27569287

Love and Reconciliation: The Case of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger
Author(s): Daniel Maier-Katkin and Birgit Maier-Katkin

Source: Harvard Review, No. 32 (2007), pp. 34-48
Published by: Houghton Library of the Harvard College Library
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27569287
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DANIEL MAIER-KATKIN & BIRGITMAIER-KATKIN

Love and Reconciliation: The Case ofHannah Arendt
andMartin Heidegger
It is by now well known that Hannah Arendt had a love affair with Martin
She was eighteen years old and his student atMarburg. He was
Heidegger.
Sein und Zeit (Being
had two children, and although
thirty-five, married,
and Time) had not yet been published,
he already enjoyed a reputation as a
intellectual history.
leading figure in German
was a charismatic
teacher, a brilliant man with
jet black
Heidegger
famous for the intricacy of his thought and
hair and a dark complexion,
an avid skier,
the beauty of his language. He was energetic and youthful,
to
He attracted the brightest
students, who struggled
the subtlety of his thought and regarded him as a sort of magi
inmaturity was one of the twentieth century's
cian. Hannah Arendt, who
as a
most
and
greatest
original political theorists, was equally extraordinary
and swimmer.
hiker,
understand
secular Jewish woman

of exceptional
emancipated,
intelligence. Her
an
as
describe
beautiful
and
her
with
contemporaries
intensity, inner
shy,
and determination
that also created an aura of magic about her.
direction,
young,
was
in Latin and Greek, well read in his

already competent
she came
tory and the classics, and familiar with the world of ideas when
to study at Marburg University,
which
she chose because of a rumor that
Arendt
Martin
was
Heidegger
a teacher
Heidegger
quickly
Plato's Sophist. Twenty-five
entitled
would
from whom
aware
became
Interest
the Nazi
in their romantic
Party
in 1933, was
could be learned.
in his
presence
later he recalled the moment
years
1924": "If only
fall toward me!"
"November
thinking
of Arendt's
from withdrawn
grace,
lectures
on
in a poem
she, the one,
turns on the fact that Heidegger

joined
of Freiburg,
elected rector at the University
liaison
the dismissal
implemented
put his considerable
Arendt
was
driven
of Jews from the faculty, and enthusiastically

intellectual prestige at the service of the F?hrer, while
into exile to escape the virulent anti-Semitism
that was
to culminate
in the destruction
of European
Jewry, and that, despite
a
at
after
total
in
time
when
she had emerged
1945,
this,
Germany's
collapse
as a major intellectual figure in her own right, Arendt
took the lead in es
about
tablishing
a reconciliation
with Heidegger.
34 Harvard Review 32
The most
interesting question presented
by the relationship
these two giants of twentieth century intellectual history is:How
have forgiven him?
between
could
she
a lecture one day early in February 1925, Heidegger

to
asked Arendt
come to his office. He later described her as "wearing a raincoat, a hat pulled
low over her face, now and then uttering a barely audible
'yes' or 'no.'"
After
On February 10 he wrote a note which begins: "Dear Miss Arendt!

Imust
.
.
.
see
are
come
You
you this evening and speak to your heart
my pupil
to
and I your teacher, but that is only the occasion
for what has happened
never
us. Iwill
be able to call you mine, but from now on you will belong
it shall grow with you." Four days later he wrote
to her
two weeks
later suggests
again this time as "Dear Hannah." A letter written
on the
"In
and
rainstorm
reveals
mood:
the
growing
intimacy
Heidegger's
in my
life, and
and great. Iwould have liked to

way home, you were even more beautiful
wander with you for nights on end."
in strict secrecy. Elf ride,
Theirs was a hidden, adulterous
love, conducted
was
a
town this meant
not
to
in
and
small
know,
wife,
Heidegger's
university
that no one must
attic apartment;
the lovers met in Arendt's
sent
notes
in
code
the place and
Heidegger
cryptic
specifying
a
with
the time of their next rendezvous
system of signals of lights to be
switched on and off to show if he was in his study. His letters during the
know. Often
sometimes
of their relationship
iswhat
for the beloved?that
first months
wait
express his longing:

ismost wonderful?for
to
"Being allowed
it is in the wait
... After the concert, I

is 'present,'" or "Dear Hannah!
ing that the beloved
was so moved
by being near you that I could not bear it any longer?and
left, when Iwould much rather have wandered
through theMay night with
beside
and
you
you?walking
silently
sensing your dear hand and your
for and why but just 'being.'" A later letter
great gaze?not
asking what
if I can not and may not do so?for your love."
ends: "Thank you?even
Without
the obvious power of physical attraction and the
diminishing
excitement
of their transgressive
of the relationship
the exhilaration
Arendt
was
complicated
philosophy
to Heidegger
affair,
it is nevertheless
clear that part of

from their shared intellectuality.
derived
a young,
beautiful
he was
paths of his thought;

and the life of the mind.
woman
who
to her an initiation
could
follow
the
into existential
was
in the early stages of the work
that came to fruition
Heidegger
two years later in Being and Time, and their talk was filled not only with
but also with his awe in
literature, poetry, and classic works of philosophy,
Maier-Katkin
35
over
the face of Being?suspended

must eventually
fall. Arendt
confessed
into which
it
the abyss of nothingness
fears of death passed
that childhood
and he responded
that there are shadows only
where
there is also sun, and that he was "made helpless" by her elementary
joy and quiet, resolute persistence.
as shadows
across her heart,
From Heidegger
Arendt
learned
the inevitability
that embracing
and of
of the present moment
of
the
appreciation
heightens
In
of
fear
of
freedom.
death
life,
Heidegger
possibilities
ordinary
taught,
is repressed;
individuals
seek distractions
and forget their own Being in
concerns. Work,
family, politics, and the petty concerns of ev
day-to-day
from awareness
else they may be, are all distractions
eryday life, whatever
nothingness
in the moment?with
of Being
awaiting
catastrophe
its concomitant
awareness
of the impending
faith of his
the Catholic
each man.
Having
rejected
to
Arendt
and the world was to face the
challenge
on with no retreat into spirituality,
and to embrace
childhood, Heidegger's
finality of death head
the possibilities
inherent
existence without
fear or illusions,
awareness
of Being.
sustained
of the possibilities
only by one's joyful
to
determination
Arendt absorbed Heidegger's
existential
his
fortitude,
ask difficult
thought must
work reflects
in limited
and his non-negotiable

that serious human
questions,
position
on first and last things, but a lifetime of
dwell persistently
that she did not accept the centrality of death in his thought,
instead to focus on birth and new beginnings. Where Heidegger's

isolation as the way to escape man's help
solipsism emphasized
to the pettiness
less addiction
of the social world, Arendt
replied with a
preferring
existential
amor mundi, which
of plurality,
philosophy
ennobled
public
life.
im
of her thought, however, was far in the future; more
This explication
Arendt began to experience
the alienating effects of a secret love
mediately
was
no
in
for which
there
the shared world of public life: "Why," she
place
wrote,
...
do
you
give
me
your
hand
of it only mine?
Shyly, knowledge
Are you from such a distant land
That you do not know our wine?
had become
By the end of 1925 their contact and correspondence
to
of family
demands
letters
attribute
the
this
frequent. Heidegger's
and his need
to withdraw
from everything
human
in order
less
life
to do creative
as "the most magnificent

human experience
he characterizes
. . . the most
. . . [but which
to
concrete
situations
with
is]
regard
one can encounter." Perhaps there was in this an element
repugnant
thing
to family
of deceit in the face of cooling ardor, or a renewed commitment
them was painful
The growing
life and respectability.
separation between
for Arendt, who was, after all, still very young. A poem of that period about
work,
which
I know
love repeats
distant
velvet,
as
heavy
the refrain:
has enwrapped
"The evening
me,
/ Soft as
sorrow."
to study with
to Heidelberg
to move
Arendt
Heidegger
encouraged
Karl Jaspers.
and
the
his distinguished
friend,
psychiatrist,
philosopher
that he could send her away, but the break
She went, hurt and confused
and secret meetings
them was far from clean. Correspondence
between
was traveling
to Switzerland,
In July 1926, when Heidegger
continued.
at a train station in a small town en route
to meet Arendt
he arranged
became more
where
spo
they could spend the night. But such meetings
less frequent. The exchanges were mostly
radic and their correspondence
love
of his abiding
send assurances
initiated by Heidegger,
who would
for his absence with excuses of ill health,
and longing for her, apologizing
and forbidding
her to respond except on specific occa
work,
meetings,
to
this is how she first began
sions when he asked her to write. Perhaps
was "always,
as she put it twenty years later, that Heidegger
recognize,
at
every
when
...
opportunity
Arendt
a notorious
was
for a rendezvous
Heidegger
the offer
wrote
Nevertheless,
in N?rnberg
vacationing
and without
letter from Heidegger
travel
liar."
with
amoment's
with
friends,
hesitation
as
late
as
1928,
she received
interrupted
her
him.
on April 2,1928,
saying that he had accepted
at Freiburg. Perhaps
chair in philosophy
and the simul
this important promotion
with
to Arendt
to assume
Husserl's
associated
the visibility
taneous publication
of Being and Time elevated his anxiety about being
a young woman
about whom
he was no
compromised
by an affair with
a
so
met
in
few
and
days later
passionate.
longer feeling
They
mid-April,
think Ihave
to Heidegger:
"That you will not come now?I
Arendt wrote
... I love
know
you as I have [since] the very first day?you
.
.
.
will love you
And
'God willing/I
this
this, and Ihave always known
more after death,'" a rough paraphrase
of the last lines of the Elizabeth
understood
Barrett Browning
poem which begins:
and ends, "I love thee with
the ways,"
life!?and,
if God
choose,/!
shall but
"How do I love thee? Let me
count
/ Smiles, tears, of all my

love thee better after death."
the breath,
Maier-Katkin
37
are letters over the next few years inwhich Arendt

refers to con
as
one
love
for
of
of
life
and longs
the
her
tinuing
Heidegger
great blessings
to kiss his eyes and brow. The intensity of love in youth leaves an indelible
and bittersweet
and this may help explain Arendt's
readiness,
impression,
There
years later, to reconcile with Heidegger,

a complete and dramatic estrangement.
but in the years just ahead there was

The last letters before the Second
World War passed between

them in the winter of 1932-33, just as the Nazis
were coming to power.
to her concern about rumors that he
In response
was becoming
declared
that these were slanders,
anti-Semitic, Heidegger
and offered a presumably
insensitive
account
but
exculpatory
profoundly
of his behavior
towards
Jews at a time when
towards
I am
on
sabbatical
. . . semester
this
that Iwanted
advance
and
to be left alone
and the like. This man who
projects
wants
to write
me
was
their destiny
turning
disaster:
every
month
a dissertation
to
report
. . . announced
large
in
not be accepting
anyway and urgently
and would
comes
is a Jew. The man who

on
well
work
in progress
comes
...
to see
is also
text for an urgent reading

Jew. The man who sent me a substantial
a few weeks
a
is
two
I helped get ac
fellows
The
whom
Jew.
ago
cepted in the last three semesters are Jews. The man who, with my
to call this
help, got a stipend to go to Rome is a Jew.Whoever wants
iswelcome
to do so. Beyond that, I am now
'raging anti-Semitism'
in University
issues as Iwas ten years
just as much an anti-Semite
...
To say absolutely
about my personal
ago inMarburg
nothing
with
Jews [e.g., Husserl, Misch, Cassirer, and others].
relationships
And
above
all it cannot
touch my
relationship
to you.
1933,
Shortly thereafter, Heidegger
joined the Nazi Party, and inAugust
into exile in France. For the next seventeen years there was
Arendt went
only
silence between
For Arendt
the hands
them.
this was
a period of danger and deprivation.

She slipped out of
a young
officials twice: first in 1933 when
she persuaded
in Berlin to dismiss
charges against her of anti-state activity
of Nazi
police officer
and then made
to Paris, where
her way without
for
she worked
papers
a Zionist organization
Youth Aliyah,
to Israel;
children immigrate
helping
then after the fall of France in 1940 she escaped from the infamous detention
center at Gurs. Cleverness,
timing,
and daring
conspired
to mark Hannah
as a survivor,
but survival in exile also involved great suffering and

in
fortune. Arendt had the good
part, a matter of uncertain
always,
fortune in Paris to meet and marry Heinrich
Bl?cher, a strong, articulate,
a German
even
leftist
heroic
handsome,
courageous,
intelligent,
figure,
Arendt
was
associated with
and theatrical circles surrounding
the intellectual
Bertolt
Brecht. Through years of exile and statelessness Arendt said of Bl?cher that
in her own four walls?wherever
she felt secure?as
she was with him. It
was
also a matter
of good fortune (combined with

that Arendt
and Bl?cher were among
preparation)
gain visas to enter the United
and she a leading
For Heidegger,
States, where
effort and
thoughtful
to
the last 250 people
citizens
became
they eventually
public intellectual.
the Third Reich began with
to lead
ambitions
grandiose
a historic spiritual and intellectual
of the German nation, but
rejuvenation
to have a leading
and despair. The Nazis were pleased
ended in disrepute
to the position
of
among their ranks and he was appointed
philosopher
Rektor at Freiburg University,
where he behaved
atrociously:
abolishing
a F?hrer system of governance,
the faculty senate, instituting
firing Jew
to
ish faculty members,
the
with
the Nazi
system
align
university
helping
to a band of thugs. In public
regime, and lending intellectual
respectability
addresses he called upon students to undertake
labor service and military
service
on behalf
of the German
ending
salute:
threefold
of the Reich,
honored
Volk and German
his speeches
"To the man
the exceptionalism
language,
thought, and
"Heil Hitler,"
of unprecedented
and excellence
tradition,
and on at least one occasion

will,
to our F?hrer Adolf
with
often
this
Hitler?a
Sieg Heil!"
On a personal
M?ller by writing
level, Heidegger
disrupted
a letter of reference praising
the career of his student Max

him as a scholar
and teacher
but criticizing
the promotion
his negative
attitude towards the Nazi state, and he blocked
of his student, Eduard Baumgarten,
him as
characterizing
associated with
intellectuals
and
liberal-democrat
the
Jewish
too closely
circle surrounding
Max Weber
at Heidelberg.
recommended
Heidegger
won
in
in 1953,
Prize
Nobel
the
(who
Staudinger
chemistry
at
and was already in the 1930s one of the most
famous faculty members
as
be
removed
of
from
his
because
his
position
pacifist
Freiburg)
professor
in this
and anti-nationalist
inclinations. The Ministry
of Culture concurred
that Hermann
concerned about worldwide

judgment, but the higher authorities,
to retain his position.
sions, allowed Staudinger
repercus
Maier-Katkin
39
treatment of his closest friends.

Perhaps most damning was Heidegger's
He betrayed
Edmund Husserl,
the
his teacher and steadfast
champion,
a baptized Austrian
of his generation,
Jew,
leading existential philosopher
and German
patriot whose
at the time of his own
Lutheran,
professing
the years
and especially
to the chair in philosophy
elevation
Heidegger's
to Heidegger:
the time Husserl wrote
enthusiastic
retirement
support over
made possible
at Freiburg University.
At
you have begun to realize your own true being as a philosopher.

From that beginning
you will grow to new and greater stature. No
too, that no ill feelings will
body has more faith in you than I?faith,
of
confuse or divert you from the work that is purely a consequence
the talent entrusted
to you,
conferred
upon
you at birth.
Four years later, itwas Rektor Heidegger

the form letter
who ^~ued
at
from
the
the
Jewish faculty
dismissing
university,
including Husserl
own
es
In a letter to Karl Jaspers, reflecting her
his emeritus position.
from
Arendt
commented
this
"would
that
have
trangement
Heidegger,
left Husserl
and
indifferent
this signature
if someone
almost
killed
else had
him,
signed
I can't but
it...
[but as] this letter

as a
regard Heidegger
murderer."
potential
In June, 1933, shortly after ascending

to the rectorship, Heidegger
vis
as
Hitler
ited Karl Jaspers. To Jaspers' question
"How can a man as coarse
no
is
"Culture
of
Just
govern Germany?"
importance.
Heidegger
replied:
look at his marvelous
wife,
Gertrud,
responded,
hands." When
cried over
"Itmakes
the news
one feel better
that his Jewish

Jaspers complained
she read in the newspaper,
Heidegger
to cry sometimes,"
and then leftwithout
house he had visited

taking his leave of Mrs. Jaspers, in whose
properly
for long stretches dating back to the 1920s. Seventeen
years later, inMarch
been
told
Arendt
that
this
1950, Heidegger,
Jaspers interpreted
having
by
come
to your
wrote
to Jaspers saying, "I haven't
affront as anti-Semitic,
a Jewish woman
lived there, but because Iwas
a
little book, On the
masterful
simply ashamed." Jaspers, who had written
a
of letters that
German
after
brief
concluded
Guilt,
Question of
exchange
as
was not as ashamed
he ought to have been and broke off the
Heidegger
house
since 1933 not because
the two men
correspondence;
Heidegger
and returned
any repulsion
never met
or spoke again after 1933.

from his position as Rektor inMay of 1934
resigned suddenly
to professorial
life. This seems to have been based less on
than on their growing
he may have felt towards the Nazis
in him. He had hoped

to be placed
in charge of the German
a
earn
to
in
and
system
place
history as the leading Nazi phi
as it happens,
These honors,
fell to Alfred Rosenberg,
who was
disinterest
university
losopher.
executed
was too rari

Heidegger's
philosophy
racist to have much appeal for the Nazis, who were
at N?rnberg.
by the Allies
fied and insufficiently
a
of him. Over the next decade the SS maintained
suspicious
increasingly
file on Heidegger;
and his rights to publish and
he was under surveillance
were
travel
somewhat
restricted.
Nevertheless,
after
the war
he
was
not
to teach
to be denazified,
declared
and he was not allowed
immediately
was
was
It
for
felt
that
many years.
unrepentant
again
widely
Heidegger
to the university
and to Germany
and that he had done too much damage
stage.
by throwing his prestige behind the Nazi regime in its formative
1949, Arendt, now celebrated as the author of Origins of To
as
inAmerica
talitarianism, and rising to a position of widespread
visibility
amission
as executive
a scholar, writer, and public intellectual, undertook
In November
director
to recover 1.5 million

volumes
of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction
Germans
and Judaica that had been appropriated
and to
the
by
or "ownerless" property. She visited
they now referred as abandoned
of Hebraica
which
Jaspers in Switzerland
contact Heidegger
when
Karl
with
would
she sent him a note which
indicated
that she did not think she
she was
in Freiburg. Once there, however,

the next day. That afternoon he came
an invitation to visit at his home that evening.
he received
to hand-deliver
to her hotel
and
She was
in the dining room, and the waiter,

the famous local
recognizing
announced
him. They talked until late in the night and again
philosopher,
were
at his home the next morning,
and Elfride Heidegger
where Arendt
introduced.
initial
This
of feeling. Arendt
outpouring
This
life
act of reconciliation
and
evening
this morning
. . . confirmation
expected.
expected
wrote
that,
accompanied
by a tremendous
the next day, saying:
was
are the confirmation

it comes
when
down
to
of an entire
it, was
never
the waiter
(I had not actually
spoke your name
not
received
after
had
the
letter,
all), itwas as if time
you,
stood still. Then all at once I became aware of something
When
suddenly
Iwould not have
to anyone
confessed before, neither tomyself nor to you nor

. . . [that] the
[to contact you] had
power of the impulse
saved me from committing
the only really inexcusable
mercifully
act of infidelity
and
forfeiting
my
life. But one
thing you
should
Maier-Katkin
41
little to do with each other, after

(as we have had relatively
as
not
as
we
and
that
all,
openly
might have), if I had done it, then
it would
only have been out of pride, that is, out of sheer crazy
know
Within
for reasons.
Not
stupidity.
had written
days Heidegger
over
many
more
ment
that she had
the
following
never
five poems
weeks.
considered
One
herself
to her, and he composed
was
to her
reaction
a German
woman
com
and had
herself a Jewish woman,

but felt as if she
long since stopped considering
a
from
Schiller?"The
Girl From
were, "after all"?here
borrowing
phrase
Abroad."
"Mountain of joy," he wrote,
"... Stranger: home of the solitary
. . .
world
where
all the fires' ashes and igniting
gaze
begins
outglowing
embers
of charity."
At Heidegger's
returned for a second visit a few weeks
urging Arendt
later. We do not know how Heidegger
characterized
his role in the Third
Reich in those first conversations,
but it is inconceivable
that their talk
circumvented
events that had transformed

their relationship
into a political
and racial discourse
perpetra
involving
of heinous
at
center
crimes?the
the
of
Arendt's
subject
the world
from a romance
tors and victims
life and work.
It can be assumed
to her mis
that Heidegger
characterized
himself
same
the
in
he
had
his
denazification
in 1945
way
leadingly,
application
and again, years later, in a final interview published
in Der
posthumously
denied
and
Spiegel. Heidegger
publicly
put
culpability
unapologetically
forward an image of himself
almost as a victim of the regime. He took on
the rectorship,
he claimed, because
the university
needed him. He only
it facilitated his efforts to protect the university,
joined the party because
and because
he believed
that the participation
of intellectuals
would
Socialism. He accepted
the Jewish Proc
deepen and transform National
lamation reluctantly
and only to keep the university
from being closed.
in 1933 and 1934 were filled with enthusiasm
If his public statements
for
the F?hrer,
itwas
because
Hitler
did indeed
seem at the time to be the man
out of crisis and towards

lead Germany
its national destiny;
were
he
sentiments,
out,
among
pointed
widespread
leading
and religious
leaders at the time. He never referred to
business,
who would
and
such
political,
his ambitions
for personal
never
acknowledged
Nazi
revolution,
with
the Nazis
greatness
responsibility
never admitted
was
flawed
within
the National
for contributing
that the thinking
or that he was mistaken
Socialist
revival,
to the legitimacy of the
that led to his d?tente
to have
behaved
as he
position was that in 1933 itwas by no means yet clear that things
a decade before
turn out as they did. If he did not foresee Auschwitz
it happened,
few did.
did. His
would
in 1934 because
he left the rectorship
maintained,
an unbridgeable
gap between himself and the Nazis,
of the greatness
because he rejected their materialist
race-based explanation
of the Volk (in favor of a more cultural and spiritual explanation),
and that
Indeed, Heidegger
he saw that there was
But he never acknowledged

this separated him from Nazi anti-Semitism.
that racial prejudice
and brutality were already evident when he
publicly
cast his lot with the Nazis, or that the party, by elevating political hacks to
in the national university
all the leadership positions
system, had signaled
did not want
that the movement
him on board
and had no further use
for
him.
In his post-factum
construction
of reality, Heidegger
that he
suggested
of spiritual resistance. He did not abandon
had entered an inner emigration
to German rebirth, but the party
his v?lkische ideology, nor his commitment
had too little regard for his intellectual
leadership and could not be counted
on to move
was
in the right direction.
In his own mind, Heidegger
more National
Socialist than the Nazis; but itwas a National
events
in some ways
inwhich
Socialism
neither
the national
were
nor the social elements
intrin
to anti-Semitic,
racist theory. Why
then did he
biological
sically connected
to pay dues to
not attend Husserl's
funeral in 1938? Why did he continue
itwas
the party until May 1945? Perhaps he was afraid to be conspicuous;
known
that those who
fell into disfavor
the movement
with
risk. There are no further allegations

of serious Nazi
but
about
character
period,
questions
Heidegger's
but to his persistent,
early Nazi enthusiasm
in 1933 and 1934.
about his activities
were
collaboration
at some
after this
attach not only
self-serving
to his
disingenuousness
It does not seem likely that Arendt was taken in by Heidegger's

duplic
and
that she forgave him because
she believed
his lies. She certainly
ity
knew about his behavior
toward Husserl
and Jaspers. Might her attitude
if she had known all the additional
have hardened
details that Heidegger
to Heinrich
Bl?cher and Karl Jaspers writ
repressed? Letters from Arendt
ten after her meeting
in 1950 show that she viewed him
with Heidegger
as
and
a liar and
as
a man
of flawed
character
whose
reactions
were
"cautious
evasive."
A July 1953 diary entry in the form of a parable is particularly

illustra
tive. It begins with a declarative
almost
said
sentence,
certainly something
in one of their meetings
in 1950 or 1952:
by Heidegger
Maier-Katkin
43
is a fox." This is
says proudly:
"People say Heidegger
Heidegger
was
once a fox so utterly
the true story of Heidegger
the fox: There
without
fell into traps but could
cunning that he not only constantly
not
even
distinguish
Arendt
seems
of men
and oblivious
trap
from
..
non-trap
was na?ve about the affairs

that Heidegger
to the transparency
of his lies.
In a letter toMary McCarthy
dated June 7,1957, Arendt wrote about an
affair
about whom
had
had
with an Englishman,
she
unhappy
McCarthy
still had tender feelings, but who turned out to have lied habitually
about
to have
concluded
and his background.

lie about facts are better
himself
who
"will come out and show
Arendt
cautioned
than those who
woman,
to remember
that men
lie about
feelings because facts

what they do . . . [but
Ifmen who
lie about facts are
them to be liars no matter
as to lies about
honest
her
feelings] who can find out?"

their feelings, they can sometimes be redeemed by the love of a
but what for?some
Some of these men can
form of respectability?
about
that itwill overrule

by genius or a talent so compelling
else." Here, she offered as examples Brecht and Heidegger.
also "be redeemed

everything
could Hannah
the question with which we began: How
creative
the
of
her
and
zenith
Arendt, approaching
powers
public recognition
and despite the dislocation
and suffering of the Nazi period, have forgiven
Consider
again
as an unrepentant
then still widely
viewed
Nazi?
Heidegger,
she did not trust him or hold his character in high regard,
Although
of love and continuing
admiration
for
there was forArendt both the memory
Martin
Heidegger's
genius. For Arendt, neither Heidegger's
disgraceful behavior in
of character that made duplicity
the critical year 1933-34, nor the weakness
rather than candor his principal defensive
strategy in the postwar years,
as to place him outside of the human community
of such amagnitude
is always a possibility.
within which,
she believed,
reconciliation
was itself an early topic in the renewed discourse between
Reconciliation
were
A letter from Heidegger,

in May
and Heidegger.
1950, addresses
as "Oh you! most trusted one" and recalls a conversation
between
are
"You
them on her second visit to Freiburg inMarch:
right," he wrote,
Arendt
Arendt
"about
We
reconciliation
and
do not know what
Arendt's
revenge."
was
observes
Denktagebuch
fundamental
equality of human
them; but a lengthy entry in

the
that forgiveness
(Verzeihung) destroys
relations by setting the person who forgives
said between
apart from and above the person who is forgiven. It destroys

relationships
a
to
the person who
be
because
forgives pretends
superior person, and
one
was
not Heidegger's
who asks to be forgiven (which in any event
the
can
seeks
which
humans
neither
give to one another
position)
something
take from one another.
nor
because
relationships
least in a psychological
Christian
(Rache), on the other hand,
preserves
the person seeking vengeance
always stays close (at
no
sense) to the other, with
pretense of superiority.
and revenge have in common
the solidarity of sin
forgiveness
that what
ners?recognition
Reconciliation
Revenge
the other did
Imight
have
rational
(Vers?hnung) is a true alternative,
or
tional
revenge and substituting
spiritual,
abandoning
and hope for new and better beginnings.
honest memory
time, at least in her English writing, Arendt
of "forgiveness" many of the attributes
Over
with
sociated
reconciliation.
Condition, Arendt
or could do.
rather than emo

for forgiveness
came to include within
as
that she originally
on Action
in her 1958 classic,
the meaning
The Human
done
In the chapter
noted that in an uncertain
never
world
people can
taken are ir
of their behavior, but actions

predict the consequences
reversible: what was done or not done cannot be changed. Only forgiving
can undo the deeds of the past, which
otherwise
"hang like Damocles'
over every new generation."

disputation
Citing Jesus of Nazareth's
against the scribes and Pharisees, Arendt argued that the power to forgive
is not exclusively
divine, but that men must forgive each other before they
sword
can hope to be forgiven by God.

Arendt does not assert a duty to forgive (or reconcile with) the extremi
ties of willed
the
evil, but only (still following
Jesus) human "trespasses,"
are
not
of
do
less
characteristic
which
that
necessarily
injury
they
principal
from men acting
than willed
evil, but that they arise from thoughtlessness,
when
they
"know
reasons,
trespass
life is enmeshed
not what
rather than spiritual

they do." For practical
in which
if the web of relationships
requires forgiveness
is to go on:
release from what they do can

Only through this constant mutual
men remain free agents, only by constant willingness
to change their
minds and start again can they be trusted with so great a power as
that to begin
Arendt
something
new.
it as the natural, expected,

revenge, but denigrates
to transgression, while forgiveness
(which, in her think
can never be predicted:
to incorporate
reconciliation)
does not excoriate
automatic
ing, now
reaction
seems
Maier-Katkin
45
It is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected

way, uncondi
act
it
the
and
which
therefore
by
provoked
freeing from
its consequences
both the one who
and the one who
is
forgives
tioned
forgiven.
Near
the end of her
commented
that every
life, Arendt
been an afterthought
for her, a reflection on experience. With
it is hard not to read Heidegger
into these sentences:
thought had
this inmind
it establishes
and the relationship
is always an eminently
or private)
individual
affair in
personal
(though not necessarily
which what was done is forgiven for the sake of who did it. . .For
Forgiving
it is one of the rarest occurrences

in human
love, although
... is unconcerned
to the point of total unworldliness
with
the loved person may
achievements,
We must
be, with
and
failings,
be careful
to remember
his qualities
and shortcomings
that the love of which
puts between
or
admiration
. . .
transgressions.
Arendt
but "regard for another person from the distance

of shared humanity
us," based on awareness
romantic,
lives
what
speaks is not
that the world
rather than on
esteem.
In response
to her friend W. H. Auden, who argued for a more liberal
to forgiveness
based on principles
of universal
approach
charity and the
to turn the other cheek, Arendt wrote
admonition
that she did not approve
in the person who
of forgiving everything
(?berhaupt), including betrayal
on
of
the
human
sinfulness
and
betrayed
grounds
solidarity with the sinner.
to forgive in the spirit
"I admit," she wrote, "that there is a great temptation
am I to Judge? but I'd rather resist it." Better, she
thought, to forgive
in the spirit of friendship, which
cannot be universal,
(unlike friendliness)
us
to
make
distinctions
individuals.
among
requiring
ofWho
the Lessing Prize of the

years later, on the occasion of receiving
of Hamburg,
Arendt
returned to the theme of forgiveness
and
of Gotthold
theWise that in the end,
love, observing
Lessing's play Nathan
Some
Free City
to sacrifice
truth to
solely in his readiness
of new beginnings
friendship." This and her hope in the possibility
explain
seems to concur in the
Arendt's
reconciliation with Heidegger;
and Auden
"Nathan's
bases
wisdom
for her
consists
judgment.
His
poem
"The Common
Life" ends:
And
always, though truth and love

can never really differ, when
seem
they
The subaltern should be truth.
It is important
reconciliation
to
in closing to observe the enduring effects of forgiveness

in the lives of Hannah Arendt
and Martin Heidegger.
and
The
flood
of correspondence
between
them in 1950 and 1952 slowed substan
Then there were almost
tially in 1953 and 1954 but remained affectionate.
no letters between
them for ten years and no further visits. There is a warm
inApril 1965, from Heidegger,
for having sent greet
thanking Arendt
on
occasion
the
of
his
and
1966
then in October
ings
seventy-fifth
birthday;
a letter from him to her on the occasion of her sixtieth
birthday, recalling the
note
seminar
on Plato's
me as ifwhat
Sophist more
has been converges
wrote
last." Arendt
than forty years earlier: "It often seems to

on a single moment
that salvages what can
back that his letter had given her the "greatest possible
... iswhere
wrote: "What endures
their first meetings,
joy" and, recalling

one can say [here quoting
and ending?always
the
Goethe]?'Beginning
new
same.'" After this
their correspondence
grew active again.
beginning
There were
of
and
books
small
and
other
then renewed
exchanges
gifts
in the summer of 1967.
visits beginning
In September
delivered
1969, Arendt
a radio
address
in honor
of
Heidegger's
eightieth
birthday,
recalling his lectures on Plato, noting
that he exemplified
the difference
between
and
discussing
philosophy
come alive with passion.
and that he made
doing philosophy
thinking
lamented
that Heidegger
and Plato, when
in
involved
they became
to tyrants and F?hrers," but this "escapade"
human affairs "resorted
in
a
she
"is
called
'mistake'
the
life,
said,
Heidegger's
mostly
today?after
..."
bitterness
has subsided
and Heidegger
this 'mistake'
"recognized
She
after a short time and then risked

German
universities
an affectionate
back
more than was common at

considerably
then." She sent a copy of this talk to Heidegger
that ended: "May those who come after us, when

our
century and its people and try to keep faith with them, not
they recall
the
sandstorms
that swept us up, each in his own way,
devastating
forget
man
and in which
like this
and his work were still possible."
something
with
In the
next
years
note
there
were
more
visits
and
very
active
correspon
dence
here and there

books,
ideas, problems with publishers,
discussing
or
on
visits
further
visits had
how
such
planning
commenting
pleasant
in Heidegger's
been. One notices,
of life's
letters, the damping
especially
Maier-Katkin
47
fire, as when
he apologizes
for a delay in writing,
saying: "I should have
written
I
but
used
best
for
the
hours
work."
long ago,
Hannah Arendt died suddenly
of a heart attack at dinner with friends
in December
1975. She was sixty-nine years
apartment
old. Martin Heidegger,
informed by telegram, wrote
that he was in deep
are
and
that
and
remembrance
left to us." He died
mourning
"only grief
a few months
later at the age of eighty-six.
In their last years an easy com
in her Manhattan
merce
between
towards
old friends
winter's
Forgiveness
manifestations
added warmth
to autumn
the sun fading
days,
night.
and reconciliation, which restore peace and friendship, are

of love as regard for another. Hannah Arendt's
reconciliation
with Martin
honors
the memory
of young
love and holds the
Heidegger
a
of world
reconstructed
Is "Being-in
promise
through new beginnings.
the-world" made better by this? Perhaps the best answer is Carl Sandburg's
existential
question:
tell me
in the
if any get more
than the lovers
...
. .
dust.
in the cool tombs.
NOTES:
This
spondents,
essay
on
draws
Hannah
especially
letters
the
Arendt
of Hannah
and Martin
by Ursula Ludz and translated by Andrew

Karl
Jaspers
translated by Robert and Rita Kimber

degger-Jaspers
her
edited
(Harcourt, 2004); Hannah Arendt
by Lotte
edited
corre
closest
1925-1975,
Kohler
and Hans
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1920-1963,
correspondence,
Letters
Heidegger:
Shields
edited
1926-1969,
Correspondence
and
Arendt
by Walter
Biemel
Saner
and
1992); TheHei
and Hans
Saner
and translated by Gary E. Aylesworth

(Humanity Books, 2003); Between Friends:
The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, 1949-1975, edited by
Carol Brightman (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1995); and Within Four Walls: The
Correspondence
and translated
Wolin,
full
Between
Hannah
Peter
by
Arendt
and Heinrich
Constantine
Bl?cher,
Brace
(Harcourt
edited
Jovanovich,
by Lotte
1996).
Kohler
Richard
The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader (MIT Press, 1998) provides
text of
Heidegger's
speeches
during
1933
and
1934. An
excellent
source
on
the
this
life isHugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life, translated

period inHeidegger's
Allan
Blunden
(Basic Books, 1993). The quotation from the Husserl-Heidegger
by
correspondence
is drawn
from
this
source.

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Love and Reconciliation: The Case of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger

Author(s): Daniel Maier-Katkin and Birgit Maier-Katkin

DANIEL MAIER-KATKIN & BIRGITMAIER-KATKIN

secular Jewish woman

in Latin and Greek, well read in his

turns on the fact that Heidegger

of Jews from the faculty, and enthusiastically

a lecture one day early in February 1925, Heidegger

On February 10 he wrote a note which begins: "Dear Miss Arendt!

and great. Iwould have liked to

express his longing:

... After the concert, I

clear that part of

paths of his thought;

the face of Being?suspended

across her heart,

and his non-negotiable

instead to focus on birth and new beginnings. Where Heidegger's

amor mundi, which

as "the most magnificent

"How do I love thee? Let me

/ Smiles, tears, of all my

are letters over the next few years inwhich Arendt

years later, to reconcile with Heidegger,

but in the years just ahead there was

World War passed between

Jews at a time when

and the like. This man who

is a Jew. The man who

text for an urgent reading

a period of danger and deprivation.

but survival in exile also involved great suffering and

of good fortune (combined with

Volk and German

and on at least one occasion

to our F?hrer Adolf

the career of his student Max

concerned about worldwide

treatment of his closest friends.

you have begun to realize your own true being as a philosopher.

Four years later, itwas Rektor Heidegger

[but as] this letter

In June, 1933, shortly after ascending

one feel better

that his Jewish

house he had visited

since 1933 not because

the two men

or spoke again after 1933.

in him. He had hoped

was too rari

fied and insufficiently

to recover 1.5 million

she sent him a note which

that she did not think she

in Freiburg. Once there, however,

in the dining room, and the waiter,

are the confirmation

confessed before, neither tomyself nor to you nor

life. But one

little to do with each other, after

that she had

to her, and he composed

herself a Jewish woman,