342 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditionallooked after ‘his firm like an anxious father’. This had the effect of
inducing Suhrkamp to publish what seemed to be unsaleable books
such as a new edition of Benjamin’s One-Way Street or Marcel Proust’s
A la recherche du temps perdu in a new German translation.^61 Of espe-
cial importance was his success, together with Gretel and Friedrich
Podszus, in publishing the two-volume edition of Benjamin’s Writings
(1955), which laid the foundation for the wave of interest in Benjamin’s
work. He regarded Benjamin’s new-found popularity with mixed feel-
ings. As he indicated in a letter to Scholem in March 1951, he felt
distinctly uncomfortable in the face of the first reactions to Berlin Child-
hood: ‘The idea that the Ernst Jüngers and Max Benses will not only
produce the readers of Benjamin, but will even try to monopolize him,
is as repugnant to me as to you. But equally, it would not be possible to
ban a German publication simply to preserve him from that fate.’^62
With Minima Moralia, his ‘Reflections from Damaged Life’, Adorno
had considerable success as an author, although the tone and his diag-
nosis of contemporary life were by no means in tune with the age. They
derived indeed from the classical tradition, French moralists such as La
Rochefoucauld, Schopenhauer’s Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life and,
finally, Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human. One reason for the success
of the book, which was published in an edition of 3000 copies, was
connected with Suhrkamp’s vigorous efforts to arouse interest in it in
the media, among potential reviewers and in the book trade.^63 Review
copies were sent to the usual papers and magazines, as well as to those
who were held to be opinion-formers at the time – Gadamer, Guardini,
Heidegger and Jaspers – together with a letter from Suhrkamp, explain-
ing that Adorno’s new book was well suited to ‘arousing discussion’.^64
In six months the book had received some sixty reviews in the German-
speaking media. Moreover, it was generally implied that, as the author
of the Philosophy of Modern Music and the Dialectic of Enlightenment,
Adorno was already a well-known and respected writer. However, such
fame really lay in the future. The recurring motifs of the reviews stressed
five aspects in particular. First, reviewers pointed to the experience of
emigration. In order to explain the underlying diagnosis of the age, the
Marxist concept of ‘alienation’ was emphasized; the author’s stance was
said to be that of a man who enlightens and unmasks. In addition, his
pessimistic view of the present was highlighted. Several reviewers raised
the question: what are the criteria which will enable us to shape society
so that the catastrophe of history, the demise of the individual, can be
prevented? Thus a review by the philosopher Hermann Krings summed
up his opinion: ‘Paradoxical as it may seem when judging a work writ-
ten in such a carefully constructed and precise language, there is a sense
in which this can be called romantic; that is to say, it makes an absolute
claim, but does not emerge from the terrain of dialectics.’^65 This was
undoubtedly a correct assessment of the contemporary significance of
Adorno’s book. This was that his position, his intransigent mode of