From Publishers Weekly
In 1924, Hannah Arendt, then an 18-year-old assimilated German Jew, fell in love with future Nazi Martin Heidegger, her 35-year-old married philosophy professor at the University of Marburg. Insecure, vulnerable Arendt, whose father died when she was seven, idealized Heidegger, who found in their four-year love affair a passionate physical and spiritual bond. Heidegger joined the Nazi Party and openly declared his support for Hitler in 1933; later that year, Arendt fled Germany and severed her ties with Heidegger. She went on to condemn fascism in The Origins of Totalitarianism, yet in 1950, encouraged by her second husband, Heinrich Bluecher, a German ex-communist and an admirer of Heidegger's philosophy, she resumed a friendship with her erstwhile lover, swallowing his lies that he was a helpless victim of malicious slander. As Massachusetts Institute of Technology humanities professor Ettinger shows in this revealing account of a strange mutual dependency that lasted until Arendt's death in 1975, Arendt became Heidegger's willing apologist despite mutual rancor, conflicting emotions and her branding of her former professor as a "potential murderer." Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In addition to Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's comprehensive biography, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (LJ 5/1/82), several studies of Arendt have appeared recently, and her correspondence is now available for critical examination. (See, for instance, Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, 1949-1973, LJ 12/94, and Correspondence, 1926-1969, LJ 9/15/92, which collects her exchanges with Karl Jaspers and others.) What Ettinger (humanities, MIT) adds to this scholarship seems to be well-informed marginalia. Arendt's curious, troubled, and lengthy relationship with Heidegger is fairly presented in this slim work, but considerable knowledge of the personalities and professional works of both major players is presumed, and readers already familiar with the earlier and more comprehensive biographical works will find little new here, either in fact or in analysis. For comprehensive collections only.?Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., Cal.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Richard Bernstein
...succinct and straightforward... Ms. Ettinger's tale is absorbing and cruelly fascinating. She is scrupulously attentive to the known facts and unsparing in her exposure of both Heidegger's mendacity and Arendt's propensity for self-deception where the philosopher was concerned.


From Booklist
Talk about odd couples! Hannah Arendt was a German Jewish student with an outgoing nature who would eventually shape much of the West's view of totalitarianism. Martin Heidegger was a brilliant philosophy professor who was withdrawn, irritable, and physically unattractive. They met in 1924 at the University of Marburg. Arendt succumbed to Heidegger's intellectual power and dynamism, and they began a four-year love affair, during which the married Heidegger generally treated the smitten Arendt like excess baggage. When the Nazis seized power, Arendt went into exile. Heidegger, who had always longed for a German "renewal," embraced the Nazis' cause and provided their racism a cover of intellectual respectability. Incredibly, Arendt met Heidegger again in 1950 and became a prominent apologist for his activities. Ettinger has a feel for the rootlessness and chaos that characterized the interwar period, and she reminds us that the Nazis depended on a solid core of romantic intellectuals, as much as on thugs, perverts, and psychotics, to fuel their revolution. Jay Freeman


Book Description
This book is the first to tell in detail the story of the passionate and secret love affair between two of the most prominent philosophers of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. Drawing on their previously unknown correspondence, Elzbieta Ettinger describes a relationship that lasted for more than half a century, a relationship that sheds startling light on both individuals.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This book is the first to tell in detail the story of the passionate and secret love affair between two of the most prominent philosophers of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. Drawing on their previously unknown correspondence, Elzbieta Ettinger describes a relationship that lasted for more than half a century, a relationship that sheds startling light on both individuals, challenging our image of Heidegger as an austere and abstract thinker and of Arendt as a consummately independent and self-assured personality. Arendt and Heidegger met in 1924 at the University of Marburg when Arendt, an eighteen-year-old German Jew, became a student of Heidegger, a thirty-five-year-old married man. They were lovers for about four years; separated for almost twenty years, during which time Heidegger became a Nazi and Arendt emigrated to the United States and involved herself with issues of political theory and philosophy; resumed their relationship in 1950 and in spite of its complexities remained close friends until Arendt's death in 1975. Ettinger provides engrossing details of this strange and tormented relationship. She shows how Heidegger used Arendt but also influenced her thought, how Arendt struggled to forgive Heidegger for his prominent involvement with the Nazis, and how Heidegger's love for Arendt and fascination with Nazism can be linked to his romantic predisposition. A dramatic love story and a revealing look at the emotional lives of two intellectual giants, the book will fascinate anyone interested in the complexities of the human psyche.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In 1924, Hannah Arendt, then an 18-year-old assimilated German Jew, fell in love with future Nazi Martin Heidegger, her 35-year-old married philosophy professor at the University of Marburg. Insecure, vulnerable Arendt, whose father died when she was seven, idealized Heidegger, who found in their four-year love affair a passionate physical and spiritual bond. Heidegger joined the Nazi Party and openly declared his support for Hitler in 1933; later that year, Arendt fled Germany and severed her ties with Heidegger. She went on to condemn fascism in The Origins of Totalitarianism, yet in 1950, encouraged by her second husband, Heinrich Bluecher, a German ex-communist and an admirer of Heidegger's philosophy, she resumed a friendship with her erstwhile lover, swallowing his lies that he was a helpless victim of malicious slander. As Massachusetts Institute of Technology humanities professor Ettinger shows in this revealing account of a strange mutual dependency that lasted until Arendt's death in 1975, Arendt became Heidegger's willing apologist despite mutual rancor, conflicting emotions and her branding of her former professor as a ``potential murderer.'' (Sept.)

Library Journal