412 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional18 Eating Bread: A Theory Devoured by Thought
The philosophical ideal would be to obviate the need to account for the
deed by doing it.^1In January 1955 Adorno’s American passport expired. He ought to
have returned to the United States so as to avoid losing the US citizen-
ship he had acquired in 1943.^2 Despite his fear of radical right-wing
nationalism and forms of ‘crypto-anti-Semitism’,^3 Adorno, who was
now fifty-one years old, decided to renew his German citizenship. What
led him to make this decision? It seems he was influenced by the role he
played in German cultural life, by the recognition he enjoyed as a uni-
versity professor in Frankfurt and by the positions he occupied in the
Institute of Social Research. His many publications in cultural journals
and his activities on behalf of the new music had given him prominence
and the reputation of being a respected and feared intellectual with
a sharp tongue.^4 Despite his high profile both in print and on the radio,
he was not overwhelmed with public honours. Nevertheless, as early as
1954 he was awarded the Arnold-Schoenberg-Medaille, and five years
later, the Deutscher Kritikerpreis für Literatur; in 1963, he was even
given the Goetheplakette of the City of Frankfurt.
Adorno believed that ‘he would be able to do some good to counter
the hardening and the repetition of the catastrophe [in Germany].’^5
How realistic was this expectation in a country in which the prevailing
trend in the first decade after the war was one of restoration? Neither
domestically nor from a foreign-policy point of view was it realistic to
believe in German neutrality as a long-term contribution to securityand
disarmament in Europe. Nor was it possible to prevent the remilitariza-
tion of Germany. In view of the growing East–West tensions, the mem-
bers of NATO abandoned their opposition to rearming West Germany,
which in May 1955 had once again become a sovereign state. In reaction
to this, the Warsaw Pact was set up under Soviet leadership in the same
month and the GDR became a member on terms of equality. As the
ideological rift between the Great Powers grew deeper, the opposing
military alliances became increasingly important.