Portion of notes from Kant lectures delivered at the New School for Social Research, 1970. The Hannah Arendt Papers (The Library of Congress Manuscript Division).
The Hannah Arendt Papers: About the Collection
Portion of notes from Kant lectures delivered at the New School for Social Research, 1970. The Hannah Arendt Papers (The Library of Congress Manuscript Division). |
The Library of Congress received the Arendt Papers as a gift and bequest from Hannah Arendt in various installments from 1965 to 2000. Small additions were made by Klaus Loewald in 1981 and Roger Errera in 1994.
The papers span the years 1898 to 1977, with the bulk of the material beginning in 1948, three years before Arendt’s naturalization as an American citizen. The collection is organized in the following series: Family Papers, Correspondence, Adolf Eichmann File, Subject File, Speeches and Writings File, Clippings, Addition I, Addition II, and Addition III. Rich in manuscripts and correspondence for Arendt's productive years as a writer and lecturer after World War II, the papers are sparse before the mid-1940s because of Arendt's forced departure from Nazi Germany in 1933 and her escape from occupied France in 1941. Documentation for the first part of her life includes a few notebooks and writings; several official and private records relating mainly to her divorce, family history, and emigration; and a small group of personal correspondence with her second husband, Heinrich Blücher, some of whose letters and unpublished writings can be found in the Family Papers series. Much of the material is in German and other European languages.
Born Johanna Cohn Arendt, Arendt later used her married name, Blücher, in private life. Arendt studied with Karl Jaspers at Heidelberg University, but her career was diverted from teaching and writing for more than a decade as a result of Adolf Hitler's rise to power and the subsequent persecution of the Jews. While in France and for several years in the United States, she worked as a welfare agent in charge of aiding Jews and as a journalist for various Jewish political and social organizations. Her papers document her support for the creation of a Palestinian homeland for Jews until 1948, when she dissented from certain policies of the new state of Israel.
 W.H. Auden. Photographed by Arendt in her New York City apartment, 1967. Courtesy of the Hannah Arendt Trust. |
The largest portion of Arendt's papers consists of the Correspondence series subdivided under the headings of General Correspondence, Organizations, Publishers, and Universities and Colleges. The material traces Arendt's intellectual, social, and professional life from the late 1940s to her death. Though not a prolific letter writer, Arendt corresponded with men and women of letters throughout Europe and America, often for the purpose of giving a reference or arranging conference and lecture dates, but just as frequently to exchange thoughts and ideas. Her correspondents include obscure as well as renowned members of the literary and academic community, many of whom sent her manuscripts in tribute to her intellectual influence or to solicit her comments. Among the prominent individuals whose names appear in the general correspondence are poets W. H. Auden, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Stephen Spender; historians Joachim C. Fest and Carl J. Friedrich; and writers Alfred Kazin, Dwight Macdonald, Mary McCarthy, and David Riesman. Readers should note that Arendt often typed replies on the reverse side of the original letters that she received.
Among correspondence pertaining to organizations, publishers, and universities and colleges are occasional personal jottings from individuals who wrote in an official capacity but were Arendt's friends and acquaintances as well. Among their letters is correspondence with publishers and editors, especially Robert B. Silvers of the New York Review of Books, William Shawn of the New Yorker, and William Jovanovich of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, and with Saul Bellow and other faculty members at the University of Chicago where Arendt was a professor and graduate student adviser on the Committee on Social Thought.
The Adolf Eichmann File deals with what was perhaps Arendt's best-known and most controversial work, Eichmann in Jerusalem. Subtitled A Report on the Banality of Evil, Arendt's conclusions about the nature and character of totalitarian rule in Nazi Germany, and her interpretation of the Jewish response to the Holocaust, prompted a strenuous and often emotional debate gathered in folders containing book reviews, articles, and letters to the editors of the New York Times and the New Yorker. Also in the Eichmann files is material that Arendt collected while covering the Nazi leader's trial in Jerusalem in 1961, including incomplete but extensive copies of English and German transcripts of the trial's proceedings, copies of the final ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court, and several files of notes and miscellaneous background information. Drafts and other related material for Eichmann in Jerusalem are located in the Speeches and Writings series.
The Subject File chiefly treats Arendt's role as teacher and lecturer as reflected in the courses she taught at the New School for Social Research, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. Numerous lectures and seminar notes by Arendt include copies of "Kant's Political Philosophy" delivered at both the New School and the University of Chicago. Also included is material relating to Arendt's students as well as contracts and royalties for her publications.
The Speeches and Writings File spans the years 1923-75. Arendt's doctoral dissertation, Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin, issued by Springer Verlag in 1929, is present in the original published version and in a manuscript of an English translation, Love and Saint Augustine. Also in this series are various drafts of lectures and chapters incorporated into Arendt's two-volume work The Life of the Mind, published posthumously in 1978. Other book-length manuscripts include the first and final drafts of Between Past and Future; the first and final corrected copies of Eichmann in Jerusalem, with additional drafts of the German translation; and Men in Dark Times. There are also essays and lectures in the Speeches and Writings series in addition to the lectures and seminar notes in the Subject File folders designated "Courses" Research material arranged by topic is filed under "Extracts and Notes" in the Speeches and Writings series.
 Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, ca. 1960s. Courtesy of the Hannah Arendt Trust. |
Addition I supplements the Speeches and Writings series with extensive material pertaining to the publication of The Life of the Mind, including drafts annotated by the work's editor, Mary McCarthy. A small group of lectures is also contained in this addition. Addition II includes correspondence from Arendt to Heinrich Blücher and a notebook kept by Arendt's mother recording Arendt's development as a child. Addition III contains additional correspondence and notes by Arendt.
In addition to the correspondents noted above, the Arendt Papers include letters to and from Hanan J. Ayalti (pen name of Hanan Klenbort), Walter Benjamin, Rosalie Littell Colie, Robert and Elke Gilbert, J. Glenn Gray, Waldemar Gurian, Rolf Hochhuth, Hans Jonas, Lotte Kohler, Judah Leon Magnes, Hans Joachim Morgenthau, Ruth H. Rosenau, Gershom Gerhard Scholem, Paul Tillich, Eric Voegelin, Ernst Vollrath, Anne Weil, and Helen and Kurt Wolff.
Lotte Kohler's Hannah Arendt/Heinrich Blücher: Briefe 1936-1968 (München: Piper, 1996) was consulted during the arrangement of the correspondence between Arendt and Heinrich Blücher in the Family Papers series. An English version of Kohler's work entitled Within Four Walls: The Correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher, 1936-1968, translated by Peter Constantine (New York: Harcourt), was published in 2000.
The papers of Hannah Arendt were initially organized and described in 1965 and 1967. A large group of the material received in 1977 was incorporated into the collection in 1980. Items received in 1982 were processed as Addition I. Material received between 1985 and 1997 was organized as Addition II in 1998, and material comprising Addition III was received and organized in 2000. The entire collection was reprocessed and the register was revised in 2000. The photographs have been transferred to the Library's Prints and Photographs Division where they are identified as a part of these papers. These are not included in the online collection.
For reference inquiries, please contact the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room.
In December 1998, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the Library of Congress a grant to support a two-year project to digitize the Hannah Arendt Papers. The staff of the Manuscript Division at the Library administered the project, with assistance from the National Digital Library Program (NDLP) and in cooperation with the New School University in New York City.
The digital version of the papers is being made available in two ways. The collection is available in its entirety onsite at the Library of Congress and two other research institutions. In addition, major portions of the collection are available to the public on the Internet.
Onsite Access to the Complete Digital Collection
The complete version of the digitized Arendt Papers (approximately 25,000 items; about 75,000 images) is available to researchers at three locations: the reading room of the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, the New School University’s Hannah Arendt Center at the Fogelman Library, and the Hannah Arendt Center at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. Contact these locations for information about accessing these collections:
| Library of Congress Manuscript Division Reading Room
Manuscript Division
| The New School University
Jerome Kohn
| University of Oldenburg
Prof. Antonia Grunenberg
|
Offsite Internet Access to Selected Digital Items
Internet distribution of the Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress presented formidable copyright challenges given the quantity and complexity of the materials involved. In view of the lengthy process that would have been necessary to secure permission to release the entire collection online the decision was made to concentrate on sections of the papers most useful for researchers on Arendt and her work. With the advice of special consultant Jerome Kohn, director of the Hannah Arendt Center, New School University, the project staff identified the following series as the top priorities for seeking copyright permissions: the Adolf Eichmann File, Subject File, Speeches and Writings File, and Addition I, plus the "General" section of the Correspondence File.
The procedure to identify copyright holders of published and unpublished materials in the collection written by people other than Hannah Arendt was a complex one. For each document needing copyright permission, the author and recipient, publisher or corporation, address, date, and biographical information were recorded when available. This information was entered into a database to facilitate research to identify and locate copyright holders in order to obtain permissions. Resources online and in print were examined to locate the addresses of approximately two thousand correspondents or their heirs in the United States and numerous other countries. For more information, please refer to Copyright and Other Restrictions. Materials with copyright restrictions or unresolved issues, particularly clippings, are available only at the three onsite locations.