Martin Heidegger’s Family Spent Decades Distorting His Work to Cover Up His Anti-Semitism

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger was undoubtedly one of the most influential of the 20th century. He was also a Nazi. For many years after World War II, his defenders insisted that his support for Hitler was limited, and not reflective of his ideas. But in 2014, the appearance in print of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks—journals he kept from 1931 until the 1970s—revealed the extent of his anti-Semitism and sympathy for the Third Reich. Moreover, explains Richard Wolin, those responsible for the posthumous editing and publication of Heidegger’s works, led by his son Hermann and other family members, have systematically distorted their content: