Debates with Benjamin, Sohn-Rethel and Kracauer 237the post we have to defend will prove a lost one everywhere under
all circumstances.... This catastrophe, dragged out over decades, is the
most perfect nightmare of hell which mankind has ever produced up
to now.’^108
Even if Adorno was under no illusions that going to the New World
meant that he would be going to a new society, he was already adjusting
mentally to the country to which he was about to emigrate. Gretel, who
did not feel at home in Britain, was reading books about Harlem and
Greenwich Village. Adorno was wondering what the radio research
project would mean for him, and whether he would be able to commun-
icate with a pure sociologist like Lazarsfeld. Horkheimer meanwhile
attempted to dispel in advance any scruples Adorno might have about
his status in the future research group. ‘Your role is not to be Lazarsfeld’s
assistant, but the idea is that you are to be a member of the research
project for which Princeton University has awarded Lazarsfeld a largish
sum of money. The money will come from the Research Centre of
Newark University which, admittedly, is led by Lazarsfeld.’^109 Of greater
urgency than the question of cooperating with Lazarsfeld was how to
get rid of the flat that had just been rented and the nerve-wracking
procedures connected with obtaining an immigration visa from the
American consulate. This act set the seal on his and Gretel’s emigration
from Germany. It was an important caesura in their life history. An
appointment at the US consulate in London had been made for mid-
December, at which all the relevant documents were to be presented.
From these it emerged that Adorno had a firm contract with both
Princeton University and the Institute for Social Research. In parallel,
he had to submit an application to Horkheimer so that Lazarsfeld could
complete the formalities involved in recruiting him officially for the
radio research project.
To judge by their complaints, Adorno’s and Gretel’s nerves were in a
bad way. So in the middle of December they travelled to San Remo on
the Ligurian coast in order to recuperate. They spent some weeks there
in the Villa Verde, a boarding house run by Dora Benjamin, Walter’s
divorced wife. Benjamin himself came down from Paris, so that they
could all spend time together on the Italian Riviera. The fact that the
focus was still mainly on scholarly work can be seen from Benjamin’s
letter to Horkheimer from the Villa Verde. They had discussed both
drafts of the article on Charles Baudelaire, with which Benjamin had
long been preoccupied, as well as the sketches Adorno had produced
on Richard Wagner. Benjamin was unable to restrain his enthusiasm
when he heard what Adorno read out to him from his draft essays.
‘What was grippingly novel about them for me was the way in which
musical facts... had been made socially transparent in a way that was
completely new to me. From another point of view I was particularly
fascinated by one facet of this work: to see how the physiognomical
realities were directly transposed into a social space, almost without the