Between Friends:
The Correspondence of
Hannah Arendt and
Mary McCarthy 1949 – 1975
Hannah Arendt once complained to her friend Mary McCarthy about how long it took her to translate The Human Condition, and that she was cursing God and the world.
Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy met in a bar in Manhattan in 1945. It was the start of a friendship that would last over 25 years, and would produce a correspondence that is one of the 20th century's most remarkable and consists of hundreds of letters. Open, funny, sometimes sharp-tongued and always carried by a deep affection, the two 'femmes de lettres' discuss politics and philosophy, literature and love, their contemporaries, books and men.
The letters are evidence of a friendship that indelibly links thinking to life and is characterised by a startling openness, moving, inspiring and more thrilling than quite a few novels. They talk about their shared search and mutual criticism, about a closeness that spans continents and the fearlessness of two women who had a mind of their own. Between Friends proves how two friends can think differently, how important arguing with each other was for the development of their respective powers of judgement and how unquestioningly they supported each other in important moments.
Martina Gedeck and Claudia Michelsen bring Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy to life in a kind of conversation about the 20th century that is a unique recent history record.
Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was born in Hanover and studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, who supervised her PhD in 1928. In 1933, she emigrated to Paris, in 1941 to New York. She worked as an editor and freelance author, and later taught in Princeton, Chicago and at the New School for Social Research in New York from 1967 onwards.
Mary McCarthy (1912 – 1989) was an American writer, art and theatre critic. She spent her early years in New York's intellectual milieu and then lived in Italy and France from the 1950s onwards, penning social criticism essays and novels, and found fame with her autobiographical novel The Group.
Martina Gedeck is an internationally successful and celebrated actor. She has so far acted in over 80 movie and TV productions, although she can also be experienced in the theatre. Joint programmes with musicians occupy a special place in her creative output.
Claudia Michelsen is an actress with a fine instinct for authentically portraying women in situations that push them to the edge. She has worked with directors such as Heiner Müller, Frank Castorf and Luc Bondy, and has won several prizes, such as the Grimme-Preis television award. She became well-known for her appearances in the Magdeburg-set episodes of the TV crime series Polizeiruf 110 as well as the series' Ku'damm 56, 59 and 63, and the film In a Land That No Longer Exists.
Dramatic rights: © Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust and © The Mary McCarthy Literary Trust c/o Georges Borchardt, Inc. (New York), represented by Mohrbooks AG (Zurich), for the German translation © Piper Verlag GmbH Munich
