Happy birthday, Hannah Arendt!

The famous philosopher and journalist is born to a German Jewish family

Born on 14 October 1906 in Hanover to a family of non-practising Jews, Johanna Arendt grew up in Königsberg in East Prussia. Reading the works of the philosopher Kant at the age of 14, she later studied with eminent philosophers in Marburg and Heidelberg and published her first book whilst still a student. After moving to Berlin, Arendt studied the obstacles to female emancipation and the social advancement of assimilated Jews. The discrimination faced by Jews and women in Germany led to an estrangement from her country of birth and eased the decision, made in 1937, to leave Germany for France following a brief arrest by the Gestapo in 1933. Stripped of her German citizenship in 1937, Hannah Arendt fled for the United States in 1941 after the German invasion of France.

Hannah Arendt was eventually naturalized as a US citizen and appointed to a professorship at the University of Chicago. During her travels through post-war Europe, Arendt chronicled the recent past and discussed Germans’ failure to confront the crimes of the Third Reich. Whilst Arendt’s study of totalitarian regimes brought her international renown, her account of the 1961 Eichmann trial in Jerusalem caused a great stir. The defendant – who was responsible for organizing the murder of millions of Jews – portrayed himself as a mere follower of orders, claiming that he had only carried out the tasks with which he had been assigned. Hannah Arendt described the mass murderer as thoughtless and interested only in his own personal advancement. Her characterization of Eichmann’s case as showing the “banality of evil” met with considerable opposition. The German-born Hannah Arendt, esteemed by the world for her profound analysis of fundamental issues, died in New York in 1975 as an American citizen.