After the war, Habermas enrolled at the University of Bonn, later also studying philosophy at Göttingen and Zurich. Between 1949 and 1953, he spent four years studying Heidegger, so his letter to the philosopher was freighted with symbolic resonances. A young intellectual was calling out his older mentor, demanding that he not hide in silence but rather explain how he could have eulogised a politically criminal system. A new German generation was calling on an older one to account for itself, and perhaps atone for its sins