Thomas Meyer, born in Bernkastel-Kues in 1966, specializes in modern German philosophy and the history of ideas. He earned his doctorate in 2003 and completed his habilitation in 2009. Meyer is currently a professor of philosophy at LMU Munich and also works as a freelance author based in Berlin. He has held teaching positions at the Universities of Chicago, Vanderbilt (Nashville), Wake Forest (Winston-Salem), Zurich and Graz.

His writing has appeared in leading publications such as DIE ZEIT, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Jüdische Allgemeine, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, BR2 and Deutschlandfunk. He has published extensively on Ernst Cassirer, as well as on Jewish philosophy and theology. His 2006 biography of Ernst Cassirer was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. His most recent works include HANNAH ARENDT: DIE BIOGRAFIE and ÜBER PALÄSTINA (ed.).

Books by Thomas Meyer

Hannah Arendt: A Life of the Mind

written by Thomas Meyer, translated by Shelley Frisch - Biography, Nonfiction

Drawing on newly discovered archival materials and previously overlooked documents, Thomas Meyer tells the story of an intellectual icon whose character and ideas continue to captivate and challenge us to this day. Tracing anew Hannah Arendt’s journey from Königsberg to Paris, where she fled after being imprisoned in 1933, and finally to New York in 1941, Meyer illuminates her formative years and the development of her radical and brilliant books, as well as her lifelong philosophical debate with Martin Heidegger, whose Nazism was a permanent challenge for her. Meyer’s account centers on two pivotal phases: Arendt’s years in Paris after fleeing Nazi Germany and her time in the United States leading up to the landmark publication of THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM in 1951.