Johanna Arendt, A Pluralistic Thinker

Johanna Arendt (better known as Hannah Arendt) was one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. Although some called her a “philosopher”, she rejected this categorization. Perhaps that was because it is too limited for an intellectual person with such broad interests.

You could say that Hannah Arendt was one of the greatest experts on the “Jewish question.” Unlike other thinkers, she approached the subject with great breadth and critical insight, even though she was Jewish herself.

Her work The Origins of Totalitarianism is a true classic when it comes to political theory. In this book she exposes the historical development of anti-Semitism, racism and imperialism. Ultimately, she describes what she calls “total domination,” which was embodied within Nazism and Stalinism.

A smart young woman

Johanna Arendt was born on October 14, 1906 in Linder-Limmen, Germany. Her family was Jewish and was originally from Linden, the region of Prussia, which later became part of Russia.

Her father was an engineer, and died of syphilis when Hannah was seven years old. Hannah’s mother, Martha Cohn, was a woman of liberal ideas. She wanted to give her daughter the same education that the boys received then.

From an early age, Hannah Arendt showed signs of great intellectual ability along with a rebellious character. It is said that at the age of 14 she had already read the works of Karl Jaspers and Emmanuel Kant. At age 17, she was expelled from school due to “disciplinary issues.”

After that, Hannah traveled alone to Berlin, where she took courses in theology and philosophy. She started studying and passed the entrance exam for the University of Marburg at the age of 18.

Johanna Arendt, a Jewish intellectual

Martin Heidegger, a popular man, was one of her teachers. The two fell in love and started a secret relationship. He was married and already had children. The situation became untenable for Hannah, who then left for a semester at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg.

There she obtained a doctorate in philosophy in 1928, after taking lessons with Edmund Husserl. Karl Jaspers mentored her dissertation and later became one of her best friends. During that time she was also friends with many of the most notable philosophers of her time.

The rise of Nazism began with a gradual rise in anti-Semitism. Hannah Arendt used her own home to help many children and young people flee. In 1933 she was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned for eight days. She then fled to France, where she met her first husband, Günther Stern.

A stateless thinker

Hannah Arendt was one of the few European intellectuals who had spoken out radically against Nazism from the start, unlike other philosophers who wanted to reconcile with the new regime.

In 1937 Hannah divorced Günther and in the same year the German government withdrew her nationality. In 1939 she managed to get her mother out of Germany. She then married Heinrich Blücher in 1940.

Shortly after, she was sent to a concentration camp in France for the crime of being German, even though she was no longer that. She managed to escape there and emigrated to the United States with her husband and mother.

Once in the United States, she worked as a journalist, a profession in which she already had experience because she had done it in Europe. In 1951 she became an American citizen, although she always said that her heart was connected to Germany through language, art and poetry.

Hannah Arendt had a wonderful career

When she became an American citizen, she “liberated” herself from her stateless status. In fact, she said that having citizenship was the right to have rights. She developed a brilliant career from then on, writing her greatest works in the United States.

In 1961 she worked as a correspondent for The New Yorker and covered the trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, a war criminal. The article was subtitled “The banality of evil” and was highly controversial.

In 1959 she became the first woman to teach at Princeton University. In 1963 she became a professor at the University of Chicago and then worked in other academic centers.

Her beloved husband died in 1970. Four years later, Hannah suffered a heart attack from which she recovered. She continued to work until 1975, when a second heart attack took her life during an academic meeting.