458 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional
levelled against me lies in the insinuation that there is a connection
between theoretical discussions and Benjamin’s financial position. There
is no truth in this.. ..It did not occur to anyone to make use [of financial
subsidies from the institute] to exert pressure on him or to censor him.’^47
Adorno did not leave matters there. At the end of March 1968, he
brought together some notes for an essay he planned on ‘Interpreting
Benjamin’. This collection of jottings was supplemented by a list of
questions: ‘Is it so terrible if Benjamin from whom I have learnt so
much is supposed also to have learnt something from me? Arendt’s
monolithic ideas.. ..Point out the way in which Hannah Arendt
and Helmut Heißenbüttel contradict each other.... The false priority
given to biographical information and historical circumstances, which
incidentally did not destroy other people despite their identity.... She
would really like to turn us into his murderers, even though it was we
who kept him above water for seven years.’^48 Adorno had planned to
provide a detailed rebuttal in the Neue Rundschau but, in view of his
many commitments and the effect on his nerves, he decided against
doing so.^49
Even though these accusations soon proved to be without founda-
tions, Adorno nevertheless found them deeply painful. How painful
could be seen from his letters to Gershom Scholem. He asked him, as
Benjamin’s closest friend, to intervene on his behalf. ‘The crucial thing
would be not so much the formalities and correcting the lies,...
but that you, as the man best qualified to do so, should emphatically
confirm my objective philosophical qualifications as far as Benjamin is
concerned.’^50
Scholem’s replies were both sympathetic and diplomatic. He wrote
that the malice of his critics and their wish to attack him personally and
wound him were evident. He counselled composure in the face of such
rancour. In his view, Adorno had no need of ‘philosophical legitimation
as an interpreter of Benjamin’.^51 That aside, ‘it was perfectly possible
for people to differ in good faith about Benjamin’s writings and
ideas...and the same thing applied to opinions about his biography.’No
one had the right to an official reading of Benjamin. ‘The vileness lies in
other assertions and as far as these are concerned the philosophical
issue is important only where it is claimed, grotesquely enough, that you
are an anti-Marxist who disapproved of Benjamin’s Marxism, rather
than a Marxist for whom Benjamin’s Marxism had not been fully thought
through.’^52 Scholem also contacted Hans Paeschke, the editor of Merkur,
to express his disapproval of the ‘in part, shameful, not to say disgrace-
ful’ remarks by Hannah Arendt.^53 Adorno evidently took Scholem’s
lengthy reply as proof of his support. In a further letter he wrote in a
calmer mood to say that the quarrels were lacking in objectivity and
had become ‘sensationalist’.^54 This was also the tenor of other letters in
which Adorno complained about the ‘witch-hunt’ that he was being
subjected to. He was having to endure ‘the crassest possible injustice’.^55