Hans Konrad Heidegger

Now, let us turn our attention to Hans Konrad Heidegger (1710 – 1778), who is esteemed as one of the most distinguished members of our lineage. In the year 1768, he attained the zenith of honor within the Republic of Zurich, assuming the esteemed office of Mayor. A true embodiment of enlightened authority, he executed his duties with rigor, a standard he likewise expected of others. During his time in office, he orchestrated the reorganization of Zurich’s entire system of schooling, as well as the somewhat precarious mortgage industry. Indeed, Bank Leu & Co. AG, a venerable institution still thriving in Zurich today, traces its origins back to this very endeavor. He played an active role in the establishment of the Usury Natural Research Society, from which he earnestly hoped to foster scientific advancements for the betterment of agriculture. In truth, he maintained close ties with the peasantry, assisting them in adopting new methods and tools to enhance their yields. The Mayor also held the esteemed position of President of the library convention, and the library was considered his most cherished pursuit.

Heidegger’s son, also bearing the name Hans Konrad (1748 – 1808), was a significant collector of art. He held several important high state offices within Zurich, before settling in Munich after the year 1795. It is said that in 1803, King Maximillian Joseph bestowed upon him both title and property within that city.

(As translated by the Right Honourable Lady Jeanne-Elise M. Heydecker from the original German of “Heydecker Genealogisches Arbeitsbuch” penned by Julius Heydecker and curated by Sebastian Heydecker, a document currently held within the European Union.)

Louis Pfyffer von Heidegg

Now we turn our attention to Louis Pfyffer von Heidegg, a scion of an ancient patrician family of Lucerne, who first saw the light of day in Naples in the year 1838. There, he joined the Swiss regiment, serving until a chronic ailment of the foot compelled him to resign his commission as lieutenant at the tender age of twenty-one. Upon his return to Lucerne, he took up a position as an official with the central railway. Following his marriage to Caroline Slidell, his attentions soon turned to the administration, enlargement, and embellishment of his ancestral castle estate.

His wife, Caroline Slidell, was born in New Orleans, in the American lands of Louisiana, in the year 1850. Her father, John Slidell, originally from New York, was a man of law, a senator, and a landowner. Her mother’s forebears, the Mathilde Deslondes, hailed from the ancient lands of Normandy. This noble couple and their four daughters were to be the last family to both own and reside within the venerable Schloss Heidegg.

Martin Heidegger

Right then, let us now turn our attention to a figure of more recent times, yet one whose influence has been profound, and weave his tale into our record:

Martin Heidegger (born the 26th of September, 1889; died the 26th of May, 1976) was a German philosopher renowned for his significant contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He stands as one of the most important and influential thinkers of the 20th century. Heidegger wed Elfride Petri on the 21st of March, 1917, in a Catholic ceremony, followed a week later by a Protestant ceremony in the presence of her parents.

In Heidegger’s seminal work, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), published in 1927, the term “Dasein” is introduced to denote the particular mode of being that is characteristic of humankind. “Dasein” has been translated as “being there.” Heidegger was born in the rural village of Meßkirch, in Baden, the son of Johanna (née Kempf) and Friedrich Heidegger. Raised in the Roman Catholic faith, his father served as the sexton of the village church, which adhered to the First Vatican Council of 1870, a stance primarily observed by the poorer inhabitants of Meßkirch. His family’s means did not permit him to attend university directly, so he entered a Jesuit seminary. However, he was asked to leave within weeks due to health requirements and what the seminary’s director and doctor described as a psychosomatic heart condition. Heidegger was of short and wiry build, with piercing dark eyes. He found pleasure in outdoor pursuits, excelling particularly in skiing.

Supported by the Church, he initially studied theology at the University of Freiburg before shifting his focus to philosophy. Heidegger completed his doctoral thesis on psychologism in 1914, drawing influence from Neo-Thomism and Neo-Kantianism. In 1916, he finished his venia legendi (teaching certificate) with a thesis on Duns Scotus, a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher, and theologian. In the two years that followed, he served as a soldier during the final year of the First World War, spending “the last ten months of the war” with “the last three of those in a meteorological unit on the western front.”

In 1923, Heidegger was appointed to an extraordinary professorship in philosophy at the University of Marburg. His students there included such notable figures as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Gerhard Krüger, Leo Strauss, Jacob Klein, Günther Anders, and Hans Jonas. Building upon the work of Aristotle, he began to develop in his lectures the central theme of his philosophy: the inquiry into the meaning of being. He extended this concept to encompass the dimensions of history and concrete existence, which he found foreshadowed in the writings of Christian thinkers such as Paul of Tarsus, Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, and Søren Kierkegaard. He also engaged with the works of Wilhelm Dilthey, Husserl, Max Scheler, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

The thirty-five-year-old Heidegger, then married with two young sons, embarked on a lengthy romantic relationship with his seventeen-year-old student, Hannah Arendt, who was of Jewish heritage. This relationship later drew criticism due to Heidegger’s support for the Nazi Party following his election as rector at the University of Freiburg in 1933. They agreed to keep the details of their affair secret, preserving their correspondence but in private. The relationship remained largely unknown until Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s biography of Arendt appeared in 1982. By the time of publication, both Arendt and Heidegger had passed away. The affair did not gain wider public knowledge until 1995, when Elżbieta Ettinger gained access to their sealed letters.

Following his relationship with Hannah Arendt, Elisabeth Blochmann maintained one of the longest affairs with Heidegger. It has become known since 2005 that Heidegger maintained what might be termed an open marriage, with his wife Elfriede being aware of his affairs and conducting her own. Elfriede Heidegger and Elisabeth Blochmann were friends and former classmates. Their story is well-documented in the 1989 edition of their letters, beginning in 1918. Heidegger’s letters to his wife also contain references to several other of his romantic involvements. He assisted Blochmann in emigrating from Germany before the outbreak of the Second World War and resumed contact with both women after the war’s end.

In 1927, Heidegger published his magnum opus, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). When Husserl was forcibly “retired” as Professor of Philosophy in 1928, Heidegger accepted Freiburg’s invitation to succeed him. Heidegger remained at Freiburg for the rest of his life, declining later offers, including one from Humboldt University of Berlin. His students at Freiburg included Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Hans Jonas, Karl Löwith, Charles Malik, Herbert Marcuse, and Ernst Nolte.

Heidegger was elected rector of the University on the 21st of April, 1933, and joined the Nazi Party on the 1st of May. During his tenure as rector, he was a member and enthusiastic supporter of the party. The relationship between his philosophy and his political allegiance to Nazism remains a subject of ongoing controversy. He aspired to position himself as the philosopher of the party, but the highly abstract nature of his work limited his influence in this regard. According to historians, his resignation from the rectorate stemmed more from his frustrations as an administrator than from any principled opposition to the Nazis. In his inaugural address as rector on the 27th of May, he voiced his support for a German revolution, and in an article and a speech to the students in the same year, he also endorsed Adolf Hitler. In November 1933, Heidegger signed the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State.

Heidegger resigned the rectorate in April 1934 but remained a member of the Nazi Party until 1945, even though the Nazis eventually prevented him from publishing. From 1936 to 1940, Heidegger delivered a series of lectures on Nietzsche at Freiburg, which contained much of the raw material that would be incorporated into his more established work and thought from this period. Of this series, Heidegger stated in his 1966 interview with Der Spiegel: “Everyone who had ears to hear was able to hear in these lectures… a confrontation with National Socialism.” However, later scholars have reached the opposite conclusion regarding this material.

Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, written between 1931 and the early 1970s and first published in 2014, contain several expressions of anti-semitic remarks, leading to a reevaluation of Heidegger’s relationship with Nazism. Having analyzed the Black Notebooks, Donatella di Cesare asserts in her book Heidegger and the Jews that “metaphysical anti-semitism” and antipathy toward Jews were central to Heidegger’s philosophical work. According to di Cesare, Heidegger viewed Jewish people as agents of modernity who were disfiguring the spirit of Western civilization; he considered the Holocaust to be the logical consequence of the Jewish acceleration of technology and thus attributed blame for the Jewish genocide to its victims themselves.In late 1946, the French military authorities determined that Heidegger should be barred from teaching or participating in any university activities due to his association with the Nazi Party. The denazification procedures against Heidegger continued until March 1949, when he was finally classified as a Mitläufer (the second lowest of five categories of “incrimination” by association with the Nazi regime). No punitive measures were proposed against him. This paved the way for his readmission to teaching at Freiburg University in the winter semester of 1950–51. He was granted emeritus status and then taught regularly from 1951 until 1958, and by invitation until 1967. He was known as a connoisseur of wine, an enthusiastic hiker, and an accomplished skier; he would hold seminars during ascents of mountains and then ski back down with his students. Heidegger passed away on the 26th of May, 1976, in Meßkirch and was laid to rest in the Meßkirch cemetery.