340 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional
his concept of ‘real sociology’. Adorno was not at all happy about this
and advised caution: ‘Schelsky is a very able man, even if this does not
always become plain, given the sheer quantity of his publications. Every
attack on him that is merely dogmatic in character, in other words, that
simply repudiates the tendencies he observes, instead of going beyond
him by offering a better explanation, would boomerang.’^49 Günther
Anders, who had returned from America in 1951 and settled in Vienna,
was not the only one to accuse Adorno of lacking in political instincts.
Adorno responded to this accusation in a letter. This arose from an
embarrassing situation in which Anders had refused to shake Gehlen’s
hand while he was talking to Adorno, who wished to introduce them.
‘Once people have taken the decision to return, as both you and I have
done, it does not seem to me to be possible blithely to adopt an attitude
of private intransigence and whenever possible to display one’s pride
before king’s thrones where none exist.’^50 In another letter a few weeks
later he explained his attitude even more clearly: ‘I avoid contact with
people who have done terrible things; someone like Gehlen, undoubt-
edly one of the most complicated cases, is not in that category. In his
case, it is a question of an attitude which is undoubtedly as unaccept-
able to me as to you, but where mere indignation does not suffice....
It is a matter of indifference whose hand I shake as long as nothing
remains sticking to the paper on which I am writing... I am too accus-
tomed to thinking in social terms to promise myself anything at all
today from the spontaneous but isolated actions of the individual.
I would much prefer to put a brave face on it and rely on the general
effect that my writings will have if I am lucky.’^51
The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung had been suspended in 1941. Now,
Horkheimer and Adorno intended to revive it in parallel to the increas-
ing activities of the institute, and they wished to secure the services
of a broad selection of future contributors. Schelsky, meanwhile, had
become one of the best-known and most widely read sociologists in the
Federal Republic under Adenauer, and such formulae as ‘the sceptical
generation’, ‘the levelled-down middle-class society’, and ‘the technical,
scientific civilization’ had entered the popular imagination. Adorno
invited him to contribute to the Zeitschrift. ‘I may say that I attach the
very greatest conceivable importance to your collaboration.’^52 But he
balanced his invitation to Schelsky, as a man of the right, with one
to Wolfgang Abendroth, a well-known left-wing intellectual: ‘I believe
that our journal will provide the solid ground on which our academic
relationship can thrive most fruitfully.’^53
Since the plan to revive the journal came to nothing, and since the
gulf between their respective views of society was too wide to ignore,
contacts between Adorno and Schelsky were limited to the links between
the institute and the Social Research Centre of Münster University,
with its seat in Dortmund. This centre was a conservative institute
at the time, to judge by its staff, and under Otto Neuloh, its director, it