Debates with Benjamin, Sohn-Rethel and Kracauer 233of the phenomenologists. As an expert on Husserl, he had himself con-
tributed to the debates on this topic. In addition, he spoke approvingly
of a lecture given by Martha Wolfenstein, a young scholar from Harvard
who had spoken about the position of the painter in industrial society.
In a private group outside the official framework of the conference,
there was a discussion with Neurath, Carnap, Hempel, Lazarsfeld and
Benjamin of Horkheimer’s recently published critique of positivism.
This gave Adorno the opportunity to improve his acquaintance with
the Austrian Paul Lazarsfeld, who was to play an important part in his
life a little later on.
After these few days in Paris, where Adorno spent some time in
‘chez Routiers’ and ‘Ramponneau’ near the Place d’Alma with a friend
from Frankfurt, Gabriele Oppenheim, he hastened to return to Britain.
For he was now expecting the arrival of Gretel Karplus, with whom
he at long last wanted to set up a household. Gretel was of a practical
turn of mind and the first step she took after her arrival, on 20 August
1937, was to rent a small furnished flat with two rooms, in 21 Palace
Court, Hyde Park, Bayswater, so that Adorno could give up living in
the Albemarle Hotel and henceforth live with her.
Once it became clear that Horkheimer had to spend a few weeks
in Europe visiting the different branches of the institute, he promised to
travel to London in order to be present at the wedding. On 7 Septem-
ber, he arrived together with his wife. On the very next day, the ceremony
took place at the registry office in Paddington. The marriage was
registered on 8 September 1937; Redvers Opie and Max Horkheimer
acted as witnesses. As Adorno reported to Benjamin, the wedding party
was small and on a modest scale, ‘in truly total privacy’.^97 Redvers Opie,
who was bursar of Magdalen, gave a lunch in the college at which, in
addition to the bridal couple and the two Horkheimers, the only people
present were Gretel’s mother, Emilie, and Oscar and Maria Wiesengrund.
Adorno would not be denied the opportunity to play some pieces on
the piano, including some Wagner, whose works he was just beginning
to explore. He wrote to Löwenthal that a honeymoon was out of the
question, ‘since we have to fix up our flat, wait for the furniture to
arrive and deal with inconveniences of that sort. Incidentally, Gretel is
completely occupied with household problems, tasks which I cynically
refuse to participate in.’^98
At this point, when Adorno was coming to terms with the novel
experience of marriage and Gretel was starting to deal with the practical
problems of daily life, he suggested to the members of the New York
institute that they should carry out a study ‘of the psychology of the
modern bourgeois woman’. This study should focus on the fetishization
of appearances, the ‘curious transfer of the anal character to consumer
goods (shopping, and the entire fixation on life’s objects)’. It should
go on to examine ‘the specific cementing function of women in modern
society’.^99 As the author of such a study he proposed Erich Fromm,