 The
central goal of the project is to preserve and catalog all items
in Hannah Arendt’s personal library. The collection was
acquired in 1976 through the efforts of co-executors Lotte Kohler
and Mary McCarthy; Alexander Bazelow (Bard College, Class of 1971);
Irma Brandeis (Bard College faculty 1944 - 1979); Librarian Fred
Cook; and Bard’s president, Leon Botstein. The collection
represents approximately 4,000 volumes, ephemera and pamphlets
that made up the library in Hannah Arendt’s last apartment
in New York City. Of particular significance are the many volumes
containing considerable notes, underlinings and other marginalia,
as well as many volumes inscribed to her by Martin Heidegger,
Gershom Scholem, Rudolf Bultmann, W.H. Auden and Randall Jarrell,
among others. A large collection of materials in the collection
related to the work of her second husband Heinrich Bluecher are
fully described at the digital Bluecher
Archive.
In addition to preserving and cataloging the collection, we have
begun to digitize selected materials with the aim of sharing some
of these unique resources with the international scholarly community
in order to expand the rich contemporary dialogue on Arendt’s
significant contribution to public discourse.
Alexander Bazelow's ('71) generous support and encouragement has been vital to our endeavor to keep these materials available and useful.
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