From Philosophy Lecturer to Advanced Student 191outlawed foreign payments. Adorno even needed the permission of the
exchange control office to enable him to accept the ‘maintenance grant’
from the AAC, which went in part to pay the university fees. When
finally his solicitor pressed him to obtain official permission, the exchange
control office wished to be told the source of his income previously. He
was forced to lie and say he had been in receipt of financial support
from the AAC prior to that, but had not known that official permission
was required. He was then informed that the matter would have to be
resolved either by the exchange control office in Frankfurt or before
a magistrate’s court. This latter possibility could have been the source
of further embarrassment. As he explained to Walter Adams in a letter
on 14 October, one outcome might have been a custodial sentence. A
further problem might arise in connection with renewing his passport,
which was due to expire in January 1937. Without a valid German
passport he could neither travel nor obtain work. It was vitally important
to him to be able to return to Germany at any time to see his parents
and Gretel Karplus. After receiving his submission, the official dealing
with his case in Frankfurt proposed the imposition of a fine which
amounted to 150 Reichsmark. Adorno had developed a relationship
based on trust with Adams and so was able to ask him to write a letter
confirming the award of the maintenance grant for the relevant period
and making it clear that these sums went directly to the university
and did not represent payment for any work, ‘so that they get the
impression that I had, if at all, only very little money in my hand.’
Adams obliged and sent a very detailed and diplomatically phrased
letter, adding unofficially, ‘I am willing to say anything that you wish in
the circumstances.’^19
The need for funds was one of the motives leading Adorno to make
repeated visits to Germany during his four years in Oxford, for longer
stays, as well as short trips. He came to dread these visits: ‘The country
really has become a hell, down to the smallest detail of everyday life.’^20
On the other hand, he had ‘terrible anxieties’ about his parents and
about Gretel, who was still working in Berlin.^21 Apart from visiting the
family in Frankfurt, he accepted the risks associated with the journey in
order to spend time between terms with Gretel. As partner in the leather
goods factory of Georg Tengler, she was ‘relatively unaffected by the
anti-Jewish measures’, according to Adorno. Nevertheless, he had been
working on persuading her to leave Germany since May 1935.^22 This
plan shows that Adorno had gradually been forming a more realistic
picture of Nazi tyranny and political trends in Germany more generally.
The necessity of leaving Germany and his experience of life abroad
had evidently helped to politicize him, and this was reflected in the
maturing of his opinions in his correspondence during this period. Thus
in the winter of 1935, he remarked to Horkheimer that within Germany
one was condemned to a ‘ghetto life’ and that as far as foreign policy
was concerned the situation was bleak. ‘Concessions are made to Hitler