With his Back to the Wall 475better than my own. But where is the authority who can decide such
things?’^133
The vacation in April, which he spent this year in Brenner’s Park
Hotel in Baden-Baden, was barely sufficient to give him the relaxation
and recuperation he needed so badly after the physical and psycholo-
gical stresses that had preceded it. In addition, there were private prob-
lems arising from his sometimes stormy love relationships, which
frequently ended with painful separations. A lover of great importance
in his life had broken off with him in autumn 1968 when he was visiting
her in Munich because she intended to marry. That was an escape into
a golden cage, he remarked later with some bitterness. Such events ‘are
the saddest things that can happen and they are a sign of age.’ He wrote
this in a state of depression to a close friend, the singer Carla Henius.^134
For the approaching summer semester, Adorno had announced a
course of lectures entitled ‘An Introduction to Dialectical Thinking’, as
well as an advanced seminar on the dialectics of subject and object.
Following his sabbatical term, the audience for his lectures in which he
intended to discuss the relation of social theory and practice was larger
than usual; the auditorium was filled with up to one thousand people.
Despite these unfavourable conditions, Adorno wished to alter the
traditional shape of the academic lecture and invited his students to put
questions to him at any time so as to create a forum for open discussion.
This attempt to change the nature of a lecture course was not only
doomed from the outset, but was evidently taken as an invitation to
disrupt the proceedings – to the point, indeed, where they turned effect-
ively into a regular tribunal. At the very first lecture on 22 April, there
was an incident, evidently organized by the direct-action wing of the
SDS, the so-called leather-jacket party. The trouble-makers, two tall
men, went up to Adorno on the platform and demanded in Stalinist
style that he perform an act of self-criticism for having recently called in
the police to clear the institute and for the legal proceedings against
Hans-Jürgen Krahl.^135 This was accompanied by shouts of ‘Down with
the informer!’. At the same time, a student wrote on the blackboard:
‘If Adorno is left in peace, capitalism will never cease.’ A large part of
the audience expressed their anger about the interruption, but without
intervening to quell those responsible for it. Adorno proposed that he
would give everyone five minutes in which to decide whether or not
they wished the lecture to proceed. Scarcely had he finished speaking
than he was surrounded on the platform by three women students who
scattered rose and tulip petals over him. They then bared their breasts
and tried to approach him while performing an erotic pantomime.
Adorno, whose desperate anxiety was plain to see, snatched up his hat
and coat and, waving his briefcase in self-defence, made his escape from
the hall.^136
After a moment of shock, the majority of those present reacted with
indignation to this almost physical attack on the lecturer. Following