There are quite a number of controversially discussed difficulties that any interpretation of Heidegger's phenomenological philosophy faces. Prof. Frede's study on Heidegger and the question of Being provides a clarification of the sense(s) in which the Seinsfrage came to vex the young Heidegger, in his early writings and in Being and Time. The present preface to the translation of her study is limited in its aims to an outline of the very positions he occupies with respect to two of the notorious interpretative issues concerning Heidegger's project of fundamental on-tology: (1) The problem of how to specify the very complex meaning (not of the Being per se, but) of the enigmatic Seinsfrage itself, since we must, to be sure, have some answer to the preliminary question "What exactly does Heidegger's problem of Being consist in?" in order to raise anew the question "What is the meaning of Being?". It just cannot possibly be known "What is the sense of Being?", without having recourse to the meaning of the Seinsfrage itself. However, as Heidegger's thinking evolved, the meaning of the question changed. (2) The problem of the different interpretative approaches (life-philosophical, existentialist, anthropological, metaphysical, scholastical, phenomenological, transcendental, hermeneutic-historical , deconstructivist, pragmatist) to the main exposition of the Being-question in Heidegger's magnum opus and their critical evaluation.