Adorno

Debates with Benjamin, Sohn-Rethel and Kracauer 227

the end of a letter in October 1936. A little later, he noted in a mood of

resignation that

it looks like a web of delusion from which there is no way out, and

one would like simply to sit down and watch in silence, like Wotan

in The Twilight of the Gods. One of the most important reasons

why I am glad to be together with you is that jointly we shall have

the strength to look the horrors in the face without losing the

vestiges of universal reason that have taken flight and thrown in

their lot with us.^70

In view of the black world situation and the concrete anti-Semitic
measures introduced by the reign of terror in Germany, Adorno
obviously felt increasingly anxious about Gretel, who was still living in
Berlin. As early as the end of 1935, he expressed the fear that she would
soon be condemned to a ‘ghetto existence’ in Germany. This was no
idle supposition. He was in an excellent position to be able to assess the
changes taking place in the ‘Third Reich’. To Horkheimer’s horror, he
kept returning to Germany at the end of each term in Oxford. When
he stayed in Frankfurt and Berlin he could see at first hand both the
reality of Nazi despotism and the concessions made by men such as
Martin Heidegger and other professors ready to fall into line with the
Nazi state.^71 He was also able to witness the success of writers such
as Hanns Johst (the author of the famous quotation which Adorno
mistakenly attributed to Goebbels: ‘When I hear the word “culture”, I
take out my pistol!’), Ernst Jünger, Ernst Wiechert, Gerhart Hauptmann,
Werner Bergengruen, Frank Thiess, Wolfgang Weihrauch and Hans
Carossa. Part of the reality of the Third Reich was formed by propaganda
campaigns such as the touring exhibition ‘Degenerate Art’, which was
also shown in the Frankfurt Städel. And in the exhibition on ‘Degenerate
Music’, mounted in part on the initiative of artistic director Hans Severus
Ziegler, compositions by Adorno occupied what he later called ‘a place
of honour’.^72
Of course, in a traditionally left-liberal town like Frankfurt, where
Adorno was officially still registered, there were isolated attempts at
resistance to the ‘coordination’ policies of the Nazi mayor, Friedrich
Krebs, who called himself an ‘old soldier’ of the nationalist movement
and who wished to coerce everyone into toeing the Nazi line. A few
professors publicly protested against the attack on the Jews. They
included the botanist Martin Möbius, the microbiologist Max Neisser
and the historian Ernst Kantorowicz. Among the students, however,
resistance to the policy of regimentation in the university and the refusal
to give places to Jewish students was minimal. Adorno reported to
Horkheimer about the tragic fate of Liesel Paxmann, a particularly
talented student of oppositional views who had studied at the institute.
She had been put under pressure by the Gestapo. ‘It is not even known