Martin Heidegger

(1889 - 1976)

Born to working-class Catholic parents, Martin Heidegger, unable to afford university fees, initially entered a Jesuit seminary but was quickly rejected due to health reasons. In 1927 he published Being and Time, widely recognized as one of the twentieth century’s most influential works of philosophy. Heidegger taught philosophy at the University of Freiburg, where his students included Herbert Marcuse, with whom he later fell out, and Hannah Arendt, with whom he had an affair. Arendt later testified on his behalf at denazification hearings after World War II.