Episode 28: Origins of a Controversy
The Hannah Arendt Story
Hannah Arendt’s life was shaped by exile. A German-Jewish thinker, forced to flee Nazi Germany as a young woman, her experience of statelessness impacted her academic and political pursuits for the rest of her life. Independent and single-minded from an early age, Hannah’s intense commitment to her own moral responsibility carried her through her anti-Nazi activism, years of exile, and a controversy that shook up the German-Jewish intellectual world.
Hannah Arendt was deeply involved in the early activities of LBI New York after it was founded in 1955. However, her papers are at the Library of Congress and her personal library is at Bard College. One significant collection in the LBI Archives that does bear her name is the “Hannah Arendt Eichmann in Jerusalem Collection”, which holds clippings documenting the furious response to her 1963 book in papers ranging from Aufbau to the Congregation Habonim Bulletin to the New Republic. Another collection of correspondence documents the response of the LBI and other German-Jewish organizations to Eichmann before the book’s publication in German.
Exile is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York and Antica Productions. It’s narrated by Joshua Malina.
This episode was written by Emily Morantz.
Our executive producers are Laura Regehr and Stuart Coxe.
Our producer is Emily Morantz.
Research and translation by Isabella Kempf.
Voice acting by Gordon Hecht and Athena Karkanis.
Sound design and audio mix by Philip Wilson.
Theme music by Oliver Wickham.
This episode of Exile is made possible in part by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future.
