On 7 February 1966, Der Spiegel published an article on Alexander Schwan’s book, Political Philosophy in the Thought of Martin Heidegger, in which Heidegger was falsely accused. As rector, he would have forbidden Edmund Husserl to enter the library of the university, and he would also have refused to visit Karl Jaspers at his home after 1933, because his wife was Jewish. At the instigation of Erhart Kästner, Heidegger accorded Der Spiegel an interview in order to defend himself against these serious accusations. Rudolf Augstein interviewed Heidegger in Freiburg, on 23 September 1966, after Der Spiegel had complied with the demand that the interview be published posthumously. The interview would finally be published in 1976, under the title Only a God Can Save Us.
In the interview, Heidegger answered questions about his involvement with National Socialism, his rectorate in 1933–34, and his relationship with Jaspers and Husserl. He explained that, at the time, he had thought the National Socialism revolution would make possible a renewal of the whole being-there of the German people. This renewal should have led to an encounter with and overcoming of the dominance of technology. Heidegger claimed he had accepted the position of rector in 1933 to defend the purity of the revolution and to block the promotion of unsuitable persons. In the latter part of the interview, he clarified his conception of technology and reflected upon the task of thinking and its relation to art.
Translated in Heidegger The Man and the Thinker, Philosophical and Political Writings and The Heidegger Controversy.
The article published in Der Spiegel is not the complete interview. Complete interview translated in The Heidegger Reader.
Reden und Andere Zeugnisse eines Lebenweges (GA 16)