In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

438 FRAMES
able faculty my most profound gratitude for the trust invested in me. I
shall permit myself to mail the descriptions of my future courses immediately
after receiving such request from my colleagues in the Department
of Philosophy. With the expression of my most sincere respect,
and remaining at Your Spektabilitiit's disposition,
Dr. Martin Heidegger
In the ensuing years, Heidegger's lack of enthusiasm for Marburg grew
into a general feeling of alienation from what he provocatively began to
call "academic philosophy." He advertised to colleagues and students
that he spent virtually every vacation day far away from them in the
Black Forest cabin. Having enjoyed, during his Freiburg years, a unique
reputation as a charismatic and promising teacher of philosophy,3
Heidegger soon become so frustrated at Marburg that he considered
accepting an offer to spend three years as a highly paid research fellow
in Japan-although he thoroughly hated traveling.4
In 1925, Heidegger was nominated by his Marburg colleagues for a
full professorship (Ordinariat) at the age of thirty-sixS-which was not
unusual, even by average academic standards. But although his mentor,
Edmund Husserl, who was widely respected throughout the German
academic community, praised him in his letter of recommendation as a
"philosopher in the grand style" and (ironically) as a potential "leader
(Fuhrer) amid the confusions and weaknesses of the present,"6 the Ministry
of Science, Art, and National Education in Berlin was reluctant to
follow such suggestions-undoubtedly because the candidate had not yet
produced a substantial monograph. In their correspondence with the
ministry, Heidegger's colleagues therefore repeatedly alluded to an unpublished
work on Aristotle (which would never appear) and, at a later
stage, to a manuscript which was eventually published in the spring of
1927 as the first part of Sein und Zeit-and which, despite its epochmaking
importance, would forever remain without a sequel. Although
Heidegger, from his early Marburg years to the end of his life, fostered
the impression that this manuscript had long been finished and kept
secret,? the actual writing of Sein und Zeit must have taken place between
February and December 1926.8
In a letter of January 27, 1926, the ministry had informed the search
committee for the Ordinariat in philosophy that, "for all the recognition
of Professor Heidegger's teaching success, it nevertheless [seems] inad-