Summary

Germany had been wrecked by 1945— it was full of displaced persons, stranded soldiers, and wandering foreigners. Heidegger found refuge with a group of university students and professors, and was excited to finally return to Freiburg. In fact, the city was full of strangers and he was banned from teaching due to his association with the Nazi party.

Heidegger began to write about devastation, compared to his writings on poetry and Being during the war. He went on joyful drives to recover his old manuscripts, but soon resigned to waiting for his ban from teaching to be lifted. He lost his connections to the world and chose to be isolated with his papers. This era of his thought was known as the turn, when he began to focus on the world’s increasing attitude of making everything seem machine-like. He thought that, through this, humanity...