222 Part III: Emigration Years
Benjamin, he even punned on his name, referring to him as ‘So’n-Rätsel’
(what a riddle!).^51
Adorno did not jettison Sohn-Rethel’s chief findings,^52 namely that
the exchange of commodity values as mediated by money was the
precondition of an objective process of abstraction that became in its
turn the precondition of the abstract nature of conceptual thought. But
he emphasized to Horkheimer that he was well aware of the weaknesses
in Sohn-Rethel’s argumentation. Nevertheless, he insisted that ‘beneath
all the rubbish, he could see a very productive idea’. He defended Sohn-
Rethel’s project against Horkheimer’s blanket condemnation, while
consoling both Horkheimer and himself with the thought that they simply
have to accept ‘that we really only have ourselves to rely on to get our
work done’.^53 This aside, Adorno repeatedly appealed to the director of
the institute to make payments to Sohn-Rethel for the various typescripts
he produced in order to help him out in the difficult conditions of exile.
Adorno also approached Walter Adams, the general secretary of the
Academic Assistance Council. Here too he was successful, for at the
end of September 1937, when Sohn-Rethel moved from Paris to London,
he received a scholarship from the council to which the Institute of
Social Research made a contribution.^54
In contrast to the closeness of these contacts, both personal and
through letters, with both Benjamin and Sohn-Rethel, Adorno confined
his relations with Siegfried Kracauer to a minimum. Like them, Kracauer
tried to survive in Paris in difficult circumstances. He had been living
there with his wife Lili since February 1933, working at first as a cor-
respondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung, although he found himself
dismissed by the editor-in-chief, Heinrich Simon, after only four weeks.
Driven by necessity, he struggled to obtain something more permanent,
approaching in turn the Institute of Social Research or the New School
for Social Research. At the same time, encouraged by the fact that his
first novel, Ginster, was published by Gallimard in a translation by Claire
Malraux, he tried to complete his next novel, Georg, which he had
begun in 1929. He also kept himself busy collecting material for a life of
the operetta composer Jacques Offenbach.
As one of his numerous initiatives, Adorno had suggested late in
1936 that Kracauer should produce a draft study for the institute on the
subject of propaganda and the masses. Horkheimer had no difficulty in
agreeing to the proposal, since he already had plans for a large-scale
project on fascist systems of rule and the effects of Nazi propaganda.^55
This was not the first time the institute had approached Kracauer; he
had several times been invited to become involved in shaping the policy
of the Zeitschrift and to take part in various projects. His wife Lili
had worked in the institute library in Frankfurt for six years. Despite
his current financial difficulties, Kracauer was hesitant about receiving
commissions from the institute. He evidently did not wish to become
too dependent on Horkheimer, who he knew felt a certain animosity