Between Oberrad and Amorbach 29in the little town of Amorbach in the Odenwald.^16 The Wiesengrund
family was friendly with the Spoerer family, the owners of the Post
House Inn. Adorno’s memories of Amorbach, which he wrote down
and published some four decades after these happy times, convey
movingly the powerful affection he retained for this magical place with
the monastic buildings of the former Benedictine abbey in the midst of
a hilly landscape, just to the south of the little town of Miltenberg on
the River Main.
The walk over the long ridge path from Amorbach to Miltenberg
comes to an end at a gate ‘that is known as Chatterhole [Schnatterloch]
because it is so cold in the forest [that your teeth chatter]. When you go
through the gate, you suddenly arrive at the most beautiful medieval
market-square, without any transition, just as in a dream.’^17 When the
family stayed at the Post House Inn, Adorno would be woken up in the
morning by the ‘thunderous hammer blows’ from the smithy next door
‘that echoed the long-forgotten past, the prehistoric world of Siegfried.’
In the Post House you could not only find excellent food and drink;
in addition, the innkeeper and his family tried to satisfy the musical
needs of their distinguished guests. Together with the piano there was
a guitar, and, even though it had two strings missing, Teddie strummed
on it, ‘intoxicated by its dark dissonant sounds, probably the first I had
encountered with so many notes, years before I heard a note of
Schoenberg. My feeling was that music should be composed to produce
the sound of that guitar. When, later on, I read Trakl’s line “traurige
Gitarren rinnen” [mournful guitars trickle on], what it reminded me of
was that broken guitar in Amorbach.’^18
Adorno was fascinated by the artists and musicians he encountered
in Amorbach, a fascination that survives in the memoir he wrote late
in life:
In fact I came into contact in Amorbach with the circle around
Richard Wagner. The painter Max Rossmann had his studio in
an extension to the abbey buildings. We often sat on his terrace
in the afternoons, drinking coffee. Rossmann had built the decor
for Bayreuth productions. He was the true rediscoverer of
Amorbach and used to bring singers from the festival ensemble
there. Something of the luxurious Bayreuth style of life with its
caviar and champagne transferred itself to the Post House Inn.
At any rate, the kitchen and cellar surpassed everything that was
to be expected of a country hostelry. I have a very clear memory
of one of the singers, although I cannot have been more than
ten at the time. He readily engaged me in conversation once he
had noticed my passion for music and the theatre.... At a stroke
I found myself swept up into the world of the grown-ups and in
the world I had dreamt of, not yet realizing that the two were
irreconcilable.^19