English

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The Upper West Side was Hannah Arendt’s home from 1941 when she arrived as a stateless refugee, until she died in 1975. This neighborhood on a hill, home to fellow artists, writers, and friends, became a haven from her endless speaking and teaching schedule, which took her around the world. She wrote here, entertained here, and rested here, and it was here where she found the four walls necessary for solitude, friendship, and thinking. For the next hour we’re going to walk the Upper West Side and trace how Hannah Arendt made a home in the United States, discovering where she used to live, what she liked to grab for lunch, and how she got her start as a writer. Let’s begin. 

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Hannah Arendt’s New York

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New York

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Goethe-Institut

Hi Everyone, I am Samantha Rose Hill for the Goethe Institute.  

And over the course of the next hour I am going to be taking you on a walking tour of Hannah Arendt’s New York City.

HA is one of the most renowned thinkers for the 20th Century, and her work has never been more relevant than it is today. Born in Germany in 1906 Arendt published her first book at the age of 23 before turning away from the world of academic philosophy to reckon with the rise of the Third Reich. After the war, Arendt became one of the most prominent and controversial intellectuals of her time, publishing works such as The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition and Eichmann in Jerusalem.

When we walk through the city streets we encounter worlds past and present. And I like to think of this walk as a documentary, each stop mapping out a moment of Hannah Arendt’s life that unfolded in New York City between 1941, when she arrived as a stateless refugee, and her death in 1975. We are going to follow Arendt’s footsteps to discover how she made a home in United States. But before we begin walking, we have to travel back in time to Vichy occupied France. You can sit down on one of the benches or the stoop of the monument if you like. 

In the spring of 1933, Hannah Arendt was arrested in BerlinBerlin by the Gestapo while collecting antisemitic statements at the Prussian State library to be sent to foreign dignitaries for the World Zionist Organization. She was held and questioned for eight days before being released by pure luck as she would later describe it in 1964 on German national televisiontelevison. 

The next morning she fled with her mother Martha through Prague to Zurich, eventually settling in Paris, where she would live for the next 8 years. During that time Arendt worked for a number of Jewish organizations that were helping Jewish youth emigrate to Palestine, preparing them to live on kibbutzim and work the land. But on May 5, 1940, there was an announcement issued in the newspapers by the Governor General of Paris, ordering all men between the ages of 17 and 55, and all unmarried or childless women who had come from Germany to report from transport to internment camps. 

Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher were sent to different camps. Arendt to the Gurs internment camp in the south of France which had been built to house Spanish refugees fleeing the civil war, and Blücher to Nevers internment camp.

Gurs was a large stretch of bare earth, partitioned into thirteen islands, which were enclosed with barbed wire and ordered by letters of the alphabet. The ground was a swamp in the spring rain and mud made it difficult to move about. The women were given daily work and little to eat to occupy their time. 

And then, after five weeks on June 22, 1940, the French armistice with Germany divided the country into two zones, one to be under German military occupation, and one to be left to the French in full sovereignty. 

As news spread throughout the camp, the women did not know what was going to happen, but they knew that with the German advance they would be sent to concentration camps. As the German front approached, all order fell apart inside the camp. Assuming there would be a transition period between the German occupation and retreat of the French guards, they made a plan to escape using the forged papers. As confusion in the camp increased from hour to hour, they were able to move freely between the once heavily guarded islands and begin distributing the certificates. When the day came, they met at 8:00 a.m. on the left side of the gate and agreed to pass through singly or in twos. They showed the guard the forged certificates only if asked, and walked out of the camp gate. They left the unused certificates behind for those who decided to try and leave. Arendt insisted on walking out alone.

Hannah Arendt did not know where her husband was, but she walked and hitchhiked her way across France from Gurs to Lourdes to Montauban, a meeting place for refugees, hoping for word to come. And then one day, by chance, walking down the main street, she saw her husband. 

Together they rode their bicycles from Montauban to Marseille, and rented a hotel room to wait for word from the US consulate. But one morning, a message was sent up to their room requesting that Blücher report to the front desk. Arendt knew the call was a trick, and that the police were not too far behind. Playing innocent, Blücher went downstairs to the lobby, left his key, and walked out of the front door before anyone could stop him. When the hotel clerk came over to Arendt asking where her husband was, she staged a loud scene, shouting that he was already at the prefecture’s office. She told the clerk that he was responsible for whatever happened to her husband. She waited for some time to pass then went to meet Blücher at a café where he was safely hiding. Together they immediately left Marseille. Between June and December 1941, the US Department of State tightened its entry policy. And of the 1,137 names submitted, only 238 people received emergency exit visas. Arendt and Blücher were two of them and with the help of Varian Fry and the American Emergency Rescue Mission, she and her husband were able to escape Vichy occupied France, escaping through Spain to Lisbon where they waited three months to board the S.S. Guinee. 

When Hannah Arendt arrived at Ellis Island on May 22, 1941 she was thirty-five years old, had twenty-five dollars in her pocket, and spoke very little English. She had just escaped two world wars, imprisonment and internment. Her life was just beginning. 

We are going to begin and end this walk in Riverside Park.

You are standing at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. I chose this as our beginning point because monuments were of particular interest to Arendt, and this is one she walked past on a regular basis. Monuments, she writes in her 1958 book The Human Condition, tell us a story – they are records of action in this realm of human affairs – This temple-like monument commemorates Union Army soldiers who served in the Civil War. Designed by Charles and Arthur Stoughton, and inspired by Greek antiquity, the cylindrical monument made of white marble has 12 Corinthian columns and is capped with richly carved ornament eagles and cartouches. It was based upon the ancient Choragic monument of Lysicrates in 4th Century Athens. 

Let’s start walking. With the Hudson River on your left, walk up to 95th street and turn right. It should take you about 8 minutes. We’re looking for 317 95th Street.

 \|||// Hi Everyone, I am Samantha Rose Hill for the Goethe Institute.  

And over the course of the next hour I am going to be taking you on a walking tour of Hannah Arendt’s New York City.

HA is one of the most renowned thinkers for the 20th Century, and her work has never been more relevant than it is today. Born in Germany in 1906 Arendt published her first book at the age of 23 before turning away from the world of academic philosophy to reckon with the rise of the Third Reich. After the war, Arendt became one of the most prominent and controversial intellectuals of her time, publishing works such as The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition and Eichmann in Jerusalem.

When we walk through the city streets we encounter worlds past and present. And I like to think of this walk as a documentary, each stop mapping out a moment of Hannah Arendt’s life that unfolded in New York City between 1941, when she arrived as a stateless refugee, and her death in 1975. We are going to follow Arendt’s footsteps to discover how she made a home in United States. But before we begin walking, we have to travel back in time to Vichy occupied France. You can sit down on one of the benches or the stoop of the monument if you like. 

In the spring of 1933, Hannah Arendt was arrested in BerlinBerlin by the Gestapo while collecting antisemitic statements at the Prussian State library to be sent to foreign dignitaries for the World Zionist Organization. She was held and questioned for eight days before being released by pure luck as she would later describe it in 1964 on German national televisiontelevison. 

The next morning she fled with her mother Martha through Prague to Zurich, eventually settling in Paris, where she would live for the next 8 years. During that time Arendt worked for a number of Jewish organizations that were helping Jewish youth emigrate to Palestine, preparing them to live on kibbutzim and work the land. But on May 5, 1940, there was an announcement issued in the newspapers by the Governor General of Paris, ordering all men between the ages of 17 and 55, and all unmarried or childless women who had come from Germany to report from transport to internment camps. 

Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher were sent to different camps. Arendt to the Gurs internment camp in the south of France which had been built to house Spanish refugees fleeing the civil war, and Blücher to Nevers internment camp.

Gurs was a large stretch of bare earth, partitioned into thirteen islands, which were enclosed with barbed wire and ordered by letters of the alphabet. The ground was a swamp in the spring rain and mud made it difficult to move about. The women were given daily work and little to eat to occupy their time. 

And then, after five weeks on June 22, 1940, the French armistice with Germany divided the country into two zones, one to be under German military occupation, and one to be left to the French in full sovereignty. 

As news spread throughout the camp, the women did not know what was going to happen, but they knew that with the German advance they would be sent to concentration camps. As the German front approached, all order fell apart inside the camp. Assuming there would be a transition period between the German occupation and retreat of the French guards, they made a plan to escape using the forged papers. As confusion in the camp increased from hour to hour, they were able to move freely between the once heavily guarded islands and begin distributing the certificates. When the day came, they met at 8:00 a.m. on the left side of the gate and agreed to pass through singly or in twos. They showed the guard the forged certificates only if asked, and walked out of the camp gate. They left the unused certificates behind for those who decided to try and leave. Arendt insisted on walking out alone.

Hannah Arendt did not know where her husband was, but she walked and hitchhiked her way across France from Gurs to Lourdes to Montauban, a meeting place for refugees, hoping for word to come. And then one day, by chance, walking down the main street, she saw her husband. 

Together they rode their bicycles from Montauban to Marseille, and rented a hotel room to wait for word from the US consulate. But one morning, a message was sent up to their room requesting that Blücher report to the front desk. Arendt knew the call was a trick, and that the police were not too far behind. Playing innocent, Blücher went downstairs to the lobby, left his key, and walked out of the front door before anyone could stop him. When the hotel clerk came over to Arendt asking where her husband was, she staged a loud scene, shouting that he was already at the prefecture’s office. She told the clerk that he was responsible for whatever happened to her husband. She waited for some time to pass then went to meet Blücher at a café where he was safely hiding. Together they immediately left Marseille. Between June and December 1941, the US Department of State tightened its entry policy. And of the 1,137 names submitted, only 238 people received emergency exit visas. Arendt and Blücher were two of them and with the help of Varian Fry and the American Emergency Rescue Mission, she and her husband were able to escape Vichy occupied France, escaping through Spain to Lisbon where they waited three months to board the S.S. Guinee. 

When Hannah Arendt arrived at Ellis Island on May 22, 1941 she was thirty-five years old, had twenty-five dollars in her pocket, and spoke very little English. She had just escaped two world wars, imprisonment and internment. Her life was just beginning. 

We are going to begin and end this walk in Riverside Park.

You are standing at the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. I chose this as our beginning point because monuments were of particular interest to Arendt, and this is one she walked past on a regular basis. Monuments, she writes in her 1958 book The Human Condition, tell us a story – they are records of action in this realm of human affairs – This temple-like monument commemorates Union Army soldiers who served in the Civil War. Designed by Charles and Arthur Stoughton, and inspired by Greek antiquity, the cylindrical monument made of white marble has 12 Corinthian columns and is capped with richly carved ornament eagles and cartouches. It was based upon the ancient Choragic monument of Lysicrates in 4th Century Athens. 

Let’s start walking. With the Hudson River on your left, walk up to 95th street and turn right. It should take you about 8 minutes. We’re looking for 317 95th Street.

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Soldiers and Sailor’s Monument, Riverside Park 

Tour Item

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The morning after Hannah Arendt and her husband Heinrich Blücher arrived at Ellis Island on the SS Guinee, she sent a telegram to her first husband, Günther Anders, letting him know they had survived. 

[Sound of a telegram being hammered out]

1941 May 23 am 11 20: ‘We’re Saved. We are here and living at 317 West 95th Street = hannah.’

As Arendt made her way through Ellis island with her husband Heinrich Blücher to safety, the New York Times announced that the Germans were pouring into Crete by Air, British Warships were being bombed, and the United States was asked by the Nazi regime to recall all diplomatic envoys to European countries.  

With a $70 monthly stipend, about $1300 today, from Zionist Organization of America, Arendt and Heinrich Blücher were able to rent two semi-furnished rooms here at 317 West 95th Street, one for them and one for Arendt’s mother Martha, who would arrive a couple months later on the SS Mouzinho. 

The apartment building you are standing in front of was called the Valencia Court. Built originally as flats, it was converted to a single room occupancy residence in 1940, or tenement housing. 

This tenement building was constructed in 1902 by Ernest Schneider and Henry Herter. Schneider and Herter were two of the most prolific housing designers in New York City around 1900. When Henry Herter arrived in New York from Germany he recoiled at the gloomy architecture, compared to the grand European facades and lavish streets of his mother country, so he went into business designing a series of tenements in the Bauakadamie style using brick piers and terra cotta spandrel to create the red brick and relatively streamlined façade we are familiar with today. His revolution in design was also responsible for changing attitudes towards tenements, which housed the immigrant poor. 

With little money friends sent them care packages of food and clothing from Königsberg and Arendt’s friend, the theologian Paul Tillich, put her in touch with an organization called Self-Help for Refugees, an agency of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in New York. Through the agency, Arendt applied to be placed as a housekeeper with an American family in Massachusetts for the summer to learn English, while her husband went to work in factory in New Jersey. But as she began to make a home in America, she did not forget what was happening in Europe. She wrote to her husband Heinrich Blücher, “Newspapers and radio speeches here are giving a totally false picture, particularly when it comes to opinions on the war.” Arendt returned the Upper West Side at the end of the end of the summer find the Jewish historian Salo Baron at Columbia University.

We're going to walk for about 20 minutes to the next stop, which will be on 114th street. Facing 317 West 95th street, turn right and head to the next block, which is West End avenue. Turn left and walk up to 114th street, to the Butler Library on Columbia University's campus.

317 West 95th Street \|||// The morning after Hannah Arendt and her husband Heinrich Blücher arrived at Ellis Island on the SS Guinee, she sent a telegram to her first husband, Günther Anders, letting him know they had survived. 

[Sound of a telegram being hammered out]

1941 May 23 am 11 20: ‘We’re Saved. We are here and living at 317 West 95th Street = hannah.’

As Arendt made her way through Ellis island with her husband Heinrich Blücher to safety, the New York Times announced that the Germans were pouring into Crete by Air, British Warships were being bombed, and the United States was asked by the Nazi regime to recall all diplomatic envoys to European countries.  

With a $70 monthly stipend, about $1300 today, from Zionist Organization of America, Arendt and Heinrich Blücher were able to rent two semi-furnished rooms here at 317 West 95th Street, one for them and one for Arendt’s mother Martha, who would arrive a couple months later on the SS Mouzinho. 

The apartment building you are standing in front of was called the Valencia Court. Built originally as flats, it was converted to a single room occupancy residence in 1940, or tenement housing. 

This tenement building was constructed in 1902 by Ernest Schneider and Henry Herter. Schneider and Herter were two of the most prolific housing designers in New York City around 1900. When Henry Herter arrived in New York from Germany he recoiled at the gloomy architecture, compared to the grand European facades and lavish streets of his mother country, so he went into business designing a series of tenements in the Bauakadamie style using brick piers and terra cotta spandrel to create the red brick and relatively streamlined façade we are familiar with today. His revolution in design was also responsible for changing attitudes towards tenements, which housed the immigrant poor. 

With little money friends sent them care packages of food and clothing from Königsberg and Arendt’s friend, the theologian Paul Tillich, put her in touch with an organization called Self-Help for Refugees, an agency of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in New York. Through the agency, Arendt applied to be placed as a housekeeper with an American family in Massachusetts for the summer to learn English, while her husband went to work in factory in New Jersey. But as she began to make a home in America, she did not forget what was happening in Europe. She wrote to her husband Heinrich Blücher, “Newspapers and radio speeches here are giving a totally false picture, particularly when it comes to opinions on the war.” Arendt returned the Upper West Side at the end of the end of the summer find the Jewish historian Salo Baron at Columbia University.

We're going to walk for about 20 minutes to the next stop, which will be on 114th street. Facing 317 West 95th street, turn right and head to the next block, which is West End avenue. Turn left and walk up to 114th street, to the Butler Library on Columbia University's campus.

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317 West 95th Street

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It was unusually cold for New York City in the late summer of 1941. Chilly air swept through the city bringing days of rain. And on one such cold afternoon Arendt made her way from 317 West 95 Street to Columbia University in search of Salo Baron, a Jewish Historian who had left Germany in 1930.

Baron was one of the most important Jewish historians of the 20th century. He came to Columbia in 1930 as the Miller Chair in Jewish History, it was the first such professorship of its kind at a secular Western university. Baron was often seen in the stacks of Butler library, researching his book Social and Religious History of the Jews. Above the library’s three-story colonnade you can see the names of writers, philosophers, and thinkers: Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Vergil, St. Augusteen, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Voltaire, Goethe – The thinkers Hannah Arendt had fallen in love with in her father’s library, memorizing Homer in the ancient Greek and lines of Goethe and the romantic poet Friedrich Schiller. For Arendt, it was the language that remained after the war, specifically, the language of German poetry that she carried around in the back of her mind.

During her meeting with Baron they talked about the history of anti-Semitism in France, and Baron suggested that Arendt develop her argument into an article and send it to Theodor Herzl Gaster, who was the executive secretary for the Institute for Jewish Affairs. 

With Baron’s help, her first essay in English translation, titled...‘From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today’ was published in Jewish Social Studies in 1942. The essay would later become part of her 1951 masterpiece, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and was the subject of a course she taught on Modern European History at Brooklyn College in the summer of 1942.

This essay was the beginning of Arendt’s writing and academic career in America. 

Arendt continued to write for Jewish Social Studies, but with Baron’s help she also resumed her work in the Jewish community. Baron hired Arendt first as the Research Director, and then as the Executive Director, at the Commission for Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, which he oversaw. In numerous trips to Germany after the war, Arendt was able to recover some 1,500,000 books of Hebraica and Judaica, countless ritual and artistic objects, and more than 1,000 scrolls of law.
In a Personal Note written shortly after Arendt’s death in 1975, he recalls their first meeting on campus: 

I still vividly remember her first visit to my office at Columbia University soon after her arrival in this country. In discussing the Jewish situation in Vichy France, she evinced deep concern about the continuity of French antisemitism from Dreyfus to Pah-tain . . . At the same time she was greatly intrigued by the fate of distinguished assimilated Jews who found themselves uprooted from their Jewish environment and yet did not become completely integrated into the national majorities of their respective countries. This concern had already found expression in her early German work on Rahel Levin Varnhagen. It was in this vein that she published in Jewish Social Studies her essays on “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition”, referring in particular to Heinrich Heine, Bernard Lazare, Charles Chaplin, and Franz Kafka. Out of this preoccupation ultimately emerged her distinguished work on The Origins of Totalitarianism.



Facing the steps to the library, turn right and head to Amsterdam Avenue. Then turn left and walk up to 122nd street, where we’ll turn right. We’re looking for 130 Morningside Drive.

535 West 114th Street \|||// It was unusually cold for New York City in the late summer of 1941. Chilly air swept through the city bringing days of rain. And on one such cold afternoon Arendt made her way from 317 West 95 Street to Columbia University in search of Salo Baron, a Jewish Historian who had left Germany in 1930.

Baron was one of the most important Jewish historians of the 20th century. He came to Columbia in 1930 as the Miller Chair in Jewish History, it was the first such professorship of its kind at a secular Western university. Baron was often seen in the stacks of Butler library, researching his book Social and Religious History of the Jews. Above the library’s three-story colonnade you can see the names of writers, philosophers, and thinkers: Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Vergil, St. Augusteen, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Voltaire, Goethe – The thinkers Hannah Arendt had fallen in love with in her father’s library, memorizing Homer in the ancient Greek and lines of Goethe and the romantic poet Friedrich Schiller. For Arendt, it was the language that remained after the war, specifically, the language of German poetry that she carried around in the back of her mind.

During her meeting with Baron they talked about the history of anti-Semitism in France, and Baron suggested that Arendt develop her argument into an article and send it to Theodor Herzl Gaster, who was the executive secretary for the Institute for Jewish Affairs. 

With Baron’s help, her first essay in English translation, titled...‘From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today’ was published in Jewish Social Studies in 1942. The essay would later become part of her 1951 masterpiece, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and was the subject of a course she taught on Modern European History at Brooklyn College in the summer of 1942.

This essay was the beginning of Arendt’s writing and academic career in America. 

Arendt continued to write for Jewish Social Studies, but with Baron’s help she also resumed her work in the Jewish community. Baron hired Arendt first as the Research Director, and then as the Executive Director, at the Commission for Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, which he oversaw. In numerous trips to Germany after the war, Arendt was able to recover some 1,500,000 books of Hebraica and Judaica, countless ritual and artistic objects, and more than 1,000 scrolls of law.
In a Personal Note written shortly after Arendt’s death in 1975, he recalls their first meeting on campus: 

I still vividly remember her first visit to my office at Columbia University soon after her arrival in this country. In discussing the Jewish situation in Vichy France, she evinced deep concern about the continuity of French antisemitism from Dreyfus to Pah-tain . . . At the same time she was greatly intrigued by the fate of distinguished assimilated Jews who found themselves uprooted from their Jewish environment and yet did not become completely integrated into the national majorities of their respective countries. This concern had already found expression in her early German work on Rahel Levin Varnhagen. It was in this vein that she published in Jewish Social Studies her essays on “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition”, referring in particular to Heinrich Heine, Bernard Lazare, Charles Chaplin, and Franz Kafka. Out of this preoccupation ultimately emerged her distinguished work on The Origins of Totalitarianism.



Facing the steps to the library, turn right and head to Amsterdam Avenue. Then turn left and walk up to 122nd street, where we’ll turn right. We’re looking for 130 Morningside Drive.

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Butler Library on Columbia University’s Campus

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In the summer of 1949, Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher had saved enough money to move out of their two furnished rooms in the tenement building and rent their first apartment at 130 Morningside Drive, where you’re standing now. In exile in Paris they had been forced to move from hotel room to hotel room—and it had taken them eight years to afford their first apartment. When Arendt had first met Heinrich in the 1930s at a private dinner hosted by a mutual friend he arrived in a suit and hat, carrying a walking stick, and Arendt took to playfully calling him Monsieur. He was pretending to be a bourgeois tourist during the day so that he would not appear to be a refugee in exile. Now, they finally had an apartment to themselves.

In a letter from Arendt’s mentor and friend Karl Jaspers written on August 4, 1949, He writes:

Dear Hannah! Your, letter, which touched both our hearts, just arrived. The pleasure you take in your new apartment and your own furniture—how wonderful that is! It’s like a game for you, and you do not complain about the privations you had to bear for so long. You haven’t lost your capacity for joy.  

The tiny set of rooms on the top floor of 130 Morningside Drive became her four walls. And those four walls saw some of the most illustrious minds of the 20th century. Hermann Broch, Paul Tillich, Salo and Jeanette Baron, Helen and Kurt Wolff, Hans Morgenthau, Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy, Lotte Kohler, Elizabeth Hardwick, Randall Jarrell, Rober Lowell, Glenn Gray, Dwight Macdonald, W.H. Auden, and Lionel and Diana Trilling. 

Many, like Arendt, were emigres from Nazi-occupied Europe. Others, like Jarrell, Kazin, McCarthy, and Trilling, were American poets, writers, artists, and critics whose work shaped the cultural milieu of mid-20th century America: the New York Intellectuals, as they came to be known.

In 1976, the poet Robert Lowell said, “Hannah Arendt was an oasis in the fevered, dialectical dust of New York—to me, and I imagine to everyone who loved her.” Lowell dedicated his translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem Taube, die draußen blieb to her, in his volume Imitations and retitled it, Pigeons, for Hannah Arendt. He wrote in a letter that it was his finest work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zinEh5-MjzI

 The poem is a mediation on home and homelessness in the world, a topic that was very near to Hannah Arendt’s life and work. As a stateless refugee, without a proper Heimat, home was much more than a house for Arendt. It was her husband, and her friends—which she called her tribe—who should could now gather in her apartment.


Facing 130 Morningside Drive, turn right to go back to Amsterdam, where we’ll turn left to retrace our steps south, to 109th. Once we get to 109th street, turn right and walk back towards the Hudson River. We’re looking for 370 Riverside Drive.

130 Morningside Drive \|||// In the summer of 1949, Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher had saved enough money to move out of their two furnished rooms in the tenement building and rent their first apartment at 130 Morningside Drive, where you’re standing now. In exile in Paris they had been forced to move from hotel room to hotel room—and it had taken them eight years to afford their first apartment. When Arendt had first met Heinrich in the 1930s at a private dinner hosted by a mutual friend he arrived in a suit and hat, carrying a walking stick, and Arendt took to playfully calling him Monsieur. He was pretending to be a bourgeois tourist during the day so that he would not appear to be a refugee in exile. Now, they finally had an apartment to themselves.

In a letter from Arendt’s mentor and friend Karl Jaspers written on August 4, 1949, He writes:

Dear Hannah! Your, letter, which touched both our hearts, just arrived. The pleasure you take in your new apartment and your own furniture—how wonderful that is! It’s like a game for you, and you do not complain about the privations you had to bear for so long. You haven’t lost your capacity for joy.  

The tiny set of rooms on the top floor of 130 Morningside Drive became her four walls. And those four walls saw some of the most illustrious minds of the 20th century. Hermann Broch, Paul Tillich, Salo and Jeanette Baron, Helen and Kurt Wolff, Hans Morgenthau, Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy, Lotte Kohler, Elizabeth Hardwick, Randall Jarrell, Rober Lowell, Glenn Gray, Dwight Macdonald, W.H. Auden, and Lionel and Diana Trilling. 

Many, like Arendt, were emigres from Nazi-occupied Europe. Others, like Jarrell, Kazin, McCarthy, and Trilling, were American poets, writers, artists, and critics whose work shaped the cultural milieu of mid-20th century America: the New York Intellectuals, as they came to be known.

In 1976, the poet Robert Lowell said, “Hannah Arendt was an oasis in the fevered, dialectical dust of New York—to me, and I imagine to everyone who loved her.” Lowell dedicated his translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem Taube, die draußen blieb to her, in his volume Imitations and retitled it, Pigeons, for Hannah Arendt. He wrote in a letter that it was his finest work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zinEh5-MjzI

 The poem is a mediation on home and homelessness in the world, a topic that was very near to Hannah Arendt’s life and work. As a stateless refugee, without a proper Heimat, home was much more than a house for Arendt. It was her husband, and her friends—which she called her tribe—who should could now gather in her apartment.


Facing 130 Morningside Drive, turn right to go back to Amsterdam, where we’ll turn left to retrace our steps south, to 109th. Once we get to 109th street, turn right and walk back towards the Hudson River. We’re looking for 370 Riverside Drive.

130 Morningside Drive.jpeg

130 Morningside Drive

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“Remember to buy champagne” Hannah Arendt writes in one of her planners, along with a note to pick up a rack of lamb, cheese puffs, and donuts. By the early 1970s word had gotten out about Hannah Arendt’s infamous New Year’s Eve parties, where she was known–from time to time–to jump up on the table and dance.

On February 6, 1974 Hannah Arendt’s parties at 370 Riverside Drive were written about in the New York Times in an article on West Side intellectuals.

At Hannah Arendt's New Year's Eve party, West Side intellectuals with European backgrounds gather in one room, and West Side intellectuals with American backgrounds gather in another. The Europeans are in the room with the liqueurs and chocolates. The Americans are in the room with the whisky.

370 Riverside Drive has a storied history, in part because of the long list of notable residents who have lived there, including Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher.

Constructed from 1922 to 1924 by Simon Schwartz and Arthur Gross, the apartment building sits on a hill overlooking the Hudson River and Riverside Park. The 16 story pre-war design included a number of Classic Six apartments with high ceilings, and a roof deck with views of the river and George Washington Bridge. 
 
As you can see it is a quiet street lined with trees, offering easy access to the park. 
In the fall of 1959, Hannah Arendt travelled to Hamburg to accept the Lessing Prize, flew to Berlin to settle her restitution claims, spent a week on holiday in Florence with Mary McCarthy, visited her childhood friend Anne Mendelsohn Weil in Brussels and stayed with Karl and Gertrud Jaspers in Basel for a week at the end of October. 
With the restitution money she received from Germany, for definitively interrupting her academic career, Arendt and Blücher were finally able to buy an apartment. 
In a letter to Karl and Gertrud Jaspers, Arendt describes their new home at 12a 370 Riverside Drive: 
Two studies with a fantastically beautiful view of the river. Completely quiet, no noise from either the street or the neighbors. Four large, nicely proportioned rooms and a small room. Very nice kitchen and pantry, generous closets, huge ones, some of which you can walk right into. The building very well kept up and with a doorman day and night…The price is just what we had set as our maximum, but for what we are getting it is not too much. All the ‘equipment’ – kitchen stove, refrigerator, kitchen sink, bathtub, etc. – is brand-new. And there are two full baths and a toilet with a small bathtub. … On moving day itself, everything was so well organized (I’m bragging, you see) that I was able to go to the movies that evening with a friend who was helping me. We had literally gotten everything done. Granted, we had had the library and the shelves needed for it set up ahead. I had a lot of help and didn’t pinch pennies anywhere. If you’re going to do it, then do it right.
Arendt’s friend Helen Wolff described it as “a cheerful apartment but by no means furnished with aesthetics in mind.” She it was a “philosopher’s home.” And it was Arendt’s home against the world, providing a place where she could retreat from the glare of public life into the solitude necessary for thinking. 

From Arendt’s desk, one could see Riverside Park and the Hudson River. In the living room there was a high-backed sofa covered in a fading green vinyl cloth, worn, and patched. Across from the sofa there was a constellation of armchairs, and a coffee table where she would offer her visitors cigarettes while pouring them glasses of champagne, red wine, or perhaps a Campari and soda. The dining room table was always covered in books, papers, and journals and surrounded by her library, with bookshelves lining the walls. It was the center of her home.

Arendt never received visitors before she finished working for the day around 5’o’clock. She would lie on her sofa, and smoke cigarette thinking, wander up to Broadway to eat Chinese food for lunch, and return home to continue her work. She wrote with a pair of silver scissors and a roll of scotch tape, only sitting down to her typewriter when she could take dictation from herself. 

Walk to the end of the block towards the water, cross the street, and take a left to sit on one of the many benches.

370 Riverside Drive \|||// “Remember to buy champagne” Hannah Arendt writes in one of her planners, along with a note to pick up a rack of lamb, cheese puffs, and donuts. By the early 1970s word had gotten out about Hannah Arendt’s infamous New Year’s Eve parties, where she was known–from time to time–to jump up on the table and dance.

On February 6, 1974 Hannah Arendt’s parties at 370 Riverside Drive were written about in the New York Times in an article on West Side intellectuals.

At Hannah Arendt's New Year's Eve party, West Side intellectuals with European backgrounds gather in one room, and West Side intellectuals with American backgrounds gather in another. The Europeans are in the room with the liqueurs and chocolates. The Americans are in the room with the whisky.

370 Riverside Drive has a storied history, in part because of the long list of notable residents who have lived there, including Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher.

Constructed from 1922 to 1924 by Simon Schwartz and Arthur Gross, the apartment building sits on a hill overlooking the Hudson River and Riverside Park. The 16 story pre-war design included a number of Classic Six apartments with high ceilings, and a roof deck with views of the river and George Washington Bridge. 
 
As you can see it is a quiet street lined with trees, offering easy access to the park. 
In the fall of 1959, Hannah Arendt travelled to Hamburg to accept the Lessing Prize, flew to Berlin to settle her restitution claims, spent a week on holiday in Florence with Mary McCarthy, visited her childhood friend Anne Mendelsohn Weil in Brussels and stayed with Karl and Gertrud Jaspers in Basel for a week at the end of October. 
With the restitution money she received from Germany, for definitively interrupting her academic career, Arendt and Blücher were finally able to buy an apartment. 
In a letter to Karl and Gertrud Jaspers, Arendt describes their new home at 12a 370 Riverside Drive: 
Two studies with a fantastically beautiful view of the river. Completely quiet, no noise from either the street or the neighbors. Four large, nicely proportioned rooms and a small room. Very nice kitchen and pantry, generous closets, huge ones, some of which you can walk right into. The building very well kept up and with a doorman day and night…The price is just what we had set as our maximum, but for what we are getting it is not too much. All the ‘equipment’ – kitchen stove, refrigerator, kitchen sink, bathtub, etc. – is brand-new. And there are two full baths and a toilet with a small bathtub. … On moving day itself, everything was so well organized (I’m bragging, you see) that I was able to go to the movies that evening with a friend who was helping me. We had literally gotten everything done. Granted, we had had the library and the shelves needed for it set up ahead. I had a lot of help and didn’t pinch pennies anywhere. If you’re going to do it, then do it right.
Arendt’s friend Helen Wolff described it as “a cheerful apartment but by no means furnished with aesthetics in mind.” She it was a “philosopher’s home.” And it was Arendt’s home against the world, providing a place where she could retreat from the glare of public life into the solitude necessary for thinking. 

From Arendt’s desk, one could see Riverside Park and the Hudson River. In the living room there was a high-backed sofa covered in a fading green vinyl cloth, worn, and patched. Across from the sofa there was a constellation of armchairs, and a coffee table where she would offer her visitors cigarettes while pouring them glasses of champagne, red wine, or perhaps a Campari and soda. The dining room table was always covered in books, papers, and journals and surrounded by her library, with bookshelves lining the walls. It was the center of her home.

Arendt never received visitors before she finished working for the day around 5’o’clock. She would lie on her sofa, and smoke cigarette thinking, wander up to Broadway to eat Chinese food for lunch, and return home to continue her work. She wrote with a pair of silver scissors and a roll of scotch tape, only sitting down to her typewriter when she could take dictation from herself. 

Walk to the end of the block towards the water, cross the street, and take a left to sit on one of the many benches.

370 Riverside Drive.jpeg

370 Riverside Drive

5.mp3

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Hannah Arendt did not like to interrupt her working day. She wasn’t much for exercise. She smoked constantly and liked to switch from coffee to cocktails at five o’clock. But from time to time she would come to Riverside Park, to sit and watch people. Taking in a bit of fresh air. Stealing a moment for herself. 

In 1943, shortly after she arrived she wrote a poem one afternoon about Riverside Park. It is a beautiful meditation on daily life, and how we are always rushing from one thing to the next. So, as we come to the end of our walk, please take a moment to stop. That was after all, what Arendt wanted, she said: It is very simple, it is nothing more than to stop and think what we are doing. 

Here is a poem Hannah Arendt wrote in 1943, perhaps not too far from where you are now sitting:

Park on the Hudson

Fisherman fish quietly on rivers
	In the whole world.
Drivers drive blindly on paths
	Around the whole world.
Children run, mothers call, 
Golden is the world.
A loving couple passes by
Sometimes through the world.

Fisherman fish quietly on rivers
	Until the sun sets
Drivers drive blindly down paths
	 Quickly towards their death.
Children, blessed in the sun,
Play eternally.
Sometimes a couple passes by, 
With them goes the time.

Fisherman fish quietly on rivers
	lonely hangs the branch.
Drivers drive blindly on paths
	Restless to rest.
Children play, mothers call, 
Eternity is almost—
A loving couple passes by, 
Bearing the burden of time.

As a stateless refugee for more than 18 years Hannah Arendt learned that a home is a lot more than the four walls of a house – It is language, familiarity of place, and the ability to express one’s feelings without hesitation. Home, gesturing back to the Latin habitus –from which we get habitat– is the daily habits and routines, walking from home to the market; it is where one can retreat from the world of appearances and be alone with themselves. 



Then I will walk as I walked before
Through grass and trees and fields; 
Then you will stand as you stood before, 
The most heartfelt greeting from the world.
 
Then the steps will have been counted
By the near and the far; 
Then this life will have been recounted  
As a dream from long ago.

 \|||// Hannah Arendt did not like to interrupt her working day. She wasn’t much for exercise. She smoked constantly and liked to switch from coffee to cocktails at five o’clock. But from time to time she would come to Riverside Park, to sit and watch people. Taking in a bit of fresh air. Stealing a moment for herself. 

In 1943, shortly after she arrived she wrote a poem one afternoon about Riverside Park. It is a beautiful meditation on daily life, and how we are always rushing from one thing to the next. So, as we come to the end of our walk, please take a moment to stop. That was after all, what Arendt wanted, she said: It is very simple, it is nothing more than to stop and think what we are doing. 

Here is a poem Hannah Arendt wrote in 1943, perhaps not too far from where you are now sitting:

Park on the Hudson

Fisherman fish quietly on rivers
	In the whole world.
Drivers drive blindly on paths
	Around the whole world.
Children run, mothers call, 
Golden is the world.
A loving couple passes by
Sometimes through the world.

Fisherman fish quietly on rivers
	Until the sun sets
Drivers drive blindly down paths
	 Quickly towards their death.
Children, blessed in the sun,
Play eternally.
Sometimes a couple passes by, 
With them goes the time.

Fisherman fish quietly on rivers
	lonely hangs the branch.
Drivers drive blindly on paths
	Restless to rest.
Children play, mothers call, 
Eternity is almost—
A loving couple passes by, 
Bearing the burden of time.

As a stateless refugee for more than 18 years Hannah Arendt learned that a home is a lot more than the four walls of a house – It is language, familiarity of place, and the ability to express one’s feelings without hesitation. Home, gesturing back to the Latin habitus –from which we get habitat– is the daily habits and routines, walking from home to the market; it is where one can retreat from the world of appearances and be alone with themselves. 



Then I will walk as I walked before
Through grass and trees and fields; 
Then you will stand as you stood before, 
The most heartfelt greeting from the world.
 
Then the steps will have been counted
By the near and the far; 
Then this life will have been recounted  
As a dream from long ago.

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