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International art exhibition in Berlin 14. 10. - 19. 11. 2006 |
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Hannah Arendt |
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1906 14 October: born in Linden (near Hanover/Germany) as daughter of engineer Paul Arendt and Martha (née Cohn).Hannah Arendt grew up in the social-democratic, secular Jewish household in Königsberg. 1924 Studied philosophy, theology and classical philology in Marburg, but later moved to Freiburg and Heidelberg, where she studied among others under Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl. 1928 Graduation under Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg on the concept of love in the work of Saint Augustine, marking the start of a lifelong connection with Jaspers. 1929 Moved to Berlin, where she married the philosopher Günther Anders (formerly Stern). They divorced in 1937. Arendt began research about German Romanticism funded by the "Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft" ("Emergency Association of German Science"). Main parts of her work were finished in 1933, but published as late as 1958 under the title "Rahel Varnhagen. Life of a Jewish Woman". 1933 After short imprisonment by the Gestapo flight to Paris (via Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia and Geneva). There she worked for several Jewish organizations. Membership in the World Zionist Organization (till 1943). Friendship with Walter Benjamin. 1935 First trip to Palestine 1940 Marriage with Heinrich Blücher (later philosophy lecturer). 1941 After weeks of being detained in the Camp Gurs, Arendt emigrated to the USA with her husband and her mother. Political columns for German-Jewish weekly magazine "Aufbau". 1944-1946 Director of Research of the Conference on Jewish Relations. 1946-1949 Lector-in-chief of Salman Schocken publishing house. 1948-1952 Managing director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Organization to save Jewish cultural assets. 1949/50 In this capacity, first visit to Germany after World War II. 1951 Granted American citizenship. Her work "Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951) investigates the unresolved political and social problems of modern nationally determined states and defines totalitarianism as a new form of government. 1953 After being guest lecturer at Princeton and Harvard (among others), awarded a professorship at Brooklyn College in New York City. 1958 Arendt becomes corresponding member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. In her investigation "The Human Condition" she describes three kinds of human activity: labour, work, and action, and the revaluation of working in modern times to the disadvantage of political freedom of action. 1959 Lessing Award from the city of Hamburg. 1961 Reports of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem for the New Yorker magazine. Her contributions are controversial, in particular her descriptions of the Jewish Council's behaviour and of Adolf Eichmann and his motivation. 1963 Her articles published as "Eichmann in Jerusalem. A report on the banality of evil". Her investigation on the conditions of a solid grounding of political freedom is published under the title "On Revolution". 1963-1967 Professorship at the University of Chicago. 1966 Beginning of the friendship with author Uwe Johnson. 1967 Professorship at the New School for Social Research in New York City. 1968 Elected as vice president of the Institute for Arts and Letters. 1970 Publication of "On Violence". 1973 Arendt appointed full member of the board of directors of the American PEN Center. 1975 4 December: Hannah Arendt died in New York. |