ideology of the party, as embodied by Alfred Bäumler or Alfred Rosenberg
, whose biologistic racist doctrines he never accepted.
Committee, Hannah Arendt
, Heidegger's former student and lover, who was Jewish, spoke on his behalf. (Arendt very cautiously resumed her friendship with Heidegger after the war, despite or even because of the widespread contempt for Heidegger and his political sympathies, and despite his being forbidden to teach for many years.) Heidegger's former friend Karl Jaspers
spoke against him, suggesting he would have a detrimental influence on German students because of his powerful teaching presence.
In September 1945, the Denazification Committee published its report on Heidegger. He was charged on four counts: his important, official position, in the Nazi regime; his introduction of the Führerprinzip into the University; his engaging in Nazi propaganda
and his incitement of students against "reactionary" professors. He was subsequently dismissed from university the same year. In March 1949, he was declared a "fellow traveller
" ("Mitläufer") of Nazism by the State Commission for Political Purification. But he was reintegrated in 1951, given emeritus status, and continued teaching until 1976. In 1974, he wrote to his friend Heinrich Petzet: "Our Europe is being ruined from below with 'democracy.'".
Thomas Sheehan has noted "Heidegger's stunning silence concerning the Holocaust," in contrast to his criticism of the alienation
wrought by modern technologies: "We have his statements about the six millions unemployed at the beginning of the Nazi regime, but not a word about the six million who were dead at the end of it." Heidegger did not publish anything concerning the Holocaust or the extermination camps, but did mention them. In a 1949 lecture entitled "Das Gestell" ("Enframing"), he stated:
Commentators differ on whether these statements are evidence of a profound disregard for the fate of the Jews or rather, a recontextualization of their suffering in terms of the mechanization of life and death. Heidegger's defenders have pointed to the deep ecology
dimension of Heidegger's critique of technological "enframing" - i.e., that the way human beings relate to nature has a determining influence on the way we relate to one another. However, this is clearly not a conventional reaction to genocide. Moreover, many of those who align themselves with Heidegger philosophically have pointed out that in his own work on "being-towards-death", we can recognize a much more salient criticism of what was wrong with the mass-produced murder of a people. Thinkers as diverse as Giorgio Agamben
and Judith Butler
have made this point sympathetically. It might be worth pointing out that the SS physician Josef Mengele, the so called "Angel of Death", was the son of the founder of a company that produced major farm machinery under the name Karl Mengele & Sons.
This side of Heidegger's thinking can be seen in another controversial lecture from the same period, "Die Gefahr" ("The Danger"):
In other words, according to Heidegger, the victims of death camps were deprived not only of their life, but of the dignity of an authentic death, since they were "liquidated" as if they were inventory or problematic accounting, rather than killed in combat as one would kill an enemy.
Another citation levied against Heidegger by his critics, is his answer to a question by his former student Herbert Marcuse
, concerning his silence about the Nazi racial policies. In a letter to Marcuse he wrote:
The reference to East Germans concerns the expulsion of Germans after World War II
from territories across eastern Europe, which displaced about 15 million people and killed between 0.5 and 2 million, involved gang-rapes throughout East Germany, East Prussia, and Austria, and harshly punitive de-industrialization policies. Heidegger was correct that the mass-murder of Jews was not known to the German people during the war; however, antisemitic legislation and deportation of Jews was common knowledge, as was the "bloody terror of the Nazis" in many other regards.
magazine, in which he agreed to discuss his political past provided that the interview be published posthumously. At his own insistence, Heidegger edited the published version of the interview extensively. In the interview, Heidegger defends his involvement with the Nazi party on two points: first, that he was trying to save the university from being completely taken over by the Nazis, and therefore he tried to work with them. Second, he saw in the historic moment the possibility for an "awakening" ("Aufbruch") which might help to find a "new national and social approach" to the problem of Germany's future, a kind of middle ground between capitalism and communism. For example, when Heidegger talked about a "national and social approach" to political problems, he linked this to Friedrich Naumann. According to Thomas Sheehan, Naumann had the "vision of a strong nationalism and a militantly anticommunist socialism, combined under a charismatic leader who would fashion a middle-European empire that preserved the spirit and tradition of pre-industrial Germany even as it appropriated, in moderation, the gains of modern technology."
After 1934, Heidegger claims in the interview, he was more critical of the Nazi government, largely prompted by the violence of the Night of the Long Knives
. When the interviewers asked him about the 1935 lecture in which he had referred to the "inner truth and greatness of [the national socialist] movement" (i.e., the lecture now incorporated into the book Introduction to Metaphysics, see above), Heidegger said that he used this phrase so that Nazi informants who observed his lectures would understand him to be praising National Socialism, but his dedicated students would know this statement was no elegy for the Nazi party. Rather, he meant it as he expressed it in the parenthetical clarification added in 1953, namely, as "the confrontation of planetary technology and modern humanity."
However, Karl Löwith's account of his meeting with Heidegger in 1936 (discussed above) has been cited to refute these contention. According to Lowith, Heidegger did not make any decisive break with National Socialism in 1934, and Heidegger was willing to entertain more profound relations between his philosophy and political involvement, than he would subsequently admit.
The Der Spiegel interviewers were not in possession of most of the evidence for Heidegger's Nazi sympathies now known, and thus their questions did not press too strongly on those points. In particular, the Der Spiegel interviewers did not bring up Heidegger's 1949 quotation comparing the industrialization of agriculture to the extermination camps.
, a Jew who had survived concentration camps operated by the Nazis' Romanian allies. On July 24 Celan gave a reading at the University of Freiburg, attended by Heidegger. Heidegger there presented Celan with a copy of What is Called Thinking?, and invited him to visit him at his hut at Todtnauberg
, an invitation which Celan accepted. On July 25 Celan visited Heidegger at his retreat, signing the guestbook and spending some time walking and talking with Heidegger. The details of their conversation are not known, but the meeting was the subject of a subsequent poem by Celan, entitled "Todtnauberg" (dated August 1, 1967). The enigmatic poem and the encounter have been discussed by numerous writers on Heidegger and Celan, notably Lacoue-Labarthe. A common interpretation of the poem is that it concerns, in part, Celan's wish for Heidegger to apologize for Heidegger's behavior during the Nazi era.
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
and the Nazi Party is a controversial subject.
Martin Heidegger joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) on May 1, 1933, nearly three weeks after being appointed Rector of the University of Freiburg. Heidegger resigned the Rectorship about one year later, in April 1934, but remained a member of the NSDAP until the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. His first act as Rector was to eliminate all democratic structures, including those that had elected him Rector. There were book burnings on his campus, some of which he successfully stopped, as well as some student violence.
Since the book Heidegger and Nazism (1987) by Victor Farias
Victor Farias
Victor Farías is a native Chilean historian and author. A one-time student of Martin Heidegger, he is perhaps best known for his controversial book Heidegger and Nazism , which concluded that Heidegger's philosophy is inherently fascist. His writings are informed by his philosophical education in...
, who had access to many documents, in particular some preserved in the STASI archives, no one denies Heidegger's historical involvement with Nazism and support of Hitler's policies and person. However, philosophers disagree on the consequences of this historical responsibility on his philosophy. His critics, such as Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
, Theodor Adorno, and Hans Jonas
Hans Jonas
Hans Jonas was a German-born philosopher who was, from 1955 to 1976, Alvin Johnson Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City.Jonas's writings were very influential in different spheres...
, claim that his historical engagement for the Nazi party derived from his philosophical conceptions.
Was Heidegger anti-Semitic?
Emmanuel Faye claims Heidegger criticized the "Judaization" ("Verjudung") of German universities in 1916, and favored instead the promotion of the "German race" ("die deutsche Rasse"). However, this claim is based on indirect evidence: a non-extant letter of Heidegger's quoted by Edmund HusserlEdmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
twenty years later. Faye also claims that Heidegger said of Spinoza that he was "ein Fremdkörper in der Philosophie", a "foreign body in philosophy" — Faye notes that Fremdkörper was a term which belonged to Nazi vocabulary, and not to classical German.
The widow of Ernst Cassirer
Ernst Cassirer
Ernst Cassirer was a German philosopher. He was one of the major figures in the development of philosophical idealism in the first half of the 20th century...
claimed she had heard of Heidegger's "inclination to anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
" by 1929. In June 1933, Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system...
criticized The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fraudulent, antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for achieving global domination. It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the twentieth century...
, a propaganda book supporting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Jaspers recalled much later that Heidegger had responded: "But there is a dangerous international alliance of Jews."
There were "rumors" that Heidegger was anti-semitic already in 1932, and he was aware of them, and vehemently denied them, calling them "slander".
Heidegger's rectorate at the University of Freiburg
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Heidegger was elected rector of the University of Freiburg
University of Freiburg
The University of Freiburg , sometimes referred to in English as the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.The university was founded in 1457 by the Habsburg dynasty as the...
on April 21, 1933, and assumed the position the following day. On May 1 he joined the Nazi Party. He sent a public telegram to Hitler on May 20, 1933.
While he was rector, Heidegger implemented the Gleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung , meaning "coordination", "making the same", "bringing into line", is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control and tight coordination over all aspects of society. The historian Richard J...
totalitarian policy, suppressing all opposition to the government. According to Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger, along with Ernst Krieck and Alfred Baeumler
Alfred Baeumler
Alfred Baeumler , was a German philosopher and pedagogue. From 1924 he taught at the Technische Universität Dresden, at first as an unsalaried lecturer Privatdozent...
, spearheaded the "conservative revolution" promoted by the Nazis.
However, Heidegger's tenure as rector was fraught with difficulties. Some National Socialist education officials viewed him as a rival, while others saw his efforts as comical. Some of Heidegger's fellow National Socialists also ridiculed his philosophical writings as gibberish. He finally offered his resignation on April 23, 1934, and it was accepted on April 27. Heidegger remained a member of both the academic faculty and of the Nazi Party until the end of the war.
Philosophical historian Hans Sluga
Hans Sluga
Hans D. Sluga is a German academic, who is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He teaches and writes on, among other things, Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and German philosophy in the Nazi period.He studied at the...
wrote:
Though as rector he prevented students from displaying an anti-Semitic poster at the entrance to the university and from holding a book burning, he kept in close contact with the Nazi student leaders and clearly signaled to them his sympathy with their activism.
In 1945 Heidegger wrote of his term as rector, giving the writing to his son Hermann; it was published in 1983:
The rectorate was an attempt to see something in the movement that had come to power, beyond all its failings and crudeness, that was much more far-reaching and that could perhaps one day bring a concentration on the Germans' Western historical essence. It will in no way be denied that at the time I believed in such possibilities and for that reason renounced the actual vocation of thinking in favor of being effective in an official capacity. In no way will what was caused by my own inadequacy in office be played down. But these points of view do not capture what is essential and what moved me to accept the rectorate.
Inaugural address
Heidegger's inaugural address as rector of Freiburg, the "Rektoratsrede", was entitled "The Self-Assertion of the German University". This speech has become notorious as a visible endorsement of Nazism by Heidegger, giving the blessing of his philosophy to the new political party.In this speech, Heidegger declared that "science must become the power that shapes the body of the German university." But by "science" he meant "the primordial and full essence of science", which he defined as "engaged knowledge about the people and about the destiny of the state that keeps itself in readiness [...] at one with the spiritual mission."
He went on to link this concept of "science" with a historical struggle of the German people:
The will to the essence of the German university is the will to science as will to the historical spiritual mission of the German people as a people [Volk] that knows itself in its state
[Staat]. Together, science and German destiny must come to power in the will to essence. And they will do so and only will do so, if we – teachers and students – on the one hand, expose science to its innermost necessity and, on the other hand, are able to stand our ground while German destiny is in its most extreme distress.
Heidegger also linked the concept of a people with "blood and soil" in a way that would now be regarded as characteristic of Nazism:
The spiritual world of a people is not the superstructure of a culture any more than it is an armory filled with useful information and values; it is the power that most deeply preserves
the people’s earth- and blood-bound strengths as the power that most deeply arouses and most profoundly shakes the people’s existence.
The speech ended with a call for the German people to "will itself" and "fulfill its historical mission":
But no one will even ask us whether we do or do not will, when the spiritual strength of the West fails and its joints crack, when this moribund semblance of a culture caves in and drags all forces into confusion and lets them suffocate in madness.
Whether this will or will not happen depends solely on whether we, as a historical-spiritual people, still and once again will ourselves – or whether we
no longer will ourselves. Each individual participates in this decision even when, and especially when, he evades it.
But we do will that our people fulfill its historical mission.
Speech to Heidelberg Student Association
In June 1933, Heidegger gave a speech to the Student Association at the university of HeidelbergHeidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
, in which he gave clear form to his views on the need for state control of the university, "in the National Socialist spirit" and free from "humanizing, Christian ideas":
We have the new Reich and the university that is to receive its tasks from the Reich’s will to existence. There is revolution in Germany, and we must ask ourselves: Is there revolution at the university as well? No. The battle still consists of skirmishes. So far, a breakthrough has only been achieved on one front: because new life is being educated (durch die Bildung neuen Lebens) in the work camp and educational association (Erziehungsverband) as well as at the university, the latter has been relieved of educational tasks to which it has till now believed it had an exclusive right.
The possibility could exist that the university will suffer death through oblivion and forfeit the last vestige of its educational power. It must, however, be integrated again into the Volksgemeinschaft and be joined together with the State. The university must again become an educational force that draws on knowledge to educate the State’s leaders to knowledge. This goal demands three things: 1. knowledge of today’s university; 2. knowledge of the dangers today holds for the future; 3. new courage.
Up to now, research and teaching have been carried on at the universities as they were for decades. Teaching was supposed to develop out of research, and one sought to find a pleasant balance between the two. It was always only the point of view of the teacher that spoke out of this notion. No one had concerned himself with the university as community. Research got out of hand and concealed its uncertainty behind the idea of international scientific and scholarly progress. Teaching that had become aimless hid behind examination requirements.
A fierce battle must be fought against this situation in the National Socialist spirit, and this spirit cannot be allowed to be suffocated by humanizing, Christian ideas that suppress its unconditionality.
Danger comes not from work for the State. It comes only from indifference and resistance. For that reason, only true strength should have access to the right path, but not halfheartedness. [...]
The new teaching which is at issue here does not mean conveying knowledge, but allowing students to learn and inducing them to learn. This means allowing oneself to be beset by the unknown and then becoming master of it in comprehending knowing; it means becoming secure in one's sense of what is essential. It is from such teaching that true research emerges, interlocked with the whole through its rootedness in the people and its bond to the state. The student is forced out into the uncertainty of all things, in which the necessity of engagement is grounded. University study must again become a risk, not a refuge for the cowardly. Whoever does not survive the battle, lies where he falls. The new courage must accustom itself to steadfastness, for the battle for the institutions where our leaders are educated will continue for a long time. It will be fought out of the strengths of the new Reich that Chancellor Hitler will bring to reality. A hard race with no thought of self must fight this battle, a race that lives from constant testing and that remains directed toward the goal to which it has committed itself. It is a battle to determine who shall be the teachers and leaders at the university.
Denounced or demoted non-Nazis
Heidegger also denounced or demoted several colleagues for being insufficiently committed to the Nazi cause.On September 29, 1933, Heidegger leaked information to the local minister of education that the chemist Hermann Staudinger
Hermann Staudinger
- External links :* Staudinger's * Staudinger's Nobel Lecture *....
had been a pacifist during World War I. Heidegger knew this would cost Staudinger his job. The Gestapo investigated the matter and confirmed Heidegger's tip. Asked for his recommendation as rector of the university, Heidegger secretly urged the ministry to fire Staudinger without a pension.
Heidegger also denounced his former friend Eduard Baumgarten in a letter to the head of the organization of Nazi professors at the university of Göttingen, where Baumgarten had been teaching. In the letter, Heidegger called Baumgarten "anything but a National-Socialist" and underlined his links to "the Heidelberg circle of liberal-democratic intellectuals around Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
."
The Catholic intellectual Max Müller
Max Müller (Catholic intellectual)
Max Müller was a German philosopher and influential post-World War II Catholic intellectual...
was a member of the inner circle of Heidegger's most gifted students from 1928 to 1933. But Müller stopped attending Heidegger's lectures when Heidegger joined the Nazi party in May 1933. Seven months later, Heidegger fired Müller from his position as a student leader because Müller was "not politically appropriate." Then in 1938 Müller discovered that Heidegger had blocked him from getting a teaching position at Freiburg by informing the university administration that Müller was "unfavorably disposed" toward the regime.
Attitude towards Jews
On November 3, 1933, Heidegger issued a decree applying the Nazi racial policies to the students of Freiburg university. These laws meant that Jews were now indirectly and directly dissuaded or banned from privileged and superior positions reserved for “Aryan Germans”. Heidegger announced that economic aid would henceforth be awarded to students who belonged to the SS, the SA, or other military groups but would be denied to "Jewish or Marxist students" or anyone who fit the description of a "non-Aryan" in Nazi law.After 1933, Heidegger declined to direct the doctoral dissertations of Jewish students: he sent all those students to his Catholic colleague Professor Martin Honecker. And in his letter denouncing Baumgarten, cited above, Heidegger wrote that "after failing with me" [not as a student but as a friend!], Baumgarten "frequented, very actively, the Jew Fränkel" -- i.e. Eduard Fränkel
Eduard Fraenkel
Eduard David Mortier Fraenkel was a German-English philologist.-Background and early life:Eduard Fraenkel was born to Jewish parents in Berlin. His father was a wine dealer, and his mother the daughter of an important publishing family...
, a noted professor of classics at Freiburg.
Nonetheless, Heidegger also intervened as rector to help several Jewish colleagues. He wrote appeals in defense of three Jewish professors, including Fränkel, all of whom were about to be fired for racial reasons. Heidegger also helped certain Jewish students and colleagues to emigrate, including his assistant Werner Brock, who found a position in England with Heidegger's assistance.
Attitude towards his mentor Husserl
Beginning in 1917, the philosopher Edmund HusserlEdmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
championed Heidegger's work, and helped him secure the retiring Husserl's chair in Philosophy at the University of Freiburg.
On April 6, 1933, the Reichskommissar
Reichskommissar
Reichskommissar , in German history, was an official gubernatorial title used for various public offices during the period of the German Empire and the Nazi Third Reich....
of Baden
Baden
Baden is a historical state on the east bank of the Rhine in the southwest of Germany, now the western part of the Baden-Württemberg of Germany....
Province, Robert Wagner, suspended all Jewish government employees, including present and retired faculty at the University of Freiburg. Husserl, who was born Jewish and was an adult convert to Lutheran Christianity, was affected by this law. But Heidegger did not become Rector until April 22, so it was Heidegger's predecessor as Rector who formally notified Husserl of his "enforced leave of absence" on April 14, 1933. Then, the week after Heidegger's election, the national Reich law of April 28, 1933 came into effect, overriding Wagner's decree, and requiring that all Jewish professors from German universities, including those who had converted to Christianity, be fired. The termination of Husserl's academic privileges thus did not involve any specific action on Heidegger's part.
Heidegger had by then broken off contact with Husserl, other than through intermediaries. Heidegger later claimed that his relationship with Husserl had already become strained after Husserl publicly "settled accounts" with Heidegger and Max Scheler
Max Scheler
Max Scheler was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology...
in the early 1930s.
There is no truth to the oft-repeated story that during Heidegger's time as Rector, the University denied Husserl access to the university library. However, in 1941, under pressure from publisher Max Niemeyer, Heidegger did agree to remove the dedication to Husserl from Being and Time
Being and Time
Being and Time is a book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly...
. The dedication was restored in post-war editions.
Heidegger did not attend his former mentor's cremation in 1938.
Support for the "Fuhrer principle"
According to Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger supported the "necessity of a FührerFührer
Führer , alternatively spelled Fuehrer in both English and German when the umlaut is not available, is a German title meaning leader or guide now most associated with Adolf Hitler, who modelled it on Benito Mussolini's title il Duce, as well as with Georg von Schönerer, whose followers also...
" for Germany as early as 1918. In a number of speeches in November 1933, Heidegger endorsed the Fuhrerprinzip
Führerprinzip
The Führerprinzip , German for "leader principle", prescribes the fundamental basis of political authority in the governmental structures of the Third Reich...
("leader principle"), i.e., the principle that the Führer is the embodiment of the people - a kind of absolute monarch. For example in one speech Heidegger stated:
Let not propositions and 'ideas' be the rules of your being (SeinSeinSein can mean:* île de Sein, an island of Bretagne* Île-de-Sein, a commune of Bretagne* Raz de Sein, a stretch of water in Bretagne* Sein, a character in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Strikers...
). The Fuhrer alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn to know ever more deeply: that from now on every single thing demands decision, and every action responsibility. Heil Hitler!
In another speech a few days later Heidegger said:
The German people has been summoned by the Fuhrer to vote; the Fuhrer, however, is asking nothing from the people; rather, he is giving the people the possibility of making, directly, the highest free decision of all: whether it - the entire people - wants its own existence (DaseinDaseinDasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time, which generally translates to being in its ontological and philosophical sense Dasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time, which generally translates to...
), or whether it does notNotNot is the general declarative form of no, indicating a negation of a related statement which it usually precedes. "Not" may refer to:* Not!, an expression used as a contradiction, especially during the early 1990s...
want it. [...]
On November 12, the German people as a whole will choose its future, and this future is bound to the Fuhrer. [...] There are not separate foreign and domestic policies. There is only one will to the full existence (DaseinDaseinDasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time, which generally translates to being in its ontological and philosophical sense Dasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time, which generally translates to...
) of the State. The Fuhrer has awakened this will in the entire people and has welded it into a single resolve.
In late November Heidegger gave a conference at the University of Tübingen, organized by the students of the university and the Kampfbund, the local Nazi party section. In this address he argued for a revolution in knowledge, a revolution which would displace the traditional idea that the university should be independent of the state:
We have witnessed a revolution. The state has transformed itself. This revolution was not the advent of a power pre-existing in the bosom of the state or of a political party. The national-socialist revolution means rather the radical transformation of German existence. [...] However, in the university, not only has the revolution not yet achieved its aims, it has not even started."
Heidegger addressed some of these remarks in the 1966 "Der Spiegel" interview, "Only a God Can Save Us" (see section below). In that interview, he stated: "I would no longer write [such things] today. Such things as that I stopped saying by 1934."
However Hans Jonas
Hans Jonas
Hans Jonas was a German-born philosopher who was, from 1955 to 1976, Alvin Johnson Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City.Jonas's writings were very influential in different spheres...
, a former student of Heidegger's, argues in a recent book that Heidegger's endorsement of the "Fuhrer principle" stemmed from his philosophy and was consistent with it:
But as to Heidegger's being, it is an occurrence of unveiling, a fate-laden happening upon thought: so was the Führer and the call of German destiny under him: an unveiling of something indeed, a call of being all right, fate-laden in every sense: neither then nor now did Heidegger's thought provide a norm by which to decide how to answer such calls—liguistically or otherwise: no norm except depth, resolution, and the sheer force of being that issues the call.
Resignation from rectorship
According to the historian Richard J. Evans,
By the beginning of 1934, there were reports in Berlin that Heidegger had established himself as 'the philosopher of National Socialism'. But to other Nazi thinkers, Heidegger's philosophy appeared too abstract, too difficult, to be of much use. [...] Though his intervention was welcomed by many Nazis, on closer inspection such ideas did not really seem to be in tune with the Party's. It is not surprising that his enemies were able to enlist the support of Alfred RosenbergAlfred Rosenberg' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
, whose own ambition it was to be the philosopher of Nazism himself. Denied a role at the national level, and increasingly frustrated with the minutiae of academic politics - which seemed to him to betray a sad absence of the new spirit he had hoped would permeate the universities - Heidegger resigned his post in April 1934.
Post-rectorate period
After he resigned from the rectorship, Heidegger withdrew from political activity, but without canceling his membership in the Nazi party. References to National Socialism continued to appear in his work, usually in ambiguous ways.In a 1935 lecture, Heidegger referred to the "inner truth and greatness of this movement" - that is, of National Socialism. This lecture was published in 1953 under the title An Introduction to Metaphysics
Introduction to Metaphysics (Heidegger)
Introduction to Metaphysics is a book by Martin Heidegger and is the published version of a lecture course he gave in the Summer of 1935 at the University of Freiburg. The book is famous both for its powerful reinterpretation of Greek thought and infamous for its acknowledgement of the Nazi Party...
. In the published version, Heidegger added a parenthetical qualification: "(namely, the confrontation of planetary technology and modern humanity)". However, Heidegger did not mention that this qualification was added at the time of publication, and was not part of the original lecture. This raised concerns in post-Nazi Germany that Heidegger was distinguishing a "good Nazism" from a "bad Nazism", a contention supported by his philosophical opponents, including Bauemler . The controversial page of the 1935 manuscript is missing from the Heidegger Archives in Marbach
Marbach
Marbach may refer to: Places in Germany*the town Marbach am Neckar, district Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg*Part of Erbach in Hessen*Part of Gomadingen, Baden-Württemberg...
. In this same course, Heidegger criticized both Russia and the United States for "the same dreary technological frenzy," calling Germany "the most metaphysical of nations."
Heidegger defended himself during the denazification
Denazification
Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the National Socialist ideology. It was carried out specifically by removing those involved from positions of influence and by disbanding or rendering...
period by claiming he had opposed the philosophical bases of Nazism, especially biologism and the Nazi interpretation of Nietzsche's The Will to Power
The Will to Power
The Will to Power is the title given to a book of selectively reordered notes from the literary remains of Friedrich Nietzsche by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Heinrich Köselitz...
. However, in a 1936 lecture, Heidegger still sounded rather ambiguous as to whether Nietzsche's thought was compatible with Nazism, or at least with that hypothetical "good Nazism": "The two men who, each in his own way, have introduced a counter movement to nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
— Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
and Hitler — have learned from Nietzsche, each in an essentially different way. But even with that, Nietzsche's authentic metaphysical domain has not yet come unto its own."
In private notes from 1939, published recently, Heidegger took stronger exception to Hitler: under the heading "Truth and Usefulness", he critiqued Hitler's statement, "There is no attitude, which could not be ultimately justified by the ensuing usefulness for the totality." Heidegger's notes record the following critical comments:
Who makes up this totality? (Eighty million-strong extant human mass? Does its extantness assign to this human mass the right to the claim on a continued existence?)
How is this totality determined? What is its goal? Is it itself the goal of all goals? Why? Wherein lies the justification for this goal-setting? [...]
Why is usefulness the criterion for the legitmacy of a human attitude? On what is this principle grounded? [...]
From where does the appeal to usefulness as the measure of truth acquire its comprehensibility? Does comprehensibility justify legitimacy?
However, in a 1942 lecture (published posthumously), Heidegger was once again ambiguous on the subject of Nazism. During a discussion of recent German classics scholarship he said: "In the majority of 'research results', the Greeks appear as pure National Socialists. This overenthusiasm on the part of academics seems not even to notice that with such "results" it does National Socialism and its historical uniqueness no service at all, not that it needs this anyhow.
In the same lectures he commented on America's entry into World War II, in a way that seems to identify his philosophy with the Nazi cause:
"The entry of America into this planetary war is not an entry into history. No, it is already the last American act of America's history-lessness and self-destruction. This act is the renunciation of the Origin. It is a decision for lack-of-Origin."
Karl Löwith
Karl LöwithKarl Löwith
Karl Löwith , was a German philosopher, a student of Heidegger.Löwith was born in Munich. Though he was himself Protestant, his family was of Jewish descent and he therefore had to emigrate Germany in 1934 because of the National Socialist regime. He went to Italy and in 1936 he went to Japan...
was a student of Heidegger's, and in 1933 Heidegger helped him to obtain a fellowship to study in Rome, where he lived between 1934 and 1936. Heidegger visited Rome in 1936 to lecture on Hölderlin, and had a meeting with Löwith. In an account set down in 1940 and not intended for publication, Löwith noted that Heidegger was wearing a swastika pin, even though he knew that Löwith was Jewish. Löwith recounted their discussion about editorials published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung is a major German language Swiss daily newspaper based in Zurich.One of the oldest newspapers still published, it originally appeared as Zürcher Zeitung, edited by Salomon Gessner, from January 12, 1780, and was renamed to Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1821...
:
He left no doubt about his faith in Hitler; only two things that he had underestimated: the vitality of the Christian churches and the obstacles to the AnschlussAnschlussThe Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
in Austria. Now, as before, he was convinced that National Socialism was the prescribed path for Germany.
[I] told him that [...] my opinion was that his taking the side of National Socialism was in agreement with the essence of his philosophy. Heidegger told me unreservedly that I was right and developed his idea by saying that his idea of historicity [Geschichtlichkeit] was the foundation for his political involvement.
Löwith went on to say:
In response to my remark that I could understand many things about his attitude, with one exception, which was that he would permit himself to be seated at the same table with a figure such as Julius StreicherJulius StreicherJulius Streicher was a prominent Nazi prior to World War II. He was the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer newspaper, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine...
(at the German Academy of Law), he was silent at first. At last he uttered this well-known rationalisation (which Karl BarthKarl BarthKarl Barth was a Swiss Reformed theologian whom critics hold to be among the most important Christian thinkers of the 20th century; Pope Pius XII described him as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas...
saw so clearly), which amounted to saying that "it all would have been much worse if some men of knowledge had not been involved." And with a bitter resentment towards people of culture, he concluded his statement: "If these gentlemen had not considered themselves too refined to become involved, things would have been different, but I had to stay in there alone." To my reply that one did not have to be very refined to refuse to work with a Streicher, he answered that it was useless to discuss Streicher; Der StürmerDer StürmerDer Stürmer was a weekly tabloid-format Nazi newspaper published by Julius Streicher from 1923 to the end of World War II in 1945, with brief suspensions in publication due to legal difficulties. It was a significant part of the Nazi propaganda machinery and was vehemently anti-Semitic...
was nothing more than "pornography." Why didn't Hitler get rid of this sinister individual? He didn't understand it.
For commentators such as Habermas
Habermas
People with the surname Habermas include:*German sociologist and philosopher, Jürgen Habermas*American philosophical theologian, Gary Habermas...
who credit Löwith's account, there are a number of generally shared implications: one is that Heidegger did not turn away from National Socialism per se but became deeply disaffected with the official philosophy and ideology of the party, as embodied by Alfred Bäumler or Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Rosenberg
' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
, whose biologistic racist doctrines he never accepted.
Post-war
During the hearings of the DenazificationDenazification
Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the National Socialist ideology. It was carried out specifically by removing those involved from positions of influence and by disbanding or rendering...
Committee, Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
, Heidegger's former student and lover, who was Jewish, spoke on his behalf. (Arendt very cautiously resumed her friendship with Heidegger after the war, despite or even because of the widespread contempt for Heidegger and his political sympathies, and despite his being forbidden to teach for many years.) Heidegger's former friend Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system...
spoke against him, suggesting he would have a detrimental influence on German students because of his powerful teaching presence.
In September 1945, the Denazification Committee published its report on Heidegger. He was charged on four counts: his important, official position, in the Nazi regime; his introduction of the Führerprinzip into the University; his engaging in Nazi propaganda
Nazi propaganda
Propaganda, the coordinated attempt to influence public opinion through the use of media, was skillfully used by the NSDAP in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany...
and his incitement of students against "reactionary" professors. He was subsequently dismissed from university the same year. In March 1949, he was declared a "fellow traveller
Fellow traveller
Fellow traveler or fellow traveller is a term referring to a person who sympathizes with the beliefs of an organization or cooperates in its activities without maintaining formal membership in that particular group...
" ("Mitläufer") of Nazism by the State Commission for Political Purification. But he was reintegrated in 1951, given emeritus status, and continued teaching until 1976. In 1974, he wrote to his friend Heinrich Petzet: "Our Europe is being ruined from below with 'democracy.'".
Thomas Sheehan has noted "Heidegger's stunning silence concerning the Holocaust," in contrast to his criticism of the alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
wrought by modern technologies: "We have his statements about the six millions unemployed at the beginning of the Nazi regime, but not a word about the six million who were dead at the end of it." Heidegger did not publish anything concerning the Holocaust or the extermination camps, but did mention them. In a 1949 lecture entitled "Das Gestell" ("Enframing"), he stated:
Agriculture is now a motorized food-industry — in essence, the same as the manufacturing of corpses in gas chambersGas ChambersGas Chambers is a fast, hollow and shallow point break type of wave. Being that it is a high performance wave it is well suited for the average to pro level surfer. Gas Chambers is located on the North Shore of Oahu about a 1/4 of a mile north of Ehukai Beach Park and 1/2 a mile west of Sunset...
and extermination camps, the same as the blockading and starving of nations [the Berlin blockadeBerlin BlockadeThe Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first resulting in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied...
was then active], the same as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.
Commentators differ on whether these statements are evidence of a profound disregard for the fate of the Jews or rather, a recontextualization of their suffering in terms of the mechanization of life and death. Heidegger's defenders have pointed to the deep ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
dimension of Heidegger's critique of technological "enframing" - i.e., that the way human beings relate to nature has a determining influence on the way we relate to one another. However, this is clearly not a conventional reaction to genocide. Moreover, many of those who align themselves with Heidegger philosophically have pointed out that in his own work on "being-towards-death", we can recognize a much more salient criticism of what was wrong with the mass-produced murder of a people. Thinkers as diverse as Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben is an Italian political philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer....
and Judith Butler
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
have made this point sympathetically. It might be worth pointing out that the SS physician Josef Mengele, the so called "Angel of Death", was the son of the founder of a company that produced major farm machinery under the name Karl Mengele & Sons.
This side of Heidegger's thinking can be seen in another controversial lecture from the same period, "Die Gefahr" ("The Danger"):
Hundreds of thousands die en masse. Do they die? They succumb. They are done in. Do they die? They become mere quanta, items in an inventory in the business of
manufacturing corpses. Do they die? They are liquidated inconspicuously in extermination camps. And even apart from that, right now millions of impoverished
people are perishing from hunger in China.
But to die is to endure death in its essence. To be able to die means to be capable of this endurance. We are capable of this only if the essence of death makes
our own essence possible.
In other words, according to Heidegger, the victims of death camps were deprived not only of their life, but of the dignity of an authentic death, since they were "liquidated" as if they were inventory or problematic accounting, rather than killed in combat as one would kill an enemy.
Another citation levied against Heidegger by his critics, is his answer to a question by his former student Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
, concerning his silence about the Nazi racial policies. In a letter to Marcuse he wrote:
I can add only that instead of the word "Jews" [in your letter] there should be the word "East Germans," and then exactly the same [terror] holds true of one of the AlliesAllies of World War IIThe Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
, with the difference that everything that has happened since 1945 is public knowledge world-wide, whereas the bloody terror of the Nazis was in fact kept a secret from the German people.
The reference to East Germans concerns the expulsion of Germans after World War II
Expulsion of Germans after World War II
The later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...
from territories across eastern Europe, which displaced about 15 million people and killed between 0.5 and 2 million, involved gang-rapes throughout East Germany, East Prussia, and Austria, and harshly punitive de-industrialization policies. Heidegger was correct that the mass-murder of Jews was not known to the German people during the war; however, antisemitic legislation and deportation of Jews was common knowledge, as was the "bloody terror of the Nazis" in many other regards.
Der Spiegel interview
In 1966, Heidegger gave an interview to Der SpiegelDer Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
magazine, in which he agreed to discuss his political past provided that the interview be published posthumously. At his own insistence, Heidegger edited the published version of the interview extensively. In the interview, Heidegger defends his involvement with the Nazi party on two points: first, that he was trying to save the university from being completely taken over by the Nazis, and therefore he tried to work with them. Second, he saw in the historic moment the possibility for an "awakening" ("Aufbruch") which might help to find a "new national and social approach" to the problem of Germany's future, a kind of middle ground between capitalism and communism. For example, when Heidegger talked about a "national and social approach" to political problems, he linked this to Friedrich Naumann. According to Thomas Sheehan, Naumann had the "vision of a strong nationalism and a militantly anticommunist socialism, combined under a charismatic leader who would fashion a middle-European empire that preserved the spirit and tradition of pre-industrial Germany even as it appropriated, in moderation, the gains of modern technology."
After 1934, Heidegger claims in the interview, he was more critical of the Nazi government, largely prompted by the violence of the Night of the Long Knives
Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives , sometimes called "Operation Hummingbird " or in Germany the "Röhm-Putsch," was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders...
. When the interviewers asked him about the 1935 lecture in which he had referred to the "inner truth and greatness of [the national socialist] movement" (i.e., the lecture now incorporated into the book Introduction to Metaphysics, see above), Heidegger said that he used this phrase so that Nazi informants who observed his lectures would understand him to be praising National Socialism, but his dedicated students would know this statement was no elegy for the Nazi party. Rather, he meant it as he expressed it in the parenthetical clarification added in 1953, namely, as "the confrontation of planetary technology and modern humanity."
However, Karl Löwith's account of his meeting with Heidegger in 1936 (discussed above) has been cited to refute these contention. According to Lowith, Heidegger did not make any decisive break with National Socialism in 1934, and Heidegger was willing to entertain more profound relations between his philosophy and political involvement, than he would subsequently admit.
The Der Spiegel interviewers were not in possession of most of the evidence for Heidegger's Nazi sympathies now known, and thus their questions did not press too strongly on those points. In particular, the Der Spiegel interviewers did not bring up Heidegger's 1949 quotation comparing the industrialization of agriculture to the extermination camps.
Meeting with Paul Celan
In 1967 Heidegger met with the poet Paul CelanPaul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
, a Jew who had survived concentration camps operated by the Nazis' Romanian allies. On July 24 Celan gave a reading at the University of Freiburg, attended by Heidegger. Heidegger there presented Celan with a copy of What is Called Thinking?, and invited him to visit him at his hut at Todtnauberg
Todtnauberg
Todtnauberg is a German village in Black Forest belonging to the municipality of Todtnau, in Baden-Württemberg. It is named after the homonym mount and is famous because it was the place where the German philosopher Martin Heidegger had a chalet.-Geography:The village is located at amsl, in...
, an invitation which Celan accepted. On July 25 Celan visited Heidegger at his retreat, signing the guestbook and spending some time walking and talking with Heidegger. The details of their conversation are not known, but the meeting was the subject of a subsequent poem by Celan, entitled "Todtnauberg" (dated August 1, 1967). The enigmatic poem and the encounter have been discussed by numerous writers on Heidegger and Celan, notably Lacoue-Labarthe. A common interpretation of the poem is that it concerns, in part, Celan's wish for Heidegger to apologize for Heidegger's behavior during the Nazi era.
See also
- Political Texts - Rectoral Addresses
- Der Spiegel Interview
- Karl LöwithKarl LöwithKarl Löwith , was a German philosopher, a student of Heidegger.Löwith was born in Munich. Though he was himself Protestant, his family was of Jewish descent and he therefore had to emigrate Germany in 1934 because of the National Socialist regime. He went to Italy and in 1936 he went to Japan...
My Last Meeting with Heidegger - Nazi propagandaNazi propagandaPropaganda, the coordinated attempt to influence public opinion through the use of media, was skillfully used by the NSDAP in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany...
- Nazism and raceNazism and raceNazism developed several theories concerning races. The Nazis claimed to scientifically measure a strict hierarchy of human race; at the top was the master race, the "Aryan race", narrowly defined by the Nazis as being identical with the Nordic race, followed by lesser races.At the bottom of this...
- Alfred BaeumlerAlfred BaeumlerAlfred Baeumler , was a German philosopher and pedagogue. From 1924 he taught at the Technische Universität Dresden, at first as an unsalaried lecturer Privatdozent...
- The Will to PowerThe Will to PowerThe Will to Power is the title given to a book of selectively reordered notes from the literary remains of Friedrich Nietzsche by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and Heinrich Köselitz...
- Edith SteinEdith SteinSaint Teresia Benedicta of the Cross, sometimes also known as Saint Edith Stein , was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and nun, regarded as a martyr and saint of the Roman Catholic Church...
External links
- Press articles on Victor Farias' 1987 book
- Pierre Joris defends Heidegger
- "Serious response to Emmanuel Faye on Heidegger and nazism"
- Réponses de Gérard Guest (1) (au dossier publié dans "Magazine Littéraire")
- Réponses de Gérard Guest (2) ( au dossier publié dans "Le Point")
- François Fédier, Pascal David et Faye.Multimedia
- Heidegger contre le nazisme (paris4philo-sorbonne)
- Heidegger and Nazism: An Exchange
- A Normal Nazi Thomas Sheehan On Heidegger