THE GREAT GERMAN PHILOSOPHER DECLARES HIS STAUNCH SUPPORT FOR REICHSKANZLER ADOLF HITLER AS THE NEW RULER OF THE GERMAN REICH, AND URGES THE FREIBURG UNIVERSITY FACULTY AND ITS STUDENT-BODY ALIKE TO VOTE THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY LINE IN THE UPCOMING [1933] ELECTIONS.

(AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY THE RECTOR OF FREIBURG UNIVERSITY, PROFESSOR MARTIN HEIDEGGER, ON NOVEMBER 11TH, 1933, TO A POLITICAL RALLY ORGANIZED BY GERMAN ACADEMICS IN LEIPZIG TO SUPPORT THE NSDAP IN THE NEXT PLEBISCITE).

German teachers and Comrades! Volksgenossen und Volksgenossinnin!

The German Volk has been convened by our Führer in order to allow all Germans to vote; however, we must realize that the Führer is asking nothing from the Volk. On the contrary, he is bestowing upon the Volk the opportunity to involve itself, in the most direct fashion imaginable, with the loftiest and most free decision of all: whether the entire Volk wants to maintain its own existence or whether, on the other hand, it does not want any existence at all.

Therefore, we must understand clearly that tomorrow the Volk will choose nothing less than its own future.

Now this election will be utterly incommensurable with all previous elections. And what is so unique about this particular election is the severe greatness of the decision that is about to be executed. The inexorability of all that is simple and ultimate tolerates no vacillation and will never be weakened by hesitation. This crucial decision extends its domain to the utmost limit of our Volk's very existence. But what is this limit? It consists of the most basic demand of all Being, that it must preserve and defend its own essence. With this development, a barrier is thereby erected between what can reasonably be expected of a Volk, and that which cannot be expected. It is by means of this fundamental law of honor that the German Volk retains the dignity and resoluteness of its life.

However, the will-to-self-responsibility is not merely the basic law of the Volk's existence; it is, in addition, the foundational law of the National Socialist State of the German Volk. From this will-to-self-responsibility, every effort, whether it can be described as humble or noble, of every social and occupational group assumes its predestined place within the social order. The labor of the individual groups supports and empowers the vital framework of the National Socialist State; labor reestablishes the Volk in its most profound rootedness in the ancestral soil; labor situates the State, i. e., the living actuality of the Volk, in close proximity to the field of action whereon dwell all the essential powers of human existence.

But it is not mere ambition or the lust for glory; nor is it an ignorant obstinacy or an insane mania for power that led our Führer to order the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the German Reich from the League of Nations. In this crucial area of foreign policy, the Führer has adroitly manifested his renowned, crystal-clear will-to-unconditional-self-responsibility in enduring -- and then mastering -- the ultimate destiny of our Volk. This decision represents anything but an aversion from the community of nations. On the contrary: with this very step, our Volk is submitting itself to that primordial law of human nature to which every Volk must initially pledge his allegiance -- if, that is, such a Volk seriously desires to survive and prosper as a Volk.

Only upon the basis provided by a mutual adoption by all peoples of this primordial law of the categorical demand of self-responsibility will there arise the possibility that each Volk will take every other Volk seriously and likewise will treat them one and all with the proper respect so that, ultimately, a true community can be proposed in theory and finally established in praxis. The will-to-national-community, or Volksgemeinschaft, is determined to remain equally remote both from the hysterical, murky yearning for "world-brotherhood" as well as from the willing submission to a moronic tyranny. That very will-to-community, due to the fact that it exists in a realm that maintains a fundamental disjunction between its own healthy world-view and the two imposter ideologies of honeyed fraternity and brutal dictatorship, permits peoples and nations to stand by each other in a frank and manly fashion, viz., as autonomous, self-reliant political entities.

What would be the ultimate result of the workings of that mode of will? Reversion to bloody barbarism? No! Rather, it would encourage the eventual repudiation by every party involved of all that hollow diplomatic smoky back-room deal-making, through the invocation of the simple, inexorably proclaimed demand issuing from all peoples and transmitted to the hearts of all peoples, viz., the universal demand serves the interests of all larger entities for it proclaims its respect for the autonomy of each particular entity. Would there be the danger of a rising wave, a volcanic irruption in the worst-case scenario, of completely lawless activity? No! The first result would be the unambiguous acknowledgment by each and every people of the inviolable independence of each and every people. Would any one party determine that it possesses a sovereign right that allows it to ordain the denial of the creativity of an intellectually gifted people and the concomitant annihilation -- by design -- of its historical traditions? No! The inevitable outcome would be the awakening of the young, who will have been purified by the simple practice of going back to their roots in the soil of the ancestors' domain. The unbreakable will to restore the vital health and cultural and material prosperity of the renovated State-structure, will force this people to become hard towards itself -- and it will also feel an increased reverence toward every genuine creative deed!

How might we best describe the nature and scope of this great event of which we speak? Perhaps, we might revel in the fact that the unified organic life that fills the hearts of the citizens will re-acquire the truth of its will-to-existence -- for truth is the disclosure of that unique revelation that makes a people confident, lucidly rational, and insuperably mighty in its political actions as well as in its conquest of knowledge. And, perhaps paradoxically, it is an irrefutable truth that this will-to-truth of which we speak, by the very nature of its operations, strictly circumscribes the right to know. Finally, from that point onward, the limits are measured out within which authentic questioning and rigorous conduct of research must legitimize their status and prove themselves worthy of their mission. This, of course, is the origin of Wissenschaft, which is necessarily constrained by this necessity, viz., of living a Volkish life that is characterized by a passionate yearning to know about the world and about man's place in that world, so that one may, in turn, assist in the production of a viable species of "knowing" in others. To be knowing, however, means to have become a born master of true clarity, of the sort of cool operational savvy which must one day, perhaps just a few miles down the road, lure us onwards until we decide to linger at a verdant spot beside the cool waters of a nearby creek, pondering matters until the epochal moment comes when we commit ourselves to an ineluctable mission: that is the epiphanic arrival of that privileged and necessarily fleeting moment when we must finally resolve to commit our fortunes to political action, sooner rather than later, come what may in the inscrutable aftermath of such a revolt!

We have long maintained our complete independence from all of those publicity vendors who flog their plaster idol-inspired schools of "thought," viz., the sorry cenacles comprising those timid souls who talk the tall talk that has no basis in being and who studiously and almost frantically avoid even the idea of political power. The end is swift approaching for the sort of "philosophy" that is content with so little and which remains quite happy in refusing to dirty its hands by placing them anywhere near the levers of power. We are utterly certain that a clear as crystal hardness coupled with a steady and precise competency that we seek to maintain when we ask our stubborn and simple questions as to the nature of existence, are returning from the dead even as we speak. For the Volkish-style Wissenschaft (E., "Science"), having the courage to grow on the one hand, and also the willingness to take serious risks in our confrontations with existence is the first form of courage as well as our innermost motive for engaging in philosophical speculation in the first place. Recall that courage lures our steps forward; courage frees itself from the conventional and banal platitudes and strengthens our resistance to the dangerous and destructive self-deceit that believes that a precedent is a perfectly adequate substitute for a reason. Our questioning is strictly unrelated to any of that stale pseudo-modern clap-trap one hears about the salvation to be achieved by devoting one's life to the no-hold's-barred obsession with aimless and unlimited curiosity about meaningless things and imbecile notions. Nor do we believe for one minute that our loftiest duty is a stubborn insistence on systematic and corrosive doubt as the solution to every problem, no matter what the cost in the end.

For us, on the contrary, questioning means: exposing ourselves to the sublime might of things and the laws that bind them. Questioning means: not shutting oneself off from the untamed shadow nor avoiding all darkness so as to preserve our freedom from all confusion. Of course, it is in order for us to be able to continue our questioning of thing and world that we question in the first place, and, therefore, it is never invoked in order to render assistance to the weary fools who succumb to their complacent lust for -- easy answers! For we know: the courage to question, the toughness that enables us to endure the abysses in existence, already supplies us with a loftier answer than any of the bargain-basement platitudes sold by the salesmen who represent the producers of phony systems of "thought."

So we, to whom the careful preservation of our Volk's will-to-knowledge in the future shall be entrusted, declare openly: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IS NOT MERELY A CHANGE OF REGIME IN THE GERMAN STATE IN ORDER TO REPLACE THE DEFEATED PARTY BY ANOTHER ONE, ALTHOUGH WE ALREADY REALIZE THAT THE NSDAP NOW PROSPERS SO MAGNIFICENTLY AND PERFORMS ITS TASKS SO EFFICIENTLY THAT IT ALREADY HAS THE ABILITY TO DO WHATEVER IT DEEMS NECESSARY AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT. ON THE CONTRARY, THIS REVOLUTION IS INAUGURATING THE TOTAL TRANSFORMATION OF OUR ENTIRE GERMAN EXISTENCE. FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, EVERY THING THAT IS WILL DEMAND A DECISION, AND EVERY DEED THAT IS PERFORMED WILL DEMAND RESPONSIBILITY. WE ENTERTAIN NO DOUBTS ABOUT ONE THING: IF THE WILL-TO-SELF-RESPONSIBILITY BECOMES, IN TURN, THE VERY LAW THAT RULES THE COEXISTENCE OF NATIONS, THEN EACH VOLK CAN, AND INDEED MUST, BE THE MASTER WHO INSTRUCTS EVERY OTHER VOLK UPON THIS PLANET IN THE RICHNESS AND POWER INHERING IN THE GREAT DEEDS AND GREAT CREATIONS OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT!

Today, the urgent requirement with which you are being confronted, O German Volk, at this very moment, simply as an end in itself and quite independent of all consideration as to the ultimate outcome of our National Socialist revolution, is that you voice, fff, your strongest possible expression of support for the new German Reality that is being embodied, before our very eyes, in the National Socialist State. Our will-to-responsibility is based upon Volkish principles, and its essence requires that each Volk discover and do all that is in it to preserve the greatness and the truth of its ultimate Fate. This will is the mightiest guarantor of peace among nations, since it connects itself intimately to the fundamental law of manly respect as well as endorsing explicitly the indispensible prescriptions entailed by an adherence to unconditional honor. The Führer, Adolf Hitler, has awakened this will in our entire Volk and has welded this will into a single indivisible resolve.

Therefore, no one should keep himself away from the polling-stations on the sacred day that so swiftly approaches, that strategically crucial occasion when the entire German Volk and its mighty will, shall and must be most clearly manifested before the world!

HEIL HITLER!