Born Christentze Dinesen on April 17, 1885, in Rungsted, Denmark, Isak Dinesen is known for her plays, short stories, novels, and poetry. She was considered by many to be Denmark's greatest lyric poet. She also produced a widely read autobiography and memoirs. Dinesen studied English at Oxford University, 1904 and painting at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, and in Paris and Rome. Dinesen's career as a writer spanned from 1907 to 1962. She was published in Danish under the name of Karen Blixen and in English under the pseudonym of Isak Dinesen. Her short story collections include Winter Tales (1942) and Last Tales (1957). Novels inspired by her experiences in Africa include Out of Africa… (1937) and Shadows in the Grass (1960). Actress Meryl Streep portrayed Dinesen in the Oscar-winning film Out of Africa, which was adapted from her work in 1985. Isak Dinesen died of emaciation September 7, 1962, in Rungsted.
Born in Hanover, Germany, Hannah Arendt received her doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1928. A victim of naziism, she fled Germany in 1933 for France, where she helped with the resettlement of Jewish children in Palestine. In 1941, she emigrated to the United States. Ten years later she became an American citizen. Arendt held numerous positions in her new country---research director of the Conference on Jewish Relations, chief editor of Schocken Books, and executive director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction in New York City. A visiting professor at several universities, including the University of California, Columbia, and the University of Chicago, and university professor on the… graduate faculty of the New School for Social Research, in 1959 she became the first woman appointed to a full professorship at Princeton. She also won a number of grants and fellowships. In 1967 she received the Sigmund Freud Prize of the German Akademie fur Sprache und Dichtung for her fine scholarly writing. Arendt was well equipped to write her superb The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) which David Riesman called "an achievement in historiography." In his view, "such an experience in understanding our times as this book provides is itself a social force not to be underestimated." Arendt's study of Adolf Eichmann at his trial---Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963)---part of which appeared originally in The New Yorker, was a painfully searching investigation into what made the Nazi persecutor tick. In it, she states that the trial of this Nazi illustrates the "banality of evil." In 1968, she published Men in Dark Times, which includes essays on Hermann Broch, Walter Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht (see Vol. 2), as well as an interesting characterization of Pope John XXIII.