Philosophical Five

Before the Nazis came to power, five assimilated Jewish philosophers lived in the Wiehre district where Red Baron resides.

In the Framework of the University of Freiburg's Studium generale, I took part in a guided tour: Auf den Spuren von Husserl, Arendt, Stein, Benjamin und Pollock – ein Spaziergang in der Wiehre (In the footsteps of Husserl, Arendt, Stein, Benjamin, and Pollock – a stroll through the Wiehre district).

For the biography of those philosophers, you may consult the Wikipedia articles. I shall, therefore, limit myself to dramatic events or lesser-known details in their lives.

Edmund Husserl (1858-1938)

©Joergens.mi/Wikipedia

The first place visited was the house in Lorettostraße 40, where Edmund Husserl lived from 1916 to 1937.

In 1887, Husserl was baptized and married in the Protestant faith to Malvine Steinschneider. They had three children: Elizabeth, born in 1892, Gerhart in 1893, and Wolfgang in 1894.

In 1916, Husserl accepted a call to the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, where he succeeded Heinrich Rickert as a full professor.  

In October 1914, both of Husserl's sons were drafted and fought on the Western Front in World War I. Son Wolfgang died on March 8, 1916, on the battlefield of Verdun. The following year, Gerhart was also wounded in combat but survived.

Despite these blows, Husserl remained a staunch patriot. The German spring offensive of 1918 thus rekindled his hopes for a victorious end to the war. Malvine confided in her diary, "Papa is beside himself. He is convinced that the final victory is now within reach." 

But in August, Husserl wrote to his favorite student, Martin Heidegger, who was drafted in 1915 and assigned to the postal service and weather observation, "The latest events at the front weigh heavily on our souls. I don't need to tell you that."

To Husserl's regret, his pupil soon stepped out of his master's footsteps. In his infamous Black Notebooks, Nazi Heidegger only had contempt for his teacher, "Of Jewish origin, Husserl was with his empty rationality and calculating behavior (leere Rationalität und Rechenhaftigkeit) incapable of substantial decisions." Not nice.

As a Jew, Husserl went through the Nazi ordeal. His grave is in the suburb of Günterstal.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

Hannah Arendt's encounter with the handsome Heidegger in 1924 was dramatic, for he taught that thinking and "aliveness" were one and the same. The 35-year-old family man with two young sons was not only a genius but also a romantic.

 
So, the 18-year-old student fell in love and, in February 1925, began a long relationship, undeterred by the fact that she was not Heidegger's first or only love affair during his time at Marburg. Arendt led a secluded life due to her relationship, which she wanted to keep private. Of course, the relationship was unbalanced when Heigegger wrote, “Tornness and despair can never produce anything like your devoted love in my work (Zerrissenheit und Verzweiflung vermag nie so etwas zu zeitigen wie Deine dienende Liebe in meiner Arbeit.)”

At the beginning of 1926, Heidegger apparently got cold feet. So he urged Hannah to change her place of study. She went to Freiburg for one semester to study with Edmund Husserl. She lived on Schwimmbadstraße, but the exact location of her house is unknown. Through Heidegger's mediation, she then became a student of Karl Jaspers and studied philosophy in Heidelberg.

In a radio broadcast in 1969, Hannah recalled the fascination that Heidegger's teaching had exerted at the time: "His fame predates the publication of Being and Time. Lecture notes were passed from hand to hand, and his name spread throughout Germany like the rumor of a secret king." 

"The rumor that there was someone who had truly achieved what Husserl had proclaimed drew [the students] to Freiburg to the private lecturer and later to Marburg."

Edith Stein  (1891-1942)

In April 1913, Edith arrived at the University of Göttingen to study with Edmund Husserl and to pursue her doctoral degree in philosophy. The thesis topic, "Das Einfühlungsproblem in seiner historischen Entwicklung und in phänomenologischer Betrachtung (The Empathy Problem as it Developed Historically and Considered Phenomenologically."

Husserl commented favorably on her dissertation, "The grand style ... deserves the highest praise. I, therefore, request that the author be admitted to the oral examination." 

In 1916, Edith moved with her teacher to the University of Freiburg to complete her doctoral exam with the Rigorosum. Here is her personal account:

The next morning at noon, I was in Freiburg. My friend Suse Mogdan strongly recommended that I stay in Günterstal so that I could enjoy some vacation relaxation. A friendly man took me from the train station to the tram stop for Günterstal. It is a secluded village located in the south of the city, built on the plain that transitions into the Black Forest mountains. At the entrance to the village, slightly elevated at the edge of the forest, stands a large house in the purest Italian style. The unusual sight immediately catches everyone's eye. The tram conductors tell you that it is the Wohlgemutsche Villa. Every time you pass by, you wish you could enter this closed paradise. It would later become dear and familiar to me when it came into the possession of the Lioba sisters.

Here is a blog about the beauties of Günterstal.

This time, I drove past it through the small old gate to the tram terminus. Nearby, in a clean farmhouse, I found a nice little room on the ground floor with a friendly young woman. Her husband was on the battlefield; she had her elderly parents-in-law living with her. Diagonally across the street, in the rural inn Zum Kybfelsen, you could get good, hearty food for little money, and when the weather was nice, you could eat in the large garden.

As soon as I had found my lodgings, I set off for Husserl's house. They lived on Lorettostraße, halfway between Günterstal and the city center, at the foot of the Lorettoberg, not in their own house as in Göttingen, but in a spacious rented apartment.

I usually went out early in the morning with my books from Günterstal to one of the surrounding mountains, lay down in a meadow, and worked there for the exam. During this time, my friend Erica Gothe came from Göttingen. She also wanted to take a vacation, but at the same time, she wanted to be there for me so that I wouldn't be all alone on the day of the exam. I picked her up at the train station. When we sat together in my little room, I laid out my map of the Black Forest and showed her: "Here is the Feldberg. We have to go there sometime." We also need to visit Lake Constance. Erika beamed with joy and hugged me.

The Reinachs had strongly advised her not to come to visit me. He said I would only be working on my exam and wouldn't have time for anything else. Now, she was being rewarded for her loyalty to me. But we had to be clever about our excursions. We couldn't skip any of Husserl's lectures. We had to fit the Feldberg into the time between lectures. We walked all the way from Günterstal via the Schauinsland, spent the night there, and in the afternoon, after the lecture, we were able to proudly tell everyone that we had been up on the Feldberg early in the morning and had seen the Alps while drinking our morning coffee.

*Adolf Reinach, one of Husserl's most remarkable students and private lecturer in Göttingen fell in Flanders on November 16, 1917

We waited until the last few days before the exam to take the trip to Lake Constance. We needed a little more time for that, so we used Saturday and Sunday. We decided not to tell Husserl anything for the time being because it might worry the master that I was treating myself to something before the exam.

As we waited for the Höllentalbahn at the Wiehrebahnhof, we noticed the whole [Husserl] family on the platform. They got on the same train not far from us and traveled with us for a while, I think as far as Hinterzarten. It seemed to us that they wanted to see as little of us as we wanted to see of them. Gerhart was with them; he was only there on furlough for a few days, and we assumed that his parents wanted to be alone with their son.

After Edith was awarded the doctorate in philosophy with the summa cum laude honor, she boldly asked Husserl, on Kaiserbrücke (now Europabrücke), while they were walking back from the university, to become his assistant. He agreed wholeheartedly.

To be near her master, she moved to a room 200 meters away from Husserl's apartment, located at the corner house on Lorettostrasse and Goethestraße. Edith now spent her days in her master's apartment "translating" the mountain of approximately 30,000 notes written by Husserl in Gabelsberger's difficult-to-read shorthand. Many scholars wonder how much of this translation is original Husserl and how much is Stein.

Edith became increasingly frustrated with her work. In February 1918, she wrote, "Basically, it's the idea of being at the disposal of someone I can't stand. ... And if Husserl doesn't get used to treating me as a colleague again ... then we'll just have to part ways."

She left Freiburg and went to Göttingen. There, in 1919, she submitted her Habilitation thesis, Psychische Kausalität (Psychic Causality), which was unsuccessful. She also applied in Breslau and Freiburg with her philosophical treatise Potenz und Akt (Potency and Act). All attempts to be admitted to the Habilitation failed because she was a woman.

For a full account of Edith's Freiburg days and her future, you may wish to consult my blog, written in 2012.

Walter Benjamin (1892-1970)

Walter Benjamin began studying philosophy, the German language, literature, and art history at Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg in the summer semester of 1912. He studied philosophy under the neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert. He had a student dig at Kirchstraße 49.

In Freiburg, he became friends with the Expressionist poets Philipp Keller and Christoph Friedrich Heinle. 

On April 14, 1912, Walter Benjamin wrote a postcard with a picture of the university to his dear friend Herbert Blumenthal:

Dear Herby!

You will receive this card before "write soon." For I have not yet finished my "travel reading." I am carefully avoiding the specter of "overwork," which hangs like a storm cloud over my first semester. Sometimes, however, the gentle breeze of a stroll through the city on a glowing morning carries me to the university beach, whose beauty, towering above Berlin, allows only faint glimmers of light to shine through. The renewed sight of the magnificent picture overwhelms me. No, no, no, it's too beautiful. 

Auf Wiedersöhn

Mein Söhn! 

Walter Benjamöhn.

By "overwork," Walter meant being overwhelmed by his interest in so many things. He often allowed himself to be distracted. 

In the winter semester of 1912/13, Benjamin and Heinle continued their studies in Berlin. But in the summer semester of 1913, Benjamin returned to Freiburg to his poet friend Philipp Keller.

On April 20, 1913, Benjamin wrote a long letter to the same Herbert B:

Dear Herbert, I certainly should write to you. But what? I feel so incapable. The church square in front of my window features a tall poplar tree (the yellow sun shines through its green leaves), an old well in front of it, and sunny house walls. I stare at it for a quarter of an hour. Then – isn't that right? – I lie down on the sofa and pick up a volume of Goethe. When I come across a word like "Breite der Gottheit" (breadth of divinity), I am already beside myself again. You know: in "Groß ist die Diana der Epheser" – perhaps the most beautiful German poem title. Let Franz tell you what I wrote about my room. Keller said very nicely, "Here, one is always a visitor." This sunny spaciousness with solid saints on the walls. I sit in a small armchair and know of no better place for philosophy.

Walter's view.
Time stood still on Kirchplatz. I took the photo on Independence Day 2025.

On August 4, 1913, Benjamin wrote to Carla Seligsohn.

Dear Miss Seligsohn.

The semester is now over. I am here with my parents and siblings for a few days and will then travel with my mother to Tyrol until the beginning of September – perhaps we can visit Venice if the weather is bearable. Saying goodbye to Freiburg – to this semester – has ultimately been difficult for me, which I cannot say about any of the last few years. There was my window, which you know, with the poplar tree and the children playing, a window in front of which one feels mature and experienced when one has not yet achieved anything, dangerous, but so dear that I will live there again if I ever come back to Freiburg ...

He never came back to "his" Freiburg.

Benjamin often allowed himself to be discouraged in the pursuit of his goals, as was the case with his university career, his Habilitation.

Ultimately, he did not want to commit himself and decided to live as a private scholar, which his father only allowed him to do to a limited extent. Later, when his father's financial circumstances were shaken by inflation, Walter was no longer allowed to do it at all.

Benjamin was restless. He would suddenly abandon projects, then take them up again much later and eventually complete them brilliantly.

He was also restless in his love life. His charisma made it easy for him to make friends, including female friends. He came to know the leading intellectual minds of his time.

As a liberal intellectual and secular Jew, he went into exile in Paris in 1933 at the beginning of Nazi rule. With his escape, Benjamin's precarious financial situation deteriorated further. In the city's intellectual scene, he met many émigré German intellectuals, including Hannah Arendt, who soon became one of his financial supporters. He also received allowances from his ex-wife and his sister, as well as a modest monthly salary of US$80 from the Institute for Social Research, which had since relocated to New York and was headed by Max Horkheimer. Not just because of his often dire financial situation, Benjamin had suicidal thoughts throughout his life.

In two essays in 1986, Hannah Arendt recalled the special relationship between Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht: "Their friendship was unique because it brought together the greatest living German poet and the most important critic of the time. Although it was certainly tense, it was a friendship that was stronger than the differences in their backgrounds, working methods, and mentalities."

Benjamin was utterly depressed after his failed attempt to flee from the Nazi henchmen across the Spanish border to Portugal and then to the US. Brecht commented on his friend's tragic suicide on the night of September 26-27, 1940, at the Hotel Francia in Portbou, "This is the first real loss that Hitler has inflicted on German literature."

Friedrich Pollock (1894-1970)

Friedrich Pollock's traces in Freiburg are dim. 

Güntertalstraße 32

Friedrich Pollock was born on May 22, 1894, in Freiburg at Dreikönigstraße 13 as the son of Julius Pollock, an assimilated Jewish leather manufacturer. The "Villa Pollock" no longer exists today. It was not far from there to his grandparents, who lived at Günterstalstraße 32 and whom Friedrich visited frequently.

Four Stolpersteine lie on the pavement in front of the house: 

Dr. Hans Pollok (*1873) was a respected doctor in Freiburg. He, his wife Alice (*1881), and their sons Walter (*1904) and Heinz (*1908) were persecuted between 1934 and 1939 due to Nazi racial policies; the sons fled, and Alice eventually emigrated to the US.

Hans may have been a cousin of Friedrich, but no further details are known.

In 1910, the Julius Pollock family moved to Stuttgart. There, Friedrich received a commercial education. At the beginning of this period, he met Max Horkheimer, also the son of a factory owner from a Jewish family. The two sealed their lifelong friendship in 1911 with a written friendship agreement, the preamble of which stated:

"We consider our friendship to be our greatest asset. The concept of friendship includes its duration until death. Our actions shall be an expression of our friendship, and each of our principles shall take this into consideration first and foremost. Understood as an expression of critical human spirit, it shall serve to create solidarity among all people."

After the two wealthy factory owners' sons had completed commercial internships in several European countries, they went to Munich, where they obtained their high school diplomas as external students in 1919. They then studied from 1919 to 1922. Friedrich studied economics, sociology, and philosophy, while Max studied psychology, philosophy, and economics in Munich, Freiburg, and Frankfurt am Main. In Freiburg, they listened to Edmund Husserl and attended a seminar by Martin Heidegger together. They completed their studies in Frankfurt in 1922 and 1923, respectively, earning their doctorates.

Both married, but their friendship remained paramount.

A significant milestone in their lives was the founding of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt in 1923, with Max Horkheimer as its inaugural director. With the Nazis' rise to power, it was all over. Both emigrated to New York via Geneva and Paris in 1933. 

The institute found a new home in New York, but financial difficulties reduced it to just a few employees within a few years, with Pollock designated as its acting director.

In 1940, Pollock became a US citizen and now saw himself as German-American. He had excellent contacts in politics, co-founding the Research Bureau for Post-War Economics and serving as an advisor to the Boards of Economic Warfare and War Production, which were established by presidential decree. In this capacity, the politically active Eleanor Roosevelt invited him to a President's Dinner.

In 1950, he returned to Frankfurt to work at the Institute for Social Research, which had been reestablished in 1951. His friend Horkheimer had already returned to Frankfurt a year earlier.

In 1957, he moved with Max Horkheimer to Montagnola in Ticino. He died there on December 16, 1970, and is buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Bern, alongside his friend Max Horkheimer.

I thank our guide Ulrike Pohl for her excellent tour and making available Edith Stein’s and Walter Benjamin’s personal accounts of their stays in Freiburg.