Heinrich Friedrich Ernst Blücher (29 January 1899 – 31 October 1970) was a German
philosopher
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
. He was the second husband of
Hannah Arendt whom he had first met in Paris in 1936.
During his life in America, Blücher traveled in popular academic circles and appears prominently in the lives of various New York intellectuals.
Biography
Blücher was born in Berlin among the poor working class of the city.
He was a member of the
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany (, ; KPD ) was a major Far-left politics, far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, German resistance to Nazism, underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and minor party ...
until 1928, but soon rejected
Stalinism
Stalinism (, ) is the Totalitarianism, totalitarian means of governing and Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), 1927 to 1953 by dictator Jose ...
and left the party in protest of its Stalinist policies. He then became a member of a small
anti-Stalinist group called the
Communist Party Opposition.
Dwight Macdonald would later describe Blücher's political identity as a "true, hopeless anarchist."
He is remembered as a philosopher, yet he "was an autodidact who had gone to night school but never graduated, a bohemian who until 1933 had worked in German cabarets."
As a Communist, Blücher had to flee Germany following the rise of
National Socialism. He escaped without the necessary travel documents across the Czech border, the same route taken by his wife.
During his time in France he became close friends with
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...
, through whom he met Arendt.
He married Hannah Arendt in France, and they emigrated to New York City in 1941.
Heinrich Blücher began teaching philosophy at
Bard College in 1952, despite having no post-secondary education, continuing for seventeen years, as well as at the
New School for Social Research
The New School for Social Research (NSSR), previously known as The University in Exile and The New School University, is a graduate-level educational division of The New School in New York City, United States. NSSR enrolls more than 1,000 stud ...
. While there he continued to hold radical anti-establishment views, stating in a lecture that "The C.I.A. has infiltrated the National Student Organization. That means we are being bribed, we are being used, and we are no longer academicians any more."
Later in the same lecture he insisted, that if "what the government says must be right, it must be spread, and no dissent shall be possible. If they call that consensus, then to hell with it."
He argued that America was now "doing what the others (the totalitarians, the Russians) did all along."
He died of a heart attack at the age of 71, in the apartment he shared with Arendt at 370 Riverside Drive, New York City. His wife
Hannah Arendt was later buried alongside him at Bard College Cemetery.
Marriage to Hannah Arendt
Arendt and Blücher met in 1936, in a café along the rue Soufflot frequented by their friend
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...
and other German émigrés. Arendt was twenty-nine, Blücher thirty-seven. Both were fugitives from the Nazis. Blücher was considered a communist militant, thus he lacked the requisite ''permis de séjour'' to work and had to move frequently from hotel to hotel. Both were still formally married, but separated from their spouses. Due to the pressures of lacking citizenship and their marital status, Blücher would not marry Arendt until 1940, despite accounts reporting that they fell in love immediately.
The marriage would last until his death; however, it would change in relation and normalcy over time. By 1952, the marriage was
polyamorous. In a letter to Blücher, Arendt expressed joy at this, writing, "Yes, love, our hearts have really grown toward each other and our steps go in unison. These fools who think themselves loyal if they give up their active lives and bind themselves together into an exclusive One; then they have no common life but generally no life at all. If it weren't so risky, one should one day tell the world what a marriage really is."
Political thought
Blücher encouraged his wife to become involved with
Marxism
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...
and political theory, though ultimately her use of
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
was in no way orthodox, as shown in such works as ''
The Origins of Totalitarianism'' (1951) and ''
The Human Condition'' (1958). Blücher also coined the term "the anti-political principle" to describe
totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public s ...
's destruction of a ''space of resistance'' — a term taken up both by Arendt and
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers (; ; 23 February 1883 – 26 February 1969) was a German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry, and philosophy. His 1913 work ''General Psychopathology'' influenced many ...
.
Blücher believed, alongside Arendt and
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art ...
, that science held a corresponding mindset which threatened first religion, and now philosophy.
He argued that this belief, which he saw best displayed in
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He created the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which has been applied in a wide variety of disciplines, inclu ...
's ''Science and the Modern World'', was the same belief as the pre-socratic thinker
Heraclitus. Namely, he saw science and Heraclitus agreeing on the claim that "there is a rational order of things that is also a natural order of things".
He also distinguished Heraclitus from metaphysics, arguing that "Heraclitus, as well as Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, and all of the others we are considering here was an entirely non-mystical philosopher and also an entirely non-magical being." He saw
Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle
The uncertainty principle, also known as Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle, is a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics. It states that there is a limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as position a ...
as indicative of a need for the development of an explicit and rigorous philosophy of science.
He furthered this necessity by the invocation of the deification of science along
Kantian lines, writing that the "fact that at the very moment when man wanted to set a principle above himself and then failed to call that principle either God or the Absolute (because both are allowed), but rather chose something concrete to make into an absolute (like human reason or what not) --- this very fact indicates one thing, and that is whenever something concrete is taken to be an absolute it all boils down to the same contention, that man is God."
Although, interestingly, he placed God as the result of morality, writing that "there is not a single one, science, art, philosophy, politics, or religion, that does not have its root in the question of morality."
Blücher came to reject both religion and science as sources of morality, and instead posed what may be interpreted as a classical republican conception of freedom, writing that "Everything we do involves an ethical and moral decision. We have to regain that freedom. We have believed for too long that we could be told what to do. They tried to tell us what to do on the authority of God; they tried to tell us what to do on the authority of science, and both no longer hold. We have to make up our own minds as to what we shall do and what we will do. That is the essence of freedom. It is not a freedom that is at hand. It is a freedom that has to be established, that has to be kept, and that has to be developed, or it vanishes like thin air."
In popular culture
Axel Milberg plays Heinrich Blücher in the 2012 film ''
Hannah Arendt'', which takes place during and after Arendt's research and publication of ''
Eichmann in Jerusalem''. Blücher is portrayed as a loving husband, who plays an active role in Arendt's life.
He is also shown to be active in the social circles Arendt and he travel in, posed in frequent heated debate with Hans Jonas. He is described in the movie as having followed
Rosa Luxemburg "to the end". In the movie he is seen deeply in love with Arendt, despite the indication of mutual infidelities that imply a marriage based in some form of
polyamory. He is also shown as emotionally supportive of Arendt during the fallout from the aforementioned publication, consoling her on the loss of her friend
Kurt Blumenfeld.
Publications
*''The Axis Grand Strategy: Blueprints for the Total War'', Published 1942. (It is unclear the amount of Blücher's involvement in this project).
*Blücher, Heinrich, Rösener, Ringo , ed. (2020). Versuche über den Nationalsozialismus, Göttingen, Wallstein
References
Further reading
*Arendt, Hannah; Blücher, Heinrich, Köhler, Lotte, ed. (2000 ). Within four walls the correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher 1936 – 1968. New York, San Diego, London: Harcourt
External links
Bluecher Archiveat
Bard College
Heinrich Blücher Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blucher, Heinrich
1899 births
1970 deaths
Writers from Berlin
Communist Party of Germany politicians
Communist Party of Germany (Opposition) politicians
20th-century German philosophers
Hannah Arendt
German communist writers
Bard College faculty
Polyamorous people