Hannah Arendt is best known for her works on totalitarianism and the banality of evil. In an event with Arendt expert Samantha Rose Hill, the focus is now on her poetry. Between 1923 and 1961, Arendt wrote 74 poems, which lead through her eventful life like personal milestones. These poetic testimonies, influenced by Goethe and Schiller, reflect intense moments of joy, love, melancholy and memory. In a bilingual reading, the poems provide an intimate insight into the lives of these formative intellectuals of the 20th century – from the Weimar Republic to the Cold War era, from Marburg to New York.

The event kicks off our Ways of Listening festival, in cooperation with DAI Heidelberg, from March 27 to April 4, 2025, and will be hosted by Samantha Rose Hill herself and legendary interviewer Paul Holdengräber. You can find an overview of the full program here.

Participants

Samantha Rose Hill is the author of Hannah Arendt (2021) and Hannah Arendt’s Poems (2023). She teaches at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and the University of the Underground. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon and LitHub, among others.

The intellectual Paul Holdengräber was the founding director of Onassis Los Angeles. Previously, he led a formative cultural series at the New York Public Library, where he held discussions with renowned personalities such as Patti Smith and Werner Herzog.