Adorno

Gaining Recognition for Critical Theory 371

his return to Germany, and this comes as no surprise since it was
because of the current research projects that he had been asked to
return. In addition, a number of ideas for future projects and specific
commissions were appearing on the horizon. Together with the con-
tinuation or completion of the existing large empirical studies, Adorno
had had the plan since 1950 of a study of the German resistance move-
ment. At the same time, he wanted to adapt the F scale from The
Authoritarian Personality to German conditions. He wished to invest-
igate how the originally authoritarian disposition of the Germans had
been transformed into democratic attitudes. This project was probably
conceived in January 1952 at a meeting in the institute attended by
sociologists, social psychologists and political scientists (in addition to
Horkheimer and Adorno, those present included Alexander Mitscherlich,
Helmuth Plessner, Ernest Bornemann and Friedrich Tenbruck, etc.).^20
The institute had also taken other projects under its wing. One of them
was a smaller study for the Office of the Federal Chancellor. This
was a highly controversial project in the institute because its aim was
to provide a selection method for the officers of the future German
army. The institute had even agreed to a cooperative venture with
the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution because in
August 1952 Adorno had gained the impression during a meeting in
Cologne that he might expect financial assistance from this source
for his plan to reconstruct the history of the German resistance to the
Nazi regime.
As representative of Frankfurt sociology, Adorno gave a lecture on
the theory of ideology at the Twelfth Conference of German Sociolo-
gists in Heidelberg in October 1954, and at the end of December he
presented a radio talk with the title ‘Sociology as Science’. He used this
lecture to give an account of the theoretical and methodological founda-
tions of this the most modern of the social sciences and he took the
opportunity to introduce the research and teaching programme of the
Institute of Social Research. Shortly afterwards, in January 1955, he and
Horkheimer organized a small conference on the problems of the soci-
ology of the family. This was attended by members of the institute such
as Walter Dirks and Ludwig von Friedeburg, as well as René König and
Helmut Schelsky as guests. Soon after, Adorno took part in an internal
institute conference on industrial sociology which was attended by the
acknowledged specialists of the day: Heinrich Popitz, Hans-Paul Bahrdt
and Theo Pirker. The last was active in the field of industrial and
factory sociology and had strong links with the trade unions. He recalls
the meeting in the building of the institute. ‘We saw very little of
Horkheimer; he sat in his room like Zeus above the clouds.... Adorno
regarded me as someone who by rights ought not to exist at all. In
his eyes the workers’ movement was dead, finished historically. It was
entirely inexplicable how a person like myself could not only have
academic qualifications and be reasonably intelligent, but could also