What flows through all these love affairs, in Heidegger’s own terms, from the sinful constraints of petty everyday life to the grandeur of the thinking work, from the material of love and sexlife to the conceptual and linguistic inventions of which that material is a vitally important resource, goes hand-in-hand with another dialectic: that of the career, of the link that becomes established between the professorial profession and its vicissitudes and the progress of the written work.
The political maneuvering to obtain a teaching position, a promotion, institutional superiority over second-rate colleagues and rivals, an “honor” (such as being the only candidate to be considered for a particular position)—all this sort of thing takes up a truly extraordinary amount of space in the correspondence. And it is especially ironic since, in the final analysis, Heidegger would practically never leave his native province, turning down other opportunities, in Berlin in particular, for purely conventional reasons he would often change into noble ones later on. It is important to remember in this regard that Heidegger had no family fortune and was really dependent on his position in the university to earn a living. He went through some hard times financially and he had many enemies in academia, including during the Hitler era. His long-standing desire to reform the German university also derived from a personal experience rife with obstacles, arbitrary restrictions, and absurd decisions of which he was occasionally the victim. That’s one side of the story. The other is his explicit adherence to the stringent rules of social life in the German provinces, his participation in that blend of conformism and spite typical of the petite bourgeoisie of those places where, during the years in question, religion, social rank, family, and institutions reigned supreme. Here, too, Heidegger transmuted this particularly thankless material into a post-Romantic discourse on dwelling, place, path, origins…And, to that end, he elevated all the scheming and intrigues, in which he was in fact endlessly involved, to the level of the discipline of self-abnegation and supreme contempt. What can be read in the letters is a three-stage construction: first, an experience that is often at the level of conventional life and its petty turmoil; second, a subjective, often retroactive, stance that places the mediocrity of this life in a devastated global environment and excepts pure thought from it; and, finally, a brilliant production of language that envelops the exception and makes it shine in the sky of philosophy. Elfride, the “dear little soul,” was the designated confidante and no doubt the astute adviser where all this was concerned.