Hanna Arendt

Hannah Arendt
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, Duns Scotus, 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 American political theorist. Her 18 books and numerous articles, ranging from works on totalitarianism to thinking and judging, greatly influence political philosophy to this day. Arendt is widely considered one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century.

She escaped from 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. 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."