Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was one of the leading social theorists in the United States "...She received her Doctorate from the University of Heidelberg at the age of 22 after studying under Martin Heidegger. In 1933 she went to France to escape the Nazis and, in 1941, fled to the U.S., becoming a U.S. citizen in 1951. Arendt was research director, Conference on Jewish Relations (1944–46); chief editor, Schocken Books (1946–48); executive secretary, Jewish Cultural Reconstruction (1949–52); visiting professor, Princeton (1959), Columbia (1960); professor, University of Chicago (1963–67), New School for Social Research (1967–75). Her publications include The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), On Revolution (1963), Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), On Violence (1970).

"Hannah Arendt was born into a family of secular Jews in the city of Linden (now part of Hanover), and grew up in Königsberg and Berlin.

At the University of Marburg, she studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger, with whom she embarked on a long, stormy romantic relationship that was criticized because of Heidegger's membership in the Nazi party.

In the wake of one of their breakups, Arendt moved to Heidelberg, where she wrote her dissertation on the concept of love in the thought of Saint Augustine, under the existentialist philosopher-psychologist Karl Jaspers.

She married Günther Stern, later knowns as Günther Anders, in 1929 in Berlin (they divorced in 1937).

The dissertation was published the same year, but Arendt was prevented from habilitating, a prerequisite for teaching in German universities, because she was Jewish. She worked for some time researching anti-Semitism before being interrogated by the Gestapo, and thereupon fled Germany for Paris. Here she met and befriended the literary critic and Marxist philosopher Walter Benjamin, her first husband's cousin. While in France, Arendt worked to support and aid Jewish refugees.

However, with the German military occupation of parts of France following the French declaration of war during World War II, and the deportation of Jews to Nazi concentration camps, Arendt was forced to flee France. In 1940, she married the German poet and Marxist philosopher Heinrich Blücher.

In 1941, Arendt escaped with her husband and her mother to the United States with the assistance of the American diplomat Hiram Bingham IV, who illegally issued visas to her and around 2500 other Jewish refugees. She then became active in the German-Jewish community in New York and wrote for the weekly Aufbau. She worked as the Executive Secretary for Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc.

After World War II she returned to Germany and worked for Youth Aliyah. Later she resumed relations with Heidegger, and testified on his behalf in a German denazification hearing. She became a close friend of Jaspers and his Jewish wife, developing a deep intellectual friendship with him and began corresponding with Mary McCarthy. In 1950, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Arendt served as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, Columbia University, and Northwestern University. She also served as a professor on the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, as well as at The New School in New York City, and served as a fellow at Yale University and Wesleyan University. In 1959, she became the first woman appointed to a full professorship at Princeton.

On her death at age 69 in 1975, Arendt was buried at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where her husband taught for many years....

Arendt's work deals with the nature of power, and the subjects of politics, authority, and totalitarianism. Much of her work focuses on affirming a conception of freedom which is synonymous with collective political action among equals.

Arendt theorizes freedom as public and associative, drawing on examples from the Greek "polis," American townships, the Paris Commune, and the civil rights movements of the 1960's (among others) to illustrate this conception of freedom.

Another key concept in her work is "natality," the capacity to bring something new into the world, such as the founding of a government that endures.

Arguably her most influential work, The Human Condition (1958) distinguishes labour, work, and action, and explores the implications of these distinctions. Her theory of political action is extensively developed in this work.

Her first major book was The Origins of Totalitarianism, which traced the roots of Stalinist Communism and Nazism in both anti-Semitism and imperialism. The book was controversial because it suggested an essential identity between the two phenomena, which some believe to be separate in both origins and nature.

In her reporting of the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker, which evolved into the book Eichmann in Jerusalem, she coined the phrase "the banality of evil." She raised the question whether evil is radical or simply a function of banality - the tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without critically thinking about the results of their action or inaction. This work created a great deal of controversy and animosity toward Arendt in the Jewish community. The book was translated into Hebrew just recently, many decades after it was written...." (from Wikipedia.com)