Ebook {Epub PDF} Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess by Hannah Arendt

Rahel Varnhagen became not just a study of a historical Jewish figure, but a poignant reflection on Arendt’s own life and times, her first exploration of German-Jewish identity and the possibility of Jewish life in the face of unimaginable adversity. Online:Estimated Reading Time: 2 mins. Long unavailable and never before published as Arendt intended, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess returns to print in an extraordinary new edition. Arendt draws a lively and complex portrait of a woman during the period of the Napoleonic wars and the early emancipation of the Jews, a figure who met and corresponded with some of the most celebrated authors, artists, and politicians of her time. Born in Berlin in as the daughter of a Jewish merchant, Rahel Varnhagen would come to host one of the most prominent salons of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Arendt discovered her writings some time in the mids, and soon began to reimagine Rahe She was, Hannah Arendt wrote, "my closest friend, though she has been dead for some hundred years."/5.

Rahel Antonie Friederike Varnhagen was a German writer who hosted one of the most prominent salons in Europe during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She is the subject of a celebrated biography, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (), written by Hannah Arendt. Arendt cherished Varnhagen as her "closest friend, though she had been dead for some hundred years". Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman was not published until By then, Arendt's great historical subject was no longer the question of whether Jews were fit to enter the salons, but the question of whether Jews were fit to inhabit the earth. Intertwining Identities Hannah Arendt's Rachel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess is the biography of Varnhagen that simultaneously attempts to define Rahel Varnhagen's gender and national identity as a resident in early 19th century Germany in Varnhagen's own terms, while Arendt refines her political theory.

Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, xii + pp. $ (cloth), ISBN Reviewed byJefferson S. Chase (University of Nottingham)Published onH-German (June, ) This volume, as title proudly proclaims, is the first complete English-language edition of Hannah Arendt's biographical study of Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, the famous early-nineteenth century salonniere. Born in Berlin in as the daughter of a Jewish merchant, Rahel Varnhagen would come to host one of the most prominent salons of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Arendt discovered her writings some time in the mids, and soon began to reimagine Rahe She was, Hannah Arendt wrote, "my closest friend, though she has been dead for some hundred years.". Rahel Varnhagen became not just a study of a historical Jewish figure, but a poignant reflection on Arendt’s own life and times, her first exploration of German-Jewish identity and the possibility of Jewish life in the face of unimaginable adversity. Online.