Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt
Mural of Hannah Arendt in Hanover, by graffitos BeneR1 and koarts, based on a photograph by Käthe Fürst
Born	(1906-10-14)14 October 1906 Linden, Prussian Hanover, German Empire (present-day Hanover, Germany)
Died	4 December 1975(1975-12-04) (aged 69) New York City, United States
Nationality	German (until 1937) Stateless United States (from 1951)
Alma mater	University of Marburg University of Heidelberg (PhD, 1929)
Website	www.hannaharendtcenter.org
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Existential phenomenology Philosophy of life Republicanism
Main interests	Political theory, modernity, philosophy of history
Notable ideas	Homo faber, animal laborans the labor–work distinction the banality of evil distinction between vita activa and vita contemplativa; praxis as the highest level of the vita activa auctoritas, natality
Influences Socrates, Bernard Lazare, Saint Augustine, Kant, Heidegger, Jaspers, Benjamin
Influenced Giorgio Agamben, Seyla Benhabib, Giannina Braschi, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Mario Kopić, Julia Kristeva, Adriana Cavarero

Johanna "Hannah" Arendt (/ˈɛərənt/ or /ˈɑːrənt/; German: [ˈaːʀənt]; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German-born Jewish American political theorist. Though often described as a philosopher, she rejected that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular" and instead described herself as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact that "men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world."

She escaped Europe during the Holocaust, becoming an American citizen. Her works deal with the nature of power and the subjects of politics, direct democracy, authority, and totalitarianism. The Hannah Arendt Prize is named in her honor.

Arendt was born into a secular family of German Jews in Linden (now a part of Hanover), the daughter of Martha (born Cohn) and Paul Arendt. She grew up in Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad when it was annexed to the Soviet Union in 1946) and Berlin. At the University of Marburg, she studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger. Arendt's family was thoroughly assimilated and she later remembered: "With us from Germany, the word 'assimilation' received a 'deep' philosophical meaning. You can hardly realize how serious we were about it."