Introduction to the Arendt-Gaus Interview 1
Natan Sznaider
The date is 16 September 1964. A man and a woman enter a studio to record an interview for the German television program Zur Person. As you will see, the man looks rather tense. She is a famous philosopher. He, twenty-three years her junior, is one of Germany’s most prominent journalists. The interview is supposed to air one time only. Moreover, the first thing the woman says is that she is no philosopher—a statement quite confusing to the journalist, who keeps insisting that in his eyes she is. However, this is of course about more than just the journalist’s viewpoint. Right at the beginning she makes a point about what it means to be a thinking person in the world. Politics is about acting in the world; philosophy is about thinking about the world. The tension between the two is crucial for her and clearly defines not only her thinking. Finally, at 9:30 pm on 26 October 1964, six weeks after its recording, the interview is broadcast on the newly established Second German TV channel—the ZDF. There was no reference to it in the newspapers, even though the interview would receive an important prize later on. That could have been it. Zur Person was only broadcast between April 1963 and April 1966 in its first version. Hannah Arendt was the seventeenth guest on the program, the first female after sixteen men in a series of interviews conducted by Günther Gaus. Both he and Arendt are smoking, so you know it is an old program. As you will see, they talk about philosophy, writing, the role of women, Arendt’s childhood, emigration, the Holocaust, and her Eichmann book, which had just been translated into German. You will never experience Arendt as personally as you will in this interview. She is crystal clear, her German sharper than ever. She is visibly nervous, but her nervousness just makes her more focused in her language and in her answers. What you will see is not only a period piece but also a dialogue between generations. Gaus, 35 years old at the time, typifies the new Germany after the Nazi period. He was a left liberal journalist, very much a member of the new West German elite, very much seeing himself as apart from the generation of his parents and grandparents, thinking he can be at ease talking as a German to a Jew. Moreover, you will see a dialogue between a man and a woman—as already mentioned, the first woman to appear on the program. Arendt is very much aware of that and talks about the role of women. She has not done this very often; it may even be the first time she does it in public. However, there is 116
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