Abstract

In November 1953 after giving his lecture “The Question Concerning Technology” at the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Martin Heidegger wrote in a letter to his wife: “Yet the decisive thing is…the fact that a horizon is opening up amongst the young people, one which announces itself from within technology while going beyond it.” The genesis of Heidegger’s now famous essay occurred 4 years earlier, however, during a series of four lectures delivered on the evening of December 1st, 1949 to a semi-private group of wealthy ship brokers, businessmen, and industry leaders at the Club zu Bremen. The December 1949 lecture would mark Heidegger’s first public speaking engagement since being made an Emeritus Professor at Freiburg University and the institution of a teaching ban as a result of his affiliation with the Nazi party, which, although lifted in 1949, would prevent him from teaching again until the winter semester of 1950–1951. It was at this prestigious Bremen club, in front of an audien ..