Hannah Arendt.

Born Johanna Arendt on October 14, 1906 in Hannover, Germany, she was the daughter of Jewish parents with social democratic attitudes. She studied theology and philosophy at the University of Marburg, University of Freiburg, and Heidelberg University, where she was a student of Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, and Edmund Husserl. In 1928 she completed her doctorate under Jaspers with a dissertation on Augustine’s concept of love. After moving to Berlin in 1929, she married philosopher Günther Anders and began research on German Romanticism, resulting in a biography of Rahel Varnhagen, published later in 1959.

In 1951, Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism, linking the rise of anti-Semitism to totalitarian regimes and comparing fascism and Stalinism. She released Vita Activa in 1960, a theory of action identifying labor, work, and action as three fundamental human activities. Eichmann in Jerusalem, published in 1963, introduced the phrase banality of evil and criticized the behavior of Jewish councils. The book was based on her New Yorker reporting on the 1961 trial. She taught at Brooklyn College in 1953, the University of Chicago in 1963, and the New School for Social Research in 1967. She served as research director for the Conference on Jewish Relations from 1944 to 1946 and headed the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction organization from 1948 to 1952.

Arendt married philosopher Günther Anders in 1929; the marriage ended in divorce in 1937. In 1940 she married Heinrich Blücher, a philosopher and poet. After being arrested by the Gestapo in 1933, she emigrated from Germany to Paris and then to the United States in 1940, becoming an American citizen in 1951. She maintained close friendships with philosopher Walter Benjamin, whom she met in Paris, and later with writer Uwe Johnson in 1966.

Arendt’s concepts of totalitarianism and the banality of evil shape political philosophy and public discourse. She received the Sonning Prize in 1975 and an honorary doctorate from Princeton University. The Hannah Arendt Prize for political thought is awarded in her memory.