With a lengthy presentation inscription from the author to the German lawyer and politician Adolf Arndt (1904-1974) in black ink to the front free endpaper: ‘In sehr freundlich Erinnerung an den schönen Abend bei Dr. Newman. Ihre dankbare Mandantin Hannah Arendt Weihnachten 1967’.
Adolf Arndt had assisted Arendt’s lawyer Dr. Randolph H. Newman in the legal proceedings following Arendt’s claim for restitution having been forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1933, hence the reference to ‘Mandantin’ (‘client’) in the presentation inscription. Arendt’s restitution claim would take years to settle, before eventually being granted by the German Supreme Court who established that her academic career had been definitively interrupted by the rise of Nazi Germany. Adolf Arndt had himself personally suffered during the Third Reich, being forced to compulsory labour as half Jewish, but went on to become a major figure in post-war German politics as a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
The first German translation of Arendt’s On Revolution, originally published in English earlier in the same year, a comparative study of the French and American Revolutions serving as a companion text to The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).
Autographed Arendt material is notably scarce and comes seldom on to the market.
