Adorno

With his Back to the Wall 465

persuade him to come to Frankfurt. Apart from this invitation, Adorno
and Habermas did everything in their power to mediate between the
two opposing sides. Agreement was prevented, however, by the intrans-
igence of the student leaders. Matters came to a head after a renewed
occupation of the sociology seminar rooms, when the strike committee
threatened in a leaflet to strip the seminar of all its furnishings and
equipment (‘its means of production’).^81 In response, the professors
responsible for the seminar brought the police in to close the buildings.
In the days that followed, on 31 January 1969, a group of striking
students under the leadership of Hans-Jürgen Krahl set off for the
Institute of Social Research in order to discuss further political initiat-
ives. The directors of the institute, with Adorno at their head, declared
that this occupation was trespass and called for police protection. A
note for the files, written by Adorno or at his behest, stated baldly:
‘The institute’s directors... had no choice, if only for legal reasons,
but to accept the confrontation that had been forced on them. They
decided to ask for police assistance in clearing the institute of intruders
and to request them to bring charges for trespass against Herr Krahl
and others who had forced an entry into the building.’^82 In justifica-
tion of their action, the directors of the institute noted in the same
memorandum: ‘It is vital that precisely those who believe that univer-
sity reform is overdue and who wish to bring about a democratic
and social institution in harmony with the Basic Law, it is vital precisely
for those who identify wholeheartedly with this aim of the extra-
parliamentary opposition, that they should feel obligated to resist their
own criminalization: they should resist all authoritarian tendencies and
equally all pseudo-anarchistic acts of violence on the part of ostensibly
left-wing activists as well as crypto-fascist actions from groups on the
extreme right.’^83
He also wrote to Marcuse: ‘I am quite unable to explain why I feel
so calm and with what infinite astonishment I register all these things.
Whether it is age or intensive repression so that I can bring my own
work to completion, I am unable to say.’^84 Despite this attempt to raise
his own spirits, Adorno was not quite able to master his own fears.
Looking forward with some anxiety to the end of his sabbatical semes-
ter and the return to teaching, he wrote: ‘God knows what will happen
in the coming term when I shall be teaching once again.’^85

Moments of happiness, despite everything

The collusion of children with clowns is a collusion with art, which adults

drive out of them just as they drive out their collusion with animals.

Human beings have not succeeded in so thoroughly repressing their like-

ness to animals that they are unable in an instant to recapture it and be

flooded with joy.^86