In 1933, the Gestapo arrested and imprisoned  Hannah Arendt,  a 26-year-old Jewish scholar, on a charge of treason, carrying a possible death sentence.  This is the true story that inspired Jenny Lyn Bader to write “Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library,” the latest production of which is running at 59e59 through October 25. (“Mrs. Stern” because Arendt was married to fellow philosophy student Gunther Stern at the time.)  

Since we know that Hannah Arendt survived, because she became a famous political theorist best known for her works “The Origins of Totalitarianism” and “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” it can be no spoiler that the Nazis did not execute her.  But the way this play dramatizes the events that unfolded in her prison cell in Berlin in 1933 struck me as so far-fetched that I felt forced afterward to research what really happened.

The story, as Hannah Arendt recounted it herself decades later, was indeed improbable. But Bader takes such liberties with Arendt’s already incredible account that I find it hard to appreciate as fully as other people have the playwright’s effort to try to turn the incident into a taut, intelligent and resonant work of theater.

Officer Karl Frick (Brett Temple) escorts Ella Kaille (Hannah) into a cell, frisks her, takes her fingerprints, and interrogates her. We eventually learn that she was informed on by a librarian, and stands accused of having used the Prussian State Library to gather evidence of the official antisemitism by government and the various professions. Officer Karl does his job, but he’s new, recently “promoted” from  the ordinary police department responsible for criminal investigations to the “political police.”  Hannah is able to convince him of her innocence, although she did indeed do what she was accused of. 

In basic outline this, remarkably, largely fits in with the account that Arendt gave In a televised interview in 1964 with the German journalist Günter Gaus (available on YouTube.) She had copied the material, she explained, on behalf of Dr. Karl Blumenfeld, head of the Zionist Organization of Germany, in order to show the outside world what was going on in Germany. An excerpt from a translation of the interview: “I was very lucky. I got out after eight days because I became friends with the officer who had arrested me. He was a lovely guy…Unfortunately I had to lie to this man…I told him fantastic stories, and he always said. ‘I brought you in. I’ll get you out again.’”

I simply cannot picture Arendt’s “lovely guy” whom she befriended as the chisel-cheeked youth dressed impeccably in familiar Nazi-era uniform that Brett Temple portrays. I imagine he was an older, unambitious, not especially bright man, somebody who had fought in the war, had become a police officer because that was the best job he could get, and had accepted his promotion  because he felt he had no choice, but on some level understood he was over his head, with neither the brutal skills nor the ugly passion to be an effective Nazi thug.

My speculation has little basis in fact, but it seems more likely than the character that the playwright has created. It’s Karl’s first week on the job, and he is determined to be by-the-book. But he is also courteous from the start, as well as sympathetic. He is  well-read, something of an intellectual who likes to study maps and recall the Latin lessons from his schooling. He has read through Arendt’s relatively abstruse past scholarship (presumably but implausibly to find incriminating evidence) and engages in conversation about her philosophy. He shares memories with her of a beloved teacher in his childhood, and how he met his wife, then asking her to reciprocate about how she met her husband. Karl and Hannah even recite poetry together.

This not only feels fanciful; it could be construed as a violation of Arendt’s major insight about totalitarian society  — that the people who make it run are ordinary to the point of banal. But it  does enable the audience to get a glimpse of the fascinating life and bracing times of the real-life figure of Hannah Arendt. Without Karl’s intellectual curiosity, it would be more difficult for the production to have mentioned some of Arendt’s philosophical ideas. If Karl were more realistic, the play would not have as lively a back-and-forth; the effort of Hannah to outwit Karl would not need to be as artful; she manages to convince him that she was wandering the library looking for recipes. There would be less room for humor.

There is an implicit acknowledgement that the duo’s exchanges were not enough to carry an entire play, with an extended scene with a Jewish lawyer (Drew Hirschfield) who visits Hannah in prison, on behalf of the Zionist organization. This supplies much of the heavy expository lifting about Arendt’s mission in the library, and its historical context. It also gives the play the opportunity to show just how brilliantly strategic Hannah is, because she rejects his representation, realizing she is better off using her own smarts informally to win over Karl.

This production of “Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library,” which is well-designed, is the latest of several successful runs over the past few years, including last month at the stately Traverse Theater in Edinburgh. What its popularity says to me is that Hannah Arendt is a character worth dramatizing, and Jenny Lyn Bader should try again.

Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library
59e59 through October 25
Running time: 90 minutes no intermission
Tickets: $76-$96
Written by Jenny Lyn Bader
Directed by Ari Laura Kreith
Scenic design by Lauren Helpern
Lighting design by Zachary Connell
Sound design by Megan Culley
Costume Design by Deborah Caney 
Cast: Ella Kaille as Hannah, Brett Temple as Karl, Drew Hirschfield as Eric