Philosopher Martin Heidegger (26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) on May 1, 1933, ten days after being elected Rector of the University of Freiburg. A year later, in April 1934, he resigned the Rectorship and stopped taking part in Nazi Party meetings, but remained a member of the Nazi Party until its dismantling at the end of World War II. The denazification hearings immediately after World War II led to Heidegger's dismissal from Freiburg, banning him from teaching. In 1949, after several years of investigation, the French military finally classified Heidegger as a MitläuferMitläufer (literally, "with-runner"; similar to "lemming-like"): a person who, unlike a fellow traveler, gives into peer pressure without participation nor resistance nor inner conviction. or "fellow traveller."Daniel Morat: Von der Tat zur Gelassenheit. Göttingen 2007, p. 302. Helmuth Vetter: Grundriss Heidegger. Ein Handbuch zu Leben und Werk. Felix Meiner, Hamburg 2014, p. 398. The teaching ban was lifted in 1951, and Heidegger was granted emeritus status in 1953, but he was never allowed to resume his philosophy chairmanship.
Heidegger's involvement with Nazism, his attitude towards Jews and his near-total silence about the Holocaust in his writing and teaching after 1945 are highly controversial. The Black Notebooks, written between 1931 and 1941, contain several anti-semitic statements, although they also contain statements where Heidegger appears extremely critical of racial antisemitism. After 1945, Heidegger never published anything about the Holocaust or the extermination camps, and made one sole verbal mention of them, in 1949, whose meaning is disputed among scholars.Thomas Sheehan, "Heidegger and the Nazis" (), a review of Victor Farias' Heidegger et le nazisme. Original article: Heidegger never apologized for anything and is known to have expressed regret once, privately, when he described his rectorship and the related political engagement as "the greatest stupidity of his life" ("die größte Dummheit seines Lebens").Heinrich Wiegand Petzet Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger, 1929–1976, 1983 p. 37. See also Frédéric de Towarnicki, A la rencontre de Heidegger. Souvenirs d'un messager de la Forêt-Noire, Gallimard 1993 p. 125.
Whether there is a relation between Heidegger's political affiliation and his philosophy is another matter of controversy. Critics, such as Günther Anders, Jürgen Habermas, Theodor Adorno, Hans Jonas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Karl Löwith,Karl Löwith, Mein Leben in Deutschland vor und nach 1933: ein Bericht (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986), p. 57, translated by Paula Wissing as cited by Maurice Blanchot in "Thinking the Apocalypse: a Letter from Maurice Blanchot to Catherine David", in Critical Inquiry 15:2, pp. 476–477. Pierre Bourdieu, Maurice Blanchot, Emmanuel Levinas,"Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, and the Politics of Dwelling" by David J. Gauthier, Ph.D. dissertation, Louisiana State University, 2004, p. 156 Luc Ferry, Jacques Ellul, György Lukács, and Alain Renaut assert that Heidegger's affiliation with the Nazi Party revealed flaws inherent in his philosophical conceptions. His supporters, such as Hannah Arendt, Otto Pöggeler, Jan Patočka, Silvio Vietta, Jacques Derrida, Jean Beaufret, Jean-Michel Palmier, Richard Rorty, Marcel Conche, Julian Young, Catherine Malabou, and François Fédier, see his involvement with Nazism as an "error"a word which Arendt placed in quotation marks when referring to Heidegger's Nazi-era politics Access to the full article requires paid subscription.that is less crucial to his philosophy than the critics believe.
Timeline
Heidegger's rectorate at the University of Freiburg
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, on the recommendation of his predecessor von Möllendorff, who was forced to give up his position because he had refused to display an anti-Jewish poster, and assumed the position the following day. He joined the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" ten days later, on May 1 (significantly the international day of workers' solidarity: Heidegger said after the war he supported the social more than the national).Spiegel-Interview, GA 16 p. 655 He co-signed a public telegram sent by Nazi rectors to Hitler on May 20, 1933. Otto Pöggeler puts this attitude into perspective: He wasn't alone to be mystified. Toynbee too after an audience in 1936 noted about Hitler: "he has beautiful hands". [...] Mein Kampf had hardly been read and absolutely not taken seriously. [...] Roosevelt was impressed by Hitler's manners, the Times in London supported Hitler's demands, and as a result of high stock exchange prices, people applauded in London's cinemas when the newsreel showed Hitler's image.Otto Pöggeler, Neue Wege mit Heidegger, Karl Alber, Freiburg, 1992 p. 248.
In Germany, the atmosphere of those days has been described by Sebastian Haffner, who experienced it himself, as "a widespread feeling of deliverance, of liberation from democracy."quoted by R.Safranski Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil Harvard p.229 Rüdiger Safranski explains: This sense of relief at the demise of democracy was shared not only by the enemies of the republic. Most of its supporters, too, no longer credited it with the strength to master the crisis. It was as if a paralyzing weight had been lifted. Something genuinely new seemed to be beginning—a people's rule without political parties, with a leader of whom it was hoped that he would unite Germany once more internally and make her self-assured externally. [...] Hitler's "Peace Speech" of May 17, 1933, when he declared that "boundless love and loyalty to one's own nation" included "respect" for the national rights of other nations, had its effect. The London Times observed that Hitler had "indeed spoken for a united Germany." Even among the Jewish population—despite the boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1 and the dismissal of Jewish public employees after April 7—there was a good deal of enthusiastic support for the "National revolution". Georg Picht recalls that Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, in a lecture in March 1933, declared that the National Socialist revolution was an attempt by the Germans to realize Hölderlin's dream. [...] in actual fact Heidegger, during that first year, was bewitched by Hitler.Rudiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp.229-30, p.232. Jaspers noted about his last meeting with him in May 1933: "It's just like 1914, again this deceptive mass intoxication."Karl Jaspers, Philosophische Autobiographie, (Munich: R. Piper & Co, 1984), p.101.
During his time as rector, Heidegger, like his predecessor, refused to display the anti-Jewish poster. He argued after the war that he joined the Party to avoid dismissal, and he forbade the planned book-burning that was scheduled to take place in front of the main University building. Nevertheless, according to Victor Farias, Hugo Ott, and Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger implemented the Gleichschaltung totalitarian policy, suppressing all opposition to the government. Faye [pp. 40–46] details precisely Heidegger's actions in implementing antisemitic legislation within Freiburg University. Along with Ernst Krieck and Alfred Baeumler, Heidegger spearheaded the Conservative Revolution promoted (in the beginning) by the Nazis. But according to others such as François Fédier and Julian Young, Heidegger "called for, not the subordination of the university to the state, but precisely the reverse", and "did indeed seek to protect students from indoctrination by the crasser form of Nazi propaganda".Julian Young Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism Cambridge University Press 1997 p.20 Young quotes the testimony of a former student, Georg Picht: The way Heidegger conceived of the revival of the university, this became clear to me on the occasion of a memorable event. To give the first lecture within the framework of "political education" a compulsory measure introduced at the universities by the Nazis [...] – Heidegger, rector at that time, invited my mother's brother in law, Viktor von Weizsäcker. Everyone was puzzled, because it was well-known that Weizsäcker was no Nazi. But Heidegger's word was law. The student he had chosen to lead the philosophy department thought he should pronounce introductory words on national socialist revolution. Heidegger soon manifested signs of impatience, then he shouted with a loud voice that irritation strained: "this jabber will stop immediately!" Totally prostrated, the student disappeared from the tribune. He had to resign from office. As for Victor von Weizsäcker, he gave a perfect lecture on his philosophy of medicine, in which national socialism was not once mentioned, but far rather Sigmund Freud.Georg Picht "Macht des Denkens" in Erinnerung an Martin Heidegger Neske, Pfullingen, 1977, p. 198, cited by Julian Young in Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism Cambridge University Press 1997 p.20, Fédier Heidegger à plus forte raison p.44.
Picht recalls his uncle Weizsäcker told him afterwards about Heidegger's political engagement: I'm pretty sure it's a misunderstandingsuch a thing happens often in history of philosophy. But Heidegger is a step ahead: he perceives something is going on that the others don't.Georg Picht "Die Macht des Denkens" in Erinnerung an Martin Heidegger Neske, Pfullingen, 1977, p.198.
Heidegger's tenure as rector was fraught with difficulties. He was in conflict with Nazi students, intellectuals, and bureaucrats. Philosophical historian Hans Sluga 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.Hans Sluga, Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: Harvard University Press, 1993), p.149.
Some Nazi education officials viewed also him as a rival, while others saw his efforts as comical. His most risible initiative was the creation of a Wissenschaftslager or Scholar's camp, seriously described by Rockmore as a "reeducation camp", but by Safranski as rather a "mixture of scout camp and Platonic academy", actually "to build campfires, share food, have conversation, sing along with guitar... with people who were really a little beyond Cub Scout age". Safranski tells how a dispute occurred with a group of SA students and their military spirit.Rudiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil Harvard 2002 p.262 Some of Heidegger's fellow Nazis 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, but took no part in Party meetings. In 1944, he didn't even have the right to teach anymore, was considered a "completely dispensable" teacher, and was ordered up the Rhine to build fortifications, then drafted into the Volkssturm national militia, "the oldest member of the faculty to be called up". In 1945 Heidegger wrote of his term as rector, giving the writing to his son Hermann; it was published in 1983: