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| German philosopher's 100th birthday celebrated
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Photo: Peter Brokmeier
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BERLIN (EJP)--- Hannah Arendt, perhaps one of post war Europe’s most celebrated philosophers would have turned 100 on October 14. Several symposia have been planned this month in honour of her around the world.
According to Berlin professor Wolfgang Heuer, Arendt’s writings were focused on how a civil society’s could achieve a post war politics of peace and justice for future generations to come. “Through her experiences in a totalitarian dictatorship, Hannah Arendt was able to ask the questions in her books and essays that would turn her into one of the leading political thinkers of the 20th century,” Heuer said.
Arendt was born in the Lower-Saxon town of Linden, on the outskirts of Hanover. She was raised in Koenigsberg (today’s Kalinengrad), in the shadow of the philosopher Emanuel Kant. Her studies of philosophy, theology and classical philology took her through the campuses of the universities of Marburg, Freiburg and Heidelberg – where she was able to learn from the leading thinkers of the time such as Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers.
After graduating in 1928, she moved to Berlin and married Guenter Stern, a social-philosopher and essayist. She was arrested in 1933 for having been involved in the banned Zionist Organisation of Germany.
After her release, she chose exile in Paris. While there, she completed her first major work emancipationist Rahel Varnhagen – initiator of the first literary salon that was to become a centre of Berlin cultural life. Also, during her stint on Paris, Arendt was involved with the youth “aliya” movement of France that was aggressively promoting the migration of Jews to Palestine.
In 1940, she was interned by the Nazis but was able to escape to the United States with her second husband Heinrich Bluecher. She took on a position at the Jewish newspaper “Aufbau” and, after the war, took on a posting at the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction.
In the early post war years, Arendt began searching for ways in which political barbarism could be avoided in the future. She concluded that modern individualism and subjectivity could only go hand-in-hand with human interaction. Reality, politics and freedom can only be achieved by consenting people and only via negotiations. According to Professor Heuer, Arendt was convinced that freedom was not self-evident but rather could only be achieved if practiced. By differentiating between the inter-human control and “silent violence” she intended to warn future generations that violence could replace politics at any time.
International fame
The results of Arendt’s initial research brought her to international fame with the publication of her findings in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” in 1951. She became a sensation on the topic overnight – an honour which immediately brought her professorship after professorship in the United States, in particular in Chicago and New York.
In 1958, her book “The Human Condition” looked at all aspects of human activities surrounding work, production and trade which included insight into a modern and non-political society’s spontaneous quest for political problem solving.
However it was Arendt’s reporting of the Adolph Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, for New Yorker magazine, that sealed her reputation as a philosopher.
During Eichmann’s trial, Arendt came up with her theory that the most terrible of crimes against humanity do not necessarily have to be committed by outwardly ruthless ideologues but could rather be executed by such lacklustre bureaucrats as Eichmann – a totally uneventful man who could have lived next door to anyone - unnoticed.
Arendt’s subsequent bestseller and perhaps most controversial and most discussed of her works, “Eichmann in Jerusalem” in 1963, referred to protagonists such as Eichmann as “the banality of evil”. For Arendt, such metaphors were a necessary tool for communicating her messages. “What binds writing and thinking is the metaphor,” she wrote in 1969.
Hannah Arendt remained a fervent Jew for her entire life. She considered Germany only as her intellectual, linguistic and philosophical focal-point. Having been exposed to the extremes of anti-Semitism as well as having been disillusioned by the National Socialist leanings of many of her mentors and friends, she firmly anchored herself as a crusader of Jewish and human rights having claimed Judaism her national heritage rather than Germany.
German exhibitions
Berlin is among many cities worldwide that is honouring Arendt with several exhibits, most notably "Hannah Arendt Denkraum" (Thinking Space), in the former Jewish girls’ school in August Strasse 11-13, Berlin-Mitte (central district) and the foyer of the library of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities (Unter den Linden 8, Berlin-Mitte). It commemorates Hannah Arendt’s political thought and visualises the continuing relevance of her political, philosophical and literary work through contemporary art.
In Hannah Arendt’s political theory and in her writings, key concepts are of outstanding importance and continuing relevance for explaining of inter-human relations as cultural qualities. These concepts include: working, producing, acting, thinking as well as understanding and loving.
These connected terms characterise the potentialities and abilities of human beings as conditions of their existence. They seem topical and may help through their values in the discussion of urgent questions of contemporary crises in society, politics and work. “Denkbilder” - thoughts about thinking (Life of the Mind), “Sprachbilder” - political imagery in Hannah Arendt’s writing and “Bildsprache” - images and imaginary elements in contemporary politics are the three main topics discussed.
The exhibition opened 14 October, 2006 and will run through 19 November, daily from 12:00 to 6:00 pm
For more details contact: HAUS am KLEISTPARK, Grunewaldstr. 6-7, 10823 Berlin, hausamkleistpark-berlin@t-online.de, http://www.hausamkleistpark-berlin.de, Telefon: 030/7560-6965
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