Hannah Arendt Ephemera Collection, ca. 1950-2006, bulk ca. 1950-1976

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Summary

Creator:
Bard College
Abstract:
Hannah Arendt was among the most influential political thinkers of the 20th century. She and her husband Heinrich Blücher lived in NYC and near Bard College where Blücher taught from 1952 to 1971. After Arendt’s death in 1975, Bard College acquired her personal library of approximately 4000 volumes from her last apartment in New York City. The bulk of the Hannah Arendt Ephemera Collection is made up of paper ephemera found in these books while they were being cataloged. This collection also includes papers from the 1976 Memorial Colloquium, “An Intellectual Appreciation of Hannah Arendt,” and the 2006 Conference, “Thinking in Dark times: A Legacy of Hannah Arendt.” In addition, there are some press clippings and a small collection of correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Alex Bazelow regarding the transcribing of Heinrich Blücher’s lectures.
Extent:
4 gray document boxes 2.75 linear feet
Language:
English

Background

Scope and content:

The bulk of the Hannah Arendt/ Heinrich Blücher Ephemera Collection is made up of paper ephemera found in the books from Arendt’s personal library. These include items such as postcards to Arendt and her husband Heinrich Blücher; personal notes to Arendt from authors; and several poems, torn from magazines and newspapers or as typescripts. There are also publication notices; notes by Arendt in German and English; and a typed letter from James William Fulbright, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1974. There are also several publisher's cards indicating that the book was a gift or that it was a review copy. The container list includes the catalog record for the book in which the item was found.

One box of the Collection includes papers from the 1976 Memorial Colloquium, “An Intellectual Appreciation of Hannah Arendt,” correspondence, estate papers, inquiries, library, press, some photographs of Hannah Arendt, and a schedule of events for the 2006 conference titled “Thinking in Dark times: A Legacy of Hannah Arendt.”

Biographical / historical:

Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906, Hannover, Germany— December 4, 1975, New York, New York, U.S.) was a German-born American political scientist and philosopher, widely considered one of the most important political thinkers of the 20th century. 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. At the University of Marburg she studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger, with whom she also had an affair. She received a doctoral degree in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in 1928.

In 1933, Arendt, who was Jewish, fled to Paris. While in France, she worked for the organization Youth Aliyah, which rescued Jewish youth. There she met Heinrich Blücher, a philosophy professor; they were married in 1940. Arendt was imprisoned in a detention camp in Gurs in southwest France. After escaping, she and Blücher fled Nazi Europe, arriving in New York in 1941.

In New York City Arendt was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, Commonweal, Dissent, and The New Yorker. She was research director of the Conference on Jewish Relations from 1944 to 1946, and chief editor of Schocken Books from 1946 to 1948. From 1949 to 1952, she was executive director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc., which sought to salvage Jewish writings dispersed by the Nazis. She was naturalized as an American citizen in 1951. She taught at the University of Chicago from 1963 to 1967 and thereafter at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She and Blücher lived on Riverside Drive in NYC and in Kingston, NY near Bard College where Blücher taught for 17 years. In 1959, Bard awarded Arendt an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.

She published three major anthologies in her lifetime: Between Past and Future; Men in Dark Times; and Crises of the Republic. Her unfinished last book was published as Life of the Mind and her numerous posthumous collections include Responsibility and Judgment, The Jewish Writings, and The Promise of Politics. Arendt died in 1975. She is buried alongside Blücher in the Bard College Cemetery.

After Hannah Arendt’s death in 1975, her personal library and some miscellaneous papers were acquired by Bard College. The Hannah Arendt Collection includes approximately 3,800 volumes that made up the library in Hannah Arendt’s last apartment in New York City.

Acquisition information:
After Hannah Arendt’s death in 1975, her personal library was acquired by Bard College through the efforts of co-executors Lotte Kohler and Mary McCarthy; Alexander Bazelow, ’71; Irma Brandeis (Bard College faculty 1944-1979); Librarian Fred Cook; and Bard’s President, Leon Botstein. The Stevenson Library supports the work of the Hannah Arendt Center on campus.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: a Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

The majority of this collection has been digitized. A link to the scan of each object is included in the catalog record for the source book. To view the physical ephemera, please contact the Archivist.

Terms of access:

This collection contains a mix of copyright statuses. Please see Archivist, Bard College Archives, Stevenson Library, Bard College.

Location of this collection:
Stevenson Library
1 Library Road
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504, United States
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