Martin Heidegger

Publication of the Black Notebooks revealed passages explicitly hostile to Judaism and references to 'world Jewry', fundamentally reopening debate over antisemitism's place in Heidegger's thought rather than merely his political biography.

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Directly implicated

In a 1935 lecture published in 1953 as Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger retained a phrase referring to the 'inner truth and greatness' of the National Socialist movement, which became central to debate over the philosophical depth of his involvement.

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Directly implicated

After the fall of the Third Reich, Heidegger underwent denazification proceedings. The French occupation authorities withdrew his teaching authorisation; the University of Freiburg's official history dates the measure to 1947. He subsequently regained his rights as professor emeritus in 1951.

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Directly implicated

In his Bremen lecture 'Das Ge-Stell', Heidegger placed mechanised agriculture, the production of corpses in gas chambers and extermination camps, organised famines and the hydrogen bomb within the same logic of technological production. The formulation was strongly challenged for suggesting equivalence between radically different historical phenomena.

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Personally implicated

Husserl, Heidegger's former mentor, was marginalised at Freiburg after the Nazis came to power because of his Jewish origins. The university withdrew his teaching authorisation on 6 April 1933. Freiburg's official history states that Heidegger, who became rector later that April, served the new rulers and did nothing to protect his former teacher.

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Institutional responsibility

Heidegger forwarded information about Hermann Staudinger's pacifist past to the Baden authorities and recommended his removal in February 1934, triggering proceedings involving the Gestapo. Staudinger, a future Nobel laureate, ultimately retained his position after reconsideration of the case.

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Directly implicated

As rector, Heidegger addressed participants in the labour service in a speech placing labour, the state and the Volk within the National Socialist project and presenting the NSDAP movement as the political form intended to organise this community.

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Personally implicated

In appeals associated with the November 1933 plebiscite, Heidegger urged Germans to support Hitler and expressed the idea that the Führer embodied Germany's present and future reality and law. These texts are among the clearest evidence of his public support for the regime at the beginning of the dictatorship.

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Personally implicated

While a professor at Marburg, Heidegger began a secret romantic relationship with Hannah Arendt, his student, then in her early twenties. Letters and biographies have made the relationship an enduring controversy because of the professor–student power imbalance and, retrospectively, the contrast between Arendt's Jewish identity and Heidegger's subsequent Nazi involvement.

State of the evidence

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Personally implicated