Heidegger, Nazism, and the Moral Dilemmas of His Circle

This lecture explores the complex and often troubling intersections of philosophy, personal relationships, and political history in 20th-century Germany, focusing on figures like Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Edmund Husserl, and Paul Celan.

The Shadow of Auschwitz and the Choice of Language

Theodor Adorno's controversial statement, "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric," highlights the profound moral and intellectual crisis following the Holocaust. Paul Celan, a Jewish poet and Holocaust survivor born in Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), challenged this view. Fluent in multiple languages including Yiddish, Romanian, Russian, German, French, English, and Ukrainian, Celan chose to continue writing in German after the war. His most famous poem, "Todesfuge" (Death Fugue), contains the haunting line, "Black milk of daybreak, we drink it at evening, we drink it at midday and morning, we drink it at night, we drink and we drink." Celan described German as both "Muttersprache" (mother tongue) and "Mordersprache" (murderer's tongue), encapsulating the profound dilemma of a language stained by atrocity.

Celan's Visit to Heidegger

In 1966 or 1967, Celan, already famous, gave a poetry reading in Freiberg, attended by Martin Heidegger, who admired Celan's work. Heidegger invited Celan to his hut in the Black Forest, Todtnauberg. Celan signed the guest book with the phrase, "In the huts book, glancing towards the Wells star in the hope of a word to come." They took a walk together, but the content of their conversation remains unknown. A week later, Celan wrote a poem reflecting on the visit, wondering whose names preceded his in the guest book and repeating the hope for "a word to come." Three or four years later, Celan committed suicide by throwing himself into the Seine River in Paris. This visit is significant because it brings together a Holocaust survivor and a philosopher deeply implicated in Nazism.

Husserl, Heidegger, and Edith Stein: Early Connections

The story of Heidegger's relationship with Nazism is intertwined with his philosophical development and personal connections. In 1916, Edmund Husserl, a Jewish philosopher, became the chair of philosophy at the University of Freiburg. Among his students were Edith Stein and Martin Heidegger.

Edith Stein, a former Red Cross nurse, worked as Husserl's assistant, a challenging role due to Husserl's demanding nature. She pursued her dissertation on empathy. Heidegger, initially from a Catholic theology background, married a Protestant woman named Elfride and began working with Husserl, becoming friendly with Stein. While Stein moved towards Catholicism, Heidegger began to distance himself from it.

By May 1917, Heidegger expressed to his wife that he found Husserl's phenomenology "too narrow and bloodless," believing "life is too rich and too great" for its approach. Despite this, Husserl was highly supportive of Heidegger, even writing to him during his military training in 1918, expressing hope for his return to philosophy.

In 1919, Heidegger confided in his wife that he felt he had surpassed Husserl philosophically but had to feign adherence to phenomenology for career advancement and financial stability. Edith Stein, however, noticed Heidegger's true intentions, writing to Roman Ingarden that Heidegger was using Husserl's trust to draw students away from his mentor's philosophy.

Heidegger, Arendt, and the Affair

In 1923, Heidegger left Freiburg for a position at the University of Marburg. The following year, 18-year-old Hannah Arendt, a Jewish student from Koenigsberg, came to Marburg to study with Heidegger. He was a captivating lecturer, and she was a brilliant student. Heidegger, then 35 and married with two children, fell in love with Arendt. Their correspondence reveals the intensity of their affair, with Heidegger writing about the richness and burden of love and his enduring affection for her.

In 1926, Arendt moved to Heidelberg to study with Karl Jaspers, a friend of Heidegger's. That same year, Heidegger retreated to his hut in Todtnauberg to write "Being and Time," a work he dedicated to Husserl, presenting the manuscript on Husserl's birthday in April 1926. In April 1928, Heidegger decisively ended his affair with Arendt. Arendt, then 22, expressed her enduring love for him in a letter.

Heidegger's Ascent and the Rise of Nazism

In 1928, Husserl retired and ensured Heidegger was appointed to his chair of philosophy at Freiburg. In 1929, Emmanuel Levinas, a young Jewish philosopher from Lithuania, came to Freiburg to study with both Husserl and Heidegger. Levinas described Heidegger as Husserl's "most original disciple whose name is now the glory of Germany," noting the immense popularity of his lectures.

The political climate in Germany was rapidly changing. In 1929, Hannah Arendt married Gunther Stern, another former student of Husserl and Heidegger. During a hike with Heidegger's wife, Elfride, a Nazi sympathizer, Stern, who was Jewish, was urged to join the Nazi party. He famously responded, "Look at me then you'll see that I belong to those who you wish to exclude."

On January 23, 1933, Husserl and Heidegger celebrated Husserl's 50th doctorate anniversary. In March 1933, the Nazis came to power. Rumors spread that Heidegger was excluding Jewish students from his seminars, which he denied to Arendt, assuring her that it would not affect their relationship.

In April 1933, Husserl's son, a law professor, was removed from his position due to new Nazi laws targeting "non-Aryans." Husserl, a German patriot who had converted to Protestantism, did not identify as Jewish. On April 21, Heidegger accepted the rectorship of the University of Freiburg. Eight days later, Elfride Heidegger wrote to Husserl's wife, Malvina, expressing gratitude and acknowledging Heidegger's philosophical divergence from Husserl. On May 1, 1933, Heidegger joined the Nazi party.

Heidegger's Rectorial Address and Nazi Ideology

On May 27, 1933, Heidegger delivered his Rectorial Address, "The Self-Assertion of the German University." In this speech, he emphasized the university's role in leading the "German folk" (Volk) and its "historical and spiritual mission." He spoke of "Volksgemeinschaft" (ethnic national community) and the "power that comes from preserving at the most profound level, the forces that are rooted in the soil and blood of a folk." He explicitly linked the university's purpose to the will of the German folk and the state, invoking Nietzsche's "God is dead" to underscore the need for a new spiritual foundation.

Heidegger urged students to become actively involved in the "struggle of the entire folk," emphasizing loyalty, will, and sacrifice. He referred to Hitler as "de Fuhrer," stating that "de Fuhrer alone is the present in future German reality and its law." This address clearly articulated existentialist motifs of decisionism and responsibility within a Nazi framework.

Disillusionment and Husserl's Last Stand

Less than a year later, in February 1934, Heidegger resigned from the rectorship. In 1935, somewhat disillusioned, he gave lectures titled "What is Metaphysics?", where he criticized the "philosophy of national socialism" as having "nothing to do with the inner truth and grandeur of this movement, namely with the confrontation between planetary techniques, a 19th century man."

That same year, Husserl, now excluded from his own university as a "non-Aryan," was invited to Prague by his student Jan Patocka. In Prague, Husserl delivered lectures that would become his final major work, "The Crisis of the European Sciences." He argued that Europe's descent into barbarism was due to a superficial rationalism and a failure to ground objectivity in subjectivity. He believed that only the "phenomenological reduction" and a deeper understanding of truth could save Europe from irrationalism.

By this time, "Being and Time" was being republished, but with the dedication to Husserl removed. In 1938, Husserl died; Heidegger and his wife did not attend the funeral.

The Fate of Edith Stein

Edith Stein, after leaving her role as Husserl's assistant, sought to complete her habilitation degree to become a university professor. Husserl's letter of recommendation stated that if women were eligible for such positions, she would have his highest recommendation. However, she was not accepted, possibly due to being a woman, a Jew, or a combination of factors. She converted to Catholicism and taught at a Catholic school.

In 1933, with Hitler's rise, she joined a Carmelite convent, seeking isolation. In 1939, as the war began, she was evacuated to a sister convent in Echt, Netherlands, hoping for safety as a Jew by birth. This hope proved false. On August 2, 1942, the Gestapo arrested her. A few days later, she was gassed to death in Auschwitz.

The following year, Heidegger wrote, "The planet is in flames. The essence of man is out of joint. Only from the Germans can there come a world historical reflection. If that is they find and preserve their Germanness." Heidegger remained in the Nazi party until the end of the war in 1945.

Denazification and the Question of Guilt

After the war, Heidegger faced a denazification committee at Freiburg University. Karl Jaspers, a staunch anti-Nazi intellectual and former friend of Heidegger, was asked to evaluate his case. Jaspers, who had not spoken to Heidegger since 1933, described him as a philosopher who combined "the seriousness of nihilism with the mystagogy of a magician." While acknowledging Heidegger's unique talents, Jaspers recommended that he be allowed to continue his philosophical work but not to teach, arguing that students were too vulnerable and needed protection.

Jaspers later wrote "Die Schuldfrage" (The Question of German Guilt), reflecting on the collective responsibility of Germans. He lamented that many people "do not really want to think" and sought "slogans and obedience." He acknowledged that while thousands died fighting the regime, many survivors, including himself, did not actively resist the persecution of Jewish friends, choosing to stay alive on the "feeble if logical ground that our death could not have helped anyone." He concluded, "We are guilty of being alive." Jaspers believed that "purification out of the depth of consciousness of guilt" was the only way for Germans to realize truth.

The denazification commission banned Heidegger from teaching for four to five years.

Arendt's Return and the Complexities of Forgiveness

In 1950, after the ban was lifted, Hannah Arendt, then living and teaching in the United States, visited Heidegger and Elfride. The meeting was fraught with unspoken tensions: Elfride expected an apology from Arendt for the affair, while Arendt likely expected an apology from Elfride for her Nazi sympathies. Neither apology was forthcoming.

Heidegger later wrote a letter to Arendt, attempting to explain his silence about their affair to Elfride, claiming he knew his wife would "understand, but also affirm the joyousness and richness of our love as a gift of fate." Arendt's response was complex, acknowledging the enduring significance of their connection but also stating that their relationship "was never personal," at least not in a way that allowed for conversation given Elfride's unyielding convictions.

Heidegger began writing poetry for Arendt again, sending her a poem titled "The Girl From Abroad." His letters to her from this period, including greetings from Elfride and descriptions of flowers, reveal a striking disconnect from the gravity of their shared past.

In 1955, Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism" was published in German translation, concluding with the idea that "there are crimes that can neither be punished nor forgiven."

Marcuse's Challenge and Heidegger's Response

Herbert Marcuse, another German-Jewish philosopher and former student of Heidegger, wrote to him in 1947. Marcuse challenged Heidegger's claim of disassociating from the Nazi regime in 1934, pointing out that his speeches and writings from 1933 identified him as a strong intellectual proponent of Nazism. Marcuse criticized Heidegger for never publicly retracting these statements, stating, "A philosopher can be deceived regarding political matters, in which case he'll openly acknowledge his error. But he cannot be deceived about a regime that has killed millions of Jews, merely because they were Jews."

Despite his strong condemnation, Marcuse sent Heidegger a care package during a time of severe food shortages in post-war Germany, acknowledging the internal conflict: "My friends have accused me of helping a man who identified with a regime that sent millions of my co-religionists to the gas chambers. Nothing can counter this argument. I excuse myself in the eyes of my own conscience by saying that I'm sending a package to a man from whom I learned philosophy from 1928 to 1932. I am myself aware that it is a poor excuse."

Heidegger responded in 1948, stating that he had expected "a spiritual renewal of life in its entirety" from National Socialism and a "deliverance of western design from the dangers of communism." He admitted his failure to provide a public counter-declaration, claiming it "would've been the end of both me and my family."

The Enduring Question of Forgiveness

Heidegger never explicitly asked for forgiveness. Yet, Arendt, in a unsent letter from 1960, described him as "The man to whom I remained faithful and unfaithful, and both in love." In a book she silently dedicated to Heidegger, she wrote about forgiveness as "the only possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility."

Jacques Derrida, reflecting on forgiveness in a 1997 essay, argued that "To forgive must mean to forgive precisely the unforgivable if it is to mean anything at all." He concluded that "forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable," implying that forgiveness announces itself as an impossibility.

Heidegger only spoke publicly about his Nazism once, in a 1966 interview with "Der Spiegel," published posthumously in 1976. He suggested that while Nazism might have been wrong, the "post-Nietzschean crisis of a world without God" remained. He famously stated, "Only a God can save us," and that humanity's task was to prepare for the arrival or absence of God.

Jan Patocka, a Czech philosopher who lived through the Nazi occupation, responded to this interview, questioning whether a German in 1933 could have clearly understood the nature of Nazism and whether some might have felt they had no choice but to "try it out."

The Heidegger Controversy

The "Heidegger controversy" is not about whether he was a Nazi – that is acknowledged. Instead, it concerns how his Nazism impacts the reading of his philosophy and the work of those connected to him, like Hannah Arendt. Some argue that Heidegger's concept of "Dasein" (being-in-the-world), which posits a subject inextricably linked to its environment, could lead to the dissolution of the individual into a collective, whether the "Volksgemeinschaft" or the gas chambers.

The question of what Heidegger meant for Arendt's work and vice versa, and the meaning of forgiveness, continues to resonate. Arendt loved him until her death, a testament to the "extraordinary complexity of human relationships."

In a seminar about Heidegger, Derrida was asked by a student, "Professor Derrida, you're a Jew, and Heidegger was a Nazi. What do you make of that?" Derrida responded that the real question was whether Heidegger could have been the greatest philosopher of the 20th century without that "ineffable something in his thought that was precisely the thing that brought him so close to Nazism." This question, according to Hans Gumbrecht, a professor who recounted this story, highlights the essential role of the university as a place where even such challenging questions can be posed.