Adorno’s Reluctant Emigration 177Of course, the idea that the Nazis might fail in the long run, or
at least be forced into compromises, was not simply a figment of the
imagination at the time. After all, even though they abolished the free-
dom of speech, the press and assembly after the Reichstag fire in order
to shackle rival parties, the NSDAP still did not succeed in gaining an
absolute majority in the elections on March 5. Adorno and his family
may have taken this to mean the majority of German voters did not
support Hitler, and in fact a third of all voters still supported the parties
of the Weimar coalition. Nevertheless, Hitler had enough of a mandate
to obtain the Reichstag’s approval on 23 March 1933 of the ‘Enabling
Law’, which made it possible for him to govern without parliament. The
Social Democratic Party and the free trade unions proved too weak to
defend the rights of democracy.
Once Hitler had finally put an end to the last vestiges of democracy
and the constitutional state, there was no stopping the witch-hunts
which had long since been in progress in the universities. After the
first intimidatory measures on the part of Nazi student organizations
and other right-wing radical groups, a number of universities began to
institute purges (e.g., Tübingen and Freiburg). Adorno was one of those
affected by these repressive measures, and it was only now that he
began to become aware of the danger to himself. The clearest evidence
of the threat to his own material existence was the loss of his lectureship
at Frankfurt University. He had made use of his right to sabbatical
leave during the summer semester 1933, but in an official letter of
8 September 1933 the ‘Prussian Minister for Science, Art andEducation’
wrote to him saying ‘On the basis of §3 of the Law for the Restoration
of the Professional Civil Service of 7 April 1933, I herewith withdraw
your licence to teach at the University of Frankfurt am Main.’^14 Adorno’s
ironic comment, ‘the less venia legendi, the better’, is only compre-
hensible against the background that even before this event the purging
of the ‘Jewish-Marxist university’ had long since been started, that the
registrar, Kurt Riezler, had also lost his job and that the new rulers
had already started to dismiss a number of colleagues on racial and
political grounds.^15 These included Max Horkheimer, Paul Tillich, Franz
Oppenheimer, Karl Mannheim, Adolf Löwe, Gottfried Salomon and
Max Wertheimer.^16
The work of the Institute of Social Research also came to an
untimely end on 13 March. The same day that the swastika was run up
on the Römer, the town hall, the institute was searched by a contingent
from the Frankfurt criminal police, and temporarily shut down. Thanks
to the research on the political consciousness of the workers, themembers
of the so-called Café Marx had recognized the political dangers even
before Hitler had become chancellor of the Reich. Horkheimer had
no doubt about the fate that was on the point of overtaking Germany.^17
He had given up his flat in February and gone to live in a hotel near
Frankfurt Central Station. This was followed by the illegal occupation