Gaining Recognition for Critical Theory 399a concept that will end up as the concept of the thing itself, not as a
poor abstraction from things.’^164
Adorno did not fail to introduce people he loved to his ‘favourite
little town’ and its surroundings. At the end of the 1920s he was there
with Gretel, and also with Kracauer, Löwenthal and Hermann Grab. In
the 1950s he would often spend Sundays or holidays in the Odenwald,
sometimes travelling in his own car, accompanied by the architect
Ferdinand Kramer and the latter’s second wife, Lore.^165
As late as the beginning of 1968 Adorno made vigorous representa-
tions to the town council, who had plans to build in Amorbach and
modernize it, urging them to preserve its unique squares and streets. He
kept in contact with the family who owned the Posthouse as well as with
Berthold Bührer, the town’s director of church music, whom he had
known since childhood from playing in the family sawmill. In a letter of
January 1968 he told Berthold Bührer how pleased he was that Bührer
was now in charge of the organ in the church and hoped that he would
play Bach for him when he next came to Amorbach.^166
Vienna was another city of which he had happy memories. It reminded
him of Alban Berg and the stimulating months they had spent together.
Adorno had lived in the Austrian metropolis with its splendid feudal
buildings in 1925, his first lengthy separation from his family in Frank-
furt, the first time he had to make his own way. It was here that he met
Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, attended the public readings
of Karl Kraus, was introduced to Alma Mahler, made friends with Soma
Morgenstern and met Hermann Grab. It is no wonder that, after his
return from emigration, Adorno visited Vienna almost every year,
attempting to combine private and professional interests. He tried to
cultivate relations with Helene Berg, so far as was possible, strength-
ened his relationship with Lotte Tobisch, the Burgtheater actress, and
became friendly with Andreas Razumovsky, who was later to become
the music critic of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Razumovsky
was a direct descendant of the Russian ambassador in Vienna who had
been Beethoven’s patron.^167 Even in the 1950s and 1960s Adorno re-
mained fascinated by the easy-going Viennese manner, as well as by the
Viennese love of the macabre. ‘Anyone who does not take grave mat-
ters too much to heart will be happy to give grave matters a free rein. In
this respect the spirit of the city is inexhaustibly creative. A few years
ago a man stabbed a ballet student to death in the labyrinth passages of
the Opera House. His name was Weinwurm’ (Weeping worm).^168
For Adorno, Vienna was in the first place the city of great music and
the city with the famous Opera House that he liked so much to patron-
ize during his visits. ‘When you enter the Opera House... you still have
something of the feeling of a child longing for Christmas. This Opera
House radiates a suggestive power that despite everything promises
something extreme.... Added to this is its unimpaired international
prestige, but also the fact that even the city’s own inhabitants still revere