Baltimore, plus a Heidegger anecdote

We crammed a lot into just a few hours in Baltimore: the Edgar A. Poe house and grave, the Visionary Art Museum, the aquarium, then the neighborhood over by Johns Hopkins. Long drive to Philadelphia in the rain coming up.

Any 10-hour discussion with Al Lingis means that you’ll hear dozens of interesting stories, but I thought I’d share the following reminiscence of Martin Heidegger, which I’d somehow never heard in my 20+ years of knowing Al. (He reads this blog sometimes, and can correct me if I heard any of this wrong.)

At some point in the early 1960’s, while at the end of his time at Duquesne, Al went over to Freiburg, having heard that Heidegger was still showing up for Eugen Fink’s seminar there. Upon arrival, he discovered that Heidegger was no longer doing this. (Fink’s seminar itself seems to have been a bit stuffy, filled with silent and reverential students.)

Then, Al somehow heard through the grapevine that Heidegger would be speaking in Todtnauberg (site of the famous hut) on the occasion of the 500th/600th anniversary of the first mention of Todtnauberg in a historical document something like that.

He says that Heidegger spoke brilliantly to an entirely local audience (the event had not been advertised in Freiburg), making numerous inside jokes about Todtnauberg incidents, and had the audience of locals roaring with laughter. But then he veered into full-blown Heideggerian philosophy, and the locals remained rapt with attention.

Afterward, Al went to photograph the Heidegger hut, and showed those slides in his classes for many years. But about 15 years later he happened to be in Todtnauberg at the same time as David Krell, who knows Heidegger geography well. And Krell told him that his photographs were of the wrong hut!