Feature: Event - The Hat, by Zsuzsanna Ardó at Hampstead Meeting House
Published: 28 January 2010
by JOSH LOEB
WHEN teachers have extramarital affairs with their pupils it can spark disapproval from some quarters.
Far worse, though, is when the teacher is a Nazi and the pupil is a Jew.
Yet this state-of-affairs existed between the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger and the political theorist Hannah Arendt.
The two began a love affair when Arendt was writing her dissertation on “The Concept of Love in St Augustine” at the University of Heidelberg, aged 18.
She fled her native land for the United States after Hitler came to power, but Heidegger remained in Germany, joined the Nazi Party and made speeches in support of Hitler.
After the war, Arendt maintained a friendship with her former lover, whose reputation she sought to rehabilitate.
Their relationship will form the subject of an event at the Hampstead Meeting House on Sunday, at which the writer Zsuzsanna Ardó, who has written a play about the first meeting between the two intellectuals, will speak.
“They had an ongoing relationship until they died,” she says.
“It is very difficult to understand how people who had completely different paths in life could become friends.
“I was fascinated by that and wanted to write about how they first met.”
• The Hat, by Zsuzsanna Ardó, arranged by the discussion group Café Philo, will take place on Sunday January 31, 6pm, at Hampstead Meeting House, 120 Heath Street, NW3. 020 7794 5229. £8 including coffee and cake.