HANNAH ARENDT
Words spoken at the funeral service for Hannah Arendt at the
Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York City on Monday,
December
8, 1975
It
is difficult to picture, for the remainder of my days,
a world without Hannah Arendt. Her presence in it made a difference
which one experienced ever anew; her going is a shattering blow, and
with her genius for friendship there are many who feel infinitely poorer
now in their personal lives. I was her friend for over fifty years-ever
since she appeared, in 1924, eighteen years old, a first-semester student of
philosophy, among the many young who then flocked to Marburg from
all over Germany, drawn by the magnet of Martin Heidegger. How I
remember this singular newcomer! Shy and withdrawn, with striking,
beautiful features and lonely eyes, she stood immediately out as
"exceptional," as "unique" in an as yet indefinable way . Brightness of
intellect was no rare article there . But here was an intensity, an inner
direction, an instinct for quality, a groping for essence, a probing for
depth, which cast a magic about her. One felt an absolute determination
to be herself, with the toughness to carry it through in the face of
great vulnerability. Her teachers felt it too : first Heidegger, later Karl
J
aspers became from teachers lifelong friends .
In those early years of my knowing her , she was , as so many
young philosophers in Germany, completely apolitical-the higher life
of the mind disdaining the vulgarity of the political arena. This changed
with the rise of Nazism. Persecution aroused her ; not just her own and
that of her people, but that of others too, of the left, of anybody .
Moral indignation armed her, extreme distress called her into the active
life . To everybody's surprise , she showed eminent practical sense , equal to
every situation of that disjointed time ; and she was as fearless in person as
she later always was in thought.
It
must have been during those emigree years in Paris, ending with the
fall of France, that her theoretical interest too took its political turn.
Still, what would have become ofthat, had she not come to these shores-who
knows? It was the experience of the Republic here which decisively shaped
her political thinking , tempered as it was in the fires of European tyranny
NOTE: This memorial statement is also appearing in
Social ReJearch.
