94-539: The Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought (German: Hannah-Arendt-Preis für politisches Denken ) is a prize awarded to individuals representing the tradition of political theorist Hannah Arendt , especially in regard to totalitarianism . It was instituted by the German Heinrich Böll Foundation (affiliated with the Alliance 90/The Greens ) and the government of Bremen in 1994, and
188-695: A naturalized citizen of the United States on December 10, 1951. Arendt had begun corresponding with the American author Mary McCarthy , six years her junior, in 1950 and they soon became lifelong friends. She had started seeing Martin Heidegger again, and had what the American writer Adam Kirsch called a "quasi-romance", lasting for two years, with the man who had previously been her mentor, teacher, and lover. During this time, Arendt defended him against critics who noted his enthusiastic membership in
282-560: A "conscious pariah". This was a personal trait that Arendt had recognized in herself, although she did not embrace the term until later. Back in Berlin, Arendt found herself becoming more involved in politics and started studying political theory, and reading Marx and Trotsky , while developing contacts at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik . Despite the political leanings of her mother and husband she never saw herself as
376-408: A "description of herself" addressed to Heidegger. In this essay, full of anguish and Heideggerian language , she reveals her insecurities relating to her femininity and Jewishness, writing abstractly in the third person. She describes a state of " Fremdheit " (alienation), on the one hand an abrupt loss of youth and innocence, on the other an " Absonderlichkeit " (strangeness), the finding of
470-587: A Jew one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man." This was Arendt's introduction of the concept of Jew as Pariah that would occupy her for the rest of her life in her Jewish writings. She took a public position by publishing part of her largely completed biography of Rahel Varnhagen as " Originale Assimilation: Ein Nachwort zu Rahel Varnhagen 100 Todestag " ("Original Assimilation: An Epilogue to
564-528: A child, writing poetry in her teenage years, and starting both a Graecae (reading group for studying classical literature) and philosophy club at her school. She was fiercely independent in her schooling and a voracious reader, absorbing French and German literature and poetry (committing large amounts to memory) and philosophy. By the age of 14, she had read Kierkegaard , Jaspers ' Psychologie der Weltanschauungen and Kant 's Kritik der reinen Vernunft ( Critique of Pure Reason ). Kant, whose hometown
658-495: A copy of Varnhagen's correspondence and excitedly introduced her to Arendt, donating her collection to her. A little later, Arendt's work on Romanticism led her to a study of Jewish salons and eventually to those of Varnhagen. In Rahel, she found qualities she felt reflected her own, particularly those of sensibility and vulnerability. Rahel, like Hannah, found her destiny in her Jewishness. Hannah Arendt would come to call Rahel Varnhagen's discovery of living with her destiny as being
752-474: A deteriorating political situation, Arendt was deeply troubled by reports that Heidegger was speaking at National Socialist meetings. She wrote, asking him to deny that he was attracted to National Socialism. Heidegger replied that he did not seek to deny the rumors (which were true), and merely assured her that his feelings for her were unchanged. As a Jew in Nazi Germany, Arendt was prevented from making
846-507: A dramatic departure from the past. He was handsome, a genius, romantic, and taught that thinking and "aliveness" were but one. The 18-year-old Arendt then began a long romantic relationship with the 35-year-old Heidegger, who was married with two young sons. Arendt later faced criticism for this because of Heidegger's support for the Nazi Party after his election as rector at Freiburg University in 1933. Nevertheless, he remained one of
940-499: A grant to support her Habilitation , which was supported by Heidegger and Jaspers among others, and in the meantime, with Günther's help was working on revisions to get her dissertation published. After Arendt and Stern were married, they began two years of what Christian Dries refers to as the Wanderjahre (years of wandering) with the ultimately fruitless aim of having Stern accepted for an academic appointment. They lived for
1034-618: A group of three young philosophers: Karl Frankenstein , Erich Neumann and Erwin Loewenson . Other friends and students of Jaspers were the linguists Benno von Wiese and Hugo Friedrich (seen with Hannah, below), with whom she attended lectures by Friedrich Gundolf at Jaspers' suggestion and who kindled in her an interest in German Romanticism . She also became reacquainted, at a lecture, with Kurt Blumenfeld , who introduced her to Jewish politics. At Heidelberg, she lived in
SECTION 10
#17327798723151128-478: A living and discriminated against and confided to Anne Mendelssohn that emigration was probably inevitable. Jaspers had tried to persuade her to consider herself as a German first, a position she distanced herself from, pointing out that she was a Jew and that " Für mich ist Deutschland die Muttersprache, die Philosophie und die Dichtung " (For me, Germany is the mother tongue, philosophy and poetry), rather than her identity. This position puzzled Jaspers, replying "It
1222-411: A plaque on the wall. Arendt had already positioned herself as a critic of the rising Nazi Party in 1932 by publishing " Adam-Müller-Renaissance? " a critique of the appropriation of the life of Adam Müller to support right wing ideology. The beginnings of anti-Jewish laws and boycott came in the spring of 1933. Confronted with systemic antisemitism, Arendt adopted the motiv "If one is attacked as
1316-602: A political leftist, justifying her activism as being through her Jewishness. Her increasing interest in Jewish politics and her examination of assimilation in her study of Varnhagen led her to publish her first article on Judaism, Aufklärung und Judenfrage ("The Enlightenment and the Jewish Question", 1932). Blumenfeld had introduced her to the " Jewish question ", which would be his lifelong concern. Meanwhile, her views on German Romanticism were evolving. She wrote
1410-611: A relationship with him. Within a month she had moved in with him in a one-room studio, shared with a dancing school in Berlin-Halensee . Then they moved to Merkurstraße 3, Nowawes, in Potsdam and were married there on 26 September. They had much in common and the marriage was welcomed by both sets of parents. In the summer, Hannah Arendt successfully applied to the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft for
1504-586: A review of Hans Weil 's Die Entstehung des deutschen Bildungsprinzips ( The Origin of German Educational Principle , 1930), which dealt with the emergence of Bildungselite (educational elite) in the time of Rahel Varnhagen. At the same time she began to be occupied by Max Weber 's description of the status of Jewish people within a state as Pariavolk ( pariah people) in his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (1922), while borrowing Bernard Lazare 's term paria conscient (conscious pariah) with which she identified. In both these articles she advanced
1598-469: A romantic affair that began while she was his student. She obtained her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in 1929. Her dissertation was titled Love and Saint Augustine , and her supervisor was the existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers . Hannah Arendt married Günther Stern in 1929 but soon began to encounter increasing antisemitism in the 1930s Nazi Germany . In 1933,
1692-529: A thinker and writer was established, and a series of works followed. These included the books The Human Condition in 1958, as well as Eichmann in Jerusalem and On Revolution in 1963. She taught at many American universities while declining tenure-track appointments. She died suddenly of a heart attack in 1975, at the age of 69, leaving her last work, The Life of the Mind , unfinished. Hannah Arendt
1786-718: A while in Drewitz, a southern neighborhood of Potsdam, before moving to Heidelberg, where they lived with the Jaspers. After Heidelberg, where Stern completed the first draft of his Habilitation thesis, the two then moved to Frankfurt where Stern hoped to finish his writing. There, Arendt participated in the university's intellectual life, attending lectures by Karl Mannheim and Paul Tillich , among others. The couple collaborated intellectually, writing an article together on Rilke 's Duino Elegies (1923) and both reviewing Mannheim's Ideologie und Utopie (1929). The latter
1880-544: Is a matter of course. This time was a particularly favorable period for the Jewish community in Königsberg, an important center of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). Arendt's family was thoroughly assimilated ("Germanized") and she later remembered: "With us from Germany, the word 'assimilation' received a 'deep' philosophical meaning. You can hardly realize how serious we were about it." Despite these conditions,
1974-784: Is awarded by an international jury. The prize money is €10,000. In 2023, the German-Israeli Society Bremen chapter chair Hermann Kuhn wrote an open letter calling for a suspension of Masha Gessen 's prize out of objection to their essay "In the Shadow of the Holocaust" in The New Yorker . Gessen compared the Blockade of the Gaza Strip to Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany , stating “the ghetto
SECTION 20
#17327798723152068-665: Is being liquidated” in the context of the 2023 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip . The Heinrich Böll Foundation initially announced it would not sponsor the award, then later announced that the award would be presented in a smaller ceremony. In response to criticisms, Gessen said " Hannah Arendt wouldn’t have gotten the Hannah Arendt prize if you applied those kinds of criteria to it," and referenced Arendt's frequent comparisons of Israeli policies and ideologies to Nazi Germany . In The New Yorker essay they quoted Arendt's 1948 letter that compared Menachem Begin 's Herut party to
2162-408: Is best known for those dealing with the nature of wealth , power and evil , as well as politics, direct democracy , authority , tradition and totalitarianism . She is also remembered for the controversy surrounding the trial of Adolf Eichmann , for her attempt to explain how ordinary people become actors in totalitarian systems, which was considered by some an apologia , and for the phrase "
2256-628: Is strange to me that as a Jew you want to be different from the Germans". By 1933, life for the Jewish population in Germany was becoming precarious. Adolf Hitler became Reichskanzler (Chancellor) in January, and the Reichstag was burned down ( Reichstagsbrand ) the following month. This led to the suspension of civil liberties , with attacks on the left, and, in particular, members of
2350-456: The Versöhnler ( Conciliator faction ). Although Arendt had rejoined Stern in 1933, their marriage existed in name only, with their having separated in Berlin. She fulfilled her social obligations and used the name Hannah Stern, but the relationship effectively ended when Stern, perhaps recognizing the danger better than she, emigrated to America with his parents in 1936. In 1937, Arendt
2444-699: The British Mandate of Palestine , mainly as agricultural workers. Initially she was employed as a secretary, and then office manager. To improve her skills she studied French, Hebrew and Yiddish . In this way she was able to support herself and her husband. When the organization closed in 1935, her work for Blumenfeld and the Zionists in Germany brought her into contact with the wealthy philanthropist Baroness Germaine Alice de Rothschild (born Halphen, 1884–1975), wife of Édouard Alphonse James de Rothschild , becoming her assistant. In this position she oversaw
2538-724: The Companhia Colonial de Navegação 's S/S Guiné II . A few months later, Fry's operations were shut down and the borders sealed. Upon arriving in New York City on 22 May 1941 with very little, Hannah's family received assistance from the Zionist Organization of America and the local German immigrant population, including Paul Tillich and neighbors from Königsberg. They rented rooms at 317 West 95th Street and Martha Arendt joined them there in June. There
2632-526: The East Prussian capital of Königsberg for her father's health care. Paul Arendt had contracted syphilis in his youth but was thought to be in remission when Arendt was born. He died when she was seven. Arendt was raised in a politically progressive, secular family, her mother being an ardent Social Democrat . After completing secondary education in Berlin, Arendt studied at the University of Marburg under Martin Heidegger , with whom she engaged in
2726-563: The Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party: KPD). Stern, who had communist associations, fled to Paris, but Arendt stayed on to become an activist. Knowing her time was limited, she used the apartment at Opitzstraße 6 in Berlin-Steglitz that she had occupied with Stern since 1932 as an underground railway way-station for fugitives. Her rescue operation there is now recognized with
2820-823: The Low Countries that month, the military governor of Paris issued a proclamation ordering all "enemy aliens" between 17 and 55 who had come from Germany (predominantly Jews) to report separately for internment . The women were gathered together in the Vélodrome d'Hiver on 15 May, so Hannah Arendt's mother, being over 55, was allowed to stay in Paris. Arendt described the process of making refugees as "the new type of human being created by contemporary history ... put into concentration camps by their foes and into internment camps by their friends". The men, including Blücher, were sent to Camp Vernet in southern France, close to
2914-613: The Prussian State Library for her work on Varnhagen. Blumenfeld's Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland ( Zionist Federation of Germany ) persuaded her to use this access to obtain evidence of the extent of antisemitism, for a planned speech to the Zionist Congress in Prague. This research was illegal at the time. Her actions led to her being denounced by a librarian for anti-state propaganda, resulting in
Hannah Arendt Prize - Misplaced Pages Continue
3008-762: The University of Berlin (1922–1923), including classics and Christian theology under Romano Guardini . She successfully sat for the entrance examination ( Abitur ) for the University of Marburg , where Ernst Grumach had studied with Martin Heidegger (appointed as a professor in 1923). Her mother had engaged a private tutor, and her aunt Frieda Arendt, a teacher, also helped, while Frieda's husband Ernst Aron provided financial tuition assistance. In Berlin, Guardini had introduced her to Kierkegaard, and she resolved to make theology her major field. At Marburg (1924–1926) she studied classical languages, German literature, Protestant theology with Rudolf Bultmann and philosophy with Nicolai Hartmann and Heidegger. She arrived in
3102-448: The rabbi , Hermann Vogelstein, who would come to her school for that purpose. Her family moved in circles that included many intellectuals and professionals. It was a social circle of high standards and ideals. As she recalled it: My early intellectual formation occurred in an atmosphere where nobody paid much attention to moral questions; we were brought up under the assumption: Das Moralische versteht sich von selbst , moral conduct
3196-451: The American vice-consul there. Fry and Bingham secured exit papers and American visas for thousands, and with help from Günther Stern, Arendt, her husband, and her mother managed to secure the requisite permits to travel by train in January 1941 through Spain to Lisbon, Portugal, where they rented a flat at Rua da Sociedade Farmacêutica, 6b. They eventually secured passage to New York in May on
3290-575: The Arendts traveled to Paris in the autumn, where she was reunited with Stern, joining a stream of refugees. While Arendt had left Germany without papers, her mother had travel documents and returned to Königsberg and her husband. In Paris, she befriended Stern's cousin, the Marxist literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin and also the Jewish French philosopher Raymond Aron . Arendt
3384-571: The Commission in August 1949. In her capacity as executive secretary, she traveled to Europe, where she worked in Germany, Britain and France (December 1949 to March 1950) to negotiate the return of archival material from German institutions, an experience she found frustrating, but provided regular field reports. In January 1952, she became secretary to the Board, although the work of the organization
3478-502: The Jewish population lacked full citizenship rights, and although antisemitism was not overt, it was not absent. Arendt came to define her Jewish identity negatively after encountering overt antisemitism as an adult. She came to greatly identify with Rahel Varnhagen , the Prussian socialite who desperately wanted to assimilate into German culture, only to be rejected because she was born Jewish. Arendt later said of Varnhagen that she
3572-615: The Königsberg Jewish community, a member of the Central Organization for German Citizens of Jewish Faith ( Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens ). Like other members of the Centralverein he primarily saw himself as German, disapproving of Zionist activities including Kurt Blumenfeld , a frequent visitor and later one of Hannah's mentors. Her lifelong best-friend, Anne Mendehlsohn,
3666-504: The Nazi annexation of Austria and invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, Paris was flooded with refugees, and she became the special agent for the rescue of the children from those countries. In 1938, Arendt completed her biography of Rahel Varnhagen, although this was not published until 1957. In April 1939, following the devastating Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, Martha Beerwald realized her daughter would not return and made
3760-521: The Nazi Party. She portrayed Heidegger as a naïve man swept up by forces beyond his control, and pointed out that Heidegger's philosophy had nothing to do with National Socialism. She suspected that loyal followers of Horkheimer and Adorno in Frankfurt were plotting against Heidegger. For Adorno she had a real aversion: "Half a Jew and one of the most repugnant men I know". According to Arendt,
3854-482: The Nazis. Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt ( / ˈ ɛər ə n t , ˈ ɑːr -/ , US also / ə ˈ r ɛ n t / ; German: [ˌhana ˈaːʁənt] ; born Johanna Arendt ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German-American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. Her works cover a broad range of topics, but she
Hannah Arendt Prize - Misplaced Pages Continue
3948-576: The New York German-language Jewish newspaper Aufbau and from 1941 to 1945, she wrote a political column for it, covering antisemitism, refugees and the need for a Jewish army. She also contributed to the Menorah Journal , a Jewish-American magazine, and other German émigré publications. Arendt's first full-time salaried job came in 1944, when she became the director of research and executive director for
4042-716: The One Hundredth Anniversary of Rahel Varnhagen's Death") in the Kölnische Zeitung on 7 March 1933 and a little later also in Jüdische Rundschau . In the article she argues that the age of assimilation that began with Varnhagen's generation had come to an end with an official state policy of antisemitism. She opened with the declaration: Today in Germany it seems Jewish assimilation must declare its bankruptcy. The general social antisemitism and its official legitimation affects in
4136-566: The Spanish border. Arendt and the other women were sent to Camp Gurs , to the west of Gurs , a week later. The camp had earlier been set up to accommodate refugees from Spain . On 22 June, France capitulated and signed the Compiègne armistice , dividing the country. Gurs was in the southern Vichy controlled section. Arendt describes how, "in the resulting chaos we succeeded in getting hold of liberation papers with which we were able to leave
4230-597: The Sterns returned to Berlin in 1931. In Berlin, where the couple initially lived in the predominantly Jewish area of Bayerisches Viertel (Bavarian Quarter or "Jewish Switzerland") in Schöneberg, Stern obtained a position as a staff-writer for the cultural supplement of the Berliner Börsen-Courier , edited by Herbert Ihering , with the help of Bertold Brecht . There he started writing using
4324-478: The angelic orders?) Arendt and Stern begin by stating: The paradoxical, ambiguous, and desperate situation from which standpoint the Duino Elegies may alone be understood has two characteristics: the absence of an echo and the knowledge of futility. The conscious renunciation of the demand to be heard, the despair at not being able to be heard, and finally the need to speak even without an answer–these are
4418-611: The arrest of both Arendt and her mother by the Gestapo . They served eight days in prison but her notebooks were in code and could not be deciphered, and she was released by a young, sympathetic arresting officer to await trial. This incident is the subject of the play Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library , by Jenny Lyn Bader, which premiered in 2019 in West Orange, New Jersey. On release, realizing
4512-466: The banality of evil ." Her name appears in the names of journals, schools , scholarly prizes , humanitarian prizes , think-tanks, and streets; appears on stamps and monuments; and is attached to other cultural and institutional markers that commemorate her thought. Hannah Arendt was born to a Jewish family in Linden (now a district of Hanover , Germany) in 1906. When she was three, her family moved to
4606-932: The baroness' contributions to Jewish charities through the Paris Consistoire , although she had little time for the family as a whole. Later in 1935, Arendt joined Youth Aliyah (Youth immigration), an organization similar to Agriculture et Artisanat that was founded in Berlin on the day Hitler seized power. It was affiliated with Hadassah , which later saved many from the Holocaust , and there Arendt eventually became Secretary-General (1935–1939). Her work with Youth Aliyah also involved finding food, clothing, social workers and lawyers, but above all, fund raising. She made her first visit to British Mandate of Palestine in 1935, accompanying one of these groups and meeting with her cousin Ernst Fürst there. With
4700-410: The camp", which she did with about 200 of the 7,000 women held there, about four weeks later. There was no Résistance then, but she managed to walk and hitchhike north to Montauban , near Toulouse where she knew she would find help. Montauban had become an unofficial capital for former detainees, and Arendt's friend Lotta Sempell Klembort was staying there. Blücher's camp had been evacuated in
4794-563: The campaign of Judah Magnes for a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict . She famously opposed the establishment of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine and initially also opposed the establishment of a binational Arab-Jewish state. Instead, she advocated for the inclusion of Palestine into a multi-ethnic federation. Only in 1948 in an effort to forestall partition did she support a binational one-state solution . She returned to
SECTION 50
#17327798723154888-639: The country is political freedom coupled with social slavery). On returning to New York, Arendt was anxious to resume writing and became active in the German-Jewish community, publishing her first article, "From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today" (in translation from her German) in July 1941. While she was working on this article, she was looking for employment and in November 1941 was hired by
4982-562: The danger she was now in, Arendt and her mother fled Germany following the established escape route over the Ore Mountains by night into Czechoslovakia and on to Prague and then by train to Geneva . In Geneva, she made a conscious decision to commit herself to "the Jewish cause". She obtained work with a friend of her mother's at the League of Nations ' Jewish Agency for Palestine , distributing visas and writing speeches. From Geneva
5076-585: The decision to leave her husband and join Arendt in Paris. One stepdaughter had died and the other had moved to England, Martin Beerwald would not leave and she no longer had any close ties to Königsberg. In 1936, Arendt met the self-educated Berlin poet and Marxist philosopher Heinrich Blücher in Paris. Blücher had been a Spartacist and then a founding member of the KPD, but had been expelled due to his work in
5170-420: The essential mentor of Bildung (education), the conscious formation of mind, body and spirit. The key elements were considered to be self-discipline, constructive channeling of passion, renunciation and responsibility for others. Hannah's developmental progress ( Entwicklung ) was carefully documented by her mother in a book, she called Unser Kind (Our Child), measuring her against the benchmark of what
5264-569: The face of the advancing Russian army. There they stayed with her mother's younger sister, Margarethe Fürst, and her three children, while Hannah attended a girl's Lyzeum school in Berlin-Charlottenburg . After ten weeks, when Königsberg appeared to be no longer threatened, the Arendts were able to return, where they spent the remaining war years at her grandfather's house. Arendt's precocity continued, learning ancient Greek as
5358-448: The fall in the middle of an intellectual revolution led by the young Heidegger, of whom she was in awe, describing him as "the hidden king [who] reigned in the realm of thinking". Heidegger had broken away from the intellectual movement started by Edmund Husserl , whose assistant he had been at University of Freiburg before coming to Marburg. This was a period when Heidegger was preparing his lectures on Kant, which he would develop in
5452-472: The first instance assimilated Jews, who can no longer protect themselves through baptism or by emphasizing their differences from Eastern Judaism. As a Jew, Arendt was anxious to inform the world of what was happening to her people in 1930–1933. She surrounded herself with Zionist activists, including Kurt Blumenfeld, Martin Buber and Salman Schocken , and started to research antisemitism. Arendt had access to
5546-422: The golden years ( Goldene Zwanziger ) of the Weimar Republic , which was to become increasingly unstable over its remaining four years. Arendt, as a Jew, had little if any chance of obtaining an academic appointment in Germany. Nevertheless, she completed most of the work before she was forced to leave Germany. In 1929, Arendt met Günther Stern again, this time in Berlin at a New Year's masked ball, and began
5640-517: The idea of Denken ("thinking") as activity, which she qualified as "passionate thinking". Arendt was restless, finding her studies neither emotionally nor intellectually satisfying. She was ready for passion, finishing her poem Trost (Consolation, 1923) with the lines: Die Stunden verrinnen, Die Tage vergehen, Es bleibt ein Gewinnen Das bloße Bestehen. (The hours run down. The days pass on. One achievement remains: merely being alive.) Her encounter with Heidegger represented
5734-419: The largest business in the city. The Arendts reached Germany from Russia a century earlier. Hannah's extended family contained many more women, who shared the loss of husbands and children. Hannah's parents were more educated and politically more to the left than her grandparents. The young couple were Social Democrats , rather than the German Democrats that most of their contemporaries supported. Paul Arendt
SECTION 60
#17327798723155828-411: The limitations of transcendent love in explaining the historical events that pushed her into political action. Another theme from Rilke that she would develop was the despair of not being heard. Reflecting on Rilke's opening lines, which she placed as an epigram at the beginning of their essay Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? (Who, if I cried out, would hear me among
5922-444: The most profound influences on her thinking, and he would later relate that she had been the inspiration for his work on passionate thinking in those days. They agreed to keep the details of the relationship a secret while preserving their letters. The relationship was unknown until Elisabeth Young-Bruehl 's biography of Arendt appeared in 1982. At the time of publishing, Arendt and Heidegger were deceased but Heidegger's wife, Elfride,
6016-405: The newly emerging Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction , a project of the Conference on Jewish Relations. She was recruited "because of her great interest in the Commission's activities, her previous experience as an administrator, and her connections with Germany". There she compiled lists of Jewish cultural assets in Germany and Nazi occupied Europe, to aid in their recovery after
6110-406: The old town ( Altstadt ) near the castle , at Schlossberg 16. The house was demolished in the 1960s, but the one remaining wall bears a plaque commemorating her time there. On completing her dissertation, Arendt turned to her Habilitationsschrift , initially on German Romanticism, and thereafter an academic teaching career. However 1929 was also the year of the Depression and the end of
6204-418: The pen name Günther Anders, i.e. "Günther Other". Arendt assisted Günther with his work, but the shadow of Heidegger hung over their relationship. While Günther was working on his Habilitationsschrift , Arendt had abandoned the original subject of German Romanticism for her thesis in 1930, and turned instead to Rahel Varnhagen and the question of assimilation . Anne Mendelssohn had accidentally acquired
6298-487: The real reasons for the darkness, asperity, and tension of the style in which poetry indicates its own possibilities and its will to form Arendt also published an article on Augustine (354–430) in the Frankfurter Zeitung to mark the 1500th anniversary of his death. She saw this article as forming a bridge between her treatment of Augustine in her dissertation and her subsequent work on Romanticism. When it became evident Stern would not succeed in obtaining an appointment,
6392-418: The remarkable in the banal. In her detailing of the pain of her childhood and longing for protection she shows her vulnerabilities and how her love for Heidegger had released her and once again filled her world with color and mystery. She refers to her relationship with Heidegger as " Eine starre Hingegebenheit an ein Einziges " ("an unbending devotion to a unique man"). This period of intense introspection
6486-461: The second part of his Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) in 1927 and Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (1929). In his classes, he and his students struggled with the meaning of " Being " as they studied Aristotle 's and Plato 's Sophist concept of truth , to which Heidegger opposed the pre-Socratic term ἀλήθεια . Many years later Arendt would describe these classes, how people came to Marburg to hear him, and how, above all he imparted
6580-484: The time of Hannah's birth, Paul Arendt was employed by an electrical engineering firm in Linden, and they lived in a frame house on the market square ( Marktplatz ). They moved back to Königsberg in 1909 because of Paul's deteriorating health. He suffered from chronic syphilis and was institutionalized in the Königsberg psychiatric hospital in 1911. For years afterward, Hannah had to have annual WR tests for congenital syphilis. He died on 30 October 1913, when Hannah
6674-422: The views of Johann Herder . Another interest of hers at the time was the status of women, resulting in her 1932 review of Alice Rühle-Gerstel 's book Das Frauenproblem in der Gegenwart. Eine psychologische Bilanz (Contemporary Women's Issues: A psychological balance sheet). Although not a supporter of the women's movement, the review was sympathetic. At least in terms of the status of women at that time, she
6768-627: The wake of the German advance, and he managed to escape from a forced march, making his way to Montauban, where the two of them led a fugitive life. Soon they were joined by Anne Mendelssohn and Arendt's mother. Escape from France was extremely difficult without official papers; their friend Walter Benjamin had taken his own life after being apprehended trying to escape to Spain. One of the best-known illegal routes operated out of Marseilles , where Varian Fry , an American journalist, worked to raise funds, forge papers and bribe officials with Hiram Bingham ,
6862-400: The war. Together with her husband, she lived at 370 Riverside Drive in New York City and at Kingston, New York , where Blücher taught at nearby Bard College for many years. In July 1946, Arendt left her position at the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction to become an editor at Schocken Books , which later published some of her works. In 1948, she became engaged with
6956-641: The year Adolf Hitler came to power, Arendt was arrested and briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo for performing illegal research into antisemitism. On release, she fled Germany, living in Czechoslovakia and Switzerland before settling in Paris. There she worked for Youth Aliyah , assisting young Jews to emigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine . She was stripped of her German citizenship in 1937. Divorcing Stern that year, she then married Heinrich Blücher in 1940. When Germany invaded France that year she
7050-495: Was Ernst Grumach , who introduced her to his girlfriend, Anne Mendelssohn, who would become a lifelong friend. When Anne moved away, Ernst became Arendt's first romantic relationship. Arendt was expelled from the Luise-Schule in 1922, at the age of 15, for leading a boycott of a teacher who insulted her. Her mother sent her to Berlin to Social Democrat family friends. She lived in a student residence and audited courses at
7144-643: Was "my very closest woman friend, unfortunately dead a hundred years now." In the last two years of the First World War , Hannah's mother organized social democratic discussion groups and became a follower of Rosa Luxemburg as socialist uprisings broke out across Germany . Luxemburg's writings would later influence Hannah's political thinking. In 1920, Martha Cohn married Martin Beerwald, an ironmonger and widower of four years, and they moved to his home, two blocks away, at Busoldstrasse 6, providing Hannah with improved social and financial security. Hannah
7238-412: Was 14 at the time and acquired two older stepsisters, Clara and Eva. Hannah Arendt's mother, who considered herself progressive , brought her daughter up on strict Goethean lines. Among other things this involved the reading of Goethe's complete works, summed up as Was aber ist deine Pflicht? Die Forderung des Tages (And just what is your duty? The demands of the day). Goethe, was then considered
7332-529: Was Arendt's sole contribution to sociology. In both her treatment of Mannheim and Rilke, Arendt found love to be a transcendent principle "Because there is no true transcendence in this ordered world, one also cannot exceed the world, but only succeed to higher ranks". In Rilke she saw a latter day secular Augustine, describing the Elegies as the letzten literarischen Form religiösen Dokumentes (ultimate form of religious document). Later, she would discover
7426-466: Was Jonas' friend, the Jewish philosopher Günther Siegmund Stern , who would later become her first husband. Stern had completed his doctoral dissertation with Edmund Husserl at Freiburg, and was now working on his Habilitation thesis with Heidegger, but Arendt, involved with Heidegger, took little notice of him at the time. In the summer of 1925, while home at Königsberg, Arendt composed her sole autobiographical piece, Die Schatten (The Shadows),
7520-587: Was also Königsberg, was an important influence on her thinking, and it was Kant who had written about Königsberg that "such a town is the right place for gaining knowledge concerning men and the world even without travelling". Arendt attended the Königin-Luise-Schule for her secondary education, a girls' Gymnasium on Landhofmeisterstraße. Most of her friends, while at school, were gifted children of Jewish professional families, generally older than her, and went on to university education. Among them
7614-533: Was also one of the most productive of her poetic output, such as In sich versunken (Lost in Self-Contemplation). After a year at Marburg, Arendt spent a semester at Freiburg, attending the lectures of Husserl. In 1926 she moved to the University of Heidelberg , completing her dissertation in 1929 under Karl Jaspers. Jaspers, a friend of Heidegger, was the other leading figure of the then-new and revolutionary Existenzphilosophie . Her thesis
7708-475: Was an urgent need to acquire English, and it was decided that Hannah Arendt should spend two months with an American family in Winchester, Massachusetts , through Self-Help for Refugees, in July. She found the experience difficult but formulated her early appraisal of American life, Der Grundwiderspruch des Landes ist politische Freiheit bei gesellschaftlicher Knechtschaft (The fundamental contradiction of
7802-544: Was born Johanna Arendt in 1906, in the Wilhelmine period . Her secular and educated Jewish family lived comfortably in Linden , Prussia (now a part of Hanover ). They were merchants of Russian extraction from Königsberg . Her grandparents were members of the Reform Jewish community. Her paternal grandfather, Max Arendt [ de ] , was a prominent businessman, local politician, and leader of
7896-604: Was detained by the French as an alien . She escaped and made her way to the United States in 1941 via Portugal. She settled in New York, which remained her principal residence for the rest of her life. She became a writer and editor and worked for the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction , becoming an American citizen in 1950. With the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951, her reputation as
7990-503: Was educated at the Albertina ( University of Königsberg ). Though he worked as an engineer, he prided himself on his love of Classics , with a large library that Hannah immersed herself in. Martha Cohn, a musician, had studied for three years in Paris. In the first four years of their marriage, the Arendts lived in Berlin, and were supporters of the socialist journal Socialist Monthly Bulletins ( Sozialistische Monatshefte ). At
8084-527: Was likewise connected to a dynasty of philosophers and musicians. Of Max Arendt's children, Paul Arendt was an engineer and Henriette Arendt a policewoman and social worker. Hannah was the only child of Paul and Martha Arendt (née Cohn), who were married on 11 April 1902. She was named after her paternal grandmother. The Cohns had originally come to Königsberg from nearby Russian territory of Lithuania in 1852, as refugees from antisemitism, and made their living as tea importers, J. N. Cohn & Company being
8178-605: Was now an émigrée , an exile, stateless, without papers, and had turned her back on the Germany and Germans of the Nazizeit . Her legal status was precarious and she was coping with a foreign language and culture, all of which took its toll on her mentally and physically. In 1934 she started working for the Zionist -funded outreach program Agriculture et Artisanat, giving lectures and organizing clothing, documents, medications and education for Jewish youth seeking to emigrate to
8272-525: Was seven, leaving her mother to raise her. They lived at Hannah's grandfather's house at Tiergartenstraße 6, a leafy residential street adjacent to the Königsberg Tiergarten , in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Hufen . Although Hannah's parents were non-religious, they were happy to allow Max Arendt to take Hannah to the Reform synagogue. She also received religious instruction from
8366-468: Was skeptical of the movement's ability to achieve political change. She was also critical of the movement, because it was a women's movement, rather than contributing with men to a political movement, and abstract rather than striving for concrete goals. In this manner she echoed Rosa Luxemburg . Like Luxemburg, she would later criticize Jewish movements for the same reason. Arendt consistently prioritized political over social questions. By 1932, faced with
8460-443: Was still alive. The affair was not well known until 1995, when Elzbieta Ettinger gained access to the sealed correspondence and published a controversial account that was used by Arendt's detractors to cast doubt on her integrity. That account, which caused a scandal, was subsequently refuted. At Marburg, Arendt lived at Lutherstraße 4. Among her friends was Hans Jonas , a Jewish classmate. Another fellow student of Heidegger's
8554-471: Was stripped of her German citizenship and she and Stern divorced. She had begun seeing more of Blücher, and eventually they began living together. It was Blücher's long political activism that began to move Arendt's thinking towards political action. Arendt and Blücher married on 16 January 1940, shortly after their divorces were finalized. On 5 May 1940, in anticipation of the German invasion of France and
8648-465: Was then considered normale Entwicklung ("normal development"). Arendt attended kindergarten from 1910 where her precocity impressed her teachers and enrolled in the Szittnich School, Königsberg (Hufen-Oberlyzeum), on Bahnstraße in August 1913, but her studies there were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I, forcing the family to temporarily flee to Berlin on 23 August 1914, in
8742-605: Was titled Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin: Versuch einer philosophischen Interpretation (On the concept of love in the thought of Saint Augustine : Attempt at a philosophical interpretation). She remained a lifelong friend of Jaspers and his wife, Gertrud Mayer, developing a deep intellectual relationship with him. At Heidelberg, her circle of friends included Hans Jonas, who had also moved from Marburg to study Augustine , working on his Augustin und das paulinische Freiheitsproblem. Ein philosophischer Beitrag zur Genesis der christlich-abendländischen Freiheitsidee (1930), and also
8836-399: Was winding down and she was simultaneously pursuing her own intellectual activities; she retained this position until her death. Arendt's work on cultural restitution provided further material for her study of totalitarianism. In the 1950s Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and The Human Condition (1958), followed by On Revolution (1963). Arendt became
#314685