Heidegger's Hut [Hardcover]

If you have an interest in Heidegger, this is a clever little monogram on the place where Heidegger wrote or was inspired throughout the course of his career. The funny thing is, it is such a meager, crappy little hut that I guess he had no choice but to think profoundly. As architecture - well, it's laughably German: bare essentials, hardly comfortable, no cross ventilation, no indoor plumbing. And somehow that last factor takes the wind, so to speak, out of all that hermeneutics. Nothing like imagining Martin bent over a log to de-mythologize one of humanity's greatest thinkers.

The hut is still in the hands of his family, so it is not really a tourist site, but there is enough interest for the local government to signpost it and then ask everyone to respect the family's privacy. The black and white photos are collected from a series done in the sixties, and the author notes that they are somewhat staged. That's alright. It gives you the impression of how close the quarters were. Spartan is far too luxurious a concept. Nonetheless, this is where Martin came to follow those paths that led to the clearings wherein he began to consider how to uncover what had been appropriated. And all that is to say, that for its barren uncomfortableness, it is all the more remarkable that it was in such a setting that such piety was contemplated.

In short, the hut had precious little to do with it, I suppose. The landscape must be spectacular. Considering who came to visit him here, it is all the more remarkable. The place must have reeked. My estimation and admiration for both Elfride Heidegger and Hannah Arendt has increased exponentially. If you have had any experience travelling with Germans over the summer, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Against this setting is also a consideration of the more suburban digs Martin and his brood occupied in Freiburg. It seems more comfortable and while I gather Marty wasn't as keen on it, at least there was running water. The two settings compose an almost Monty Python pastiche of the life of Martin Heidegger - a bit like the Sartre sketch Cleese and Idle did: "OW, 'e's in his room sulkin again - all what about I dunno".

Much is made about Heidegger's brief flirtation with the Nazis, and his banishment to Todtnauberg (mostly self imposed, mind you), and as an ardent student of his work, I think it's time for a reality check: one, he gave up the Nazi post within a year, and in fact five years before Kristallnacht (ever wonder why? Of course not, it would force you to admit and forgive), and two, Hannah forgave him for being pissed at Jewish students who were annoying him and stating incredibly stupid propoaganda policies. And if she could forgive him, that's good enough for me.

Besides, look who is ghetto-izing and annhilating a minority now - as Victor Hugo would have it, those who refuse to learn from history.....

In any case, yer not likely, mate, to find hidden swastikas and egyptian icons writ backwards and cryptic messages stating "Paul is the walrus" anywhere around. This was a simple, really basic, unattractive hut in a beautiful setting that Martin found ideal for his enterprises. Hardly sacred space, but sacred enough for him.

The book is a quick read, but file it definitely under the cult of personality studies that seek vicarious approximation to glory in fetishizing the most insignificant details that have nothing to do with the heart of being, Being, Martin.

I found this book when the summer was still young, read every page several times over, with greatest pleasure! What a thinkers' paradise Heidegger's wife built there for her husband (a sign in Todnauberg contradicts Sharr's book, suggesting that Heideggers wife built the hut from her inheritance -- she was familiar with the village from ski holidays).

Here one finds embodied in a building Zengetsu's suggestion for the Zen student, "Poverty is your treasure. Don't exchange it for an easy life".

Of course it is difficult for anyone, including Heidegger himself, to really make sense of the place. It has significance only for Heidegger the thinker, as a place that came to support and sustain his thinking, in which he could be creative, in which he felt comfortable. He probably dind't know himself why this place "worked" for him and it probably would not work for anyone else (unless you grew up near the High Black forest and were intimately familiar with the landscape and its people). For Nietsche it was the Engadin, for Heidegger the High Black Forest -- German thinkers seem to have a long tradition of attachment to place and so do Japanese. So, does Sharr's book really have any significance beyond the pretty pictures?

I think it does. It made me contemplate when and where I will build my own hut. It made me understand embodiment. The simplicity of the philosopher's hut keeps reminding me of what is truly essential and strips away everything else. Here Heidegger could dwell directly in the elements of unpolluted-by-modernity-life itself -- the wind, the trees, the rocks, the traditions of the region.

Martin Heidegger was a thinker of dwelling. His essays after the so called 'turn' indicate an increasing preoccupation with one's environment, dwelling, and world. Adam Sharr is an architect who has done a tremendous job presenting a visual representation of Heidegger's famous place of work in Todtnauberg (the black and white photographs in this monograph are extraordinary) while attempting to link the place of Heidegger's work with the work. Unfortunately, Sharr's knowledge of Heidegger's philosophy is clearly a bit weak, and this text often borders on fetishism. Still, an intimate picture of this notoriously isolated thinker emerges as Sharr traces the particular significance of this location for Heidegger's lifelong pursuit into the meaning of being.