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A Companion to Adorno
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A Companion to Adorno

Edited by
Peter E. Gordon
Espen Hammer
Max Pensky
This edition first published 2020
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data

Names: Gordon, Peter Eli, editor. | Hammer, Espen, editor. | Pensky, Max, editor.
Title: A companion to Adorno / edited by Peter E. Gordon, Espen Hammer,
Max Pensky.
Description: First edition. | Hoboken : Wiley, 2019. | Series: Blackwell
companions to philosophy ; 71
Identifiers: LCCN 2019024545 (print) | LCCN 2019024546 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781119146919 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119146926 (adobe pdf) |
ISBN 9781119146933 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Adorno, Theodor W., 1903–1969.
Classification: LCC B3199.A34 C655 2020 (print) | LCC B3199.A34 (ebook) |
DDC 193–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019024545
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019024546
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: Akademie der Künste, Photo: Ilse Mayer Gehrken, © T. W. Adorno Archiv, Frankfurt

Set in 10/12pt Photina by SPi Global, Pondicherry, India

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

Notes on Contributors ix
Editors’ Introduction xv
About the Editors xix

Part I Intellectual Foundations 1

1 Adorno: A Biographical Sketch 3
Peter E. Gordon
2 Adorno’s Inaugural Lecture: The Actuality of Philosophy in the Age
of Mass Production 21
Roger Foster
3 Reading Kierkegaard 35
Marcia Morgan
4 Guilt and Mourning: Adorno’s Debt to and Critique of Benjamin 51
Alexander Stern
5 Adorno and the Second Viennese School 67
Sherry D. Lee

Part II Cultural Analysis 85

6 The Culture Industry 87
Fred Rush
7 Adorno and Horkheimer on Anti-Semitism 103
Fabian Freyenhagen
8 Adorno and Jazz 123
Andrew Bowie
9 Adorno’s Democratic Modernism in America: Leaders and Educators
as Political Artists 139
Shannon Mariotti
10 Inhuman Methods for an Inhumane World: Adorno’s Empirical
Social Research, 1938–1950 153
Charles Clavey

v
ConTEnTS

Part III History and Domination 173

11 Adorno and Blumenberg: nonconceptuality and the Bilderverbot 175
Martin Jay
12 Philosophy of History 193
Iain Macdonald
13 The Anthropology in Dialectic of Enlightenment 207
Pierre-François Noppen
14 Adorno’s Reception of Weber and Lukács 221
Michael J. Thompson
15 Adorno’s Aesthetic Model of Social Critique 237
Andrew Huddleston
16 The Critique of the Enlightenment 251
Martin Shuster

Part IV Social Theory and Empirical Inquiry 271

17 “nothing is True Except the Exaggerations:” The Legacy of The
Authoritarian Personality 273
David Jenemann
18 Exposing Antagonisms: Adorno on the Possibilities of Sociology 287
Matthias Benzer and Juljan Krause
19 Adorno and Marx 303
Peter Osborne
20 Adorno’s Three Contributions to a Theory of Mass Psychology and
Why They Matter 321
Eli Zaretsky
21 Adorno and Postwar German Society 335
Jakob Norberg

Part V Aesthetics 349

22 Aesthetic Autonomy 351
Owen Hulatt
23 Adorno and Literary Criticism 365
Henry W. Pickford
24 Adorno as a Modernist Writer 383
Richard Eldridge
25 Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory 397
Eva Geulen
26 Aesthetic Theory as Social Theory 413
Peter Uwe Hohendahl

vi
 ConTEnTS

27 Adorno, Music, and the Ineffable 427

Michael Gallope
28 Adorno and opera 443
Richard Leppert

Part VI Negative Dialectics 457

29 What Is negative Dialectics?: Adorno’s Reevaluation of Hegel 459
Terry Pinkard
30 Adorno’s Critique of Heidegger 473
Espen Hammer
31 Concept and object: Adorno’s Critique of Kant 487
J. M. Bernstein
32 Critique and Disappointment: Negative Dialectics as Late Philosophy 503
Max Pensky
33 negative Dialectics and Philosophical Truth 519
Brian O’Connor
34 Adorno and Scholem: The Heretical Redemption of Metaphysics 531
Asaf Angermann
35 Adorno’s Concept of Metaphysical Experience 549
Peter E. Gordon

Part VII Ethics and Politics 565

36 After Auschwitz 567
Christian Skirke
37 Forever Resistant? Adorno and Radical Transformation of Society 583
Maeve Cooke
38 Adorno’s Materialist Ethic of Love 601
Kathy J. Kiloh
39 Adorno’s Metaphysics of Moral Solidarity in the Moment of its Fall 615
James Gordon Finlayson

Index 631

vii
 Notes on Contributors

Asaf Angermann is Lecturer and Associate Research Scholar in Humanities, Philosophy,

and Judaic Studies at Yale University. He is the author of Beschädigte Ironie: Kierkegaard,
Adorno und die negative Dialektik kritischer Subjektivität (de Gruyter, 2013), the editor of
Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem, “Der liebe Gott wohnt im Detail”: Briefwechsel
1939–1969 (Suhrkamp, 2015), and the Hebrew translator and editor of Theodor W.
Adorno: Education to Autonomous Thinking (HaKibbutz HaMeuchad, 2017).
Matthias Benzer is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sheffield, England, where
he teaches social and sociological theory. Among his publications on Adorno’s sociology is
The Sociology of Theodor Adorno (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Matthias is currently
finishing a monograph (with Kate Reed) on the socio‐theoretical analysis of “social life.”
J. M. Bernstein is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School for
Social Research. His research has focused on Critical Theory, aesthetics, ethics, and the
philosophy of law. Among his books are: Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (2002); Against
Voluptuous Bodies: Late Modernism and the Meaning of Painting (2006); and, most recently,
Torture and Dignity: An Essay on Moral Injury (2015). He is completing a study entitled
Notes Toward a Minor Utopia of Everyday Life: Human Rights and the Construction of Human
Dignity.
Andrew Bowie is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and German at Royal Holloway,
University of London. He has published very widely on modern philosophy, music, and
literature, and is a jazz saxophonist. His books are: Aesthetics and Subjectivity: from Kant to
Nietzsche; Schelling and Modern European Philosophy; F.W.J. von Schelling: “On the History of
Modern Philosophy”; From Romanticism to Critical Theory. The Philosophy of German Literary
Theory; Manfred Frank: “The Subject and the Text”; F.D.E. Schleiermacher, “Hermeneutics and
Criticism” and Other Writings; Introduction to German Philosophy from Kant to Habermas;
Music, Philosophy, and Modernity; and Philosophical Variations: Music as Philosophical
Language; German Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction; and Adorno and the Ends of
Philosophy.
Charles Clavey is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Harvard University.
Maeve Cooke is Professor of Philosophy at University College Dublin, Ireland and a
member of the Royal Irish Academy. She is the author of many articles in the area of social
and political philosophy. Her books include Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas’s
Pragmatics (MIT Press, 1994) and Re‐Presenting the Good Society (MIT Press, 2006). She is
on the editorial board of a number of scholarly journals and has held visiting appoint-
ments at universities in the United States and Europe.

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NoTES oN CoNTRIbUToRS

Richard Eldridge is Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Philosophy at

Swarthmore College. He is the author, most recently, of Images of History: Kant, Benjamin,
Freedom, and the Human Subject (oxford University Press, 2016) and Werner
Herzog – Filmmaker and Philosopher (bloomsbury, 2018). He is the Series Editor of Oxford
Studies in Philosophy and Literature. He has held visiting positions in bremen, Essex,
Stanford, Freiburg, and Sydney. He has published widely in philosophy of literature,
aesthetics, German philosophy, and Romanticism.
James Gordon Finlayson works at the University of Sussex. He teaches philosophy,
Critical Theory, and social and political thought and directs the Centre for Social and
Political Thought. He writes articles and books on social and political thought. He is the
author of The Habermas Rawls Debate (Columbia University Press, 2019), and is working
on a book on transcendental homelessness in Adorno’s life and work.
Roger Foster is the author of Adorno: The Recovery of Experience (SUNY, 2007) and
Adorno and Philosophical Modernism: The Inside of Things (Lexington, 2016), as well as
numerous papers and book reviews on the tradition of Critical Social Theory. He teaches
philosophy at the borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of
New York.
Fabian Freyenhagen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex, UK. His publi-
cations include Adorno’s Practical Philosophy: Living Less Wrongly (Cambridge University
Press, 2013) and articles and book chapters on Critical Theory. Among his future projects
is a historically informed ethics after Auschwitz that builds on Adorno’s work.
Michael Gallope is Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and
Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota where he is a McKnight Presidential
Fellow. He is the author of Deep Refrains: Music, Philosophy, and the Ineffable (University of
Chicago Press, 2017), as well as over a dozen articles and essays on music and philosophy.
As a musician, he works in a variety of genres from avant‐garde composition to rock and
West African electronica.
Eva Geulen is Director of the Centre for Literary and Cultural Research and teaches at
Humboldt University in berlin. She studied German Literature and Philosophy at the
University of Freiburg and The Johns Hopkins University. She has held teaching positions
at Stanford University, the University of Rochester, and New York University and was
Professor of German Literature at the University of bonn and at Goethe University
Frankfurt. Her research focuses on literature and philosophy from the eighteenth century
to the present, pedagogical discourses around 1800 and 1900 as well as Goethe’s mor-
phology and its reception in the twentieth century. Her publications include: Aus dem Leben
der Form. Goethes Morphologie und die Nager (August Verlag 2016); The End of Art. Readings
of a Rumor after Hegel (Stanford University Press, 2006); Giorgio Agamben zur Einführung
(Junius Verlag, 2005, 3rd edition 2016); Worthörig wider Willen. Darstellungsproblematik
und Sprachreflexion in der Prosa Adalbert Stifters (1992); and essays on Nietzsche, benjamin,
Raabe, Thomas Mann, and others. Since 2004, she has been co‐editor of the Zeitschrift für
deutsche Philologie.
Andrew Huddleston is Reader in Philosophy at birkbeck College, University of London.
Prior to coming to birkbeck, he was a Fellow at Exeter College, oxford. He specializes in
German philosophy, as well as in aesthetics, ethics, and social philosophy. He has published

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 NoTES oN CoNTRIbUToRS

a number of articles on these topics. His book Nietzsche on the Decadence and Flourishing of
Culture (2019) was published with oxford University Press.
Owen Hulatt is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York. He is the author of
Adorno’s Theory of Philosophical and Aesthetic Truth (Columbia University Press, 2016). His
current research interests include Spinoza’s metaphysics, Louis Althusser’s late work, and
aesthetics. He is currently writing a monograph on aleatory materialism.
David Jenemann is Professor of English and Film and Television Studies at the University
of Vermont where he serves as the co‐director of the UVM Humanities Center. He is the
author of Adorno in America (2007) and The Baseball Glove: History, Material, Meaning, and
Value as well as a number of essays on Critical Theory and cultural history. He is currently
writing a biography of Adorno.
Kathy J. Kiloh is Assistant Professor of philosophy at oCAD University in Toronto, Canada.
Juljan Krause is a researcher in social philosophy, philosophy of technology, and science
and technology studies at the University of Southampton, UK. He is the editor of the
philosophy journal Evental Aesthetics. Juljan is currently working on a monograph that
explores the social and political dimensions of building the quantum internet.
Sherry D. Lee is Associate Professor of Musicology and Associate Dean of Research at the
University of Toronto Faculty of Music. A specialist in music and modernist cultures,
nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century opera, and philosophical aesthetics, her work appears
in JAMS, Cambridge Opera Journal, Music and Letters, 19th‐Century Music, the Germanic
Review, and several collected volumes, the more recent including the Oxford Handbook of
Music and Disability Studies (oxford University Press, 2015), Music, Modern Culture, and the
Critical Ear (Routledge, 2017), and Korngold and His World (forthcoming 2019). Her mono-
graph Adorno at the Opera is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, and with Daniel
Grimley she is preparing The Cambridge Companion to Music and Modernism.
Richard Leppert is Regents Professor and Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching
Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. His research is concentrated on Western European
and American cultural history from the seventeenth century to the present. His
most recent book is Aesthetic Technologies of Modernity, Subjectivity, and Nature (Opera –
Orchestra – Phonograph – Film) (University of California Press, 2015). His current research
focuses on the history of phonography and film music.
Iain Macdonald is Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal. His area of spe-
cialization is nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century European philosophy, including Hegel,
Marx, Critical Theory, phenomenology, and aesthetics. Among other things, he is the author
of What Would Be Different: Figures of Possibility in Adorno (Stanford University Press, 2019).
Shannon Mariotti is Professor of Political Science at Southwestern University. She is
the author of Adorno and Democracy: The American Years (University Press of Kentucky,
2016) and Thoreau’s Democratic Withdrawal: Alienation, Participation, and Modernity
(University of Wisconsin Press, 2010). She is also co‐editor of A Political Companion to
Marilynne Robinson (University Press of Kentucky, 2016). Her work explores the practice
of democracy in everyday life, with a focus on sensory perception, experience, and aes-
thetics. She takes a comparative political theory approach to nineteenth‐century American

xi
NoTES oN CoNTRIbUToRS

Transcendentalism, twentieth‐century Critical Social Theory, and the emerging area of

buddhist political theory. Her current book project is titled Zen Democracy: Buddhism,
Modernism and the Experience of Democracy.
Marcia Morgan is Associate Professor of Philosophy and affiliate faculty member in
Jewish studies, sustainability studies, and women’s and gender studies at Muhlenberg
College. She is the recipient of the Donald b. Hoffman Research Fellowship for 2018–2019.
She has recently published articles in Revue Internationale de Philosophie, Journal of
Speculative Philosophy, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, and Thesis Eleven, and
book chapters in the anthologies, Critical Theories and the Budapest School (Routledge,
2017) and Benjamin, Adorno, and the Experience of Literature (Routledge, 2018).
Pierre‐François Noppen (PhD, Sorbonne) is Assistant Professor in the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Saskatchewan. He specializes in modern and contempo-
rary German philosophy, social and political philosophy and Critical Theory. His current
research is on Adorno’s materialism. He served as president of the Association for Adorno
Studies.
Jakob Norberg is Associate Professor of German at Duke University. He is the author of
Sociability and Its Enemies: German Political Thought After 1945 as well as essays on Theodor
W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Georg Lukács, and Carl Schmitt.
Peter Osborne is Professor of Modern European Philosophy and Director of the Centre
for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University, London. He
has held Visiting Chairs in the Philosophy Department at the University of Paris 8 (2014,
2019), the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2015), and Yale University School of Art
(2017). His books include: The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant‐Garde (Verso, 1995,
2011); Philosophy in Cultural Theory (Routledge, 2000); Conceptual Art (Phaidon Press,
2002); Marx (Granta, 2005), Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art (Verso,
2013); and The Postconceptual Condition (Verso, 2018). He is the editor of the three‐volume
Walter Benjamin: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory (Routledge, 2005). From 1983 to
2016 he was an editor of the british journal Radical Philosophy.
Brian O’Connor is Professor of Philosophy at University College Dublin. He is the author
of Adorno’s Negative Dialectic (2004), Adorno (2013), Idleness: A Philosophical Essay (2018),
and editor of The Adorno Reader (2000).
Henry W. Pickford is Associate Professor of German and Philosophy at Duke University.
He is the author of The Sense of Semblance: Philosophical Analyses of Holocaust Art, Thinking
with Tolstoy and Wittgenstein: Expression, Emotion and Art; co‐author of In Defense of
Intuitions: A New Rationalist Manifesto; co‐editor of Der aufrechte Gang im windschiefen
Kapitalismus; editor and translator of Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords
and Lev Loseff, Selected Early Poems.
Terry Pinkard teaches philosophy at Georgetown University. Among his publications are
(with Cambridge University Press): Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (1994);
Hegel: A Biography (2000); German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism (2002);
with oxford University Press, Hegel’s Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life
(2012); with Harvard University Press, Does History Make Sense? Hegel on the Historical
Shapes of Justice, 2017. In 2018 his translation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit was pub-
lished by Cambridge University Press.

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 NoTES oN CoNTRIbUToRS

Fred Rush is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of
Irony and Idealism (oxford University Press, 2016), On Architecture (Routledge, 2009), and
the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory (Cambridge University Press,
2004) and the Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus (2004–2014). He is
working on a book in the philosophy of film called Film’s Experience.
Peter Uwe Hohendahl Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Comparative
Literature and German Studies, Cornell University; Director of the Institute for German
Cultural Studies, 1992–2007; American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2003—; selected
publications include: Building a National Literature: The Case of Germany, 1830–1870
(Cornell University Press, 1989); Reappraisals: Shifting Alignments in Postwar Critical Theory
(Cornell University Press, 1991); Prismatic Thought: Theodor W. Adorno (University of
Nebraska Press, 1995); The Fleeting Promise of Art: Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory Revisited
(Cornell University Press, 2013); and Perilous Futures: On Carl Schmitt’s Late Writings
(Cornell University Press, 2018).
Martin Shuster teaches at Goucher College in baltimore, MD, where he is part of the
Center for Geographies of Justice. In addition to many articles, he is the author of Autonomy
after Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity and New Television: The Aesthetics
and Politics of a Genre, both published by the University of Chicago Press, in 2014 and
2017, respectively. Most recently, with Daniela Ginsburg, he translated Jean‐François
Kervégan’s L’effectif et le rationnel: Hegel et l’esprit objectif, published as The Actual and The
Rational: Hegel and Objective Spirit, also by the University of Chicago Press in 2018.
Christian Skirke is Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam. He publishes on
Critical Theory, existentialism, and phenomenology.
Alexander Stern received his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame and works on
the philosophy of language, social and political philosophy, and aesthetics. His writing has
appeared in the European Journal of Philosophy and Critical Horizons, as well as in the New
York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His recent
book is The Fall of Language: Benjamin and Wittgenstein on Meaning (Harvard University
Press, 2019).
Michael J. Thompson is Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political
Science, William Paterson University. Some of his recent books include: The Politics of
Inequality (Columbia University Press, 2012); The Domestication of Critical Theory (Rowman
and Littlefield, 2016); as well as the edited The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory
(Palgrave, 2017); Hegel’s Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Politics (Routledge, 2018); and,
with Greg Smulewicz‐Zucker, Anti‐Science and the Assault on Democracy: Defending Reason in
a Free Society (Prometheus, 2018). He is the author of the forthcoming, The Specter of
Babel: Political Judgment and the Crisis of Modernity (SUNY) and Twilight of the Self: The
Eclipse of Autonomy in Modern Society (Stanford University Press).
Eli Zaretsky is Professor of History at the New School for Social Research. He is the author
of Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life (HarperCollins, 1985); Secrets of the Soul: A Social
and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis (Three Rivers Press, 2005); Why America Needs a Left
(Polity Press, 2012); and Political Freud: A History (Columbia University Press, 2017).

xiii
 Editors’ Introduction

A full half‐century has passed since Adorno’s death in 1969. In the intervening years the
landscape of his critical reception has transformed and diversified in manifold ways. In the
early years Adorno was most often seen alongside his colleague Max Horkheimer as a par-
tisan of Critical Theory in the philosophical tradition of the Institute for Social Research,
also known as the “Frankfurt School.” Among his students, he was admired as a returned
émigré and public intellectual who embodied the spirit of the Weimar era and used his
moral authority to challenge the stifling atmosphere of conservativism and political
repression in postwar Germany. In publications such as Minima Moralia and in radio
addresses on political as well as cultural themes, he fastened his attention on the question
of how to reimagine philosophy and art after Auschwitz. Jürgen Habermas, who com-
menced his studies in Frankfurt in 1956, later wrote of Adorno that he was “the only
genius I have met in my life.” but this reputation was highly ambivalent. by the later
1960s, Adorno found himself at odds with more militant members of the New Left who
came to see him as an ally of the political establishment. His rarefied philosophical style
and his mandarin aesthetic sensibility left him vulnerable to charges of cultural elitism
and political quietism. His confrontation with student activists in the final months before
his death cast a shadow over his legacy that would take years to dispel. by the 1980s and
1990s, a new generation of scholars looked to his philosophical legacy with fresh con-
cerns. The ascendant wave of interest in the cultural and literary criticism of his colleague
and friend Walter benjamin led to a deepened appreciation for Adorno’s own legacy as a
cultural critic, while literary and theoretical fashions associated with French
poststructuralism led to surprising if unlikely exercises in comparison. by the turn of the
millennium, Adorno had reemerged in scholarship in a rather new guise, as a thinker
whose works were best understood in their full independence as contributions to defining
questions of the philosophical canon. Fifty years on, the time has arrived for a summation
and critical reappraisal of this formidable legacy.
No doubt, the very idea of a comprehensive summary would have aroused Adorno’s ire.
From the beginning of his career Adorno looked with skepticism on philosophical efforts to
embrace all of human reality, both social and intellectual, within the logic of a single,
totalizing framework. In “The Actuality of Philosophy,” his 1931 inaugural lecture as pro-
fessor at the University of Frankfurt, he argued that “Whoever chooses philosophy as a
profession today must first reject the illusion that earlier philosophical enterprises began
with: that the power of thought is sufficient to grasp the totality of the real” (Adorno
1931, 24). In his habilitation on Kierkegaard, Adorno presented himself as a materialist
who would read philosophical texts against the grain and resist the allure of the grand

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EDIToRS’ INTRoDUCTIoN

philosophical system. The concept that seeks to subsume the plenitude of reality became
for Adorno a sign of the subject’s will to mastery and a philosophical correlate for social
domination. In a conscious rejoinder to Hegel’s famous dictum from the Phenomenology of
Spirit that “the true is the whole,” Adorno wrote in Minima Moralia that “the whole is the
false”. This principled resistance to the totalizing ambitions of the mind helps to explain
Adorno’s conviction that dialectics could no longer strive for seamless reconciliation; only
a “negative dialectic” could remain attentive to the insufficiency of the concept and pay
homage to what he called the “preponderance of the object.” This emphasis on the unrec-
onciled condition of social reality, with its materialist appeal to the persistence of objective
suffering, became the leitmotif throughout Adorno’s work not only in philosophy but in
his cultural and aesthetic criticism as well. In the “late‐style” of beethoven’s music and in
the ruined and unredeemed landscapes portrayed by Samuel beckett, Adorno discerned
the “cracks and fissures” of the only aesthetic style suitable to the catastrophic world of
late‐capitalist modernity.
but Adorno was never only a philosopher in the conventional sense. His mind was
always restless, untethered from all disciplinary orthodoxies and the bonds of established
method. Trained in musical composition and gifted with an unusual sensitivity to both
music and literature, Adorno authored important studies on figures of the European
musical canon, including monographs on berg, Mahler, Wagner, and the (unfinished)
study of beethoven, along with literary analyses of Kafka, Hölderlin, and beckett. Especially
during his years in exile in the United States, he came to appreciate the possibilities of
empirical sociological research; during his initial years in New York he collaborated with
Paul Lazarsfeld at Princeton University on a study of radio listening; and, during the later
1940s in California, he joined the research team at berkeley in the landmark study in
social psychology, The Authoritarian Personality, published in 1950. Upon his return to
Germany he continued his sociological research in the 1950s with inquiries into the
postwar persistence of Nazi sympathies in German public opinion, most notably in Group
Experiment and Guilt and Defense. Adorno also applied his critical and sociological skills to
the analysis of mass‐cultural or commodified art, the products of what he and Horkheimer
called the “culture industry.” Most notoriously, Adorno wrote a handful of essays on jazz,
which he condemned as an especially pernicious form of commodified art and pseudo‐
individuality. In all such inquiry Adorno sustained the uncompromising posture of an
intellectual who feared that the emancipatory promise of the modern age was falling into
eclipse and that it was the critic’s preeminent task to fasten one’s attention on the persis-
tence of negativity in the midst of an increasingly “affirmative” culture that denied the
possibility of genuine transformation. In his final and most formidable work of philosophy,
Negative Dialectics (1966) he set forth the core principles that would inform this task. In the
posthumously published and never‐finished Aesthetic Theory (1970), he entertained the
question of what sort of critical potentials might be said to survive in modern art in the
midst of an increasingly uncritical world.
In this volume, we have convened an extraordinary group of scholars from a variety of
disciplines to address what we believe to be the most promising and enduring facets of
Adorno’s intellectual legacy. The chapters that follow concentrate primarily on the
philosophical concerns that remained of central importance for Adorno himself. but the
chapters also speak to the centrality of aesthetic, musical, moral, political, and sociolog-
ical themes in Adorno’s oeuvre. As editors we have undertaken this volume with some
humility and in the recognition that no compendium of critical scholarship could possibly

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 EDIToRS’ INTRoDUCTIoN

do justice to the richness of Adorno’s thought. but we hope that this collection will serve
as a helpful resource for those who wish further to explore the still‐undiminished power
of his legacy.

Reference
Adorno, T.W. (1931). The Actuality of Philosophy. In: The Adorno Reader (trans. b. Snow;
ed. b. o’Connor), 23–39. Malden, MA: blackwell.

xvii
 About the Editors

Peter E. Gordon is Amabel b. James Professor of History and Faculty Affiliate in the
Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. Among is his more recent books are
Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (2010) and Adorno and Existence (2016). He is
also the co‐editor, with Espen Hammer and Axel Honneth, of The Routledge Companion to
the Frankfurt School (2018).
Espen Hammer is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, Philadelphia. He is the
author of Stanley Cavell: Skepticism, Subjectivity, and the Ordinary (Polity Press, 2002),
Adorno and the Political (Routledge, 2006), Philosophy and Temporality from Kant to Critical
Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and Adorno’s Modernism: Art, Experience, and
Catastrophe (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Max Pensky is Professor of Philosophy at binghamton University, the State University
of New York. His publications on Critical Theory include Melancholy Dialectics: Walter
Benjamin and the Play of Mourning (University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), The Ends of
Solidarity: Discourse Theory in Ethics and Politics (SUNY, 2008), and (with Wendy o. brown
and Peter E. Gordon) Authoritarianism: Three Inquiries in Critical Theory (Chicago University
Press, 2018).

xix
 Part I

Intellectual Foundations
 1

Adorno: A Biographical Sketch

PETER E. GORDON

Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund‐Adorno was born in Frankfurt am Main on Friday

September 11, 1903, the only son of Oscar Wiesengrund, a German‐Jewish wine mer-
chant, and Maria Calvelli‐Adorno della Piana, a talented singer of Corsican‐Catholic
descent. The young Theodor, known as “Teddie,” was baptized as a Catholic after the faith
of his mother, but grew up without a strong sense of religious identity. His household was
notably rich in music thanks to the influence of his mother and his maternal aunt Agatha,
a singer and pianist whom Teddie called his “second mother.” When he was not occupied
with his academic studies and his music lessons the young Teddie would play with friends
in the “spookily pleasurable” corners of the cellar beneath the house where his father
stored his wines (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 20). The young Adorno was a “pampered child,” a
“slightly built” and “shy boy” who was taunted on the playground as a “unique person
who outshone even the best boys in the class” (quoted in Müller‐Doohm 2005, 34; quoting
reminiscence of Erich Pfeiffer‐Belli).
Adorno received his education in Frankfurt, attending the Kaiser‐Wilhelm Gymnasium
from 1913 to 1921. In the early 1920s, Adorno forged an intimate friendship with
Siegfried Kracauer, and the two met together on regular occasions for an intensive study of
Kant’s first Critique. Adorno pursued a further education in music at the Hoch conserva-
tory in Frankfurt, where he studied piano and composition; he published music and opera
reviews throughout the early 1920s. Around 1923, Adorno met Gretel Karplus, the highly
educated and culturally sophisticated daughter of a leather manufacturer in Frankfurt.
Gretel received a doctorate in chemistry at age 23 and was known to spend her time in the
company of prominent intellectuals such as Brecht, Bloch, and Walter Benjamin, with
whom she formed a strong friendship. Teddie and Gretel would be married only in 1937;
they had no children, and it is perhaps revealing that in a letter to her friend Benjamin she
refers to Adorno her husband as their “problem child” (Sorgenkind).
At the age of 17, Adorno entered the new University of Frankfurt, where he studied
various fields: sociology, art history, musicology, and psychology, but mostly philosophy.
His chief instructor in philosophy, Hans Cornelius, was unusually broad‐minded; a spe-
cialist in neo‐Kantianism but also a pianist, sculptor, and painter. Under his guidance,
Adorno completed his dissertation in 1924 on “The Transcendence of the Thingly and the

A Companion to Adorno, First Edition. Edited by Peter E. Gordon, Espen Hammer, and Max Pensky.
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

3
PETER E. GORDON

Noematic in Husserl’s Phenomenology.” A critical study of Husserl’s phenomenology, the

dissertation examined the tension in Husserl’s work between the immanent objects of
consciousness and the consciousness‐transcendent objects in the world. Along with an
unsuccessful 1927 habilitation on the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious, the
Husserl-dissertation is typically seen as an exercise in purely academic themes, but
Adorno’s effort to identify contradictions clearly anticipates the philosopher’s later practice
of immanent critique (Bloch 2017).
Throughout the later 1920s, Adorno found himself poised between two possible
careers. While he continued to pursue his philosophical interests, he also dedicated him-
self with greater energy to musical composition. It was in 1924 that Adorno first made the
acquaintance of Alban Berg, the composer who had apprenticed with Arnold Schoenberg
and was considered, together with Anton Webern, a member of the so‐called “Second
Viennese School” of musical modernism. The Schoenbergian breakthrough to atonality,
often characterized as “the emancipation of dissonance,” had an enormous impact on
Adorno, whose early compositional efforts, such as the String Quartet (1921) bear obvious
affinities to Schoenberg’s style; by 1925 Adorno had commenced studies in musical
composition with Berg in Vienna. Adorno’s talents in musical analysis and composition
were considerable (Paddison 1993). Throughout the later 1920s he continued under
Berg’s tutelage, publishing music reviews while devoting himself in earnest to composi-
tion; in December 1926, his Pieces for String Quartet was performed by the Kolisch Quartet.
Berg, however, recognized that Adorno found himself at a crossroads: “it is your calling,”
he wrote, “to achieve the utmost [and] … you shall … fulfill this in the form of great
philosophical works. Whether your musical work (I mean your composing), which I have
such grand hopes for, will not lose out through it, is a worry that afflicts me whenever I
think of you. For it is clear: one day you will, as you are someone who does nothing by
halves […] have to choose either Kant or Beethoven” (Adorno and Berg 2005, 44).
By the later 1920s, Adorno seemed to be moving toward a decision. Although he continued
musical composition and would remain seriously committed to musicological criticism, he
also selected a topic for a habilitation in philosophy, which he began writing in 1929. Accepted
by the theologian Paul Tillich in 1931 and published two years later as Kierkegaard: The
Construction of the Aesthetic, the book bears the strong imprint of the author’s deepening
friendship with Walter Benjamin, whom he had first met in 1923 and whose cultural and
literary criticism would remain, despite their considerable differences, a primary source of
inspiration throughout Adorno’s life. In works such as The Origin of German Tragic Drama
(1928) and in early drafts for a study of the Paris arcades, Benjamin had begun to develop an
idiosyncratic style of critical reading that fastened upon particular elements of cultural life in
a materialist mode, by plunging into their detail and drawing out allegorical lessons for
broader problems of history. Adorno’s study of Kierkegaard bears a strong resemblance to his
friend’s allegorical manner of materialist interpretation: rather than reading Kierkegaard as a
theologian or proto‐existentialist, Adorno seeks to expose the social‐historical underpinnings
of the Dane’s ideology as a child of the rising bourgeoisie. The typical living space or interiéur
of the bourgeois apartment is shown to be the materialist correlate to Kierkegaard’s subjec-
tivist philosophy. Submitted to the university in February 1931, the habilitation received
enthusiastic comments from both Tillich and Horkheimer, and Adorno had every reason to
hope that he could now embark on a successful career as a professor of philosophy.
Meanwhile, Adorno’s affiliation with the Institute for Social Research had grown in
importance and he had developed a lasting friendship with the philosopher Max
Horkheimer, who, like Adorno, had been a student of Cornelius and in 1931 was appointed

4
 ADORNO: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

as the Institute’s new director (Jay 1996). That same year Adorno, equipped with a license
to teach, gave his inaugural address at Frankfurt, “The Actuality of Philosophy” (Adorno
2000). In the lecture Adorno speaks to the widespread sense of a “crisis” in the various
schools of philosophical idealism. He criticizes neo‐Kantianism, philosophical
anthropology, and Heideggerian ontology, all of which, despite their differences, remain
captive to the fantasy that they can grasp all of reality even while they are trapped in “the
realm of subjectivity.” Against these subjective and idealist tendencies Adorno insists that
philosophy must embrace what he calls “the thinking of materialism” (Adorno TP, 32).
Whereas traditional philosophy searches for “meta‐historical, symbolically meaningful
ideas,” the way forward will require a strategy of interpretation. The task of philosophy will
be “to interpret unintentional reality,” and this can be done only if philosophy looks away
from ideal forms to those that are “non-symbolic” and constituted “inner-historically”
(Adorno TP, 32–33). The new emphasis on historical interpretation must look away from
truths that are ideal and toward “unintentional truth” (Adorno TP, 33). The materialist
approach to interpretation is possible only “dialectically,” and this means that much of the
effort must involve immanent criticism or even the “liquidation” of reigning philosophical
systems that make claims to knowledge of totality (Adorno TP, 34). Philosophy must not
seek the security of idealistic systems and it should not protect itself from “the break‐in of
what is irreducible.” Against the illusions of a systematic form, philosophy must embrace
the form of the essay with its focus on appearance rather than essence, the particular
rather than the general. This critical method could be accused of “unfruitful negativity,”
but Adorno is ready to accept this charge. “For the mind (Geist) is indeed not capable of
producing or grasping the totality of the real, but it may be possible to penetrate the detail,
to explode in miniature the mass of merely existing reality” (Adorno TP, 38).
The inaugural lecture is striking in its anticipation of themes that would preoccupy
Adorno throughout his philosophical career. The appeal to that which is particular and
irreducible to thought already points toward the emphasis on the “non‐identical” and the
turn to the object as points of critical leverage for what Adorno would later call “negative
dialectics.” Other lectures and seminars from this period also bear witness to Adorno’s
enormous debts to Walter Benjamin. Despite the fact that his friend had failed to secure a
habilitation with the study of German tragic drama, Adorno continued to feel that
Benjamin’s work deserved serious philosophical attention: he devoted two seminars on
aesthetics to the study of Benjamin’s Trauerspiel book, and in 1932 also presented a lec-
ture, “The Idea of Natural History,” to the Kant Society in Frankfurt in which he lavished
praise on Benjamin’s method of allegorical interpretation as a route beyond the false
antithesis between history and nature. Benjamin responded with gratitude even as he took
note of the way in which Adorno had made extensive use of his ideas both in the lecture
and especially in the Kierkegaard book. “[I]t is true,” Benjamin wrote, “that there is
something like a shared work after all” (quoted in Müller‐Doohm 2005, 129).
With the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 Adorno’s chances for a career in Germany came
to an end. By the terms of the April “Law for the Restoration of the German Civil Service,”
Adorno was classified as a “half‐Jew” and was no longer permitted to hold a professorship
in Germany. Adorno was by no means ashamed of his father’s Jewish identity, but the legal
designation imposed on him by the state bore little connection to his own self‐conception.
Baptized in his mother’s faith as a Catholic, Adorno had spent his formative years in a
strongly Jewish milieu and often found himself characterized as a Jew in spite of his indif-
ference to his father’s religious heritance and his general resistance to all categories of
ethno‐national or religious belonging. His childhood friend Erich Pfeiffer‐Belli would later

5
PETER E. GORDON

recall that “We all knew that he was Jewish” but also added that any persecution that the
young Adorno had experienced on the playground was “not anti‐Semitic” but was simply
due to the usual hostility that the “stupid” boys directed at the one who outshone all the
others in the classroom (quoted in Müller‐Doohm 2005, 34). By the mid‐1930s, however,
Adorno’s relative indifference to questions of personal identity was to matter far less than
the official ruling by the new authoritarian state that defined citizenship in explicitly racist
terms. In September 1933, he received a letter that informed him that his license to teach
had been revoked, and after some months of hesitation he made the decision to leave
Germany and set about seeking employment elsewhere. Uncertain plans for transferring
his professorial license to either Istanbul or Vienna fell through, and Adorno then applied
himself to the task of securing a position in England, where connections through his
paternal uncle seemed to promise greater success. In 1934, he was admitted as an
advanced student in philosophy at Oxford.
Adorno’s period of study in England did not prove terribly fruitful, despite some contact
with a few philosophers (most notably Gilbert Ryle) who shared his interests in phenome-
nology and other trends that were in vogue back in Germany but less appreciated in Oxford.
A.J. Ayer would later recall Adorno as “a comic figure” whose “dandified manner” could
not mask his “anxiety” to be taken seriously (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 190). Adorno spent
much of his time at Oxford immersed in studies of Husserlian philosophy that would only
appear in book‐length form after the war as Metacritique of Epistemology (1956). His aging
parents remained for some time in Germany and he made frequent trips back to Frankfurt
to see them and also to visit Gretel, who continued to manage the co‐owned factory in
Berlin. Oscar Wiesengrund, like many German Jews of his generation, had served in the
army during the First World War and had even received a Cross of Honor that he believed
would protect him from state persecution. As the political situation deteriorated and the
Nazis consolidated their rule over all spheres of government and society, Adorno gradually
awakened to the fact that it was no longer safe for his family to remain in Germany.
In these precarious circumstances Adorno could take some comfort in deepening his
personal and professional bond with Horkheimer. In fact, he had already begun publishing
in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, the Institute’s journal, beginning with the inaugural
issue in 1932. His early essays for the journal demonstrate his continued interest in
working at the boundary‐line between musicology and socially inflected philosophy. In his
first essay for the Zeitschrift, “On the Social Situation of Music,” (1932) Adorno argues that
if music succeeds in resisting its reduction to the commodity form it will be able to portray
the antinomies of society within its own formal language. “It is not for music to stare in
helpless horror at society,” Adorno writes. Music “fulfills its social function more precisely
when it presents social problems through its own material and according to its own formal
laws.” Musical autonomy is not a retreat into social irrelevance but a precondition for
music’s social meaning; music will “call for change through the coded language of
suffering” (Adorno 2002, 393). The alternative was for music to abandon its claims to
autonomy and sink to the level of the commodity form where all critical possibilities would
be defeated. Adorno developed this point with especially polemical vigor in his essay “On
Jazz,” that was written during his stay in Oxford and appeared in the Zeitschrift under the
pseudonym of Hektor Rottweiler. Jazz, Adorno argued, was a thoroughly commercialized
musical form that promised only the illusion of freedom. “The improvisatory immediacy
which constitutes its partial success counts strictly among those attempts to break out of a
fetishized commodity world which want to escape that world without ever changing it,
thus moving ever deeper into its snare” (Adorno 2002, 478). It should be noted that

6
 ADORNO: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Adorno’s knowledge of jazz was severely limited: he knew virtually nothing about the
African‐American idiom and aimed his criticism primarily at “dance‐band commercial
jazz” such as the standardized music played by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra (Paddison
2004, 113.) He therefore had little patience for romantic claims that jazz could serve as a
vehicle for authentic self‐expression. “With jazz, a disenfranchized subjectivity plunges
from the commodity world into the commodity world; the system does not allow for a way
out. Whatever primordial instinct is recovered in this is not a longed‐for freedom, but
rather a regression through suppression” (Adorno 2002, 478).
The controversy over jazz should be understood within the context of Adorno’s general
critique of reification in capitalist culture. During the mid‐1930s, this critique grew espe-
cially pronounced in Adorno’s debate with Walter Benjamin, who took a rather more
favorable view of the possibilities of mass‐produced art. In late February 1936, Benjamin
sent to Adorno a draft of his essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproducibility,” in which he argued that the dissolution of the aura thanks to modern
technical conditions of reproduction and circulation could open up new possibilities for
the mass‐reception of modern art as a medium for collective politicization. In a long letter
sent from London on March 18, 1936, Adorno sharply dissented from his friend’s claims.
He was especially troubled by what he considered the “anarchistic romanticism” that had
distorted Benjamin’s views of the proletariat. Under the influence of his friendship with
the more militant and communist‐inclined Bertholt Brecht, Benjamin was too sanguine
concerning the prospect for the masses to awaken to political agency by absorbing mass‐
reproduced artworks in a state of distraction. Nor was Adorno convinced by Benjamin’s
critique of the traditional ideal of aesthetic autonomy. “Dialectical though your essay is”,
Adorno wrote, “it is less than this in the case of the autonomous work of art itself,” “for it
neglects a fundamental experience which daily becomes increasingly evident to me in my
musical work, that precisely the uttermost consistency in the pursuit of the technical laws
of autonomous art actually transforms this art itself, and, instead of turning it into a fetish
or taboo, brings it that much closer to a state of freedom” (Adorno and Benjamin 2001,
129). Adorno did not mince words; he clearly felt that his intellectual friendship with
Benjamin was in jeopardy. “[M]y own task,” he wrote, “is to hold your art steady until the
Brechtian sun has finally sunk beneath its exotic waters” (Adorno and Benjamin 2001,
132). The debate with Benjamin was to continue even after the latter’s death; traces of
their dispute can be detected nearly everywhere in Adorno’s later work and even in the
pages of Aesthetic Theory.
Meanwhile, the situation in Europe was growing more ominous. By the autumn of
1937, Adorno had recognized that his chances for a new academic career in England were
slim, and as the Nazis expanded their anti‐Jewish policies his father’s business in Frankfurt
was under threat, which meant that he could no longer rely on financial support from his
family. On September 8, he and Gretel were at last married, a fact that only enhanced his
sense of bourgeois responsibility. Despite his growing attachment to the Institute and espe-
cially to Horkheimer, the Institute’s own financial difficulties meant that it had only been
able to provide him with a half‐time position with a diminished salary. It was therefore a
great relief when Horkheimer sent him a telegram with the good news of an invitation to
move to the United States as a research associate on the Princeton Radio Project with the
sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld. Adorno did not hesitate in accepting the offer and, in February
1938, Teddie and Gretel boarded a steamer for New York. Adorno’s parents, however, were
now in serious danger: Maria was briefly arrested, and his father suffered injuries when his
offices were broken into. Oscar caught pneumonia, which delayed their plans for escape.

7
PETER E. GORDON

Eventually they were able to leave Germany: they arrived in Cuba in May 1939, and then
made their way to the United States by early February 1940 (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 261;
Adorno 2006, 36).
As an émigré in the New World Adorno was eager to prove his worth as soon as possible.
His earliest essay, written during a summer sojourn in Bar Harbor, Maine, was “On the
Fetish‐Character in Music and Regression in Hearing,” published in the Zeitschrift in 1938.
The essay can be read as a rejoinder to Benjamin’s reflections on the artwork and its
mechanical reproducibility (Buck‐Morss 1977). Music, Adorno writes, has been converted
in capitalist culture into a commodity to such a degree that the exchange value of a musical
work now colonizes its very content. Mass music has become standardized to the extent
that musical works become interchangeable and are structured only for easy consump-
tion. This fetish‐character in turn afflicts the consciousness of the mass of listeners, who
consume the stereotyped products of mass society in a state of “deconcentration” that
bespeaks not freedom but instead regression and a “catastrophic phase” in modern culture
(Adorno 2002, 313).
The essay also served as an entry ticket for Adorno’s new position as a researcher with
Lazarsfeld in New Jersey. The Princeton Radio Project was meant to be an empirically based
study that would examine the role played in daily experience by this relatively new medium
of communication. The Vienna‐born sociologist Lazarsfeld was the director of the project
under the title “The Essential Value of Radio to All Types of Listeners,” for which he recruited
Adorno, whose work he had known and admired since the early 1930s. Almost from the
start, however, the collaboration was plagued by misunderstanding and dissent. Adorno’s
negative attitude toward radio listening comes through with unmistakable force in texts
such as “A Social Critique of Radio Music,” which he presented to his fellow researchers in
October 1939. “Commodity listening” on the radio allowed the listener to “dispense as far
as possible with any effort,” even if such effort were required for genuine understanding.
The intellectual element in listening was displaced by merely gustatory experience: “It is the
ideal of Aunt Jemima’s ready‐mix for pancakes extended to the field of music. The listener
suspends all intellectual activity when dealing with music and is content with consuming
and evaluating its gustatory qualities – just as if the music which tasted best were also the
best music possible” (Adorno 2009, 137). Later in life when he reflected on his experiences
as a European intellectual in America, Adorno would still recall with disdain what he con-
sidered the mindless emphasis on data collection that had characterized the Princeton
Radio Project. The machine that allowed research subjects to signal their “like” or “dislike”
during the radio performance of a given musical selection seemed to Adorno highly inade-
quate as a means of comprehending the place of music in mass society, not least because it
appeared to isolate the individual stimulus from the total context of society. When he was
confronted with the demand to “measure culture,” Adorno responded that “culture might
be precisely that condition that excludes a mentality capable of measuring it” (Adorno
1969, 347). Needless to say, such opinions did not sit well with Lazarsfeld’s team. When it
came time to renew funding for the project Adorno was not invited to continue.
Fortunately, Horkheimer was able to secure for Adorno a dependable and permanent
position as a member of the Institute, which had moved by then into its offices in New
York’s Morningside Heights in the vicinity of Columbia University. For reasons of space,
Adorno himself did not have an office in the building, but he nonetheless enjoyed a special
role as Horkheimer’s closest intellectual companion. By the end of the 1930s, the two men
were at the beginning stages of planning a work that they described as a “dialectical logic.”
Adorno would never feel entirely at home in the United States, and the experience of

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 ADORNO: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

dislocation is a crucial theme in Minima Moralia, the book of “reflections from damaged
life” that he composed during his exile and dedicated to Horkheimer: “Every intellectual in
emigration is, without exception, mutilated, and does well to acknowledge it to himself, if
he wishes to avoid being cruelly apprised of it behind the tightly closed doors of his self‐
esteem.” He felt himself to be a fish out of water, displaced not only from his native lan-
guage but also from the ambient horizon of cultural references that he cherished. “The
isolation,” he added, “is made worse by the formation of closed and politically controlled
groups, mistrustful of their members, hostile to those branded different” (Adorno MM, 13;
English version, 33). He nonetheless accepted invitations to lecture and made efforts to
strengthen his bonds, on the premise that it might prove necessary to remain in his adopted
country for the remainder of his life. In February 1940, he gave a lecture on “Kierkegaard’s
Doctrine of Love” at Columbia University; and he even spoke on the radio for the first time,
offering an introduction to a performance by the Kolisch quartet of musical works by
Schoenberg and Krenek (among others) (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 262).
But if his friendship with Horkheimer left Adorno with a growing sense of intellectual
satisfaction, his feelings of success in the United States were qualified by the daily reports
of the darkening political conditions in Europe. He was especially concerned for his friend
Walter Benjamin, whose situation in Paris in 1939–1940 had grown increasingly precar-
ious. In September 1939, Benjamin had been interned outside Paris and, later, at Nevers.
By February 1940 he had fled southward from Paris to Lourdes: “The complete uncer-
tainty about what the next day, even the next hour, may bring has dominated my life for
weeks now,” he wrote. “I am condemned to read every newspaper […] as if it were a
summons served on me in particular” (Adorno and Benjamin Correspondence 2001,
Letter 120, 339). Horkheimer was meanwhile struggling to secure a visa for Benjamin’s
safe passage from Europe to the United States, but the crucial French exit‐visa was still
lacking. On September 25, Benjamin wrote a final letter to Henny Gurland from Port Bou:
“In a situation with no escape, I have no other choice but to finish it all. It is in a tiny village
in the Pyrenees, where no one knows me, that my life must come to an end. I would ask you
to pass on my thoughts to my friend Adorno and to explain to him the situation in which I
have now found myself ” (Adorno and Benjamin Correspondence 2001, Letter 121). When
Adorno heard the news that Benjamin had taken his life, he wrote a despairing letter to
their mutual friend Gershom Scholem: “It is completely inconceivable,” he wrote. “What it
means for us, I cannot say in words, it has transformed our intellectual and empirical
existence to the innermost core” (Adorno and Scholem 2015, 33).
In the spring of 1941, Horkheimer moved to Los Angeles and settled in Pacific Palisades,
a neighborhood that had already become well‐known as a refuge for Central European
émigrés such as the novelist Thomas Mann, who lived nearby. Los Angeles had become a
kind of “Weimar on the Pacific,” thickly populated with intellectuals and artists such as
Arnold Schoneberg, Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Bertholt Brecht. Adorno
soon came to feel that his proximity to Horkheimer was of highest importance if the two
were to embark upon writing their co‐authored “dialectical logic.” Once the decision was
made, it took several months for Adorno and Gretel to manage all of the logistics for the
move. By the end of November, Adorno wrote to his parents in New York about the journey
by train that he and Gretel had taken from the East Coast to Los Angeles: “We travelled
through the Rockies in the state of Wyoming on Monday night, and did not even notice the
difference in altitude. Tuesday through snowy Utah with the big Salt Lake. The landscape
seems strange, with those mountains that suddenly shoot up out of the plain like pyra-
mids, and increasingly disappear as one approaches Nevada.” Max Horkheimer and his

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PETER E. GORDON

wife Maidon were at the station to greet the new arrivals, who marveled at the new sur-
roundings. “The beauty of the region is so incomparable that even such a hard‐boiled
European as myself can only surrender to it,” Adorno wrote. “The shape of the mountain
[…] is more reminiscent of Tuscany,” he added, noting with pleasure that “one actually has
the feeling that this part of the world is inhabited by humanoid beings, not only by gasoline
stations and hot dogs” (Adorno 2006, 70).
Adorno and Gretel now lived in a house not far from Horkheimer; a dwelling where
Adorno could arrange not only his library but also make room for a grand piano. Adorno
and Horkheimer were poised to begin working in earnest on the book that they now
planned to call Dialectic of Enlightenment. In conceiving of its argument, the memory of
their recently deceased colleague Walter Benjamin weighed heavily on their minds.
Adorno now had in his possession the manuscript of Benjamin’s essay, “On the Concept
of History,” and he shared with Horkheimer his sense of intellectual sympathy for its
themes: “It contains Benjamin’s final concepts,” he wrote, adding that “none of
Benjamin’s works shows him closer to our intentions than this. This relates above all to
the conception of history as permanent catastrophe, the critique of progress and mastery
of nature, and the place of culture” (quoted in Wiggershaus 1995, 311; from Adorno to
Horkheimer, June 12, 1941). Dialectic of Enlightenment was in most every respect a collab-
orative effort, though traces remain of primary authorship: Adorno, it seems, was respon-
sible for at least the initial drafts of the “excursus” on Odysseus, and the chapter on the
“culture‐industry.” But every portion of the book underwent extensive revision to such a
degree that each chapter ultimately reflects the imprint of both authors, who met daily
for conversations that were recorded by Gretel and then subjected to scrupulous revision.
It took nearly two and a half years for Adorno and Horkheimer to finish the manuscript,
and it was published in mimeograph format in May 1944 with a dedication to their
Institute colleague Friedrich Pollock.
Dialectic of Enlightenment is a highly speculative exercise that surveys the entire history
of human self‐assertion from mythic and Homeric times to the twentieth century. “What
we had set out to do,” the authors write in the 1944 preface, “was nothing less than to
explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a renewed
barbarism” (Adorno and Horkheimer DE, xiv). Its core thesis is that reason has betrayed its
emancipatory promise: rather than leading to genuine freedom it has been distorted into a
mere instrument for the domination of nature. If primitive myths were already attempts to
explain and thereby disenchant the nature that terrified and threatened the human being,
then myth was already a species of enlightenment. But because enlightenment has lost its
capacity for self‐reflection and has become nothing but a compulsive and thoughtless
exercise in domination it has come to resemble the myths it wished to dispel. The enlight-
enment thus describes a transhistorical pattern of self‐sabotage whereby reason has
become irrational. This general framework permits the authors to examine specific facets of
human conduct in distinct chapters that focus on Homer’s Odyssey, the writings of de
Sade, Kant, and Nietzsche, the effects of commodified culture, and the function of anti‐
Semitism. It is a book that reflects the darkness of the political era in which it was written.
In the preface, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that its critique of enlightenment is meant
“to prepare a positive concept of enlightenment which liberates it from its entanglement in
blind domination” (Adorno and Horkheimer DE, xviii). But many readers have felt that
this positive concept is lacking and inconsistent with the book’s overall argument. It circles
without resolution around the question as to whether a truly self‐reflective species of
enlightenment is historically possible.

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 ADORNO: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

During his years in Los Angeles, Adorno also devoted a considerable amount of time to
writings about music. By 1941, upon his move to the West Coast, he had already com-
pleted the final draft of The Philosophy of New Music, though the book would not be pub-
lished in its original German edition until 1949. In many respects it is a musicological
statement of its author’s own painful yet necessary sense of dissociation from his current
surroundings. Music, he writes, must sustain a stance of determinate negation: it “pro-
tects its social truth by virtue of its antithesis to society, by virtue of its isolation, yet by the
same measure this isolation lets music wither” (Adorno 2006, 20). Adorno portrays the
contemporary situation in modern music as a dialectical contest between Schoenberg and
Stravinsky, where Schoenberg’s early phase of “free” atonality with its strains of subjective
lyricism and expressionism signifies “progress,” while Stravinsky’s compositions with their
fusion of modernism and archaism represent the “annihilation of the subject” and a will
to “regression.” But Adorno complicates this dualism by indicting the mature twelve‐tone
compositional technique as a mindless mechanism that expels subjectivity. He faults
Webern in particular for a “fetishism” of the twelve‐tone row (Adorno 2006, 86).
Schoenberg’s compositions were split between expressionist intensity and “administrative
impassivity.” This very tension, however, was the culminating phase in the musical tradi-
tion. Although old conventions of musical meaning have reached a point of collapse, in
Schoenberg’s music one can hear how the “fissures” between “twelve‐tone mechanics and
expression” became the last ciphers of musical meaning. The history of modern music
thus describes a dialectic into unfreedom: “The possibility of music itself has become
uncertain” (Adorno 2006, 87).
This verdict on modern music repeats themes that were already apparent, for example,
in the 1937 essay on Beethoven’s “late style,” in which Adorno had sought to characterize
the fragmentation or dialectical tension that was typical of the German composer’s music
in his final years (Adorno 2002, 564–568). The essay and the manuscript of The Philosophy
of New Music drew the attention of Thomas Mann, who by the early 1940s was working in
Los Angeles on his novel Doctor Faustus and turned to Adorno for assistance in writing the
sections of the book that demanded musicological description. Mann borrowed extensively
from Adorno’s characterization of late style, especially in chapter eight of the novel, in
which the character Wendell Kretschmar gives a lecture on Beethoven’s final piano sonata,
Number 32 in C Minor (Opus 111): “Beethoven’s late work,” declares Kretschmar, is
“untransformed by the subjective”; what is most “conventional” emerges with an “ego‐
abandonment,” as if art itself has abandoned “the appearance of art.” In Kretzschar’s lec-
ture on the sonata’s second movement Mann included a small homage to his musical
advisor: written in the form of a theme and variations, the movement begins by stating an
aria that opens with three simple notes (C, descending to G, and then a repeated G), a
“tranquil figure” which Kretschmar likens to verbal phrases such as “sky of blue,” or
“meadow‐land” (Wiesen‐grund), a sly reference to Adorno’s paternal last name (Mann
1997, 57–58). Mann’s debts to Adorno for the musical passages in the book were indeed
considerable: Adorno even wrote out extensive passages that describe fictitious works by
Adrian Leverkühn, the novel’s protagonist, passages that Mann inserted into the novel, in
some cases with only minor alteration (for evidence, see Müller‐Doohm 2005, 317–318).
In a letter to his parents, Adorno reported frequently on the collaboration with Mann, evi-
dently taking great pride in his advisory role even though he called it “a very peculiar rela-
tionship” (Adorno 2006, 274).
The end of the war in Europe brought great relief but little optimism for the future.
Adorno wrote to his parents that “I at least cannot shake off the feeling of ‘too late’ – in

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PETER E. GORDON

truth, the Germans have pulled the whole of civilization down with them” and “there is
every reason to believe that the principle upheld by the Nazis will outlast them.” He could
therefore hope for little more than “breathing spaces and loopholes” (Adorno 2006, May
1, 1945; quote from 217). In this rather grim mood Adorno did not believe that the United
States was in any sense immune from the fascist tendencies that had overwhelmed Europe.
The urgent question remained: What were the causes of the political catastrophe and what
potential was there for a similar barbarism to overtake the United States?
As early as 1942, Horkheimer had entered into discussions with the American Jewish
Committee to secure support for a major research study on anti‐Semitism as part of the
Institute’s multivolume Studies in Prejudice. By 1943, Adorno had agreed to join the study,
which demanded that he make frequent trips up the coast from Los Angeles to Berkeley,
where he convened with a research group of European émigré and American psycholo-
gists. The plan was to use surveys and intensive interviews to develop a social‐psychological
diagnostic tool that could identify the latent characterological traits of the fascist person-
ality. In helping to develop the questions for the study Adorno had drawn upon the
“Elements of Anti‐Semitism” chapter in Dialectic of Enlightenment (Müller‐Doohm 2005,
296). His intellectual collaboration with the Berkeley group ranks among his most suc-
cessful experiences in empirical sociology. The completed book was published in 1950 as
The Authoritarian Personality. But the experience was not without its challenges: Adorno
found it especially troubling that the study seemed to place undue stress on psychological
rather than social factors in explaining the emergence of authoritarianism. The study also
tended to see individuals as identifiable “types,” a problem that Adorno tried to resolve by
suggesting that mass society itself was becoming increasingly standardized (Gordon,
Authoritarianism, 2018). Nor should we neglect the simple fact that by temperament and
with a few notable exceptions (Horkheimer, Mann) Adorno did not often find collaboration
a congenial experience. His discontent with universities and group research programs is
recorded in the very first entry from Minima Moralia (1951): “The son of well‐do‐do par-
ents who, whether from talent or weakness, engages in a so‐called intellectual profession,
as an artist or a scholar, will have a particularly difficult time with those bearing the dis-
tasteful title of colleagues” (Adorno MM, 21).
In mid‐summer of 1946, Adorno received the sad word that his father had died. On
October 17, 1946 Adorno and Horkheimer received an invitation from Walter Hallstein,
the president of Frankfurt University, to return to Germany to assume new posts on the
faculty there. Adorno’s decision to return to Germany was not an easy one, not least
because his mother was now a widow and living alone in New York. As late as October
1947, he was writing to reassure his anxious mother that he did not plan to return to
Germany in the long term (Adorno 2006, 301). By October 1949, however, the decision
had been made though not without misgivings. In Minima Moralia Adorno had produced
an intellectual diary of his experiences in exile: “Nothing less is asked of the thinker today,”
he wrote, “than that he should be at every moment both within things and outside them”
(Adorno MM, 74). He could not feel that the return to Germany was a return to home since
the very idea of a homeland had assumed during his absence a monstrous meaning. “It is
part of morality,” he wrote, “not to be at home in one’s home” (Adorno MM, 39).
The Institute for Social Research reopened on November, 1951 in a new building, with
Horkheimer as its official director. Adorno found himself confronted with multiple respon-
sibilities that included both university teaching and overseeing numerous research pro-
jects for the Institute. His return was also punctuated by personal loss: he had been in

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 ADORNO: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Germany for little more than two years when he received word in late February 1952 that
his beloved mother had died. For an intellectual who had always retained certain child‐like
qualities, emotional delicacy combined with irrepressible imagination, the event marked a
symbolic transition: a definitive end to his own childhood. But he would continue to cher-
ish memories of his childhood well into his last years.
As a returned émigré in the postwar Federal Republic, Adorno did not waste time in
establishing himself as one of the foremost intellectuals in the public sphere. The
atmosphere of repression that pervaded West Germany after the war troubled him; “for the
heirs of the Nazis,” he wrote to Horkheimer, “forgetting and cold deceit is the intellectual
climate that works best” (quoted in Müller‐Doohm 2005, 330). Confronted with this ten-
dency to repression, he asserted himself with even greater energy in public debates, in
journals and on the radio, on topics such as “The Meaning of Working Through the Past”
(1959) and “Education after Auschwitz” (1968). He also published at an astonishing pace,
introducing German readers to texts many of which he had already completed while living
abroad: The Philosophy of New Music (1949); Minima Moralia (1951); In Search of Wagner
(1952); Prisms (1955); the Metacritique of Husserlian phenomenology (1956); Mahler: A
Musical Physiognomy (1960); and Introduction to the Sociology of Music (1962). Among his
many writings on literature were critical essays on Kafka, Hölderlin, and Beckett, all of
which bore witness to the author’s stylistic skills as a writer in the German language. In his
penchant for irony and in the very difficulty of his prose Adorno drew consciously on ante-
cedent writers such as Heinrich Heine and Karl Kraus. In the 1956 radio address, “Heine
the Wound,” Adorno extolled the German‐Jewish ironist of nineteenth‐century romanti-
cism as a critical resource against present‐day apologetics: “Heine’s stereotypical theme,
unrequited love, is an image for hopelessness, and the poetry devoted to it is an attempt to
draw estrangement itself into the sphere of intimate experience.” In a world that has been
injured, all language becomes as injured as was Heine himself. “The wound that is Heine,”
he concluded, “will heal only in a society that has achieved reconciliation.” (Adorno 1994,
80–85: 85.)
Of all the literary figures in the modernist canon with whom Adorno felt the deepest
affinity, the most significant, it seems, was Samuel Beckett. Adorno had seen a production
of Endgame in Vienna in April, 1958 and he wrote to Horkheimer that the playwright’s
insights “coincide with our own” (Quoted in Müller‐Doohm 2005, 357). To Friedrich
Pollock he explained that “Beckett is concerned with the same phenomenon as critical
theory: to depict the meaninglessness of our society and to protest about it, while pre-
serving the idea of better things in that protest” (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 357). In late
November, 1958, during a lecture trip to Paris Adorno met Beckett for the first time and
the two engaged in an extended conversation. In 1961 he completed the essay, “Trying to
Understand Endgame.” For Adorno, Beckett’s singular importance lies in the fact that he
portrays characters in a landscape of catastrophe. Endgame resists any and all interpreta-
tion that seeks to discover a universal or humanistic “meaning,” and for this reason the
play is opposed to all existentialisms. It “mocks the spectator with the suggestion of
something symbolic, something which, like Kafka, it then withholds” (Adorno 1994,
241–275; 251). The absurdity that is staged in Beckett’s work does not represent something
ahistorical as the existentialists suppose. On the contrary: it portrays the absurdity of his-
tory itself, “the nonsense in which reason terminates” (Adorno 1994, 241–275; 273).
In addition to his literary and musical writings, Adorno continued to devote an equal if
not greater share of his attention to lectures on philosophical themes. During his tenure at

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PETER E. GORDON

Frankfurt throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he offered lecture courses on such topics as
metaphysics, moral philosophy, dialectics, and aesthetics. These lectures drew a great
many students and helped to establish Adorno as one of the foremost voices in postwar
German philosophy. With Horkheimer’s retirement from the Institute in 1959, Adorno
was confronted with the added burdens of administration. In addition to directing the
Institute he also served as Chairman of the German Sociological Society and in 1961 par-
ticipated in the famous “positivism dispute” with Karl Popper. (See Müller‐Doohm 2005,
424–428; also see Adorno et al. The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology.) Especially dur-
ing the early 1960s, his regular lectures at Frankfurt, and occasional visiting lectures in
Paris and elsewhere, also gave him an ongoing forum in which to refine his own
philosophical commitments in preparation for writing Negative Dialectics, the 1966 book
he lovingly described as his “fat child” (dickes Kind).
Negative Dialectics is widely seen as the culminating statement of Adorno’s philosophical
career. But it is a book with diverse themes that are not easily aligned with any systematic
intent. Extended sections of the book consist in a vigorous and critical dismantling of
major thinkers in the modern philosophical canon, chiefly Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. All
three philosophers were of central importance for Adorno, not only because they repre-
sented crucial phases in the history of philosophy; the confrontation with the philosophical
tradition also served as the dialectical preparation for his own philosophical arguments.
This was especially true in the case of Hegel, whose philosophy had been a constant source
of inspiration but also a foil for Adorno as he sought to formulate the principles of a nega-
tive dialectic against Hegel’s dialectic of rational reconciliation. Already in 1963, Adorno
published Three Studies on Hegel, a small book that collected his occasional lectures from
the late 1950s and early 1960s, which Adorno described in the preface as “preparation for
a revised conception of the dialectic” (Adorno 1963, xxxvi). The significance of Heidegger’s
philosophy for Adorno was less obvious but hardly less dramatic (Macdonald and Ziarek
2008; Lafont 2018). In postwar Germany, Heidegger’s existential ontology had grown in
importance notwithstanding the well‐known secret of Heidegger’s scandalous record of
public support for the Third Reich. Adorno was a fierce and unsparing critic of Heidegger
but not only because of the German philosopher’s political conduct; he also saw how the
mannered qualities of Heidegger’s language had contributed to the flourishing of a
pseudo‐spiritual cultural style in postwar Germany (Gordon 2016). Because this com-
plaint was directed as much against the cultural discourse of “Heideggerism” (Heideggerei)
as against Heidegger’s actual philosophy, Adorno eventually decided to publish the cultural
polemic in a separate and shorter volume as The Jargon of Authenticity (1964). The book
was a devasting exercise in cultural criticism that punctured the inflated pretentions of
existentialism and compared its language to the false promises of modern advertising. The
jargon of authenticity, Adorno declared, was “the Wurlitzer organ of the spirit.” To mark
its appearance Adorno agreed with his publisher Suhrkamp to give a public reading that
provoked “laughter and applause” (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 433).
Negative Dialectics was a far more challenging book written with far‐reaching
philosophical ambitions. Adorno had labored over the text for seven years and referred to
it with pride as “my chief philosophical work” (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 434; letter to Helene
Berg). A bold passage in the preface declared his intent “to break through the delusion of
constitutive subjectivity by means of the power of the subject” (Adorno ND, 8). If tradi-
tional philosophy had assigned itself the task of reconciling thought with reality, Adorno
pronounced this task an impossibility. The manifest irrationality and suffering of the world

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 ADORNO: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

resisted philosophical comprehension, and the merely conceptual medium by which phi-
losophy had sought to understand the world must now admit its radical insufficiency when
confronted with the “non‐identical.” After Auschwitz the metaphysical ideal of reconciling
the real and the ideal was exposed as an outrage. “The capacity for metaphysics is crip-
pled,” Adorno wrote, “because what occurred smashed the basis of the compatibility of
speculative metaphysical thought with experience” (Adorno ND, 354–358). Metaphysics
could survive only a state of decay and in fragments that signified the negativity of an
unredeemed world. Upon the book’s publication Adorno immediately sent a copy to his
friend Gershom Scholem in Jerusalem. In the years since the death of their mutual friend
Benjamin, the two scholars had grown to admire one another and had forged a genuine
friendship, despite strong differences in philosophical orientation. Scholem wrote that he
had never read such a “chaste and restrained defense of metaphysics” but still detected a
strain of Marxist dogmatism that played the role of a deus ex machina in Adorno’s argu-
ments. (Adorno–Scholem, March 1, 1967; Letter 182, 407). Adorno hastened to respond
that the book’s materialism was altogether non‐dogmatic; it retained a deep affinity not
only with metaphysics but even with theology (Adorno and Scholem 2015, 414).
Negative Dialectics was the last major work to appear during Adorno’s lifetime. But its
completion by no means marked an end to the author’s productivity. Already in the fall of
1966, Adorno had begun to work in earnest on his book on aesthetics; he also offered at
least three lecture courses on the same topic (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 470). In November of
that year, however, he also received word of the death of his childhood friend and colleague
Siegfried Kracauer; in a letter to Horkheimer he recalled Kracauer’s importance as the
person who had first initiated him into philosophy (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 436). Adorno
himself had now passed his sixty‐third birthday and was slowly beginning to grasp the dif-
ficult truth that, for many of his students, he had become, despite himself, the embodiment
of tradition. In the late 1960s, as opposition to the Vietnam War flowed into a broader
spirit of social rebellion, Adorno’s relations with student activists in Frankfurt were
growing increasingly difficult.
The tension between Adorno and student activists in Frankfurt was due in part to
political controversies that swept through the Federal Republic in the later 1960s. In 1965,
the government amended the Basic Law to introduce the emergency powers laws or
Notstandgesetze, which students referred to as “NS‐Gesetze,” in reference to the Nazi‐era. In
1966 the Erhard government collapsed, leading to a grand coalition between the Christian
Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social‐Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) with Kurt‐
Georg Kiesinger appointed as chancellor. Between 1933 and 1945, Kiesinger had been not
only a member of the Nazi party but also a senior official in Goebbels’s ministry of propa-
ganda. For a great sector of the student movement it now appeared as if the German state
was an extension of Nazi‐era authoritarianism. Activists who saw the democratic system
as rotten to its core identified themselves as the “extra‐parliamentary opposition”
(Außerparlamentarische Opposition, or APO). In early June 1967, during a student protest
against the visit by the Shah of Iran, Benno Ohnesorg was shot and killed by police. At a
student conference in West Berlin to protest the killing, Rudi Dutschke called for
Kampfaktionen, provoking Adorno’s student Habermas to issue a warning about “action-
ism” and the risk of “left‐wing fascism.” By the spring of 1968, student groups were
beginning to occupy university buildings. Students at Frankfurt declared their school the
“Karl Marx University,” and an estimated 2000 students, led by the student activist Hans‐
Jürgen Krahl, moved to blockade the main building (Kundnani 2018).

15
PETER E. GORDON

Many students expressed great disappointment that Adorno did not speak more force-
fully in support of their cause. In September 1968, Krahl recalled that:

six months ago, when we were besieging the council of Frankfurt University, the only pro-
fessor who came to the students’ sit‐in was Professor Adorno. He was overwhelmed with ova-
tions. He made straight for the microphone, and just as he reached it, he ducked past and shot
into the philosophy seminar. In short, once again, on the threshold of practice, he retreated
into theory. (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 461)

But Adorno did not feel that participation in political activism was appropriate for someone
of his age or character. To student complaints that he had not joined the march on Bonn to
protest the emergency laws, Adorno replied: “I do not know if elderly gentlemen with a
paunch are the right people to take part in a demonstration” (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 461).
When the novelist Günther Grass accused Adorno of conformism, Adorno responded with
anger. In a letter from late 1968 he wrote to Grass that he would not “let myself be
browbeaten into what for years now I have called the principle of unilateral solidarity …
everything I have written makes clear that I have nothing in common with the students’
narrow‐minded direct action strategies which are already degenerating into an abominable
irrationalism” (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 461).
In early 1969 Adorno’s relations with Krahl and other student activists degenerated.
On January 31, students arrived at the Institute with a political program, and then occu-
pied the building. Adorno declared the occupation an illegal trespass and called for police
protection. In a written memorandum, he explained that:

The institute’s directors … had no choice, if only for legal reasons, but to accept the confronta-
tion that had been forced on them. They decided to ask for police assistance in clearing the
institute of intruders and to request them to bring charges for trespass against Herr Krahl and
others who had forced an entry into the building. (Adorno 1969b)

From Adorno’s perspective, the student militants appeared as a menacing mob with inde-
terminate aims. He wrote:

It is vital precisely for those who identify wholeheartedly with this aim of the extra‐
parliamentary opposition, that they should feel obligated to resist their own criminalization:
they should resist all authoritarian tendencies and equally all pseudo‐anarchistic acts of vio-
lence on the part of ostensibly left‐wing activists as well as crypto‐fascist actions from groups
on the extreme right. (Adorno 1969b)

In an April 1 letter to the film director and philosopher Alexander Kluge, Adorno expressed
his fears in rather more drastic and Kafkaesque terms: “[I do not see] why I should make a
martyr of myself to Herr Krahl, whom I picture putting a knife to my throat and getting
ready to use it and when I utter a mild protest, he responds by saying, ‘But Herr Professor,
it’s wrong to take these things personally’” (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 608–608).
The experience left Adorno feeling embittered and defensive. In a February 9 radio
address given on the Sender Freies Berlin, Adorno offered remarks on the theme of
“Resignation.” The remarks read like an explicit rejoinder to Krahl:

We older representatives of what the name ‘Frankfurt School’ has come to designate have
recently and eagerly been accused of resignation. We had indeed developed elements of a

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 ADORNO: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

critical theory of society, the accusation runs, but we were not ready to draw the practical con-
sequences from it. And so, we neither provided actionist programs nor did we even support
actions by those who felt inspired by critical theory.

In response to such accusations, Adorno insisted that student militants had misconstrued
the relation between theory and practice. They preferred “pseudo‐activity” to practice
informed by thought. What Adorno called “pseudo‐activity” was the premature rush to
realization that only instrumentalizes thought. If any idea were to be evaluated only in a
practical light, for its practical consequences, this would merely strengthen the spirit of
instrumental reason that had come to dominate late‐modern industrial societ. Students
who demanded immediate action were therefore the ones who had sabotaged the utopia
they claimed to uphold and had thereby betrayed the task of genuine emancipation. “The
uncompromisingly critical thinker, who neither signs over his consciousness nor lets him-
self be terrorized into action, is in truth the one who does not give in” (Adorno 1998, 292).
Thinking became for Adorno the best means of protecting utopia against its betrayal and
its premature instrumentalization. Thinking in the critical sense was “a form of praxis,”
and had more in common with “transformative praxis” than activity that conformed to
reality for the sake of praxis. “Prior to all particular content, thinking is actually a force of
resistance” (Adorno 1998, 293).
Such claims were unlikely to satisfy student militants who thirsted for the actual trans-
formation of both the university and society at large. On April 22, 1969, Adorno began
the first of his lectures for the summer semester in a course on “An Introduction to
Dialectical Thinking.” Two students, affiliated with the “leather‐jacket party” (a faction of
Students for a Democratic Society who were committed to direct action), mounted the
podium and insisted that Adorno engage in self‐criticism for having called the police and
for bringing legal charges against Krahl. Although many students protested against the
interruption of the lecture, Adorno quickly found that he could not proceed. Three female
students surrounded him on the platform, showered him with flower petals, and then
bared their breasts. Adorno fled the hall (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 475–476).
The symbolism of this event was overdetermined. To many students it was clear that
Adorno had become a symbol of the establishment. After he had rushed from the room, stu-
dents distributed a leaflet that declared: “Adorno as an Institution is Dead.” To Adorno it felt
as if the critical spirit he had worked so tirelessly to awaken among his students had taken its
ironic vengeance. He was left personally shaken and humiliated. “To have picked on me of
all people,” he despaired, “I who have always spoken out against every type of erotic repres-
sion and sexual taboo!” (quoted in Müller‐Doohm 2005, 476). Although he tried to resume
his lectures in June, protests continued and he determined that it was necessary to cancel his
teaching at least for the coming semester. In a letter to Herbert Marcuse he described himself
as “a badly battered Teddie” (Müller‐Doohm 2005, 478). In a letter to Gershom Scholem he
resorted to more drastic imagery: he described the contemporary scene in Frankfurt as
“Tohuwabohu,” the Hebrew term for primordial chaos (Adorno and Scholem 2015, 521).
In search of solace from the political disruption in Frankfurt, Adorno and Gretel went to
Switzerland, and on July 22 they drove to a hotel in Zermatt. Against his physician’s coun-
sel they journeyed by cable‐car to a mountain peak, where Adorno began to feel chest
pains. Later that day he was taken to the St. Maria hospital. On the morning of August 6,
1969 Gretel was informed that Adorno had died. The funeral was held without religious
ceremony in the Frankfurt Central Cemetery, where he was buried in the family tomb. An
estimated 2000 mourners were in attendance.

17
PETER E. GORDON

Adorno’s intellectual legacy would long outlive his death. In her sadness, Gretel com-
mitted herself to preparing the manuscript on aesthetics that Adorno had left in a partially
unfinished state. The book, which bore the ambiguous title Aesthetic Theory, and that the
author had intended to dedicate to Samuel Beckett, was published posthumously in 1970.
A searching reflection on the possibility of modern art, it does not seek to resolve the par-
adox of aesthetic transcendence: “Art is autonomous and it is not,” Adorno observed. Only
by seeking to rise above worldly conditions can art comment on those conditions. But its
commentary succeeds only if it registers through form what it refuses to thematize as
content. “The unresolved antagonisms of reality return in artworks as immanent prob-
lems of form” (Adorno AT, 6). Adorno’s emphasis on formalism aligned him theoretically
with traditions of classicism and high modernism (Hammer 2015). But his commitment
to the ideal of aesthetic autonomy should not be condemned as a document of political
quietism or as a sign of the author’s retreat into “mere” aesthetics. On the contrary, Adorno
was acutely aware of the social and historical guilt that accompanies art like a shadow,
especially after the catastrophes of the mid‐twentieth century. He nonetheless insisted that
art sustains, through its very claims to autonomy, a dialectical bond with the social condi-
tions it outwardly resists. “[I]t would be preferable,” he wrote, “that some fine day art van-
ish altogether than that it forget the suffering that is its expression” (Adorno 1997, 260).
In the years following Adorno’s death, some critics were inclined to dismiss him as a
bourgeois aesthete whose contribution to philosophy was either too rarefied in its content
or too recondite in its style to merit any lasting importance. More discerning readers, how-
ever, continue to discover in his work the resources for a critical style of thinking that
resists all complacency and refuses to sever philosophy from the social conditions that first
make it possible. The emphasis on the “negative” in Adorno’s thought is not mere nega-
tivism: it is all the more utopian the more it refuses to accept any image of utopia, since
only this refusal unbinds thought from any dogma and from the oppressive power of what
passes itself off as fact. “Thinking,” Adorno wrote, “is not the intellectual reproduction of
what already exists anyway.”

As long as it doesn’t break off, thinking has a secure hold on possibility. Its insatiable aspect, its
aversion to being quickly and easily satisfied, refuses the foolish wisdom of resignation. The
utopian moment in thinking is stronger the less it – this too a form of relapse – objectifies itself
into a utopia and hence sabotages its realization. Open thinking points beyond itself. (Adorno
1998, 292–293)

References
Adorno, T.W. (1969a). Scientific experiences of a European scholar in America. In: The European
Migration: Europe and America, 1930–1960 (eds. D. Fleming and B. Bailyn), 338–370. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Adorno, T.W. (1969b; 2000). Frankfurter Adorno Blätter, vol. 1 (ed. R. Tiedemann), 93–100. Munich:
Theodor‐Adorno Archiv.
Adorno, T.W. (1978). Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (trans. E.F.N. Jephcott). London:
Verso.
Adorno, T.W. (1982). Against Epistemology: A Metacritique. Studies in Husserl and the Phenomenological
Antinomies (trans. W. Domingo). Basil Blackwell.
Adorno, T.W. (1991). Heine the Wound. In: Notes to Literature, vol. 1 (trans. Shierry Weber
Nicholsen), 80–85. New York: Columbia University Press.

18
 ADORNO: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Adorno, T.W. (1993). Trying to Understand Endgame. In: Notes to Literature, Vol. 1 (trans. Shierry
Weber Nicholsen), 241–275. New York: Columbia University Press.
Adorno, T.W. (1993). Heine the Wound. In: Notes to Literature, vol. 1, (trans. Shierry Weber
Nicholsen), 80–85. New York: Columbia University Press.
Adorno, T.W. (1994). Hegel: Three Studies. (trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen). Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Adorno, T.W. (1997). Aesthetic Theory (trans. R. Hullot‐Kentor). Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Adorno, T.W. (1998). Resignation. In: Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (trans. H.W.
Pickford), 289–293. New York: Columbia University Press.
Adorno, T.W. (2000). The actuality of philosophy. In: The Adorno Reader (ed. B. O’Connor), 23–39.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Adorno, T.W. (2002). Essays on Music (ed. R. Leppert). Berkeley, CA: The University of California
Press.
Adorno, T.W. (2006). Philosophy of New Music (trans. R. Hullot‐Kentor). Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Adorno, T.W. (2006). Letters to His Parents, 1939–1951. (ed. C. Gödde and H. Lonitz; trans. W.
Hoban). Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Adorno, T.W. (2009). A social critique of radio music. In: Current of Music. Elements of a Radio Theory
(ed. R. Hullot‐Kentor), 133–143. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Adorno, T.W. and Benjamin, W. (2001). The Complete Correspondence, 1928–1940 (ed. H. Lonitz;
trans. N. Walker). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Adorno, T.W. and Berg, A. (2005). Correspondence, 1925–1935 (eds. H. Lonitz and W. Hoban).
Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Adorno, T.W. and Scholem, G. (2015). Briefwechsel. “Der liebe Gott wohnt im Detail,” 1939–1969 (ed.
A. Angermann). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Adorno, T.W. et al. (1976). The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (trans. G. Adey and D. Frisby).
In:. London: Heinemann Educational Books.
Bloch, Brandon. 2017. “The Origins of Adorno’s Psycho‐Social Dialectic: Psychoanalysis and Neo‐
Kantianism in the Young Adorno,” (originally publihsed onine, forthcoming in Modern Intellectual
History).
Buck‐Morss, S. (1977). The Origin of Negative Dialectics; Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the
Frankfurt Institute. New York: Free Press.
Gordon, P.E. (2016). Adorno and Existence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gordon, P. (2018). The Authoritarian Personality Revisited: Reading Adorno in the Age of Trump.
In: Authoritarianism: Three Essays in Critical Theory (eds. W. Brown et al.), 45–84. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Hammer, E. (2015). Adorno’s Modernism: Art, Experience, and Catastrophe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Jay, M. (1996). The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social
Research, 1923–1950, 2e. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kundnani, H. (2018). The Frankfurt School and the West German Student Movement. In: The
Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School (eds. P.E. Gordon, E. Hammer and A. Honneth), 221–
234. New York: Routledge.
Lafont, C. (2018). Heidegger and the Frankfurt School. In: The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt
School (eds. P.E. Gordon, E. Hammer and A. Honneth), 282–294. New York: Routledge.
Macdonald, I. and Ziarek, K. (eds.) (2008). Adorno and Heidegger: Philosophical Questions. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Mann, T. (1997). Doctor Faustus. The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn as Told by a Friend
(trans. J.E. Woods). New York: Knopf.
Müller‐Doohm, S. (2005). Adorno: A Biography (trans. R. Livingstone). Malden, Ma: Polity Press.
Paddison, M. (1993). Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Paddison, M. (2004). Adorno, Modernism and Mass Culture: Essays on Critical Theory and Music.
London: Kahn & Averill.
Wiggershaus, R. (1995). The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (trans. M.
Robertson). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Further Reading
Jay, M. (1984). Adorno. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Hammer, E. (2005). Adorno and the Political. New York: Routledge.
Bernstein, J.M. (2001). Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
O’Connor, Brian (2004). Adorno’s Negative Dialectic: Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
Pensky, Max, editor. (1997). The Actuality of Adorno: Critical Essays on Adorno and the Postmodern.
Albany: SUNY Press.

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 2

Adorno’s Inaugural Lecture: The Actuality

of Philosophy in the Age of Mass Production
ROGER FOSTER

1. Introduction

In the 1920s, the neo‐Kantian philosophy that had dominated German philosophy since
the middle of the nineteenth century came under sustained attack by the new
philosophical perspectives that had emerged amid the cultural, social, and economic
chaos of the postwar period. Neo‐Kantianism had come to prominence some two genera-
tions before as Hegelian speculative philosophy was in irreversible decline and the social
and cultural legitimacy of the natural sciences was on an inexorable rise. Although it had
provided a stable resolution of academic philosophy’s identity crisis since the mid‐
nineteenth century, it proved no match for the urgency of the new impulses and aspira-
tions that began to filter into professional philosophy in the post‐war period. Life
philosophy, neo‐ontology, positivist philosophy and Marxism were all positions that were
taken up by critics to attack Kantian philosophy in the 1920s. When Adorno gave his
inaugural lecture at the University of Frankfurt in May 1931, the idealist philosophy that
had carried the bourgeois spirit through the transition to an industrial, mass society
appeared to be in severe crisis. In its inaugural period, idealism expressed the self‐
confidence of the bourgeoisie in its capacity to form the world in its own image. Through
the power to shape reality according to their own requirements, idealism reflected back to
the ascendant classes their economic and social importance in the early phase of capitalist
development. In the early twentieth century, however, idealism’s productive powers had
undergone a serious crisis of confidence that appeared to cast doubt on its capacity to
drive the creative appropriation of reality.
Adorno talks of this crisis in terms of the incapacity of thought to think about being
as a totality; thinking is simply incapable of encompassing being as a meaningful, artic-
ulated whole. That failure, however, is not the result of a mistake or problem in the way
academic philosophy has chosen to go about this task. In this case, the failure of philos-
ophy is simply a reflection of the fact that reality is not totally accessible and available to
thought. Thinking can therefore only grasp this reality in fragmented form, as the traces
and ruins that cannot be assembled into a coherent whole. The underlying historical
reality that is expressed in this philosophical failure is a substantial transformation in

A Companion to Adorno, First Edition. Edited by Peter E. Gordon, Espen Hammer, and Max Pensky.
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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ROGER FOSTER

the structure of capitalist society. In the nineteenth century, capitalist development was
driven by the entrepreneurial activity of the bourgeoisie. This was the form of capitalism
whose spirit was said by Max Weber (1985) to stem from the capacity for methodical
self‐control, permitting steady and predictable accumulation of wealth. Weber (1985,
24) described it as “sober bourgeois capitalism with its rational organization of free
labor.” But in the early twentieth century, this economic order had clearly begun to give
way to a new socio‐economic formation, in which the productive power of capitalism
had now become located in an impersonal process, involving the large‐scale application
of modern science, and divorced from the intentional planning and direction of
individual entrepreneurs. The proliferation of middle managers and bureaucrats to run
the large‐scale organizations dominating the economic landscape demonstrated the new
priority of specific and precise scientific and technical knowledge. The capacity of the
independent entrepreneur to survey the economic scene as a whole, and make produc-
tion and investment decisions based on his or her power to predict the shape of future
reality, was no longer such a vital force in the dynamism of capitalism. Weber (1985,
181) expressed this point in stating that the lives of all individuals in the modern
economic order are now “bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine
production.” The dominance of mass production meant that only impersonal, rational-
ized management was capable of assimilating the technical and specialized knowledge
that allowed for the planning of production. Weber’s charge that this development had
produced “specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart,” (Weber 1985, 182) was
a romantic and nostalgic way of marking the difference of the new and impersonal
economic arrangements with the cultural power and authority of dominant entrepre-
neurs in capitalism’s expansive phase.
If the history of idealism can be interpreted as the history of the bourgeois spirit, from
its rise to ascendancy in the world of entrepreneurial capitalism through to its loss of opti-
mism and confidence in the world of mass production organized by impersonal scientific
knowledge, then academic philosophy’s identity crisis will turn out to be a reflection of
capitalism’s shift toward a new system of accumulation that is far less reliant on individual
foresight, initiative, and creativity. The neo‐Kantian attempt to re‐establish the idealist
ascendancy after the collapse of Hegelianism had been opposed from the beginning by
forms of materialism, scientism, and religious and speculative philosophy. By the late
1920s, powerful currents of life philosophy and existentialism were attacking the con-
stricted focus on narrow questions of epistemology in academic philosophy in the name of
broader dimensions of lived experience. These movements represented powerful cultural
reactions against the increasing dominance of a scientific culture allied with the needs of
the machine age. While Adorno saw these movements, particularly life philosophy, as
embodying important insights concerning the failure of that dominant culture, they were
also taken in by the seductive power of an irrationalism that identified reason as such with
its constricted form in current academic philosophy. Adorno’s attempt in his early writings
to avoid these two errors of a scientistic narrowing of reason and a reactive rejection of
rational thought in the name of what is excluded by this constriction of reason, would lay
out a path that he followed for most of his career. Adorno found the answer to this problem
in a view of philosophy as a form of interpretation. While undoubtedly influenced by
Walter Benjamin, I suggest that Adorno’s model of philosophical interpretation was actu-
ally rooted in early modernist aesthetic responses to the rigidified and flattened experience
of life in the age of mass production and consumption.

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2. Idealism and Bourgeois Society

It would not be an exaggeration to say that in the late eighteenth century, idealist philos-
ophy captured the deep aspirations for a way of life released from the old order of hide-
bound tradition that was beginning to collapse in the 1770s. The revolutionary claims of
Kantian idealism, Terry Pinkard (2002) argues, would allow it to play a key role in articu-
lating the demands for collective and individual autonomy that would inaugurate the new
era. Kant’s assertion of the intrinsic connection between autonomy and morality, Pinkard
(2002, 214) suggests, captured the imperative to “assume responsibility for one’s own life,
not to be pushed around by forces external to oneself (either natural or social).” By the
1770s, the erosion of the normative force of the traditional order had created a “revolu-
tionary situation.” Philosophy stepped in to the brink to help guide and shape the aspira-
tions of the new order (Pinkard 2002, 11). With the emergence of new forms of economic
activity freed from the constraints of traditional social and communal relations, especially
in the towns, the emerging bourgeois order became particularly concerned with investi-
gating and justifying the idea of what it meant to live autonomously. The “fundamental
motor” of German idealism, in fact, was the need to “give adequate form to and validate
the modern conception of individual autonomy” (Gardner 2007, 20). Of course, the
Kantian notion of autonomy, if it were really to underpin the burgeoning bourgeois
culture, would have to be careful about what kind of “forces external to oneself ” were the
target of its critique. When launched against the remnants of feudalism and its social and
intellectual restraints, autonomy proved to be a valuable battering ram. But those aspira-
tions would also have to be restricted, so that the “forces external to oneself ” did not include
the social constraints placed on gender, sexuality, ethnicity or regional identity, and class.
Autonomy, in other words, would be harnessed to support the system of the accumulation
and legal transfer of bourgeois property, rather than constitute any kind of threat to that
system.
German academic philosophy entered a crisis of identity in the nineteenth century once
it became clear that the sciences could flourish by themselves seemingly without the need
for philosophical foundations (Schnädelbach 1984, 67). This coincided with the arrival of
the industrial revolution in Germanic Europe, leading to a rapid professionalization of sci-
ence as it became a major force in the system of production. As Germanic culture became
an increasingly scientific culture in the course of the nineteenth century, oppositional
currents took on an increasingly privatized, apolitical, and aestheticized cast. These exiled
currents of thought continued to hum along underneath the formal scientific culture, and
re‐emerged with a vengeance in the aftermath of the Great War. The failure to integrate
these currents left the dominant culture in a precarious position when faced with a major
threat to its existence in 1933. A very significant factor in this failure to integrate broader
cultural currents in official academic philosophy was the self‐limiting response of philos-
ophy to the post‐March political repression in Germany. This set official academic philosophy
on the path to a learned science that would reach its culmination in the rise of neo‐
Kantianism (Köhnke 1991, 79). Broader philosophical worldviews, which gave personal
meaning to the self battered by the depersonalizing forces of the modern world, were shut
out of academic debate. Guided by the idea of a neutral, scientific resolution to the conflicts
among different philosophical worldviews, including materialism, egoism, and pessimism,
neo‐Kantians came to see themselves as preventing any transgression of the boundaries
between science and philosophical worldviews. In the process, of course, neo‐Kantians were

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ROGER FOSTER

in fact defending a particular ideal of the autonomy of philosophy as a discipline, and of the
moral, autonomous individual as achieving mastery and self‐control through the sober,
scientific analysis of worldview claims that were seen as the cause rather than the
consequence of social conflict.
The large corporations that emerged in European and North American economies at
the end of the nineteenth century brought with them the managerial revolution that
replaced entrepreneurs with a vast general staff organized according to bureaucratic
notions of hierarchy. During this period, as Chandler (1990, 425) noted, German univer-
sities became leading research centers in science and technology, outperforming their
British and American counterparts in this regard. Germany was especially advanced in the
development of physics and chemistry and their application to modern and industrial
technology. These were the industries at the heart of the second industrial revolution.
Fohlin (2007, 21) asserts that between 1871 and 1908, 15 times more joint stock firms,
with about three times the capital, were founded than in the previous 45 years. Once enter-
prises were established and initial investment and production decisions made, they were
turned over to the cadres of professional managers whose organizational and technical
skills were needed for continued growth and successful performance (Chandler 1990,
598; Blackbourn 2003, 245). The result of the scientific‐technical revolution in produc-
tion was a fundamental reconstruction of the capitalist labor process. With the aid of the
new possibilities of control provided by the concentration of scientific knowledge, the early
twentieth century saw concerted efforts to dissolve the labor process as one controlled and
managed by the worker, and to reconstitute it as a process controlled and conducted by
management (Braverman 1974, 170). The subjective aspects of labor were increasingly
dissolved into objective procedures to be monitored and regulated by management. Rather
than a bearer of traditional craft knowledge, the worker was re‐conceived as an inter-
changeable element that was called upon to perform standardized and regulated move-
ments that, just like the material inputs, could be precisely controlled and deployed by the
new structures of professional management.
Looking back on this century‐long transformation in 1915, Thorstein Veblen gave voice
to the remarkably comprehensive displacement of philosophy, in its role as the expression
of the spirit of the community, by the new scientific attitude:

[German philosophy] is a philosophical expression of the Romantic spirit, it is viable only within
the spiritual frontiers of Romanticism; that is to say, since and in so far as the German people
have made the transition from Romanticism to the matter‐of‐fact logic and insight characteristic
of modern technology and applied science, the characteristic philosophy of Germany’s past is
also a phenomenon of the past age. It can live and continue to guide and inspire the life and
thought of the community only on condition that the community return to the conditions of
life that gave rise and force to this philosophy, that is to say, only on condition that the German
nation retreat from its advance into the industrial arts and discard such elements of the modern
scheme of institutions as it has hitherto accepted. (Veblen 1915, 219–220)

Veblen’s association of German philosophy with the proto‐capitalist and pre‐imperial past
gave voice to the magnitude of the transformation that had seen the German nation
become a leading, modern scientific culture. In his inaugural lecture, Adorno would speak
of the “liquidation” of philosophy through the dominance of a scientific attitude.
Philosophy’s claim to articulate the guiding spirit of a nation, its people, and its institu-
tions had clearly collapsed. The main options for philosophy included continuing the effort
of neo‐Kantianism to align philosophy with the new scientific culture, carving out a role

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 ADORNO’S INAUGURAL LECTURE

for philosophy within that culture as establishing the unity and universality of scientific
truth. Alternatively, there was the option of simply dissolving philosophy into the realm of
natural science, as advocated by positivism. Another option was to oppose the dominant
culture tout court under the banner of a version of life philosophy or a vitalism that attacked
the intellectualistic, congealed, and exhausted culture of the modern machine age. From
his initial philosophical writings onwards, Adorno would continue to reject all three of
these options. The task, as he saw it, was to search for an interpretive, dialectical philos-
ophy that sought to expand the scope of what might be encompassed by philosophy’s ratio-
nalized and hollowed‐out concepts.

3. Weimar: Social Experience and Industrial Society

The mix of archaic and contemporary social formations in Weimar often created social
friction between perspectives representing tradition and duty, and strivings that looked to
the future as a sort of liberation. Although ostensibly possessing a democratic constitution,
the Weimar Republic, as David Durst (2004, xxiv) points out, remained under the semi‐
hegemonic control of its military and agrarian aristocracy. At the same time, German
capitalism was becoming increasingly centralized in large organizations and financialized
through ever tighter relations with banks. The sense of discontinuity and the fragmentation
of experience were evident effects of this juxtaposition of the archaic and the possibilities
of the future. As a young man of 15 when the Great War ended, Adorno needed a teacher
to help him navigate the labyrinthine twists of social experience in the 1920s.
At just the right moment, Adorno was introduced by family friends to the 29‐year‐old
Siegfried Kracauer, with whom Adorno would spend Saturday afternoons poring over
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. From the beginning, Adorno (1974a, 388) wrote, he
learned to see the work not only as an epistemological argument, but also as “a type of
coded writing in which the historical status of the spirit could be read.” Kracauer, Adorno
acknowledged, taught him to see philosophical texts as “force‐fields,” where the task was
to find a way of getting beneath the surface to observe the play of forces that presented the
engagement of philosophy with social experience. In his early Weimar writings, Kracauer
sees himself as at the end of a historical process of “decay” characterized by “the disap-
pearance of a meaning embracing reality as a whole” (Mülder‐Bach 1998, 7). The same
theme is taken up at the beginning of Adorno’s inaugural essay, where he writes that total
reality is inaccessible to reason, which instead must seek to make sense of reality only
through its “traces and ruins” (Adorno 1977, 120). This inaccessibility of reality to
thought, Adorno claims, vitiates an enterprise like Heidegger’s that views being as a whole
as accessible and transparent to thought.
Kracauer’s 1927 essay “The Mass Ornament” provides a brilliant demonstration of his
interpretive technique, and its capacity to disclose the shape of cultural experience from
the analysis of objects and events that are understood as surface‐level expressions of
deeper historical tendencies. Kracauer’s focus in this essay is the choreographed perfor-
mances of dancers and athletes whose scripted movements give rise to different patterns
visible to spectators from a distance. What interests Kracauer about this phenomenon is
the way that it seems to give expression to a fundamental transformation of the nature of
human relationships in the age of mass production. The mass ornament gives expression
to the rationalization of human activity that has utterly transformed the social interaction
of human beings. Kracauer emphasizes that the mass ornament gathers and deploys the

25
ROGER FOSTER

individuals who constitute it as a “mass.” Kracauer means by this that the elements are
deprived of any characteristics that might emphasize their particularity or unique history,
and are deployed in the arrangement as parts that are interchangeable with one another.
This rationalization and coordination of human activity, furthermore, gives expression to
the transformation of work and human experience through a scientifically driven mass
production process. This can be seen, on the one hand, in the way human activity in the
mass ornament is completely liberated from the contingencies of nature and tradition, in
the same way that labor under rationalized mass production is divorced from its unique
craft and local traditions and treated as standard human labor power. It can be discerned,
on the other hand, in the way that the “meaning” of this coordination of human activity
is invisible to the participants themselves, and can only be comprehended at a distance,
from whence the movements can be choreographed and controlled. So the dancers, just
like workers for whom the meaning of their work has now been captured by a scientific‐
intellectual process of management divorced from them, are subjected to a kind of total-
izing perspective that they can neither understand nor control. For those involved in the
process itself, totality is inaccessible. Kracauer presents the “mass” as the collective
arrangement made possible by the liberation of people from older communities and tradi-
tions, but enslaved under a new set of abstract relationships, which manipulate them
according to the dictates of a logic that is absent from the consciousness of the members
themselves (Jonsson 2010, 290). Kracauer draws out the meaning of the mass ornament
as a surface‐level expression of a rationalized social order riven by fundamental class
conflict:

The structure of the mass ornament reflects that of the entire contemporary situation. Since
the principle of the capitalist production process does not arise purely out of nature, it must
destroy the natural organisms that it regards either as means or resistance. Community and
personality perish when what is demanded is calculability; it is only as a tiny piece of the mass
that the individual can clamber up charts and can service machines without any friction.
(Kracauer 1995, 78)

The mass ornament makes clear that capitalism only liberates the human subject in order
to resituate that subject as an exchangeable element under the control of an inscrutable
logic of calculation and efficiency. In the early twentieth century, the mechanization of
work and the focus on breaking the work process down into standard and simple tasks
allowed capitalism to destroy the traditional craft knowledge of workers and reconstitute
that knowledge in an abstract and centralized form.
Kracauer’s perceptive descriptions of the social and cultural consequences of rational-
ized mass production echoed the influential theory of reification developed by the
Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukács in the early 1920s. In the essay “Reification and the
Consciousness of the Proletariat,” Lukács (1971) develops the concept of “reification” to
account for the distorting effects of rationalized capitalism on culture and subjectivity.
A consequence of a thoroughly mechanized work process, Lukács (1971, 90) argues, is
the destruction of the bonds that “had bound individuals to a community in the days when
production was still ‘organic.’” Like Kracauer, Lukács charges that mechanization turns
individuals into “isolated abstract atoms” who are no longer connected “directly and
organically” through their work. Lukács’ essay was influential because it provided a
scheme for thinking about the consequences of the rationalization and mechanization of
work for society and culture as a whole, beyond the production process. Lukács (1991, 99)

26
 ADORNO’S INAUGURAL LECTURE

notes the proletarianization of the work of white‐collar workers, which resembles

“operating a machine.” This is a theme that would be taken up by Kracauer several years
later in The Salaried Masses, his ethnographic study of white‐collar workers in Berlin. The
rational‐bureaucratic reorganization of work, Lukács argues, leads to the increasingly
formal and standardized treatment of the objects of bureaucratic activity, leading to all
social domains becoming affected by the process of reification

The distinction between a worker faced with a particular machine, the entrepreneur faced
with a given type of mechanical development, the technologist faced with the state of science
and the profitability of its application to technology, is purely quantitative; it does not entail
any qualitative difference in the structure of consciousness. (Lukács 1991, 98)

In the second part of the essay, Lukács argued that the structure of reification could also
be discerned at the core of Kantian idealism. As in the case of the atomization and stan-
dardization of elements in the capitalist production process, knowledge becomes conceived
in idealism as the appropriation of isolated elements of reality through the operation of
formal and systematic laws. The unique history of the knower and the individual historical
trajectory of the object therefore become irrelevant, as knowledge is concerned with the
properties exhibited by objects conceived as standardized, repeatable elements that can be
processed by the laws of thought, as objects are processed by the formal procedures of
rationalized production.
In his inaugural lecture, Adorno extends Lukács’ critique of idealist philosophy to its
contemporary descendants, in particular Husserl’s phenomenology. Lukács argued that
the problems of idealism came fully into view within the consciousness of the working
class, the collective subject that would overturn the purely contemplative stance prevalent
throughout bourgeois society. Adorno, however, focuses instead on the question of what
the transformation of idealism since Kant discloses about the structure of bourgeois
society. The transformation is captured in the claim that Husserlian phenomenology
renounces the “productive power of mind, the Kantian and Fichtean spontaneity,” and
“resigns” itself to the passive registering of the given (Adorno 1977, 122). Where it had
earlier portrayed the subject as having a constitutive role in forming and constructing
reality, later idealism begins to reflect the formalization and standardization of the role of
the knower, and the atomization and abstraction of the object that had come to charac-
terize the interaction of subject and object across all domains of social experience. Husserl’s
philosophy, without actually intending to do so, takes up this experience of the interaction
of subject and object in later bourgeois society and shapes it into an epistemology. Adorno
expands on this critique in his dissertation on Husserl, which was written in the 1930s. In
this book Adorno attempts to show that Husserl’s phenomenology severs logical laws from
the practice of thinking and reifies them as sheer mental “facts,” “divested of any movement
of spontaneity and subordinated to the positivistic ideal of the sheer acceptance of irre-
ducible facts, that is, ‘givens.’” This takes place through Husserl’s notion of “evidence,”
which embodies the positivistic ideal of immediate givenness to consciousness (Adorno
2013, 57). Reification and idealization become equivalent in Husserl because logical laws
are presented as though they were “simply there” like objects are immediately given to the
senses. Husserl’s conception of the flow of consciousness, as Biceaga (2010, 126) notes, is
not a sequence of acts carried out by the ego, it is “an inherently passive dimension of sub-
jectivity as such which makes possible all inner perception.” If Husserl were to conceive
“the subject of logical validity as social and in motion rather than as isolated and

27
ROGER FOSTER

‘individual,’” then “he would not need to drive an ontological cleft between thought and
its own laws” (Adorno 2013, 57). But in establishing this separation between thought
and its own laws, Husserl is simply recapitulating the essential structure of reification that
drives a wedge between the subjectivity of the knower, his or her organic connections to
the community and to history, and the extracted and formalized cognitive structure that
assimilates the given in the manner of pure receptivity. It is the cleavage between subject
and object in the scientific, capitalist culture of the early twentieth century that finds its
way into Husserl’s work in the desperate and ultimately doomed effort to separate logic
from its social and historical context. Husserl’s attempt to save idealism by demonstrating
its capacity to reach trans‐subjective being ends up simply expressing the evisceration of
subjectivity that has made knowledge into a domineering system of classification, having
use for neither the history nor the particularity of the knower or indeed of the thing
known. The objectivity that Husserl believes he achieves is in fact simply the reification of
the work of thinking that confronts the thinker as though it were an alien world of things
to be passively registered by it.
“The real life process of society,” Adorno (2013, 26) writes, “is not something sociolog-
ically smuggled into philosophy through associates. It is rather the core of the contents of
logic itself.” Husserl’s conception of the givenness of logical laws to consciousness allows
him to reject the reduction of logic to psychological processes. However, Husserl’s presen-
tation of this argument embodies more truth than simply the critique of psychologism. His
account of the relation of logic to thought is saturated with the experience of living in a
society characterized by the estrangement of subject and object. That experience is ulti-
mately rooted in an epochal shift in the nature of capitalist society, in which the systematic
application of science to the production process renders obsolete the economic and cultural
authority of wealthy entrepreneurs. That historical process was at the root of the crisis of
idealism in the early twentieth century, when earlier idealist notions of the world‐shaping
power of human subjectivity lost credibility, since the power shaping human and social
reality now seemed to be a purely impersonal process divorced from guiding human
intentions.

4. The Actuality of Philosophy and Aesthetic Modernism

Adorno emphasizes in his inaugural lecture that the question of philosophy’s “actuality”
is not a question about philosophy’s place in the hierarchy of knowledge, but a fundamental
question about whether it is possible to answer philosophical questions at all. Every philos-
ophy concerned with truth is therefore faced with “the problem of the liquidation of phi-
losophy” (Adorno 1977, 124). The agent of that liquidation in the early twentieth century
is the positivist attempt to dissolve philosophical problems into questions that can be dealt
with in the natural sciences. In his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory,”
Horkheimer distinguishes science and philosophy as two different points of view on the
social process. Science has become integrated into the process of production, and therefore
represents the specific interests of the production process with regard to growth, efficiency,
and profitability. The “scholar and his science,” Horkheimer (1995, 196, 197) states, “are
incorporated into the apparatus of society.” They are “moments in the social process of
production.” Positivism simply carries into philosophy the imperative that thought subor-
dinate itself to the needs of the production process. The standpoint of Critical Theory
emerges when human beings become aware that the process of production is a human

28
 ADORNO’S INAUGURAL LECTURE

social activity, subject to the control and direction of collective human ends. The shift from
traditional to Critical Theory, according to Horkheimer, is one from a perspective where
philosophical thought is subordinated to the imperatives of capitalist society to one where
it is able to grasp the social process as a whole, including the way that capital introduces a
fundamental distortion into the relations of knower and known, subject and object.
Adorno does not take this route, but instead notes that problems such as the “given” and
the problem of other minds cannot be answered with the theoretical tools of positivism.
Since the nature of what is given to consciousness is socio‐historical, it cannot be grasped
by a theory that lacks an understanding of the interaction of subject and object in history.
The notion of the historical nature of truth is certainly a partial step toward Horkheimer’s
idea of Critical Theory, but Adorno’s reading allows that insight to emerge in the
philosophical critique of positivism, without suggesting that it serves as the placeholder for
a collective subject able to seize the mechanism of social production and redirect it toward
more humane purposes
It soon becomes clear in the lecture that what Adorno has in mind is a conception of
philosophy as a special kind of dialectical critique; philosophy illuminates the contempo-
rary social order as marked by the alienation of subject and object, but does not claim to
join up with a collective subject that is conceived as the agent of history. This is why, for
Adorno, science and philosophy are not distinguished from one another through their
respective roles in the social process of production; what differentiates them is the nature
of their relation to their given materials. As a form of “research,” science accepts its mate-
rials as static givens whose significance is readily apparent. Philosophy, as a form of inter-
pretation, must treat the material with which it works as enigmatic ciphers that are to be
understood through the painstaking work of interpretation. Adorno is careful to distin-
guish this idea of critique from a philosophical misunderstanding that misconceives it as
the discovery of essential truth beneath the world of appearance. Precursors of such a
perspective would include Plato’s discovery of an ideal being independent of the world of
material things, and Kant’s understanding of the in itself independent of how things
appear. Adorno makes clear that the alignment of interpretation with the philosophical
discovery of meaning misconceives the nature and purpose of philosophical critique.
The discovery of meaning has a justificatory function with regard to the world of appear-
ance that is vitiated by the inaccessibility and fragmentation of being in the twentieth
century. Any attempt to assert the meaning of being today would simply force philosophy
to regress to the formulation of a series of arbitrary worldview perspectives (weltanschauli-
cher Standpunkte [Adorno 1977, 128]). This sums up nicely the situation Adorno saw phi-
losophy facing in 1931. The movements that had emerged in the twentieth century in
opposition to the increasing narrowing of the interests of academic philosophy toward
epistemology portended a regressive aversion to the discipline of rational thought. This
was true especially of life philosophy and its offshoots (including Heideggerian ontology),
which, as Schnädelbach (1984, 139) noted, “led the attack on all that was dead and con-
gealed, on a civilization which had become intellectualistic and anti‐life,” and represented
a new sense of life in the idea of “authentic experience.” Adorno admired many aspects of
Bergson’s philosophy, but he remained convinced throughout his life that rational thought
must be taken up and expanded or loosened from within; attacking it from a position osten-
sibly independent of it would ultimately weaken the prospects for a rational solution to the
authoritarian structure of western rationality. But at the same time positivism, with its
exceptionally narrow and scientistic understanding of the function of rational thought,
was threatening to eliminate the space in which that critique of western rationality could

29
Another random document with
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 Für sie war es ein Schmerz, eine persönliche Demütigung ihrer
Schwester gegenüber, daß Felix seine Prüfungen nicht machte. Sie
schämte sich vor ihrer Schwester und vor ihrem Schwager. Und in
ihrem Zorn tat sie dasjenige, was sie hätte unterlassen müssen ...
sie überhäufte Felix mit Vorwürfen. Sie trieb ihn zu seinen Büchern,
wie man faule Schuljungen treibt, und machte ihm so das Leben zur
Hölle.
Frau Susanne Altwirth mangelte jedes Verstehen für die
künstlerischen Neigungen des Sohnes, und von Künstlerfreiheit und
Künstlerdrang hatte sie keine Ahnung. Für sie war es der höchste
Inhalt eines menschlichen Daseins, wenn man sein sicheres Brot
hatte und dabei ungetrübt und ohne Nahrungssorgen leben konnte.
Max Storf allerdings verstand und begriff alles. Er war es auch,
der einmal mit dem Apotheker über die Sache sprach.
Einmal nach einem Abend, als sie beide beim Weißen Hahn
gewesen waren, begleitete der junge Arzt den Apotheker nach
Hause und redete mit ihm über den Freund.
Herr Tiefenbrunner tat sehr erschrocken. „Ja, aber um
Gotteswillen, er hat ja alles, was er braucht. Es geht ihm doch nix
ab!“ sagte er und sah ganz verstört zu dem jungen Manne auf.
„Das ist’s ja auch gar nicht, Herr Tiefenbrunner!“ entgegnete
Doktor Storf. „Sie lassen ihm nichts abgehen. Das ist richtig. Aber
Felix eignet sich nun einmal nicht zum Beamten. Er ist ein Künstler
und sollte die Mittel bekommen, um sich als solcher auszubilden.“
„Sie meinen, ein Maler werden?“ fragte der kleine Apotheker und
starrte mit nachdenklichem Gesicht vor sich hin.
Die beiden waren gerade durch die breite Herzog Friedrich-
Straße gegangen und blieben an der Ecke der Maria Theresia-
Straße stehen. Der helle Schein einer Straßenlampe fiel auf das
kleine, fahle Gesicht des Apothekers und beleuchtete scharf die
tiefen Denkerfurchen auf seiner niedern Stirn.
Der Apotheker Tiefenbrunner mußte tatsächlich nachdenken.
Angestrengt nachdenken. Was ihm da Doktor Storf sagte, war keine
Kleinigkeit, war eine ernste Sache. Da ließen sie nun, er und seine
Frau, diesen Buben, den Felix, studieren aus gutem Herzen, aus
reiner Gutmütigkeit, damit er einmal sein anständiges Auskommen
habe und geachtet dastehe auf der Welt. Und mehr geachtet denn
als Beamter konnte man im Leben doch unmöglich sein.
Der Apotheker wurde ganz zapplig, als er seinen angestrengten
Gedankengang so weit verfolgt hatte. So zapplig, daß sich sein
Gesicht nach allen Seiten verzog. Dabei erbebte seine Nase vor
innerer Erregung so sehr, daß der Zwicker, der ohnedies nur
wackelig darauf saß, in ernstliche Gefahr geriet, herabzugleiten.
Ganz ängstlich und hilflos sah der Apotheker Tiefenbrunner über
die Gläser hinweg zu Max Storf empor, und mit zitterigen Händen
rückte er sich immer und immer wieder seinen Zwicker zurecht. Aber
er wollte nicht passen. Er wollte überhaupt nicht passen, wenn Herr
Tiefenbrunner eine Erschütterung seines Seelenzustandes erlitt.
Und eine Erschütterung war das unbedingt. Eine starke
Erschütterung sogar. Jetzt um Mitternacht. Der Apotheker machte
ganz vorwurfsvolle Augen. So eine Roheit ... das hätte er dem Max
Storf gar nicht zugetraut. Ihn derart aus seiner behaglichen Ruhe zu
stören! Und das noch dazu allein ohne seine Frau! Und hier,
ausgerechnet hier, an der Ecke der Maria Theresia-Straße, sollte er
sich entschließen in einer so wichtigen Angelegenheit. Wenn doch
seine Frau in der Nähe gewesen wäre!
Ein Maler wollte der Felix werden. Schau, schau! Eigentlich ein
interessanter Fall. Der Felix und ein Künstler. Was da nur seine Frau
sagen würde?
Bei diesem Gedanken überkam den Apotheker ein Gefühl, als
spürte er die kleinen, nervösen Trittchen einer Maus über seinen
Rücken huschen. Es war entschieden eine höchst ungewöhnliche
Situation. Ganz entschieden! Und es war eine Roheit von dem
Doktor Storf, ihm mit so was bei der Nacht zu kommen. Ein ganz
gemeiner Überfall war es, der ihn eigentlich erzürnen sollte.
Aber Herr Tiefenbrunner erzürnte sich nicht. Schon aus Prinzip
nicht. Er beschwichtigte immer und in jeder Lebenslage. So
beschwichtigte er sich jetzt auch selber. Eine Zumutung blieb es
aber deswegen doch.
Der kleine Apotheker hatte endlich einen Ausweg aus seiner
unangenehmen Lage entdeckt. „Ja,“ sagte er sehr langsam, als
müßten sich seine Gedanken erst allmählich aus dem tiefen
Labyrinth der innersten Seelenforschung erholen. „Ja, ein Künstler,
sagen’s, möcht’ der Felix werden?“
„Jawohl!“ bestätigte Max Storf. „Ein Maler. Und dazu braucht er
Mittel, Herr Tiefenbrunner. Er muß die Akademie besuchen, muß ...“
„Wissen’s was, Herr Doktor ...“ versetzte der Apotheker, und sein
Gesicht glättete sich deutlich vor Freude über den gefundenen
Ausweg. Er legte den Zeigefinger seiner rechten Hand an die
Nasenspitze und sah furchtbar klug aus. „Wissen’s was, i red’ mit
meiner Frau darüber.“
Herr Tiefenbrunner war nie ein großer Redner gewesen und
mußte sich stets jeden Satz gewaltsam von der Zunge ringen. Seine
Sprache klang leise und etwas heiser, als ob er an ständigem
Rachenkatarrh leiden würde.
„Der Felix ist ja meiner Frau ihr Neffe ...“ fuhr er langsam und
bedächtig fort. „Da soll s i e entscheiden, was das Gescheiteste in
dem Fall ist. Wissen’s, die Frauen sind in solchen Fällen immer die
Gescheitern!“ fügte er mit leisem Kichern hinzu. „So machen wir’s,
Herr Doktor, gelten’s?“
Ehe es sich der junge Arzt versah, hatte ihm der Herr Apotheker
Tiefenbrunner die Hand gedrückt und war um die Ecke gebogen, die
zum Marktgraben führte. „Kommen’s gut nach Haus!“ rief er ihm
noch rasch nach. „I bieg’ jetzt da heim ummi. Gute Nacht, Herr
Doktor! Schlafen’s g’sund!“
Etwas verblüfft schaute Max Storf dem Apotheker nach. Dieser
Ausgang der Unterredung war gar nicht nach seinem Geschmack.
Wenn die Frau Apotheker zu entscheiden hatte, dann war die Sache
allerdings verloren. Das wußte er bestimmt. Aber ein gerissener
Schlaumeier war der Apotheker. Das mußte man ihm lassen. Der
geborene Diplomat. Kein Wunder, daß es der verstand, sich so
unentbehrlich zu machen ...
Frau Therese Tiefenbrunner fällte ihr Urteil, und das lautete, daß
ein Maler niemals nicht das Ansehen habe von einem Beamten, und
daß das nicht ginge, daß man von den Prüfungen davon laufe, und
daß der Felix seine Staatsprüfung zu machen habe, und daß
nachher noch immer Zeit genug sei, den Fall zu besprechen.
Doktor Max Storf mußte an sich halten, um dem Apotheker keine
grobe Erwiderung zu geben, als ihm dieser den Bescheid seiner
Frau überbrachte. Er wußte, daß er durch jedes unüberlegte Wort
seinem Freund nur geschadet hätte.
 Sechstes Kapitel.

E s blieb bei der Entscheidung der Frau Apotheker. Felix Altwirth

mußte sich, ob er wollte oder nicht, mit dem Ernst seiner Lage
vertraut machen. Tag und Nacht büffelte und studierte er und bläute
sich die für ihn so trockene Materie seines Faches ein.
Oft hatte er das Gefühl, als könne sein Kopf nichts mehr
auffassen, nichts begreifen und nichts behalten, was da vor ihm
gedruckt und geschrieben stand. Mit beiden Fäusten stützte er dann
seinen gemarterten Schädel. Wiederholte immer und immer wieder
die gleichen Stellen und dachte doch in innerster Seele an ganz was
anderes ...
Felix Altwirth machte seine Staatsprüfung und fiel zweimal durch.
Es war schon das erstemal schrecklich. Nun war es aber der völlige
Zusammenbruch.
Max Storf hatte den Freund von der Universität abgeholt. An dem
todbleichen Gesicht des jungen Mannes erkannte er auf den ersten
Blick, wie die Sache stand. Abermals durchgefallen. Ruiniert. Die
ganze Existenz vernichtet.
Kein Wort konnte Felix Altwirth sprechen. Stumm und gleichgültig
schritt er neben dem Freunde und beachtete gar nicht, daß dieser
durch den alten Torbogen der Hofgasse einlenkte und die Richtung
gegen den Weißen Hahn nahm.
Es war Spätherbst, und die Abende waren früh und kühl. Der
dämmerige Schein der hereinbrechenden Nacht fiel über die
hochgebauten, altersgrauen Häuser der Hofgasse. Die Lichter der
Straßenlampen brannten noch nicht. Geschäftiges Treiben herrschte
in der schmalen Gasse. Kinder tummelten sich umher, schrien und
pfiffen oder trugen Milch oder Bier für den elterlichen Haushalt heim.
Schweigend schritten die beiden jungen Männer nebeneinander
her. Felix befand sich in einem Zustand so vollständiger Apathie,
daß er wie willenlos dem Freunde folgte. Erst als sie im Hausflur des
Gasthofes zum Weißen Hahn anlangten, fuhr er erschrocken
zusammen.
„Da hinein ...“ machte er. „Du wirst doch nicht ... Ich kann nicht,
Max! Laß mich, ich kann heute nicht unter Menschen gehen!“
Max Storf nahm mit festem Griff den Arm des Freundes und zog
ihn gewaltsam mit sich fort.
„Es ist noch nicht spät, Felix. Es wird dir gut tun. Die Stammgäste
kommen ja erst später.“
Im Herrenstübel war es gähnend leer. Eine Lampe erleuchtete
den Raum nur sehr spärlich.
Der junge Arzt war dem Freund behilflich, den Hut und den
Überzieher abzulegen. Gleichgültig ließ Felix alles mit sich
geschehen. Es fröstelte ihn. Wie in einem Traumzustand befand er
sich, aus dem er nie wieder zu erwachen wünschte.
Für Augenblicke kam ihm seine ganze Lage zum Bewußtsein.
Durchgefallen, wieder durchgefallen! Was wohl jetzt mit ihm
geschehen würde? Ob sich die Verwandten nun von ihm abwenden
würden? Nur nicht nachdenken, nur jetzt nicht nachdenken!
Wie ein milder, alles verstehender Vater redete Max Storf mit
guten Worten auf Felix ein. „Nimm’s nicht so hart, Felix. Du kannst ja
nichts dafür. Es ging dir halt die ganze Sache gegen deine Natur.
Vielleicht ist’s zu deinem Glück, daß es so gekommen ist!“
„Glück!“ Mit bitterem Hohn wiederholte Felix dieses Wort. „Glück!
Als ob ich je ein Glück gekannt hätte im Leben!“
Und dann saßen die beiden jungen Männer schweigend
nebeneinander, eine ganze Weile lang.
 Erst nach geraumer Zeit kam Sophie ins Herrenstübel. Die
Kellnerin von der Schwemme hatte sie darauf aufmerksam gemacht,
daß im Herrenstübel Gäste seien. Die Schwemme befand sich auf
der rückwärtigen Seite des breiten, gewölbten Hausflurs und war das
Gastzimmer derjenigen Besucher des Weißen Hahn, die im sozialen
Leben eine oder auch zwei Stufen niedriger standen als die Gäste
des Herrenstübels.
Es geschah nicht oft, daß die Schwemmkellnerin ihrer Kollegin
einen Gefallen erwies. Ganz im Gegenteil. Wenn sie ihr einen
Possen spielen konnte, so tat sie es. Teils aus Neid auf deren
bevorzugte Stellung und teils aus persönlicher Abneigung.
Die Sophie war daher äußerst erstaunt über die ungewohnte
Liebenswürdigkeit der andern. „Bist ja heut’ gar amal nett zu mir,
Kathl!“ meinte sie scherzend. „Wo muß i denn das hinschreiben?“
„Von mir aus, wohin du willst!“ erwiderte die andere schnippisch.
Sie trug einige Biergläser in der Hand und stieß im Vorbeigehen mit
Absicht an die Sophie an, so daß ihr der braune Saft über die
blendend weiße Schürze spritzte.
„Macht nix!“ sagte die Sophie scherzhaft. „Bin jung g’nug. Das
kann i schon aushalten!“
Dabei zeigte sie im Lachen die zwei Reihen großer, schöner,
weißer Zähne, die in dem braunen, gesund geröteten Gesicht den
Eindruck kräftigster Lebensfrische nur noch erhöhen halfen. Die
Sophie wollte darauf anspielen, daß die Kathl sich schon den
Dreißigern näherte, während sie selber ja noch in der ersten Blüte
der Zwanziger stand.
Mit flinken Schritten lief sie dann ins Herrenstübel. „Ja, Herr
Altwirth und der Herr Doktor!“ machte sie erstaunt und hielt den
beiden die Hand zum Gruße hin. „Was ist denn das, daß Sie schon
da sind so zeitlich?“
Die Sitzungen im Herrenstübel gingen immer erst viel später an.
Vor sieben Uhr war noch wenig Leben in der Bude.
Ein feines Rot bedeckte das zarte Gesicht von Felix Altwirth, als
er zu dem hübschen Mädchen aufsah, das vor ihm stand und ihn
forschend anschaute. Seine großen, etwas träumerischen blauen
Augen leuchteten auf. Es tat ihm wohl, ihr frisches, teilnehmendes
Gesicht zu sehen.
„Ich hab’ Prüfung gemacht, Fräul’n Sophie ...“ sagte er dann
zögernd.
„Ja ... und?“ Er glaubte etwas wie eine geheime Sorge in dem
Klang ihrer Stimme zu vernehmen. „Wie ist’s denn ausgangen?“
„Wie die frühere auch. Durchgefallen!“ Der junge sprach es leise,
kaum hörbar. Seine Stimme verschleierte sich, als habe er mit
aufsteigenden Tränen zu kämpfen. Er hielt den Kopf tief nach vorne
gesenkt, und in seinem weichen Kindergesicht zuckte es gewaltsam.
Sophie hatte mehr Licht gemacht. Der helle Schein fiel auf das
blonde, volle Haar des jungen Mannes. Es lag etwas Rührendes in
seiner ganzen Haltung. Fast noch etwas knabenhaft Unberührtes.
Wie er so da vor ihr an dem mit einem farbigen Tuch gedeckten
viereckigen Tische saß, war es der Sophie, als hätte Felix Altwirth
eine Ähnlichkeit mit ihrem toten Brüderchen, dem Karrnerbübel. Und
ganz ähnlich, wie sie jenen so oft in seinem kindlichen Leid getröstet
hatte, machte sie es nun mit dem durchgefallenen
Prüfungskandidaten. Mit der ganz gleichen resoluten Energie, in
demselben mütterlich tröstenden Ton sprach sie jetzt zu Felix, wie
sie es in ihren frühen Kinderjahren so oft getan hatte.
Sophie Zöttl setzte sich auf die Bank an die Seite des jungen
Mannes, ergriff mit warmem Druck seine eisigkalte Hand und hielt
sie fest in der ihren. „Und jetzt, jetzt sind’s natürlich recht
unglücklich! Statt daß Sie Ihnen freuen täten, daß Sie kein so
langweiliger Beamter zu werden brauchen. Gelten’s? Und möchten
wohl am liebsten gleich in Inn eini springen, ha? Und stellen Ihnen
vor, wie schön ’s wär’, wenn man an jedem Ersten sein schäbiges
G’haltel einstecken könnt’, wie man vertrocknen dürft’ vor lauter
Aktenstaub. Und dann hinaus kommen tät’ aufs Land als k. k.
Bezirksrichter. Ja, ja!“ nickte sie mit einem komisch ernsten Gesicht,
als Felix sie unterbrechen wollte. „Es ist schon so, wie ich sag’! Und
wenn man dann am Land draußen den großen Herrn spielen könnt’
... und wenn man dann alt und katzgrau und so schäbig ist, daß si’
g’wiß koa Madel mehr nach einem umdreht, da darf man wieder in
die Stadt z’ruck. Da kriegt man an schönen G’halt und bildet sich an
Batzen drauf ein. Stackelt umanander, recht breit und recht behäbig,
Bauch voran und die Füß’ auseinander, daß ja a anderer Mensch
koan Platz mehr hat, da wo man selber geht. Denn am Land
draußen, da hat man’s erst begriffen, daß man wer ist, und da bildet
man sich nacher aa was ein drauf, weil man sonst nix hat, auf was
man sich was einbilden könnt’. Ja, ja ... mei’ Lieber, so ist’s! Und das
möchten Sie werden, akrat das? Aber z’schad sein Sie für so eppas,
sag’ i Ihnen, viel z’schad dazu! Grad recht ist’s, daß Sie durchg’fallen
sein. Justament recht ist’s, und mi g’freut’s. Jatz muß die
Apothekerin nachgeben, ob sie will oder nit! Gelten’s, Herr Doktor?“
Felix Altwirth hatte bei dem Redeschwall des jungen Mädchens
unwillkürlich lachen müssen. Sie hatte das alles mit so viel
Entschlossenheit und drolliger Urwüchsigkeit gesagt, daß es ihn
erheitern mußte.
Ein gutes Korn Wahrheit steckte ja in dem allen, was sie sagte.
Diese ganze Schilderung des alternden Beamten hatte er sich oft
genug selbst gemacht, und mit Schaudern hatte er sich vorgestellt,
wie wohl sein ganzes Leben da draußen am Land mitten unter den
Bauern sich gestalten würde.
Vielleicht hatte die Sophie doch recht. Vielleicht war’s trotz allem
nicht gar so schlimm, daß er durchgefallen war. Vielleicht durfte er
nun doch sein Leben ... Ja, wenn nur die Tante und der Onkel nicht
wären und seine Mutter. Seine Mutter ... die wußte ja noch gar
nichts, wie’s um ihn stand.
Bei diesen Erwägungen machte Felix Altwirth ein recht trauriges
Gesicht und unterdrückte nur mit Mühe einen Seufzer.
Auch Max Storf dachte an die Verwandten seines Freundes und
sagte ziemlich mutlos: „Das stellen’s Ihnen doch leichter vor, als es
ist, Fräul’n Sophie. Die Frau Apotheker ...“
„Ach was, die Frau Apotheker! Die nimm einfach i mir z’leihen.
Der sag’s einfach i. Die kommt ohnedies heut’ auf d’Nacht her. Da
kommt’s mir grad recht. Da red’ i damit!“ meinte die Sophie resolut.
Mit einem jähen Ruck war Felix Altwirth von seinem Sitz
emporgeschnellt. „Was? Die Tant’ kommt? Ja da muß i gleich ...“
Und mit Blitzeseile hatte er nach seinem Hut und nach seinem
Überzieher gelangt, um sich vor der ihm drohenden Gefahr zu
flüchten.
Lachend hielt ihn Max Storf mit beiden Händen an den Schultern
fest. „Ob du dableibst oder nit, du Hasenfuß! Vor einem Weib davon
laufen, schämst di nit?“
„Nein, ich schäm’ mich nit! Bleib du und red’ mit ihr, wenn du die
Schneid’ hast!“ Felix Altwirth mußte jetzt über sich selber lachen.
Die Erinnerung an seine Tante bewirkte, daß sich sein Humor
entschieden besserte. Es war eine Art komischer Furcht, die er vor
seiner Tante hatte. Er wußte, daß diese Frau allein sein Schicksal in
Händen trug. Diese Frau, der gegenüber er sich stets wie auf einem
Vulkan befand. Keinen Augenblick fühlte er sich davor sicher, mit ihr
ernstlich zusammen zu krachen.
Ihre bornierte Anmaßung, die Beschränktheit ihrer
Lebensauffassung und ihre ungeheure Gönnermiene hatten ihn von
jeher schon so gereizt, daß er es stets vorzog, mit dem Onkel zu
verhandeln ohne Beisein von dessen Frau. Hauptsächlich aus
diesem Grunde war er ursprünglich Stammgast beim Weißen Hahn
geworden. Bis dann später ein neuer Anziehungspunkt hinzukam,
der ihn dort fesselte. Das war seine heimliche Verehrung für Sophie
Zöttl.
„Ich bleib’ schon!“ sagte der junge Arzt. „Und ich red’ auch mit ihr.
Aber nit heut’, sondern erst morgen. Also heut’ ist wieder
Damenabend?“ erkundigte er sich dann bei der Sophie. „Wer kommt
denn alles?“
„Na also amal die Frau Apothekerin Tiefenbrunner, dann die Frau
Patscheider, die Frau Direktor Robler, die Frau Professor Haidacher,
die Frau Baurat Goldrainer und ihre Schwester ...“
Felix Altwirth hielt sich mit komischem Entsetzen die Ohren zu.
„Um Gotteswillen hören’s auf, Fräul’n Sophie! Da wird einem ja ganz
damisch bei die vielen Leut’. Da geh’ ich lieber!“
„Aber Sie wohl nit, Herr Doktor, hm?“ fragte Sophie mit
schnippischer Anzüglichkeit.
„Nein, ich nit, ich bleib’!“ erwiderte der junge Arzt fest, aber doch
mit einiger Verlegenheit in seinem Gesicht.
Die Sophie wußte es ganz genau, daß sich Doktor Max Storf nun
schon seit einiger Zeit für Fräulein Hedwig Eisenschmied, die
Schwester der Frau Baurat Goldrainer, interessierte. Daß der junge
Arzt so bald schon seine Aufmerksamkeiten gegen sie auf eine
andere übertragen hatte, das kränkte ihre weibliche Eitelkeit.
Sophie Zöttl war in gewisser Beziehung ein sehr verwöhntes
Mädchen geworden und verlangte es, ohne sich dessen bewußt zu
sein, daß ihr sämtliche männliche Mitglieder der
Stammtischgesellschaft huldigten. Sie hatte mit dem jungen Arzt ihr
Spiel getrieben. Sie hatte mit ihm kokettiert, wie sie mit jedem
kokettierte. Aber nicht lange. Max Storf eignete sich nicht, der Sklave
eines Weibes zu werden oder sie in scheuer Anbetung zu verehren,
wie sein Freund dies tat.
Der junge Arzt hatte sich eine warme Verehrung für die reine
Frau bewahrt. Daß Sophie noch zu den reinen Frauen gehörte, das
fühlte er. Er hatte keine Ahnung von ihrer eigentlichen Abkunft und
hielt sie für ein Bauernmädchen aus dem Unterinntal.
Max Storf war Menschenkenner genug, um es zu wissen, daß ein
wildes, ungezügeltes Temperament unter der scheinbar
gleichgültigen Art des jungen Mädels lauerte. Ein Temperament, das
er sich scheute zu wecken, das ihm für ein loses Spiel zu gefährlich
schien und für ein ernstes Glück zu ruhelos und wild.
In Fräulein Hedwig Eisenschmied glaubte er das Mädchen
gefunden zu haben, das ihm für ein dauerndes Glück sichere
Bürgschaft bieten konnte.
Sophie bemerkte sofort den Umschwung in seinen Gefühlen. Da
sie ihn nicht liebte, berührte es sie innerlich nur wenig. Einzig und
allein gekränkte Eitelkeit war es, die sie veranlaßte, dem jungen Arzt
schnippische und anzügliche Reden zu geben. Doktor Storf war kein
Neuling in der Beurteilung und Behandlung der Frauen, und sein
Takt, auch in diesem Falle, erregte die geheime Bewunderung von
Felix ...
Es war schon beinahe halb acht Uhr abends, als Felix Altwirth
das Stammlokal beim Weißen Hahn verließ. Gerade noch
rechtzeitig, ehe er mit dem ersten der abendlichen Gäste im Hausflur
zusammentraf.
Langsam schlenderte Felix die Anlagen des rechtsseitigen
Innufers entlang. Er hatte den dunklen Hut tief in die Stirn gedrückt.
Den Rockkragen des hellen Überziehers hatte er aufgestülpt und die
beiden Hände in die weiten Taschen vergraben. So ging er mit
lässigen Schritten seines Weges, ohne jemand zu beachten. Er kam
noch immer früh genug nach Hause. Es eilte ihm gar nicht. Den
bittern Reden und Vorwürfen seiner Mutter würde er ja doch nicht
entgehen. Daß sie damit nicht sparen würde, das wußte er.
So nahe sich Mutter und Sohn in früheren Jahren gestanden
waren, so tief war die Kluft zwischen ihnen geworden.
Unüberbrückbar erschien sie dem Sohn. Wenn er nur fort könnte!
Fort von hier ... weit fort!
In der Dunkelheit der Nacht bauten sich ihm die Berge der
Nordkette auf wie die Riesenmauern eines Gefängnisses. Hoch,
mächtig und erdrückend schwer. Da war kein Ausweg für Felix. Fast
schien es ihm, als sei das gigantische Gebirge in seiner trotzig
herben Unnahbarkeit ein Symbol für ihn.
Kein Ausweg! Sollte er tatsächlich hier in dieser Stadt ein kleines
Schicksal zu Ende leben müssen? ...
Am Himmel war kein Stern sichtbar. Stockfinster war die Nacht
und regenschwer die Luft. Immer weiter ging Felix Altwirth den Inn
entlang ... viele Stunden ... weit hinunter ins breite Inntal. Erst der
frühe Morgen brachte ihn heim zu seiner Mutter.
 Siebentes Kapitel.

E s geschah nicht oft, daß die Herren von der

Stammtischgesellschaft beim Weißen Hahn ihre Damen
mitbrachten. So alle heilige Zeiten einmal kam es vor. Aber dann
ging’s auch jedesmal hoch her. Da wurde geplaudert, gelacht und
gesungen, und die Sitzungen waren ausdauernder, als wenn die
Herren unter sich blieben.
Wenn so ein Weiblein einmal etwas Gutes genießt, dann will sie
es auch bis zur Neige auskosten. Das war gewöhnlich der Schluß
der philosophischen Betrachtungen, die der Herr Rat Leonhard
immer und immer wieder anstellte und durch die er die
Notwendigkeit solcher weiblicher Heimsuchungen zu ergründen
bestrebt war. Dieser Schluß war für ihn eine Art Selbstberuhigung.
Besonders dann, wenn er in lauten Selbstgesprächen, die er auf der
Straße mit sich führte, sich diesen Schluß stets von neuem wieder
vorsagte und sich damit zu trösten suchte.
Für den Herrn Rat waren die Damenabende eine große
Geduldprobe. Mit geheimer Angst sah er jedesmal einen solchen
Abend herannahen. Er ertrug ihn als eine ihm vom Schicksal
auferlegte Prüfung. Obwohl er diese Prüfung als im höchsten Grade
unverdient erachtete, wußte er sie doch mit Anstand und Würde zu
tragen. Der Anstand und die Würde, die der Herr Rat bei solchen
Gelegenheiten zur Schau trug, waren allerdings etwas
eigentümlicher Art. Alles, was er zur Verschönerung seines äußeren
Menschen tat, beschränkte sich darauf, daß er sich nebst einem
weißen Hemd einen steifen Kragen anlegte, einen breiten, niedern
Umlegkragen, und dazu eine helle, möglichst geschmacklose
Krawatte, die ihm selber aber außerordentlich gefiel.
 Im gewöhnlichen Leben war der Herr Rat stets mit einem bunten
oder auch dunkelfarbigen Flanellhemd bekleidet, dessen weicher
Kragen ihn nicht drücken konnte. Die Stelle der Krawatte vertrat
meistens eine Schnur mit Quasten, wie sie bei den Touristenhemden
üblich ist. Steife Kragen oder gar Manschetten haßte der Herr Rat
ehrlich und aufrichtig und betrachtete diese „Futteraler“ als eine
unerhörte Beschränkung seiner persönlichen Freiheit.
Die Frau Professor Haidacher, die eine lustige Frau war und eine
unbedingt satyrische Ader besaß, machte einmal die Bemerkung: sie
glaube, der Herr Rat Leonhard wähle die dunkle Hemdenfarbe aus
Sparsamkeitsgründen und mit Rücksicht auf die Reinlichkeit.
Der böse Witz wurde viel belacht; denn alle wußten es, daß der
Herr Rat ziemlich ungezogene Manieren bei Tisch besaß und daß
seine Kleidung nie ohne die Spuren der genossenen Mahlzeiten
blieb.
Daß der Herr Rat Leonhard zu den Damenabenden auch
jedesmal ein weißes Hemd anziehen mußte, war eine Prozedur, die
der lustigen Frau Professor sicher viel Vergnügen bereitet hätte,
wenn sie dieselbe hätte beobachten können. Im Geist stellte sie
sich’s zwar genau so vor, wie es in der Wirklichkeit sich immer
ereignete. Und diese Vorstellung ließ es ihr nur begreiflich
erscheinen, daß der alte Junggeselle den Damenabenden beim
Weißen Hahn bloß Gefühle des Abscheus und der Furcht
entgegenbrachte.
Die lustige Frau Professor sah den kleinen Mann, wie er in seiner
Junggesellenbude nervös auf und ab trippelte, überall seine Wäsche
zusammensuchte und sie nicht finden konnte. Sie sah ihn, wie er
nach glücklich vollbrachtem Fund sich abmühte, in das steife, ihm
ungewohnte Wäschestück hinein zu schlüpfen. Sie hörte ihn ächzen
und keuchen und ingrimmig fluchen, wenn er den Ausweg für den
Kopf nicht finden konnte, da er vergessen hatte, oben die Knöpfe
aufzumachen. Sie sah ihn in ratloser Verzweiflung und mit
ungeschickten, zitterigen Händen einen Knopf annähen, der lose an
einem Faden hing und auszubrechen drohte, und sah noch viele
kleine Unfälle, die ihm widerfuhren und die er zu überstehen hatte.
 Und das mußte der Herr Rat, wie die rundliche, gut genährte
Frau Professor mit innerer Befriedigung feststellte, alles zur Strafe
dafür durchmachen, weil er es versäumt hatte, sich rechtzeitig im
Leben um eine Gefährtin umzusehen, die ihm die kleinen Lasten des
Alltags mit liebevoller Sorge abgenommen hätte.
Als warnendes Beispiel hatte die Frau Professor den Rat
Leonhard schon oft dem Doktor Rapp vor Augen gestellt. Denn daß
der Advokat so völlig keine Lust bezeugte, in den Ehestand zu
treten, das wollte ihr schon gar nicht gefallen.
„Schauen’s, Herr Doktor, so viele hübsche junge Mädeln gibt’s in
Innsbruck. Mädeln mit Geld und Mädeln ohne Geld. Beißen’s doch
an! Ein Mann wie Sie! Ich bitt’ Ihnen!“
Auch heute abend hatte sich die Frau Professor den Doktor Rapp
aufs Korn genommen, um ihn abermals in ihrer lustigen Art für den
Ehestand zu kapern. Sie selber war eine äußerst glückliche Frau
geworden, hatte einen guten, etwas phlegmatischen Mann
gefunden, der ihr willig das Zepter der Regierung überließ und sich
in alles fügte, was sie bestimmte. Da Frau Anna Haidacher eine sehr
vernünftige Dame war, so bedurfte es auch keiner allzu großen
Selbstverleugnung von Seite des Herrn Professors, sich ihrem
höhern Willen unterzuordnen.
Die Frau Professor war entschieden der Sonnenschein am
Stammtisch. Sie war die einzige, die es zustande brachte, die
Sophie für den Abend auszustechen. Ohne Absicht natürlich; denn
sie befand sich nebst den andern Damen in vollkommener
Unkenntnis darüber, welchen Grad der allgemeinen Aufmerksamkeit
das junge Mädchen für gewöhnlich genoß. Sophie trat für diesen
einen Abend gerne zurück. Sie erfreute sich gleich den andern an
der sprudelnden Heiterkeit der jungen blonden Frau.
Sophie hatte eine ganz besondere Zuneigung zur Frau Professor
gefaßt. Sie zog sie allen übrigen Damen vor und machte sich gerne
um sie zu schaffen. Das kam daher, weil Frau Haidacher ganz
anders zu dem Mädel war als die übrigen Damen. Frau Anna hatte
eine gute, freundliche Art, mit dem Mädchen zu reden. Sie sprach
mit ihr, als wäre sie eine ihresgleichen, und kehrte mit keinem Wort,
mit keinem Blick und keiner Gebärde die Dame vom Stande heraus;
und dafür hatte Sophie ein besonders feines Empfinden.
Die Damenabende waren für Sophie eigentlich stets Stunden der
Selbstüberwindung und Selbstbeherrschung. Ihre Stellung beim
Weißen Hahn war mit der Zeit eine derartige geworden, daß sie das
Gefühl, eine Dienerin zu sein, ganz verloren hatte. Die Wirtin hielt sie
wie ihr eigenes Kind. Die Gäste bewunderten sie und feierten sie
und ließen sich von ihr hofmeistern. Das Dienstpersonal nahm eine
Art scheuen Abstandes von ihr ein, der nicht frei von Neid war.
Mit dem Auftreten der Damen in der Stammtischgesellschaft
änderte sich für Sophie das Bild, und sie empfand deutlich den
sozialen Unterschied zwischen sich und jenen. Da war keiner der
Männer, der es gewagt hätte, in Gegenwart der Frauen einen Witz
mit ihr zu machen. Sogar die jungen Herren am andern Ende des
Zimmers verhielten sich ruhiger und zurückhaltender. Sophie war
stets froh, wenn so ein Damenabend wieder glücklich überstanden
war. In diesem Punkt stimmte sie mit dem alten Herrn Rat
vollkommen überein.
Mit heimlicher Genugtuung bemerkte sie es, wie die übrigen
Damen es der Frau Professor neideten, daß diese der Mittelpunkt
der Gesellschaft war und sich der allgemeinen Gunst erfreute. Die
Professorin war hübsch, jung, übermütig und besaß einen sich stets
gleichbleibenden Humor. Eigentlich war Frau Professor Haidacher
gar keine Innsbruckerin. Sie war nur eine „Eingeheiratete“ und von
Geburt eine Linzerin.
Es dauerte auch geraume Zeit, ehe die Innsbrucker Damenwelt
sich mit ihr anfreunden konnte. Die herzliche, heitere Art der jungen
Frau bezwang aber doch schließlich die kühle, beobachtende
Zurückhaltung der Damen. Jetzt allerdings war sie schon längst eine
der Ihren geworden, und sie fanden sich ab mit ihrer überquellenden
Lustigkeit und mit der für ihre Begriffe zu extravaganten Kleidung der
Professorin.
Frau Haidacher liebte es, sich stets nach der allerneuesten
Wiener Mode zu kleiden. Und die Art und Weise, wie sie sich trug,
wie sie sprach und ging, verriet die Dame von Welt, die in ihre
gegenwärtige spießbürgerliche Umgebung nicht so ganz
hineinpassen wollte.
Daß sie nicht ganz zu ihnen paßte, das fühlten die Innsbrucker
Damen besser, als es Frau Haidacher selbst bewußt wurde. Die
Professorin hatte sich rasch eingewöhnt in der Stadt. In ihrer
leichtlebigen Art fand sie sich gleich mit allem zurecht und sehnte
sich keinen Augenblick nach ihrer alten Heimat zurück.
Sophie Zöttl war, während die Professorin den Rechtsanwalt
wieder einmal neckte, in der Nähe geblieben und hatte scharf auf
jedes Wort geachtet, das gesprochen wurde.
Sie stand hinter dem Stuhl der Professorin und hatte die rechte
Hand leicht auf die Lehne gestützt. Es war eine vertrauliche Haltung,
die sie einnahm, während sie ihr Gesicht gegen eine andere Seite
wandte, als erwarte sie von dort her einen Auftrag oder als achte sie
gar nicht darauf, was in ihrer allernächsten Nähe verhandelt wurde.
Und doch entging ihr kein Wort, nicht ein einziges. Auch nicht die
geringste Nuance im Tonfall eines Wortes. Sie war so voll
Aufmerksamkeit, daß sie es nicht einmal bemerkte, wie einige
Damen sich über ihre gemütliche und ungezwungene Art sich zu
geben beschwerten.
Die Frau Patscheider, die sich, wenn ihr Gatte anwesend war,
ganz besonders dazu berufen fühlte, über Schickliches und
Unschickliches zu urteilen, wandte sich mit schlecht verhehlter
Empörung an ihre Nachbarin, die Frau Baurat Goldrainer: „Finden
Sie nicht, Frau Baurat, daß die Sophie jetzt anfangt, gar a bissel zu
vertraut zu werden. Das gehört sich schon gar nicht. Ein Unterschied
muß doch sein. Sie ist ja doch bloß a Kellnerin!“ meinte sie, und ihre
vollen Lippen verzogen sich geringschätzig.
Die Frau Patscheider war eine Frau in den schönsten Jahren.
Groß, schwarz und üppig, ein bißchen zu üppig. Die schwere,
goldene Uhrkette, die sie doppelt um den Hals geschlungen trug, lag
straff gespannt über der schwarzseidenen Bluse, die den prallen
Busen nur noch mehr zur Geltung brachte. Die Frau Patscheider
machte den Eindruck, als hätte sie sich ganz besonders eifrig der
Prozedur des Schnürens unterzogen. Sie atmete schwer, und wenn
sie sprach, schöpfte sie immer erst tief Atem, als verursache ihr das
Sprechen eine ungeheure Anstrengung.
Die Damen saßen alle in einem Kreis beisammen. Männlein und
Weiblein waren streng geschieden. Nur die Professorin bildete hier
abermals eine Ausnahme. Sie mußte an ihrer Seite stets ein
Mannsbild haben, wie sie sich ausdrückte. Sonst fühlte sie sich nicht
wohl. „An e i n e r Seite wenigstens!“ lachte sie. „Damit ich auch
einmal was anderes zu hören krieg’, als Kinder, Dienstboten und den
andern Klatsch.“ Die Damen lachten ihr dann immer mit süßsaurer
Miene zu. Die Professorin war halt einmal so. Daran konnte man
nichts ändern.
Auch Frau Therese Tiefenbrunner hatte einen Tischnachbar. Sie
hatte sich ihn zwar nicht ausgesucht, sondern er war für sie
bestimmt worden. Nämlich der Herr Rat Leonhard.
Da der Herr Rat diese Abende als eine ihm von Gott auferlegte
Prüfung ansah, in die er sich mit Würde und Anstand zu schicken
wußte, so erachtete er es auch für seine Pflicht, bei diesen
Gelegenheiten als Tischältester zu präsidieren. Und daß er dies nur
an der Seite einer Dame konnte, war klar.
Da die Wirtin an den Damenabenden stets den Platz zu seiner
Rechten innehatte und keine der Damen zu bewegen war, ihr diesen
Platz zu nehmen, so blieb nur noch der Platz zur Linken des Herrn
Rat frei. Eine jede der Damen hatte aber eine ganz bestimmte
Abneigung dagegen, neben dem Herrn Rat zu sitzen.
Der Herr Rat pflegte an den Damenabenden einen völlig andern
Menschen aus sich zu machen und allen ihm lieb gewordenen
Angewohnheiten zu entsagen. Er verzichtete sogar mit Rücksicht auf
die Vertreterinnen des schönen Geschlechtes auf seine ihm sonst
unentbehrliche Pfeife. Der Herr Rat hatte in seiner frühen Jugend
einmal gehört, daß es nicht anginge, in Gegenwart von Damen
Pfeife zu rauchen; und das hatte er sich wohl gemerkt. Er wollte
nicht unhöflich sein. Um keinen Preis! Und er wußte auch, was sich
gehörte.