Hannah Arendt über ihr Leben: Interview mit Günter Gaus (1964)

question played no role for her, of course, it was a lie, she would never have baptized me, I guess she would have waited for me left and right if she had. I once realized that she had denied something in the south. Being was off the record, so to speak, it was out of the question. The question itself obviously played a much bigger role in the 1920s when I was young than it did in the 1920s. My mother, and for my mother later when she was an adult, also played a much bigger role than before in his life, but that is due to external circumstances.

I, for one, don't think she ever considered myself. as a German in the sense of ethnicity, not nationality, if I make the difference and remember that I was around the year 30 Discussion that has already been requested about this, for example with jaspersattel, of course they are clear, I am not one and That didn't play any role for me, I didn't perceive it as inferiority and that just wasn't the case and if I can go back to it again. What's special about the family home, you see, is that All Jewish Children faced anti-Semitism and it poisoned the souls of many children.

The difference with us was that my mother always took the view that you don't have to duck, you have to defend yourself. So, let's say, anti-Semitic comments. were made by the teachers, mostly without any reference to me, but with reference to other Jewish students, for example Eastern Jewish students, then they ordered me to immediately get up from home, to leave the class, to return home, to record everything in detail, then I wrote that my mother sent me one of her many registered letters and, of course, the matter was completely resolved for me. I already had the day off and it was very nice when I came from the children, they didn't allow me to tell it.

At home, none of that, from children, did not apply to yourself, so these things did not become a problem for me, there were behaviors in which, so to speak, I felt like I was here and protected , absolutely protected. They studied in Marburg, Heidelberg and Freiburg with professors Heidegger Bultmann and Jaspers, specializing in philosophy and also in theology and Greek. How did this choice of studies come about? Yes, you know, I've thought about that many times too. I can only say that in philosophy, I have been determined since I was 14, why I had read, so you can ask why I read them and for me it was a question of either I can study so much again or I will dip my toe in the water, so say it, but not simply because I was not living the time of life and that calmed down very early, you see that the books were all at home, they brought out recognized reading experiences that they especially remember, first of all, Miró Psychology of the world of Jasper, I think it was published in 1920, I was 14 14 13 14 20, so I'll let you think and then he realized that for me the two go together and I just had to think about How you only do that when you're not angry and how that happens.

I had no idea and had serious concerns which were then easily resolved. Reading Greek is a different matter. I have always been very political and poetry played a role. important role in my life and then I took Greek because it was the most convenient. I won't let that happen anyway. Yes, respect, her intellectual talents were tested so early that she occasionally separated them as a schoolgirl and young student. a perhaps painful form of the normal behavior of those around her. Yes, you know, it would have been like that if I hadn't known when he realized this mistake quite late.

I don't want to say it. be ashamed I was indescribably naive that was partly due to education at home there was never talk of censorship there was never talk of censorship I'm great I can be inferior everyone is more ambitious than inferior at home and in any case I was not Aware of the matter, I I sometimes perceived it as a kind of strangeness among people, a strangeness that they believed came from them, yes, but it had nothing to do with talent. I never related it to talent. For example, at a young age a kind of contempt for others arose, which was very early, it could be very early and sometimes I have suffered from that contempt, which is that you really shouldn't do that and you shouldn't do that.

They're not really allowed to do that and so on, when they left Germany in 1933 they went to Paris, where they worked in an organization that was trying to accommodate young Jews in Palestine. Can you tell me something about it? I want to tell him about it, that would do me too. It was normal. I want to tell you what it was, it was the Jugendalia, an organization that was founded in Germany at the instigation of Richard Freier and, of course, became very big in '32 and. then he was 33 years old and was then directed by Henriet Soul in the United States.

He became an independent organizational researcher in Germany at Ritter Sound in thought in Palestine this organization brought young Jews and also children, but with the children I had nothing to do with it, now I am 13 and 17 years old. Palestine so that they could come from Germany and have them at home and that is why I know this settlement relatively well and from very early and at that time I had great respect for how this was happening with the children. They received vocational training and school education only in France. The thing is that they were refugee children when they were 14 years old and they didn't finish school and they didn't get a job or a vocational training permit and they were eaten. refugee children and I worked with smuggled Polish children here and there because, of course, in Germany there was a preference for them, those who came from East Germany ran out and that's why I did it with very old children, it was fun, it was social work regular educational. work on mathematics, large camps in the countryside where the children prepared themselves, where they also had hours where they learned field work where, above all, they had to gain weight, they had to be dressed from head to toe, you had to cook for them, In fact, you had to do it, I have to do it, you had to get them papers, you had to negotiate with your parents, you had to talk to them and, above all, you had to get money.

That largely falls on me, me. I have already worked with French women, not so French, so that was more or less the activity now, but the decision at all from the previous activity whether or not they want to please. I can from a purely academic activity and in that sense, I have done it in the 33rd year. a very lasting impression on me, firstly positive and secondly negative, because I would like to say, firstly negatively and secondly positively, today it is often thought that the shock of German Jews 33 is explained by the fact that Hitler now has power and people.

My generation is worried, I can say that it is a strange misunderstanding, that of course it was very bad, it was political, it was not personal, that the Nazis are our enemies, my God, we did not need Hitler's arrest to know that. That was at least four years ago. Years ago, everyone who was not weak-minded knew perfectly well that a large part of the German people were behind this. Yes, we had to do it too, we couldn't have done it. I have been shocked in 33 years, that moved away from general personal politics first of all general politics yes a personal destiny if you publish it second but you know what conformism is and that is that friends align, no one has the problem of the personal The problem was not what our enemies did but what our friends did.

Back then, in the wave of conformity, which was quite voluntary, at least not yet under the pressure of terror, but in the sudden abandonment it was as if a teacher was forming a space around you. Now I lived in an intellectual and I also met to other people and I could pretend that this was the rule among intellectuals and not among others and I have never forgotten the story and I left Germany with a thing like me. I thought at that moment, of course always exaggerating something, I never move any intellectual history again, I don't want to have anything to do with this society Of course, I was not of the opinion that one.

A German Jew or a German Jewish intellectual would behave significantly differently if they had been in a different situation than the one they found themselves in. I don't think it's related to this job, I've talked about it in the past, I know more about it now than I did back then. I wanted to ask. Do you still believe that? Yes, you don't know much anymore, but that's the gist of it. People can think of something to say about any topic, but they see it. immediately someone turned against them because they have to take care of the women and children.

No one ever transferred it to him. The bad thing is that they really believed in it for a short time, some for a very short time, which is saying a lot. about Hitler, and some of them were extremely i

nter

esting things, not at all fantastically i

nter

esting and complicated, and things that were way above the usual level I found grotesque, that is, they fell into the trap of their own ideas. I'm not saying today that that's not what happened. I did not overlook it at the time and that is why, if I understand you correctly, it had a special value for you to radically distance yourself from those circles from which you absolutely wanted to say goodbye.

Then moving from academic work to practical social work, now the positive side is that I always said one sentence back then. I remember that when you are attacked as a Judah, you have to defend yourself as a Jew, not as a German or as a German. a citizen of the world or human rights or something like that but very specifically how can I do what can I do 2 if I want definitely now I want to organize that day for the first time and of course organizing with the Zionists it was the individuals who were prepared, that is , the assimilationists.

That wouldn't make any sense of course, I never really have anything to do with it, by the way, the Jewish question itself, I've dealt with it before, the clean Hagen was finished when I left Germany and that's where the Jewish problems come into play . Also at that moment I want to understand that it was not my personal problems of youth that I was discussing there, but now it was my own problem and my own problem was politically purely political I wanted to dedicate myself to practical work and I only wanted to dedicate myself to jute and in this I oriented in France until 1940.

Then she came to the United States of America during World War II, where today she works as a professor of political theory, not philosophy, and of political theory in Chicago. Her husband lives in New York; In 1940 she married and also works as a philosophy professor in the United States, the current academic province. Now he wants to belong again after the disappointment of 1933, it is international. I ask him if the Europe of the pre-Hitler era is missing, which will never happen again, when one is in America or when one comes to Europe, what remains and what is has lost irreparably and the Europe of then, I don't feel like it, I can't say what.

What remains is the language, that means a lot to you and I have always consciously refused to lose my mother tongue. I've always kept a certain distance, that's why I wanted to ask you about French. , which was very good at the time, and English, which I write today That's what I wanted to ask you. Today you write in English, I write in English but I can see the distances, there is a huge difference between me. mother tongue and all other languages. For me I can say it very easily. In German, I know a large number of German poems by heart.

They are the ones that move, since somehow that is always on my mind. Of course, I will never achieve it again in German, I allow myself to do things that I didn't want to allow myself in English. Now you know I can do it because I've become cheeky, but no, in general. I have the German language, that's all. The main thing that has remained and what I have always consciously maintained is that it also exists during, so what should you not do so that it is not the German language that has gone crazy and, secondly, there is no substitute for the language mother tongue you can forget your mother tongue.

It's true, I've seen it. The thing is that people speak the foreign language better than me. I still speak with a very strong accent and many times I don't speak. , as we say, idiomatically. Everyone can do that. It becomes a language in which, in effect, everyone is chasing each other because the real productivity one has in one's own language is interrupted by forgetting that language. that you found where you forgot your mother tongue, in your impression this was often the result of repression I saw it I saw it in people's stores I thought because they know that the crucial thing is not 33, at least not for me the crucial thing The thing was the day we found out about Auschwitz and that was a 43 and at first we didn't solve it.

He, although my husband and I always say that we trust the hiker to do everything, we didn't believe it, also because it went against all the needs and needs military because you understand, he is a former military historian, he understands something about the matter and he said don't leave them stories. They can't convince themselves of that anymore, then six months later we believed it because it was shown to us and that was the real shock. This victory was something that people told themselves beforehand, that is, that there are no enemies in the world, it is completely natural why a town does not have an enemy, it is a gang. , anything is possible, but this was different, it was really as ifopened the chasm because somehow you had the idea that everything else could have been done right again, just like in politics, everything somehow doesn't have to be that way. possible to repair the damage, this should not have happened, as I always say, and by this I do not mean the number of victims, I mean the production of the corpses and so on, I do not need to get involved in anything.

Also, something was allowed to happen that we can't all stand anymore and I have to say that with all the other things that happened there, it was a little difficult at times and you were very poor and they chased you and you had to escape. and you had to cheat to get ahead and whatever not, that's just the way it is. We were younger, it was even a bit fun, I can't say otherwise that with everything else you could also have personality. I would like to know from you to what extent your opinion has changed about that post-war Germany, which you frequently visited and where your most important works were published, from 1945 to the present.

I returned to Germany for the first time. time in 1949 on behalf of a Jewish organization for the rescue of Jewish cultural property, essentially an organization that I. At that time, he was in charge of what they say, the CEO came with very good will. since 45 was next. What happened in '33 is actually irrelevant in view of what happened then, certainly the disloyalty of the friends, if you can put it that way, them. Of course, I experienced it personally, you know, if anyone really. I became a Nazi and then wrote articles about it, well, it didn't need to turn on me.

Anyway, I didn't talk to him anymore, but none of that was a carrot because it wasn't just that people like me would do it. They say today that they have fallen into their own traps, that they did not expect it either. That's why it seemed to me that it was precisely in this abyss that a basis should be given and that is also the case in many personal things. That's how it's been, I've had to deal with people, I'm not very friendly, I'm not very polite yet, I say my opinion and so on, but somehow things worked out again with several people, like I said, they're just people who occasionally , for a few months or at worst a few years something was done and then again the killers are still the ocean, as I said, not people who had thought of something, but of course the best experience When you return to Germany, apart from the experience of recognition, which is always the central point in Greek tragedy, the action is not the anagnosis, it is that you can actually experience what is not really, that is a great shock, now , secondly, the fact that German is spoken on the street he asked.

He asked me an unlikely question with this idea, you can do it 49 and I got nothing out of it and today things became firm again so once we got to a solid track the gaps became bigger than before in this shock because the conditions in this country made things turn around too quickly for your feeling. A fixed track garden is yes and sometimes of course in a glass that I don't agree with but I don't feel responsible, so I don't see it from the outside. and that means I'm much less involved today than I was back then, I can do that too.

How long she lies when she is 15 is not a piece of paper, of course it is not true, but they would say if you want. To sum it up in a single expression, as far as possible, indifference has become stronger, yes, distancing, indifference is too much, but distancing is important. Ms. Arend published her book on the Eichmann trial this fall in The Federal Republic. in Jerusalem and this work has been published in the United States for years and has been very, very hotly discussed and objections have been raised to this book, particularly from the Jewish side, who say it is part of it.

Misunderstandings towards another can be attributed to a completely controlled political campaign. What was particularly offensive was the question they addressed about the extent to which Jews should be blamed for their passive resistance to the German assassination or, what is the most important part of her book, the extent to which collaboration exists in any case. In the event that certain Jewish councils of elders of your kind have been declared complicit in a portrait of Hannah Ahrens, it seems to me that several questions arise from this book by Eichmann: Are you hurt by the accusation that this is your book?

The accusation from the Jewish side that this is his book. Lack of love for the Jewish people, so, first of all, I can understand a kindness that, of course, they have already become the target of these campaigns. I have not accused the Jews anywhere in the book. People can't resist this. I've had someone else do that Human thing which is take out the prosecutor's office. I called the questions he asked the witnesses in Jerusalem at this address. I read the book. Some of the accusations that were made against them are based on the sound that some things have been written, but I can't say anything else and I don't want to say that if you are the man you can only write about these things, as I should say pathetic and al say yes or let's say I want to not become aggressive they will be aggressive no what's the point don't you see when there are people people take one thing away from me and I can understand that to a certain extent from the outside, I mean I can still laugh and I really thought that Eichmann was a buffoon and I tell you that I have read 3,600 pages of this police interrogation and I read it very carefully and I don't know how many times I laughed, but we took into account the reaction of the people, I can't do anything, I know, but one Which I would probably do another 3 minutes before certain death and what they say is the tone, not the tone, there is a lot of it. ironic of course and that is completely true that is exactly the tone in this case it is really the person if you tell me so I mean this story that I would have accused the YouTube people of that is a lie of malicious propaganda and nothing more the tone but that is an objection against me as a person I can't do anything about it there is nothing you can do I can't tell people I have your lady understands me and in truth this is what happens in my heart and the one in front That's what smiling is.

In this context I would like to return to a testimony of yours in which you say that I have never loved any people or group in my life, neither the Germans nor the French nor the Americans nor the workers. class or something like that. Otherwise, I really only love my friends and am completely incapable of any other kind of love. Above all, this love for Jews would seem suspicious to me, since I am Jewish myself. Yes, can I ask something about that? Isn't it necessary for the human being as a being who acts politically to be linked to a group, a link that can then be called love to a certain extent?

Do not fear that your attitude may be politically sterile. No, I would say the other one is political. We would have a long conversation, you see, belonging to a group is above all something natural, given that they belong to some reserved group. now always belong to a group, as they understand it in the second sense, that is, to organize, that something completely different in this organization always occurs under reference to the world, that is, what those who are now organized have in common among themselves. Yeah. It is what is normally called interest, that is, what is behind is what is in the middle, the real worldly reference that is directly the personal reference in which one can speak of love.

Of course, in real love it exists in the greatest possible form and secondly, to some extent, it also exists in friendship because you really care about the person you are addressing directly, regardless of the relationship with the world, so let's say that people from different organic situations can still be friends in person if these things get confused with each other. If you come to the negotiating table with love, to put it bluntly, I think it's a very great relationship. They considered her apolitical. I think it's a very big, very big relationship, and I admit that the Jewish people are. the best example of an association of people without a world that I would like to see thousands of associations of people without a world that maintain in the sense of their terminology as a space for politics and also as a public space political people that I do not It is enough to say why the Communities were, of course, political, religion is a national religion, it cannot be said to be political, but political with very great restrictions.

You see this loss of the world that the Jewish people suffered in Elster's radiation. So like all a few peoples of yesteryear created a very peculiar warmth among those who belonged to them, a warmth that I know very well, this changed at the time when Israel was founded, rather when the Jewish national home was created in Palestine, something was lost, whose loss they regret, yes, I mean that freedom pays dearly, I once said the human difficulty, specifically of the Jewish people, but it was something very nice. They're too young, they probably didn't know. Not anymore, but it was very nice, this is completely outside of all social ties, the lack of prejudice, which I experienced very strongly, especially with my mother, who practiced it again against Jewish society and, of course, all this has A great impact. damage, they say for liberation, I once said in the last episode in 1959 that this can Humanity does not survive the day of liberation even five minutes.

You can see it's happening to us too, of course you don't want to. Go backwards. I know there has to be a price for freedom, but I can't say that at that moment, especially when you realize that they win through political philosophical speculation or sociological analysis, they feel so committed to that. knowledge that the publication of this knowledge itself becomes a duty for them oDo you recognize reasons that allow a recognized truth to be hidden? Yes, you know it is a very difficult problem. That's basically the only question that interested me in the whole controversy over Eichmann's book.

It never came up, except when I. I addressed it, I've cut it often, so Fiat Veritas periat Mundus, now Eichmann's book hasn't really touched on those things, so basically nobody's legitimate interest is really affected. Just believe it, yes, although of course you have to let it go. is legitimate to the debate, yes they are right, something legitimate is written again, yes, you are right, although I probably understand legitimate differently than Jewish organizations, yes, it is true, but now let's assume that there is a real interest in the game that I can say a recognized truth if you had written it published no under any circumstances would it be suppose that someone asked me if you had foreseen it and that you would not have written it otherwise I answered that I would not would you like to write or the oak tree would have been an alternative or don't write, you can be a bitch you don't always have to say it now there are only questions because we come to the question of what it is and how people called facts truths in the 18th century if you say this it's just about facts truths it's not about opinion now he for these facts truths the historical sciences the guardians of the universities have not always been the best they do not allow themselves to be dictated by the state they say that if someone has informed me then there is a book about the origins of the During the First World War, A German says he wouldn't let them leave me with the memory of this very edifying time, so well, he's a man I know. who is he, that is not interesting, the factor is a, he is the guardian of historical truth is the fact and these guardians how important they are, we know, for example, from Bolshevik history, where history is rewritten every five years, and the fact, for example, that a gentleman despite what is given, we want to remain unknown, we want the government to have an interest in it.

Do you have interest in it? Does it seem like they don't have the right to it? They believe that they have the right to it because otherwise they would not have any university, so there is also an interest among the strong themselves in the truth, I mean, there are no military secrets here now, that is a different matter now these stories are about 20 years ago why not tell the truth, 20 years may not be enough, some say that and others say that after 20 years you can't even tell the truth you can't discover it anymore, that means that in any case there is interest in clarifying , that is not a legitimate interest, so in case of doubt they would give preference to the truth, I would say that impartiality has come to the world as where more for the defeated if the beloved voices are silent about the defeated man. then let me go then the hero Dortmund came and told the great deeds of the Greeks and the barbarians and all science comes from this spirit, including modern history, if you reach this impartial level it is not lacking because you pretend to love his own.

There are so many people that you keep telling them the truth beforehand, so to speak, deposit it with them, so that later you can't say that you can't do anything. I am of the opinion that these are not patients for the most part. important works Most active or active life According to my impression of the most important works of life, I come to the conclusion, Mrs. Arendt, that modern times have dehorned the sense of the primacy of the political in communities and describe societymodern. Phenomena such as the uprooting and abandonment of masses and the triumph of a type of human being.

I think a mere process of work and consumption is enough. I have two questions: first, to what extent does a philosophical intuition depend on this degree? Personal experiences to start a thought process? I don't think there is any thought process that lacks personality. I live in the modern world and of course in my experience in the modern world, I have this. and by the way, many others have also noticed that they work and consume things that, in my presentation, are only two sides of the same phenomenon, that is, this cycle in which life. Everything that lives oscillates, that is why it is so important once again.

It seems sinister to me that once again I am in a world without a world that makes itself known. You no longer care what the world looks like. The world has always been understood as a space in which politics, no, is now much bigger. a space in which things are made public as a space in which one lives and which has to look dignified in which of course art also appears in which everything seems possible, do you remember, do you know who has tried to expand the space? public in a very decisive way? By inviting poets and other people, nothing has been brought out, it has not been loaded into the water house, it has not been loaded into the water house, so all of this could still belong in this room when working , is consumed, the person is really completely thrown away. again about themselves, the biological, biological doctor and about themselves and there they have a connection with abandonment in their The work process creates a peculiar abandonment.

I can't go into that here right now, that would take us too far and. This abandonment is that return on oneself in which consumption, so to speak, replaces all really relevant activities, public action, a second issue. In this context, they come to the conclusion that the real world-oriented experiences that I am citing mean, that is, ideas and experiences and the highest political ranks, increasingly evade the experiential horizon of the average human existence in this such an important aspect of human existence, so to speak, today's wealth is acting limited to a few, what does this mean? In practical politics, Mrs Arndt, to what extent does a form of government based theoretically on the shared responsibility of all citizens become a fiction in these circumstances?

A truly appropriate orientation not only exists for the broad masses, but also exists for everyone else. classes I would say that even for the statesman the statesman is surrounded by an army of experts and really the question here should be asked between the statesman and the statesman. After all, he has to make the decision. He can make the decision appropriately. Come on, he can't know all that. He has to take it from experts, and from experts who basically have to talk to each other over and over again. Not all sensible statesmen consult experts contrary to the usual ones. the issue everywhere?

I was in the middle, he has to judge and what this judgment is a supreme process is not expressed in what is then expressed as a whole, what now affects, let's say, the mass of people, so I would say that following wherever people are together, no matter the size, public interests are formed and the public and the United States, where there are still these spontaneous associations that then break down again, not this association that Will has already talked about, can be seen very clearly the people interest now refers to a certain group of people, a neighborhood or even just a house or a city or a different group, then these people will come together and they will be very well placed to act publicly on these things because they pass them by. high, which means something They say this only applies to the most important decisions at the highest level and, believe me, the difference between the statesman and the man in the street is basically not very good.

I think I can only do that, but Karl. Jaspers told him that the former teacher is considered to be particularly connected with them and with him as a kind of dialogue partner in each of the dialogues between friends that you have already mentioned before, in which the strongest influence is seen that Jaspers has had in them. and you see where he has come from now and speaks, I hope he listens to this program because it will be light, he has an unreserved, a confidence, an unconditional ability to speak that I got to know other people. This already impressed me.

When I was very young He also had a concept of freedom linked to reason. When I arrived in Heidelberg it was completely unknown to me, I didn't know anything about it even though I knew how to read, I have seen this reason in practice, so. speak, and if I may say so, I grew up without a father, I do not allow myself to be educated by that or if you will, if he succeeded, I do not want him to be responsible for me for the love of God, then because someone managed to bring me to my senses, to educate me in the sense of bringing me to my senses, then that is Karl-Jasper and this dialogue Of course, today it is completely different, that was actually my strongest post-war experience, that there is a conversation that you can talk like this Allow me one last asks in a celebratory speech about Jaspers, you said that the humanities are never won alone and never by anyone.

Only those who take the risk of publicity with their life and their person with it can achieve this risk. of publicity because Jaspers' quote again, what does it mean for Hannah Arendt? Now the risk of publicity seems clear to me, my exposure to the public and as a person. Although I am of the opinion that one. It is not allowed to appear and act in public reflecting on oneself, even so I know that in each action the person in a vase expresses himself like in no other Trading and speaking speaking is a way of acting, he does not want any other activity so that is the second was that we start something, we thread our thread into a web of relationships, what will result from it, we never know, we all depend on it, say Lord, forgive them for what they do, they don't know what they do. do, that applies to all actions because just very concretely because you can't know, that's true and now I would say to conclude that this undertaking is only possible by trusting people.

There is some kind of fundamental trust in human beings. nature of all people that is difficult to pin down