452 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional
Ohnesorg, was shot in the back by a policeman. The Berlin Senate
responded by banning future demonstrations, and this was condemned
in its turn by the APO as ‘a non-declared emergency’. It formed the
chief topic of debate in many student meetings in the universities.^14
The events leading to the death of a fellow student as well as the
campaign of the populist Springer Press against the demonstrating stu-
dents persuaded Adorno to raise the matter in one of his sociology
seminars. He remarked that ‘the students have taken on something of
the role of the Jews.’^15 A little later on he spoke of the death of Benno
Ohnesorg, but also about the so-called Six-Day War between Egypt and
Israel. He began his aesthetics lecture on 6 June with the words:
I find it impossible to begin my lecture today without saying some-
thing about the events in Berlin, overshadowed though they are
by the terrible threat to Israel, the refuge of countless Jews who
have fled a horrifying fate. I am conscious of how difficult it is
to form a just and responsible opinion about even the simplest
fact because all the news that reaches us is so slanted. But that
cannot prevent me from expressing my sympathy for the student
whose fate, whatever the reports, is so disproportionate to his
participation in a political demonstration.. ..It is not merely the
urge to ensure that the victims receive justice, but also the fear
that the democratic spirit which is only just developing in Ger-
many might be stifled by authoritarian practices that make it
necessary to demand that the authorities who will be carrying out
the investigations in Berlin should not be connected with those
who wielded the cosh and did the shooting. Moreover, they should
be free of the suspicion that they might have an interest in the
direction taken by the investigation. The desire that the inquiry
should be carried out in complete freedom, uninfluenced by auth-
oritarian wishes and in accordance with the spirit of democracy, is
one that I do not think of as only my own private wish, but as one
that arises from the objective situation. I presume that you share
it. I now invite you to stand in memory of our dead colleague
Benno Ohnesorg.^16Two days after Adorno’s statement the funeral of Benno Ohnesorg
took place. There were a large number of expressions of condolence,
including a convoy of vehicles from Berlin to Hanover. Hanover was
to be the setting for a major congress on the subject of ‘Democracy
and the University – the Conditions and Organization of Resistance’. In
the midst of heated debate about the legitimacy of political forms of
resistance, Jürgen Habermas warned of the dangers of actionism in the
student movement. He described the task facing the APO as ‘if not to
rectify, at least to proclaim the absence of a policy that is enlightened in