Hannah Arendt

AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENTIST

WRITTEN BY: 

• The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

LAST UPDATED: Oct 10, 2019 See Article History

Hannah Arendt, (born October 14, 1906, Hannover, Germany—died December 4, 1975, New York, New York, U.S.), German-born American political scientist and philosopher known for her critical writing on Jewish affairs and her study of totalitarianism.

Arendt grew up in Hannover, Germany, and in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). Beginning in 1924 she studied philosophy at the University of Marburg, the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, and the University of Heidelberg; she received a doctoral degree in philosophy at Heidelberg in 1928. At Marburg she began a romantic relationship with her teacher, Martin Heidegger, that lasted until 1928. In 1933, when Heidegger joined the Nazi Party and began implementing Nazi educational policies as rector of Freiburg, Arendt, who was Jewish, was forced to flee to Paris. She married Heinrich Blücher, a philosophy professor, in 1940. She again became a fugitive from the Nazis in 1941, when she and her husband immigrated to the United States.