Hannah Arendt was born into an upper-middle-class born 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 Eichmann's banality and its criticism of European Jews for not offering more resistance during the Holocaust.

Bibliography:

Hannah ARENDT: Between friends. Carol Brightman Ed. Pp. XXXVI, 412. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995

Hannah ARENDT: Eichmann in Jerusalem. Pp. 312. Penguin Books, 1977

Hannah ARENDT: The Human Condition. Pp. IX, 385. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959

Hannah ARENDT: The Jew as Pariah. Pp. 288. New York: Grove Press, 1978

Hannah ARENDT: Men in Dark Times. Pp. X, 272. London: J. Cape, 1970

Hannah ARENDT: The Origins of the Totalitarianism. P. XV, 520. New York: Meridian Books, 1958

Links:

Hannah Arendt Preis fuer Politisches Denken e. V.

The Hannah Arendt Papers