Born in Germany of Jewish parents, Johannah Arendt experienced tragedy young, when, at age seven, she lost her father to syphilis. The best biography of her intellectual development is to be found in Elizabeth Young Breuhl's nearly six hundred page tome, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. ¹ Arendt's early teens were a turbulent time, during which she became a voracious reader of German and French literature and philosophy. Her undergraduate education began at the University of Marburg for a year and continued for a year at the University of Freiburg. Her Ph.D. in Philosophy was completed at the University of Heidelberg when she was twenty-two.