Hannah Arendt
Thinking is Dangerous

The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) is the first major account of the rise of Hitlerism and Stalinism. Through three sections on Antisemitism, Imperialism, and Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt traces the underlying elements that crystalized in the phenomenal appearance of totalitarianism in the 20th century.

The Human Condition (1958) offers an account of the fundamental activities of human life—labor, work, and action—and how they have been transformed in modernity, leading to a new form of modern worldly alienation.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil (1963) draws together Hannah Arendt’s reportage on the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem originally published in The New Yorker magazine. 

To celebrate Valentine's Day, acting students from the Lee Strasberg Institute read selected love letters exchanged by Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher at the Goethe-Institut New York.

Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher met in Paris in 1936, both exiled from Nazi Germany. Arendt was Jewish and escaped Germany in 1933 after being arrested by the Gestapo, and Blücher was a communist and was expelled due to his work with Versöhnler, an opposition group. Their early romance was characterized by tribulations, including being separated into different internment camps before they were eventually able to flee to the U.S. in 1941. They lived in New York together until Blücher's death in 1970, sharing their love and work; as Blücher wrote, “We each do our work, and then come together to discuss.” Their love story is simultaneously cinematic and intimate - it spans borders and decades, and the two writers found in each other true life partners. As Arendt wrote to Blücher: "It still seems incredible to me that I managed to get both things, the ‘love of my life’ and a oneness with myself. And yet, I only got the one thing when I got the other. But finally I also know what happiness is."​

Moderated by Samantha Rose Hill