Short Biography (English Version)

Born in 1906 in Linden near Hanover as the daughter of engineer Paul Arendt and Martha Arendt, nee Cohn

1913 Death of her father

1916-1924 Hannah Arendt attended the Mädchengymnasium (girls‘ grammar school) in Königsberg

1920 Her mother married Martin Beerwald

1924 Graduation as external candidate

1924: Studied philosophy, theology, and classical philology (Greek) in Marburg, inter alia, with Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann, in Freiburg/Br. with Edmund Husserl, from 1925 studied in Heidelberg with Karl Jaspers

1928/29 Doctorate under Japsers with the ‚Liebesbegriff bei Augustinus‘ (the concept of love in Saint Augustine); 1929 marriage to Günter Stern

1930-33 Research on German Romanticism, later released under the title, „Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess“

1933: Short imprisonment by the Gestapo in Berlin (Gestapo)

1933 Fled to Paris. She worked there for various Jewish organizations until 1946.

1937 Divorce from Günter Stern. The National Socialist regime removed Jewess Hannah Arendt’s German citizenship, rendering her without a nationality

1940 Marriage to Heinrich Blücher

1940/41 Detention in the detention camp in Gurs, France; escape via Marseilles and Lisbon to the USA

1944-1946: Research Director for the Conference on Jewish Relations

1946-1948: Chief Editor at Salman Schocken Verlag

1948: Death of her mother

1948/49-1952: Executive Director of the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Organization (to rescue Jewish cultural property). In 1951 Arendt became an American citizen

1950-1975 During this period she wrote her most important political theory books, including The Origins of Totalitarianism, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Vita Activa (The Human Condition), and The Life of the Mind.

1975 Hannah Arendt died in New York