 Between 1949 and 1955, Ortega avoided the pressure of the Spanish Government by reactivating his cultural interests in conferences and meetings abroad where he lectured and received honors. In early July 1949, he visited Aspen, Colorado, with his good friend Ernst R. Curtius, the cultural historian, to attend and participate in the bicentennial commemoration of Goethe’s birth under of the auspices and direction of Robert M. Hutchins and the University of Chicago. In September, he visited Hamburg, Berlin, Darmstadt and Munich for similar reasons. In August 1951, he returned to Germany to participate in a conference at Darmstadt (where he met Heidegger) and to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Marburg. The conference, which Ortega was invited to attend in Darmstadt, was sponsored by scientists and architects to discuss “Man and Space”. This brief meeting was apparently pleasant, as neither philosopher broached the sensitive issue of originality or similarities of certain aspects of their thought during the course of their private conversations. In 1951, he received another honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow. Failing health due to stomach and liver cancer curtailed his traveling after his last lecture given in May 1955 at Venice. On October 18, 1955, in Madrid, Ortega died in his apartment on the sixth floor at Calle Monte Esquinza 28.