Heidegger’s appeal rested on German postwar economic disaster and resentment

Evidence

Heidegger’s magnetic performances in 1929 enhanced his philosophical appeal in a country that had emerged from war and a 1923 hyperinflation crisis, only to sink into economic disaster again. Many Germans felt betrayed by the socialist government that had taken over in a kind of coup in the closing stages of the war. They muttered about Jews and Communists, and accused them of plotting to undermine the national cause. Heidegger seemed to share these suspicions. He too felt disillusioned and disoriented by the Germany of the 1920s. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 252

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on Heidegger’s Nazism and how intellectual celebrity intersected with Weimar crisis (e.g., Emmanuel Faye’s Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy).
• SEED: Angle: how philosophers who feel ‘disillusioned and disoriented’ by their era drift toward fascist sympathies — a pattern with modern echoes.