190 Part III: Emigration Yearsdifficult philosophical writers as Brudley [sic].’ Speaking, he said, was
adequate, but not faultless, while his ability to write was still insufficient.
He wished, he said in his application, to study for a doctorate in order
to qualify himself to teach philosophy. Adorno had hoped to meet Ernst
Cassirer in the London office of the AAC, but nothing came of this.
He therefore relied entirely on the suggestions of Harold H. Joachim, a
professor of logic at New College, Oxford, who was close to retirement.
In May, he had a lengthy talk with Joachim in Oxford, where he went to
stay for a few weeks in order to gain an impression of the university. He
lived in 47 Banbury Road with a Mrs Ney, ‘a very acceptable lodging’,
as he said, and where he even had the use of a piano.^13
By mid-June Adorno was in a position to register officially in Merton
College as ‘an advanced student’ in philosophy. The decision to go to
Merton may have been influenced by the fact that his older cousin
Bernhard T. Wingfield had studied there. Despite this personal success
in overcoming the bureaucratic obstacles, there was something absurd
about his new status, which was remarkably inappropriate for a man of
over thirty who had obtained his doctorate a decade earlier, had been
awarded the Habilitation a short time before, and had a considerable
list of publications to his credit. When dining with the other students
in hall, his appearance and manner of speaking made it obvious that he
did not fit in. The ‘advanced student’ told both Horkheimer and Berg
that this was his worst ‘nightmare’ come true, ‘to have to go back to
school. In short, it is an extension of the Third Reich.’^14 In contrast, he
wrote to the general secretary of the AAC: ‘Here the June is delightful
and I am beginning to feel myself human again; a kind of feeling I had
lost in Germany last year.’^15 And he wrote to Berg that Berg absolutely
had to come to Oxford; the town could ‘only be compared to Venice’.^16
Such diametrically opposed reactions were not unusual for a letter writer
who took careful account of the recipients of his letters and what they
wanted to hear from him.
The euphoric note in these letters did not last long. During the summer
vacation Adorno had returned to Germany. When he arrived in Oxford
for the new academic year in autumn 1934, he again felt uncertain
about his position in the university and his own future prospects.^17 It
seems that it was only now that he began to realize that emigration can
mean isolation and loneliness. Some Oxford colleagues rejected him
vehemently, others refused to take him seriously. The philosopher
Alfred Ayer recalls that Adorno ‘seemed to us a comic figure’, with his
snobbish demeanour, ‘his dandified manner and his anxiety’ to be ac-
corded recognition. His specific interests in social theory and aesthetics
had little resonance in Oxford.^18
The enduring problems of living abroad included the growing difficulty
of transferring funds from Germany to Britain. This problem gained in
urgency because he depended on regular payments from his father for
his day-to-day living. The difficulty was that the German authorities had