In what environment did Hannah Arendt grow up?
Both on the paternal side and on the maternal side, on that of the Jewish bourgeoisie. Around 1840, his great-grandfather, Aron Arendt, moved with his wife to Königsberg, where he quickly developed a flourishing business as a merchant. His son Max, in turn, made the family business prosper by intervening in numerous Jewish associations, but also politically, in the public life of his hometown. Paul, son of Max and therefore father of Hannah Arendt, becomes chief engineer of an international company, in a city called Linden, which is now part of Hanover. As for the mother, her maiden name was Cohn. His family left Eastern Europe around 1860 and also settled in Königsberg. They are also merchants. The Arendts and the Cohns lived in the same building for years. This is where Paul Arendt and Martha Cohn learned to know each other from a young age. Paul is a brilliant student. On the other hand, we know little about Marta’s youth.
Martha Arendt, the mother, paints in a notebook the portrait of a gifted and then rebellious girl, who rarely expresses her emotions and has been passionate about literature from a very young age. How is the young woman different from the girl?
Very few documents have reached us about the young woman, so it is difficult to answer this question. The many memories her loved ones have of young Hannah are all marked with admiration, even bordering on panegyric. It evokes the first reader of Nietzsche, who did not consider making friends with someone who knew nothing about this work. Another tells of a good friend who, although she suffered daily anti-Semitism, was very happy with her family and friends, as numerous photographs attest. The sensitive girl described by her mother seems to have grown into an intelligent young woman, with no particular relationship problems.
You have chosen, in your biography, to restore the life and work of Hannah Arendt in her time and only her time. For what reasons?
Given all the new things I had discovered about Hannah Arendt over the years I spent exploring the archives, this choice was an obvious one. I couldn’t “to make people talk” this material only within the framework of a coherent historical situation. In order for the reader to fully understand the nature of Arendt’s lived experiences and the genesis of her thought, I had to restore them in the time and light of that era.
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