German had for more than a century been an important medium for those who wanted to become involved in the work of the philosophers, namely, in reading important texts and discussing their content. It was Christian Thomasius who, at the University of Halle in 1694, changed from Latin, the language common at the time for academic lectures, to German. But it was only with Immanuel Kant that German became recognized in countries near and far as a language which corresponded, as it were, to the dignity of philosophy. I need not comment on the next stages: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, but also Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Max Weber, and finally, the above-mentioned Heidegger. Their major texts contributed towards the German language becoming familiar to philosophers all over the world, but also towards the delusion that one should philosophize in German.

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