Königsberg in the 1910s, Berlin in the 1920s, Paris in the 1930s, and New York in the 1950s and 1960s. The wars and totalitarian regimes of the 20th century shaped and preoccupied her; her major political work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, made her famous overnight in 1951. When Hannah Arendt reported on the Eichmann trial from Jerusalem in 1961, she recognized the mass murderer as a bureaucratic “Hanswurst” and sparked controversy with her report on the banality of evil. She stood up to criticism. Freedom was her highest good. She called it “thinking without guardrails.”

Ken Krimstein is an expert on the subject. The Chicago-based cartoonist and author, who regularly draws for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and the Chicago Tribune, has dedicated a book to the life of the famous thinker. In hundreds of drawings, his graphic novel The Three Lives of Hannah Arendt sketches her adventurous biography. Ken answered a few questions during a visit to the DT in the spring of 2025.

Dear Ken, the German public associates the name Hannah Arendt primarily with the “Banality of evil”. It is a phrase for which she was misunderstood and criticized.

I believe that phrase leads to a lot of confusion in English as well. “Banal” tends to mean “kind of tacky” or “tasteless.” I believe the way Hannah Arendt intended it was more along the lines of “oblivious”, “unthinking”, or even “willfully stupid and evil” – the inability to see things from the other person’s point of view, as she might have said. Cliché-ridden thinking – a cardinal sin for her.

How did you come up with the idea of focusing on Hannah Arendt?

I have always been sort of aware of Hannah Arendt – but just really a lay person’s knowledge, or as I like to say, the typical NPR (National Public Radio) listener. But to focus on her? It was a combination of her fascinating life and how that might have led to equally fascinating thinking. And there were questions – for example, why did she say she was “renouncing” philosophy? And was she?

Hannah Arendt is much more than the reporter of the Eichmann trial. What fascinates you about her thinking and work? 

She embraces life – in a full, original, and I think needed way. She’s a genius of a reader – I want to read anything she writes about. Her heroic honesty – as I sometimes say, she was/is an “equal opportunity upsetter”. She calls it like she sees it. And although she was a very sociable person, she had a horror of being a “joiner”. Her ideas are the gifts that keep giving – although I suspect she would like many of them to fade away … And she’s very snide and funny – and great to draw.

The interview was conducted by Bernd Isele.