Ach! Hannah Arendt

Impulse and discussion with Felix Heidenreich

Understanding the present with Arendt? A re-reading of her theory of totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt's book Elements and Origins of Totalitarianism (1952) established her fame and is still read, discussed, criticized and celebrated today. An expanded new edition from 2023 became a bestseller. In this subject area, too, Arendt seems enormously topical - as with the subjects of education, refugees, statelessness, Zionism and the mechanization of the living world. Do we understand the present better if we engage with Arendt's thinking? Does she provide a key to understanding the new global authoritarianism? While Anne Applebaum explicitly affirms this, others argue that Arendt's theories are difficult to update and unsuitable for Trumpism. What applied to National Socialism and Stalinism, they say, misses the very characteristics of the new enemies of democracy. Using an excerpt from the text, we will explore the question of where the potentials and limits of recourse to Arendt lie in the "Riverside Salon". What does Arendt say? And what does she say to us? After a short input, Felix Heidenreich and Matthias Bormuth, curator of the series, invite the audience to join in the discussion. Supported by the Baden-Württemberg Foundation