Hannah Arendt lecturing in Germany, 1955.
A documentary about Hannah Arendt, “Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny” premieres nationwide Friday, June 27, at 9 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listingsfor other times), pbs.org/americanmasters and the PBS App. It takes a close look at one of the significant Jewish political writers of modern times.
Arendt came of age in Germany as Hitler rose to power, before escaping to the United States as a Jewish refugee. Through her unflinching capacity to demand attention to facts and reality, Arendt’s time as a political prisoner, refugee and survivor in Europe informed her insights into the human condition, the refugee crisis and totalitarianism.
The documentary is anchored in Arendt’s life experience, including her resistance against the Nazi regime, her work to help Jewish children escape to Palestine, her relationship with the esteemed philosopher and Nazi Martin Heidegger and her time in a prisoner of war camp before fleeing to the United States.
Actress Nina Hoss provides the voice of Arendt beginning as a student in Germany and continuing to the 1970s. She and others bring to life correspondence that Arendt had on both sides of the Atlantic.
Arendt’s major works are The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), On Revolution (1963) and Crises of the Republic (1972).
The film is produced by Jeff Bieber Productions, LOOKSfilm, SWR and RBB in association with American Masters Pictures and the Center for Independent Documentary. It is directed by Chana Gazit and Jeff Bieber.
“Hannah Arendt was in an endless conversation with the human condition,” said Bieber. “Throughout her life she strived to understand the historic rise of Nazism and how it was able to garner such massive support through totalitarianism. Later, in the United States she warned how currents of authoritarianism continued to threaten democratic institutions. As authoritarianism threatens democratic countries across the world today, her writings— and warnings—deserve our attention.”
