Adorno’s Reluctant Emigration 17311
The ‘Coordination’ of the National
Socialist Nation and Adorno’s
Reluctant Emigration
Weimar democracy, weighed down by the authoritarian legacy of the
German imperial era, was a chronically unstable political system. It had
twenty-two different governments between 1918 and 1933, and it was
constantly threatened by recurrent economic and political crises until
it finally collapsed in the totalitarian system of the National Socialist
dictatorship. Inflation, the world economic crisis, unemployment, the
crisis of the state finances, political extremism and separatist aspirations
all played a role in its undoing. The ultimate demise of the Weimar
constitution was brought about towards the end of the 1920s by the
growing tension between the political parties on the one hand and the
autocratic institution of the presidency of the Reich on the other.
The political naivety of Paul von Hindenburg, the anti-republican pre-
sident and field marshal, was partly a product of the semi-dictatorships
of the three cabinets under Brüning, von Papen and Schleicher, the
men in charge of the government before Hitler.^1 What was perhaps of
greater importance for the progressive destruction of the parliamentary
system was the fact that the republic had so few genuinely committed
supporters.
Was Adorno fully aware of this absence of commitment to demo-
cratic values? He undoubtedly knew that many of his contemporaries
hankered after the authoritarian solutions put forward by supporters of
a ‘conservative revolution’, as well as their susceptibility to nationalist
and ‘völkisch’ ideologies. It would have been impossible to overlook the
nationalist and conservative voices in the haute bourgeoise circles he
frequented, such as the house of Georg von Schnitzler, the sales dir-
ector of the IG Farben concern. He noted them with irritation, while
hoping that the artistic sensibilities of the traditional aristocratic and
middle-class elites would help them to resist inhuman political trends.
He claimed, for example, that the music of Gustav Mahler was so con-
vincing that anyone able to grasp its import would be immunized against
anti-Semitic propaganda. ‘Music generates an indestructible minimum
of morality that will prove its worth even in these times.’^2 Despite his
indifference to, and even ignorance of, political institutions, his lack of