In the final years of the Weimar Republic, shortly before her escape from Germany in 1933, the young Hannah Arendt worked on a text in which she became visible as a political philosopher for the first time. Her topic: Judaism and the public sphere. Her counterpart: Rahel (1771-1833), born Levin, later married Varnhagen, for herself “Rahel all her life and nothing else”. For Arendt “my best friend, unfortunately dead a hundred years now”.

In the production on May 28, 2024 at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, the two intellectual figures will enter into a dialog with each other and with today's Arendt and Rahel research. Spectators will travel back in time to the 20th and 19th century and back to the present - the famous salonière and her no less prominent biographer invite you to a public encounter!

Prof. Barbara Hahn, main editor of the edition, editor of Arendt's Rahel Varnhagen and the Six Essays and co-editor of The Modern Challenge to Tradition, Dr. Friederike Wein, collaborator in the edition of Arendt's Rahel Varnhagen and co-editor of Kleine Schriften I, and Dr. Johanna Egger, collaborator in the Rahel Varnhagen volume, will be participating on behalf of the Kritische Gesamtausgabe.

The event is being held in cooperation with the Kritische Gesamtausgabe, the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin, the Centrum Judaicum, the Jewish Community of Berlin and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. The performance will be in German. Organizer is Georg Stephan.