334 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditionalnew project about topical questions of local-government reform and
town planning in which the Institute of Social Research had a hand.^25
As he told Thomas Mann, ‘physically’ he felt ‘exceptionally well, three
times as fresh and able to work as on the West Coast and free of
headaches – a strange response of a professionally homeless man to his
homeland.’^26 A minor counter-initiative to the experience of homeless-
ness was his visit with Gretel to Amorbach, where they were able to
enjoy a peaceful autumn break. From Amorbach he wrote a birthday
letter to his mother, who was now eighty-five and had remained in New
York. He told her that they had stayed in the Posthouse and had gone
for long walks in the surrounding forests. To his delight he had met the
son of the painter Max Rossmann again.^27
Even if Adorno frequently had the feeling of having to capitulate to
the numerous professional claims on his energies, his life had neverthe-
less taken a turn for the better. He enjoyed being able to speak his mind
and he was happy to have left the travails of emigration behind him.
Germany destroyed seemed to him to be the symbol of the era. Even if
Adorno was happy to be able to live there once more, that does not mean
that his life was free of vexations.^28 For example, he and Horkheimer
had to come to terms with the unpleasant fact that Sinn und Form, the
East German cultural magazine, published extracts from Dialectic of
Enlightenment without the authors’ permission. Shortly afterwards, Max
Bense published a critical review of that book as well as The Philosophy
of Modern Music in the widely circulated West German magazine
Merkur. The review, entitled ‘Hegel and the Californian Emigration’,
accused the authors of an elitist Hegelian/Marxist orientation.^29 This led
Adorno and Horkheimer to consider making a public statement about
their relation to Soviet Marxism. In the draft that Adorno wrote and
that reflected their political position at the time, he said: ‘We are unable
to see anything in the practice of the military dictatorships disguised as
people’s democracies other than a new form of repression and, in what
people over there are accustomed to call “ideology”, we see only what
was originally intended by that word: the lie that justifies an untrue
condition of society.’^30 No less irksome for Adorno was the fact that
Querido Verlag was making difficulties about the production ofDialectic
of Enlightenment, which was of course intended for a German readership.
Even though it was conceived as a ‘message in a bottle’, the message
was supposed to be found and decoded soon, not just at any old time. In
the event, however, people would not have to wait long.
But what most concerned him was his future position in the univer-
sity. Initially, he was restricted to an acting professorship. As a former
Privatdozent he was standing in for Horkheimer as long as the latter
was unable to come. But his not unjustified hopes were directed at a
chair of his own. In the spring of 1949 Walter Hallstein, in his capacity
as rector of Frankfurt University, had made a trip to the United States,
including Pacific Palisades, chiefly to contact Thomas Mann, whose name