Born in Hanover into a Jewish family, Arendt studied in the German existentialist tradition of Jaspers and Heidegger with whom she had a notorious affair which, in one form or another, survived her awareness of Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazis. She moved to Paris in 1933, and escaped the Nazi occupation to America in 1940. Her first major work was The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), and other books include On Revolution (1963) and On Violence (1970). She is best remembered for the idea of the ‘banality of evil’, arising from reflections on the trial of Adolph Eichmann in 1963.

http://www.bard.edu/arendtcollection/news.htm Arendt’s personal library at Bard College, with links to other Arendt sites, collections, and events