Check out our new Hannah Arendt Personal Library Website

Check out our new Hannah Arendt Personal Library Website!

Over the last few months, we have been improving our online navigation for the Hannah Arendt Personal Library (HAPL). The Stevenson library’s new Archives & Special Collections site was launched last week and with it, a new page for the HAPL!

About HAPL
After Hannah Arendt’s death in 1975, her personal library was acquired by Bard College through the efforts of co-executors Lotte Köhler and Mary McCarthy, Alexander Bazelow ’71, 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 900+ volumes containing marginal notes or lining, endnotes, and ephemera, as well as many volumes inscribed to her by Martin Heidegger, Gershom Scholem, W.H. Auden, and Randall Jarrell, among others.

Thanks to a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2008), the collection is cataloged and stabilized. We are now working to digitize all volumes containing marginalia, a project that is freely shared with the international scholarly community in order to expand the rich contemporary dialogue on Arendt’s significant contribution to public discourse.

Materials in the collection related to the work of her second husband Heinrich Blücher (Bard College faculty 1952–1971) is described in the digital Blücher Archive, thanks to the support of alumnus Alex Bazelow, class of 1971.

The Catalog
Click this link for a full library catalog list of the nearly 4,000 volumes in the Hannah Arendt Personal Library.
Please note: Physical volumes in this collection must be viewed in the Reading Room of the Stevenson Library at Bard College. Please see this link for information about how to plan a visit and request access to these holdings.

Our Visiting Scholar Program
The Hannah Arendt Center invites six to eight Visiting Scholars each year to apply for non-stipendiary visiting scholar fellowships. The visiting scholar fellowships are intended for scholars who have an interest in accessing The Hannah Arendt Personal Library at the Stevenson Library at Bard College for Arendt-related research projects. To learn more and apply, please click here.

Contact 
For questions about HAPL, please email [email protected] or contact Jana Mader, Director of Academic Programs at the Hannah Arendt Center at [email protected].