Q. How do I make an appointment to use the Hannah Arendt Archives at the New School?

The New School Archives and Special Collections has a small collection of Hannah Arendt’s faculty files from her time teaching at The New School. This finding aid describes the collection: https://findingaids.archives.newschool.edu/repositories/3/resources/233.

The collection is mainly undigitized, however, users can browse through a small selection of student files through The New School Archives digital collections database. Access to the rest of the files in the collection may be consulted by appointment only. Please contact The New School Archives at archivist@newschool.edu to schedule a visit. New School Archives appointments must be booked two weeks in advance. 

A large, completely digitized collection of Hannah Arendt’s papers are fully available online through the United States Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/collections/hannah-arendt-papers/. The collection contains correspondence, articles, lectures, speeches, book manuscripts, transcripts of Adolf Eichmann’s trial proceedings, notes, printed matter pertaining to Arendt’s writings, family and personal materials, evidence of Arendt’s network of fellow intellectuals, editors, writers, and theorists, and documentation of her academic affiliations and courses taught.

Previously, a portion of this collection was only available through onsite access at The New School, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and the University of Oldenburg in Germany. As of 2023, visiting these sites in person is no longer necessary for full access to the Library of Congress’s Hannah Arendt papers. Access to the List Center Library at The New School is no longer granted for users of the Hannah Arendt computer terminal.