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Hans Jonas studied under Martin Heidegger before fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933; he later served in the Jewish Brigade during the Second World War, then broke publicly with his former teacher in 1964 over Heidegger's Nazi Party membership. His 1958 book The Gnostic Religion became the standard English-language study of ancient Gnosticism, but his most consequential work was The Imperative of Responsibility (1979), which argued that technological power obligates humanity to protect the survival of future generations — a book that helped catalyze Germany's environmental movement.