Skip to website content >

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), political theorist, born into an upper-middle-class family in Hanover, Germany, studied in German universities and with the rise of Nazism fled to Paris. Here she directed the Youth Aliya, 1935-1938. When the Germans overran France, she was interned, but managed to reach the US in 1941. Arendt was research director of the Conference on Jewish Relations and chief editor of Schocken Books. From 1948 to 1952 she directed the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction. Arendt taught at the University of Chicago and the New School of Social Research, New York. Her books, especially "Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951) received wide acclaim. In 1963, her book "Eichmann in Jerusalem; A Report on the Banality of Evil" aroused considerable controversy in the Jewish world for its depiction of Adolf Eichmann's banality and its criticism of European Jews for not offering more resistance during the Holocaust.

ANU Databases
Jewish Genealogy
Family Names
Jewish Communities
Visual Documentation
Jewish Music Center
Personality
אA
אA
אA
Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), political theorist, born into an upper-middle-class family in Hanover, Germany, studied in German universities and with the rise of Nazism fled to Paris. Here she directed the Youth Aliya, 1935-1938. When the Germans overran France, she was interned, but managed to reach the US in 1941. Arendt was research director of the Conference on Jewish Relations and chief editor of Schocken Books. From 1948 to 1952 she directed the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction. Arendt taught at the University of Chicago and the New School of Social Research, New York. Her books, especially "Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951) received wide acclaim. In 1963, her book "Eichmann in Jerusalem; A Report on the Banality of Evil" aroused considerable controversy in the Jewish world for its depiction of Adolf Eichmann's banality and its criticism of European Jews for not offering more resistance during the Holocaust.

Written by researchers of ANU Museum of the Jewish People