National Endowment for the Humanities/Hannah Arendt Center Distinguished Visiting Fellow

Marie-Luise Knott

Marie Luise Knott was born in Cologne. After completing her Master Degree in Political Science and Roman Literature (1978, University of Konstanz) she worked as an editor for 10 years. Later she worked as a literary translator from French and English and as a journalist for various publishing houses, newspapers and radio stations. From 1995 to 2006 she was the founder and editor in chief of the German Le Monde diplomatique. In 2010 she completed her Ph.D. at Humboldt University:Denken im Dialog mit der Dichtung: Über Produktionsbedingungen theoretischer Texte im 20. Jahrhundert am Beispiel Hannah Arendts. Since 2006 she works as curator, editor, translator and author. She has diverse teaching experiences at Universities (FU Berlin, Universität Greifswald) and other german institutions. Her publications include Unlearning with Hannah Arendt (2011/2015) and Exhaustion of Modernity in 1930 (2017). She edited the letters of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem (2010), co-edited a book on John Cage (Empty Mind, 2012) and translated several works by Anne Carson. Her long essay 370 Riverside Drive, 730 Riverside Drive: Hannah Arendt and Ralph Waldo Ellison (2022), won her the renowned Tractatus Prize for Philisophical Essais at the Philosophicum Lech.