In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

466 FRAMES
before Heidegger. He mentions excursions in the north German landscape
with his family and with the Wandervogelorganization (a national
hiking group with a right-wing orientation) as decisive experiences of his
childhood and adolescence. Blunck studied law in Heidelberg and in
Kiel, earning a doctorate in 1910 (three years earlier than Heidegger).
Atypically for the prewar era (but like Heidegger), Blunck never participated
wholeheartedly in the student movements that were then a particularly
dynamic force within German nationalism. Also like Heidegger,
he served mainly in bureaucratic functions during the Great War and
therefore did not see any military action that could have become the
topic of heroic retrospectives. Shortly after the war, Blunck became a
legal counsel for the State. Without any particular problems or, it seems,
any impressive achievements, he climbed the standard career ladder,
which culminated in his appointment as Syndikus at the University of
Hamburg in 1926. Two years later, when Heidegger, after achieving the
rank of Ordinarius, could finally afford to distance himself from academic
philosophy, Blunck decided to quit his career as a civil servant in
order to dedicate himself exclusively to his literary work, which had
begun during the prewar years. He became a full-time novelist, storyteller,
and poet, occasionally publishing journalistic essays on cultural
politics.
In 1919, three years before the Heidegger family began to spend their
vacations in the cabin at Todtnauberg, Blunck had acquired a farmhouse
in the northernmost part of Germany, where, despite his professional
obligations in Hamburg, he and his wife tried to lead a part-time existence
as amateur peasants. Later on, they would allow young enthusiasts
of Blunck's work to share this life with them, motivated by pedagogical
concerns similar to those that inspired the "academic camps" (Wissenschaftslager)
which Heidegger organized in 1933.102 Less than half a year
after the National Socialist Party's "seizure of power," Blunck was appointed
to the Academy of Poetry in the Prussian Academy of the Arts. 103
In the same year, on November 15, Joseph Gobbels appointed Hans
Friedrich Blunck the first president of the newly founded Reichsschrifttumskammer.
While it is difficult to ascertain the precise reasons for this
promotion, there can be no doubt that Blunck's (semi)political star had
already begun to fall as early as the spring of 1934, about the time that
Heidegger resigned as head of the University of Freiburg after only one
year in the office. On October 3, 1935, in a ceremony described by the