Europe Discovers Nietzsche 341ated by the ruling authorities, and at the end of the 1930s he was relieved
of his teaching post and prohibited from teaching elsewhere.
At the same time that Jaspers was writing this book, Heidegger was
holding a series of lectures on Nietzsche. The resulting book, published
after the war, was one of the key works in Nietzsche's academic recep-
tion. Some especially narrow-minded philosophers considered
Nietzsche worthy of study only after they had read Heidegger's book.
After resigning from his rectorship, Heidegger had to endure allega-
tions of "nihilism" from Nazi ideologues. Krieck wrote in 1934: "The
meaning of this philosophy is categorical atheism and metaphysical
nihilism of the kind that has generally been represented in our country
by Jewish literati; in other words, an enzyme of decomposition and dis-
solution for the German people" (Schneeberger 225). In the lectures on
Nietzsche that Heidegger held between 1936 and 1940, he turned the
tables and attempted to demonstrate that, unbeknownst to the follow-
ers of Nietzsche, the will to power to which the Nazi ideologues
referred was not the transcendence but the consummation of nihilism.
These lectures came to represent a frontal attack on what Heidegger
considered the nihilistic metaphysics of racism and biologism. He con-
ceded that Nietzsche was somewhat suited to the reigning ideology, but
at the same time distanced himself from it Heidegger sought to align
himself with Nietzsche while presenting his own thinking as a transcen-
dence of Nietzsche in Nietzsche's footsteps.
Heidegger explicated Nietzsche's concept of the will, underscoring
the significance of growth, the desire to be stronger, enhancement, and
transcendence. He concurred with Nietzsche's critique of idealism and
applauded his call to "remain faithful to the earth" (4,15; Ζ First Part,
Prologue § 3). However, it was on this very point that he also criticized
Nietzsche, accusing him of not having remained faithful to the earth
with his philosophy of the will to power. To Heidegger, "remaining
faithful to the earth" entailed not privileging the products of existence
over existence itself. He argued that Nietzsche, proceeding from the
principle of the will to power, drew everything into the sphere of the