02/14/22
6:00pm EST
The Love Letters of Hannah Arendt & Heinrich Blücher
Reading
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Goethe-Institut New York, New York, NY
- Language English
- Price Free, please RSVP
To celebrate Valentine's Day, acting students from the Lee Strasberg Institute will read selected love letters exchanged by Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher.
Registration Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher met in Paris in 1936, both exiled from Nazi Germany. Arendt was Jewish and escaped Germany in 1933 after being arrested by the Gestapo, and Blücher was a communist and was expelled due to his work with Versöhnler, an opposition group. Their early romance was characterized by tribulations, including being separated into different internment camps before they were eventually able to flee to the U.S. in 1941. They lived in New York together until Blücher's death in 1970, sharing their love and work; as Blücher wrote, “We each do our work, and then come together to discuss.”
Their love story is simultaneously cinematic and intimate - it spans borders and decades, and the two writers found in each other true life partners. As Arendt wrote to Blücher: "It still seems incredible to me that I managed to get both things, the ‘love of my life’ and a oneness with myself. And yet, I only got the one thing when I got the other. But finally I also know what happiness is."
This event is part of the Goethe-Institut North America project Thinking is Dangerous, curated by Samantha Rose Hill. The project draws on the renewed interest in Hannah Arendt's work in the wake of the 2016 U.S. election, and is designed to engage participants in Hannah Arendt’s life and work. Who was Hannah Arendt? Why did she write so much about thinking? What are the core elements of her political thinking? Stay tuned for more information about this project!
Samantha Rose Hill is the author of Hannah Arendt (Reaktion, 2021) and Hannah Arendt’s Poems (Liveright, 2022). She is associate faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and the University of the Underground. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon, LitHub, OpenDemocracy, Public Seminar, Contemporary Political Theory, and Theory and Event. www.samantharosehill.com
Registration Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher met in Paris in 1936, both exiled from Nazi Germany. Arendt was Jewish and escaped Germany in 1933 after being arrested by the Gestapo, and Blücher was a communist and was expelled due to his work with Versöhnler, an opposition group. Their early romance was characterized by tribulations, including being separated into different internment camps before they were eventually able to flee to the U.S. in 1941. They lived in New York together until Blücher's death in 1970, sharing their love and work; as Blücher wrote, “We each do our work, and then come together to discuss.”
Their love story is simultaneously cinematic and intimate - it spans borders and decades, and the two writers found in each other true life partners. As Arendt wrote to Blücher: "It still seems incredible to me that I managed to get both things, the ‘love of my life’ and a oneness with myself. And yet, I only got the one thing when I got the other. But finally I also know what happiness is."
This event is part of the Goethe-Institut North America project Thinking is Dangerous, curated by Samantha Rose Hill. The project draws on the renewed interest in Hannah Arendt's work in the wake of the 2016 U.S. election, and is designed to engage participants in Hannah Arendt’s life and work. Who was Hannah Arendt? Why did she write so much about thinking? What are the core elements of her political thinking? Stay tuned for more information about this project!
Samantha Rose Hill is the author of Hannah Arendt (Reaktion, 2021) and Hannah Arendt’s Poems (Liveright, 2022). She is associate faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and the University of the Underground. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon, LitHub, OpenDemocracy, Public Seminar, Contemporary Political Theory, and Theory and Event. www.samantharosehill.com
Location
Goethe-Institut New York
30 Irving Place
New York, NY 10003
USA
30 Irving Place
New York, NY 10003
USA