which they themselves have thrown
into confusion. And they seem so
constructed as to fight their way
against their own fear, far away
from the soil of home but stretch–
ing towards the roots from whence
they have come, towards the "still–
reserved" discovery. "Their sacri–
fice holds concealed the poetic call
to the closest in the homeland, even
though the reserved discovery
should remain reserved."
It
would,
however, be wrong to conclude
that Heidegger admits no possibil–
ity of escape or return. But he sees
the sacrifice which both, escape
and return, demand. He was quite
definite to me on that point. But
he seemed far away in his own
contradictions.
To get at him, even physically,
was an almost impossible task. The
policeman in Freiburg had never
heard of him and did not know his
address. But perhaps he was new.
He looked weary and old. At Hei–
degger's house, a French officer
opened the door. That was nothing
unusual. Upstairs, Mrs. Heidegger
guarded the last secrets: the pro-
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508
fessor was not in the house, he was
not in town, he was not visible to
journalists. There had been-1
learned that later-a stream of
journalists, mainly from France.
Many French journalists seem to
be partisans. They do not explore
a situation but rather go out to
state a case. One of them, a Com–
munist, headed his interview, "Like
God in France: Heidegger Among
Us." Jean-Paul Sartre printed two
interviews in one issue of
Les
Temps Modernes,
one for the
Master, the other against him. An–
other Frenchman discovered when
he sat down to write up the con–
versation that there had been no
point of contact with the philoso–
pher. He overlooked a slight error
on his part: he had tried to discuss
existentialism with an existentialist.
But it needed a newspaperman to
sum up the situatic;I. He wrote
that Heidegger was only interested
in "how to exchange his German
marks into dollars." A cultural
journal in Berlin, published under
Russian license, reprinted the arti–
cle of the French Communist. The
persecution was in full swing. Hei–
degger withdrew into his skiing hut,
all by himself. The field, mean–
while, was clear for distortion.
In America, in the PAR_TISAN
REVIEW, Hannah Arendt (a pupil
of Professor Jaspers who, by a co–
incidence, showed me a copy of the
issue in Heidelberg) drew the
"final" conclusion: Heidegger has
nothing to say. Or if he has it could
only
be
a renunciation of what he
