Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt was born in Linden, now part of Hanover, into a secular Jewish family and studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. After briefly being detained by the Gestapo in 1933 she fled Germany, lived in Paris, was interned in France in 1940, and reached New York in 1941. Stateless for years, she became a US citizen in 1951. Her major works include The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), On Revolution (1963) and Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963). She taught at the University of Chicago and the New School for Social Research.

Arendt is one of the most studied political theorists of the 20th century, and her work on totalitarianism, statelessness and refugees, and the 'right to have rights' is widely cited in human rights debates. Her ideas are drawn on by liberals, republicans, conservatives and the left, and she rejected all these labels for herself. Eichmann in Jerusalem provoked strong criticism, particularly over her account of the role of Jewish councils and her portrait of Eichmann, and some historians argue that later evidence shows Eichmann was more ideologically committed than she suggested. Her essay on Little Rock was criticized as racially insensitive, and her relationship with Heidegger remains debated. Admirers value her defense of plural public life and independent judgment.