66
PARTISAN REVIEW
Arendt did not get any Jewish education, but what she
did
receive was
Bildung,
and of that the best-gymnasium, private
tutors, and finally a brilliant university career ending with a Ph.D.
thesis on St. Augustine. By then she had done it all: Greek, Latin,
philosophy, literature in every form, and all of it so completely
absorbed that it was for her, and her kind, part of the natural self. At
this time she also became an ardent Zionist, which had since Herzl's
day appealed to those assimilated Jews who wanted Israel to be a
nation like all the others. For her mentor Kurt Blumenfeld and her,
Zionism was also the solution to the "Jewish Question," as the
influx of unwelcome
Ostjuden
was called. Zionism was to make the
Jews a single people, especially by settling the East European Jews
in what is now Israel. By 1933 there really was not much choice left.
Zionism was now a necessity, not one option among others.
The details of Hannah Arendt's life can be found in the biogra–
phy,
Hannah Arendt: For Love of the J#Jrld,
by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl,
which appeared less than ten years after Arendt's death. Young–
Bruehl not only vividly remembers Arendt, she was also able to talk
to many of Arendt's oldest friends, and just in time, because many
have died since she interviewed them. These people shared their rec–
ollections and letters freely, it seems, and the outcome is a rich and
detailed biography, with all the strength andweakness of a memoir
written by an admiring friend. The disadvantages of haste are that
some important documents and correspondences are not yet avail–
able and that Arendt, to some degree directly, and indirectly through
her friends, was able to choose what would be and what would not
be revealed. There are therefore some incomplete details and omis–
sions. The book is also often repetitious. Nevertheless, anyone who
might in the future write another life of Hannah Arendt, or the his–
tory of the last generation of German Jews, will gratefully rely on
this volume.
Young-Bruehl tells the first part of Arendt's story exceptionally
well. She might have said a little more about the impact of the First
World War, which hit Arendt and her widowed mother very hard.
We know from
The Origins of Totalitarianism
that Arendt herself was
fully aware of the moral and cultural debasement that followed the
war. The universities were a moral chaos, respect for learning was
eroded, and the veterans were bitter and cynical. The best people
began to ask why all those young men had continued to go to places
like Flanders Field; why had they not refused? The memories of
