Hannah Arendt

In the organizer's words:

Author Thomas Meyer in conversation with Patrick Bahners

"I don't believe that there is any thought process that is possible without personal experience. All thinking is reflection, the act of thinking." For Thomas Meyer, these sentences form the guiding principle of his biography of Hannah Arendt. Meyer follows them as he uses new sources to trace and interpret her life and work from Königsberg to New York, from her dissertation on Augustine to her unfinished magnum opus "On the Life of the Mind". His biography sheds light on the fascination and criticism that the person and her writings triggered throughout her life, making the phenomenon of "Arendt" easier to understand for both those interested and those in the know.

Thomas Meyer completed his doctorate at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, where he also habilitated. After numerous positions in Germany and abroad, Meyer teaches philosophy in Munich. His research and publications focus on the 20th century. He has edited several of Hannah Arendt's writings, including "Wir Flüchtlinge" (2015) and "Die Freiheit, frei zu sein" (2018).

Patrick Bahners, born in 1967, studied history and philosophy in Bonn and Oxford. In 1989, he joined the features section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which he headed from 2001 to 2011. After working in New York and Munich, he has been reporting from Cologne as a cultural correspondent since 2017. Since 2016, he has also been the editor responsible for the humanities at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.