Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

Hannah Arendt, born in 1906 in Hanover, was a philosopher, publicist and scholar. She studied in Marburg, with amongst others Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), with whom she had a love affair, and in Heidelberg, where she wrote a doctorate on the Liebesbegriff bei Augustin (1928) under Carl Jaspers (1883–1969). Because she was Jewish, the National Socialists take-over ended her chances of a university career and she emigrated  to Paris in 1933, and then to America in 1941, where she quickly established herself as a publicist and finally became a university professor. Her academic work examines, amongst other topics, totalitarian rule and antisemitism, for example in her main work The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).

Fred Stein, portrait of Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), black-and-white photograph, after 1940; source: © Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte (bpk) / Fred Stein, image number 10002519.