Release of Heidegger’s ‘Black Notebooks’ Reignites Debate Over Nazi Ideology
“In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Heidegger was very angry,” says Mr. Trawny. By then, he says, the philosopher realized that both Nazi ideology and his own philosophical mission, which was predicated on a national revolution and Germany’s dominance in Europe, were going to fail. “In this anger, he makes reference to Jews, including some passages that are extremely hostile. We knew that he had expressed anti-Semitism as private insights, but this shows anti-Semitism tied in to his philosophy,” says Mr. Trawny.
The editor says Heidegger’s references to a controlling “world Jewry” and to a collusion of “rootless” Jews in both international capitalism and communism are essentially the logic that informs the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous, early 20th-century, anti-Semitic forgery that claims to show a Jewish conspiracy for global domination. “He doesn’t say he’s read The Protocols,” says Mr. Trawny, “but that’s not necessary to share a certain kind of anti-Semitism with the Protocols. Nazi propaganda was full of exactly this kind of anti-Semitism.”
According to the editor, some of the material became public when he sent several sections of his own forthcoming book on the wartime notebooks to a French colleague. The passages found their way to others in France, and fuming responses to the notebooks—and to Mr. Trawny’s interpretation of them—started appearing in the French news media and on blogs late last year. Mr. Trawny says one Heidegger supporter even lobbied the Heidegger family to have him removed as editor.