Adorno’s Reluctant Emigration 185Heidegger.) Why have you remained silent hitherto about your
authorship of the accompanying article which appeared in the above-
mentioned anti-Semitic and National-Socialist periodical in June 1934?’^47
Adorno published a defence in the very next issue of the paper. He said
he had never intended to ingratiate himself with the Nazi rulers; that
much was obvious from his defence of the music that the Nazis had
slandered as ‘decadent’. ‘In the situation of 1934, the turns of phrase
that I can be reproached with must have appeared to every rational
reader as captationes benevolentiae [a bid for the readers’ goodwill]
which allowed me to speak in this way. My true mistake lay in my
misjudgement of the situation.’^48
Haselberg has provided further evidence of Adorno’s political
myopia. During the Hitler dictatorship, in the isolation of exile in
Britain, he began to assemble the personal notes that would form
the core of Minima Moralia, which was not published until much later.
In these notes he attempted to account for the contradictions in his
own responses at the time. His unworldliness prevented him from
instantly recognizing the barbaric nature of the Hitler regime and
this clouded his judgement. However, he had been prepared for
Hitler’s reign of terror by his ‘unconscious fear’. He had a presentiment
about the catastrophe brooding at the heart of German society, ‘and
it often seemed to my foolish terror as if the total state had been
invented expressly against me, to inflict on me after all those things
from which, in my childhood, its primeval form, I had been temporarily
dispensed.’^49
The unconscious fear of which Adorno speaks saved his life. It
encouraged him to take an increasingly realistic view and led to the
conviction that in Nazi Germany there could be no future for a left-
wing intellectual. He now had no choice but to leave the country. But
where should he go? For a brief period he thought about Istanbul. A
more obvious choice, given his musical and philosophical connections,
was Vienna. Since Paul Karplus, Gretel’s uncle, had a chair inneurology
at the University of Vienna, he tried to arrange to have his Habilitation
transferred there. His prospects were not good, however. He received
no assistance from his Nazified home university and Vienna was indif-
ferent to both him and his teaching interests. In October 1934, Adorno
confessed to Krenek that his efforts had come to naught: ‘I should
like to add that of course I tried to transfer my Habilitation to Vienna,
but without success. Herr Gomperz who was charged with the business
discovered that the only thing of interest in my Kierkegaard book was
the quotations, and that the book could not be judged an above-average
achievement. So Vienna shut the door in my face.’^50
Vienna having shown him the cold shoulder, Adorno began in mid-
1934 to think seriously about a British university, and he looked to the
Academic Assistance Council for support. Oscar Wiesengrund strongly
encouraged his son in this venture. He guaranteed him the financial