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Matt_Simpson comments on Rationality Quotes: February 2011 - Less Wrong
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I'm not sure what Popper's motivation for saying that was, but I've read a bit of Heidegger and I felt the same way afterward.
I once told a university friend of mine, who was majoring in modern philosophy, that Heidegger was the most empty and nonsensical philosopher I had encountered in high school. He blamed this on translation difficulties and my Marxist teacher, and offered to guide me through a selected reading of Sein und Zeit; an offer on which I took him up.
We called it quits (in a friendly manner) after five evenings of heated arguing over whether it was even intellectually permissible to use half of the words Heidegger was using, and I left with the judgment that Heidegger was raping the German language.
I don't know about raping the German language but your friend is right in that a) Heideggerr, more than maybe any other philosopher ever, is harder to understand in translation and b) a Marxist might have a lot of trouble explaining Heidegger.
He definitely is not an author one should take on by oneself and I definitely can't explain much of anything he's said. I do lean toward the position that he said meaningful, even important things but thats totally based on people whose rationality and intelligence I trust regarding other philosophy telling me so. His obscurity is definitely the cause of a ton of bad philosophy.
Here's another Popper quote on Heidegger. No points for guessing how Popper took this (as is clear from the surrounding context):
--"The Unknown Xenophanes", The World of Parmenides, Karl Popper