Adorno: A Biography

List of Figures viii

List of Plates ix

Preface xii

Acknowledgements xiv

Illustration Acknowledgements xvi

Part I Origins: Family, Childhood and Youth: School and University in Frankfurt am Main Family Inheritance: A Picture of Contrasts 3

1 Adorno’s Corsican Grandfather: Jean François, alias Giovanni Francesco 5

• Fencing master Calvelli-Adorno in the Frankfurt suburb of Bockenheim 8

2 Wiesengrund: The Jewish Heritage of his Father’s Romantic Name 13

• A generous father and two musical mothers 15

3 Between Oberrad and Amorbach 25

• School experiences of a precocious youth 32

• Arousing philosophical interests in the musical soul: Kracauer’s influence on Adorno 37

4 Éducation sentimentale 52

• First love and a number of affairs 55

Part II A Change of Scene: Between Frankfurt, Vienna and Berlin: A Profusion of Intellectual Interests Commuting between Philosophy and Music 67

5 Against the Stream: The City of Frankfurt and its University 69

• First meeting with Max Horkheimer in the seminar on gestalt psychology 74

6 A Man with Philosophical Qualities in the World of Viennese Music: The Danube Metropolis 82

• Apprenticeship with his master and teacher 83

7 In Search of a Career 95

• Between philosophy and music: no parting of the ways 100

8 Music Criticism and Compositional Practice 110

• Theorizing the twelve-tone method: Adorno’s debate with Krenek 115

9 Towards a Theory of Aesthetics 119

• Rather more than a beginner’s foray into philosophy 125

10 A Second Anomaly in Frankfurt: The Institute of Social Research 132

• Two inaugural lectures 134

• A Privatdozent in the shadow of Walter Benjamin 145

• The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung and Adorno’s ideological critique of music 150

• In league with Horkheimer against a second school of sociology under the same roof 155

• The opera project: The Treasure of Indian Joe 159

Part III Emigration Years: An Intellectual in a Foreign Land A Twofold Exile: Intellectual Homelessness as Personal Fate 169

11 The ‘Coordination’ of the National Socialist Nation and Adorno’s Reluctant Emigration 173

• Hibernating with dignity? 181

12 Between Academic and Authentic Concerns: From Philosophy Lecturer to Advanced Student in Oxford 187

• Sticks and carrots 194

• An abiding distaste: jazz as a tolerated excess 198

• Setbacks . . . 203

• . . . and personal losses 207

13 Writing Letters as an Aid to Philosophical Self-Clarification: Debates with Benjamin, Sohn-Rethel and Kracauer 214

• A double relationship: Gretel and Max 226

14 Learning by Doing: Adorno’s Path to Social Research 242

• In the Institute of Social Research on Morningside Heights 255

• Between two stools once again: a long road from New York to Los Angeles 267

15 Happiness in Misfortune: Adorno’s Years in California 273

• Messages in a bottle, or, How to create enlightenment about the Enlightenment 278

• Merits of social research: studies in the authoritarian personality 288

• Moral feelings in immoral times 298

• The Privy Councillor: Adorno and Thomas Mann 311

Part IV Thinking the Unconditional and Enduring the Conditional The Explosive Power of Saying No 325

16 Change of Scene: Surveying the Ruins 328

• Playing an active role in postwar Germany? 336

• Back to America: horoscope analysis and TV research 348

• Letting the cat out of the bag: Kafka, Beckett, Hölderlin 353

17 Gaining Recognition for Critical Theory: Adorno’s Activities in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s 366

• In the stream, but swimming against the tide 374

• Speaking of the rope while in the country of the hangman 380

• The crisis of the subject: self-preservation without a self 387

• The purpose of life: understanding the language of music 392

• Right living? Places, people, friendships 398

18 Eating Bread: A Theory Devoured by Thought 412

• The dispute about positivism: Via discourse to the Frankfurt School 421

• Against German stuffiness 430

• The fat child 433

• What kind of a society do we live in? Adorno’s analysis of the present 441

19 With his Back to the Wall 448

• Patricide deferred 457

• The futility of defending a theory as practice 460

• Moments of happiness, despite everything 465

• The divided nature of art 470

• Death 474

Epilogue: Thinking Against Oneself 481

Notes 492

References and Bibliography 615

Index 645