ABSTRACT
The most serious episode in Martin Heidegger’s public life was his membership and active involvement in the Nazi Party from April, 1933, to February, 1934. Since Heidegger’s most active involvement in the Nazi Party is coterminous with his holdings of the office of rector at Freiburg University, it is basic that one understand the events which led to his election to the rectorate. In Heidegger’s understanding, academic freedom in the modern age had come to mean academic specialization and the fragmentation of learning into distinct and isolated areas. Heidegger’s literary work was outlawed in the whole Nazi press at the instigation of the Nazi pseudo-philosopher Krieck, whom Heidegger deeply despised. Heidegger was one of the very rare professors who never began his courses with the “German salute”, even though it was administratively obligatory. An interpretative framework becomes compelling if one is to make biographical, philosophical, and historical sense out of Heidegger’s support of National Socialism.
