Notes to pp. 339–341 569study of specific social problems and the philosophical theory of society
which was concerned with the interpretation of social life as a totality. See
König, Soziologie, p. 8ff.
45 Continuity can be seen not just in the careers of Arnold Gehlen and
Helmut Schelsky, but also in the fact that former Nazis occupied import-
ant posts in postwar German sociology. Examples are Werner Brepohl,
Karl Valentin-Müller and Karl-Heinz Pfeffer, whose work has direct links
with so-called national (völkisch) thinking. Cf. Carsten Klingemann, ‘Ver-
gangenheitsbewältigung oder Geschichtsschreibung?’; Alex Demirovic, ‘Die
Hüter der Gesellschaft: Zur Professionalisierung der Soziologie in
Westdeutschland 1945–1950’; Johannes Weyer, Westdeutsche Soziologie
1945–1950: Deutsche Kontinuitäten und nordamerikanischer Einfluß.
46 Horkheimer to René König, 22 June 1952, Horkheimer–Pollock Archive,
Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main.
47 See Gerd Schäfer, ‘Wider die Inszenierung des Vergessens: Hans Freyer
und die Soziologie in Leipzig 1925–1945’, p. 121ff.
48 See Gerd Schäfer, ‘Die nivellierte Mittelstandsgesellschaft – Strategien
der Soziologie in den 50er-Jahren’; Schäfer, ‘Soziologie auf dem Vulkan –
Zur Stellung René Königs in der Dreieckskonstellation der westdeutschen
Nachkriegssoziologie’, p. 378ff.
49 Adorno to Mauss, 14 September 1955, Heinz Mauss’s Literary Estate,
Hessisches Staatsarchiv, Marburg (NL 340). I am indebted to Gerhard
Schäfer for drawing my attention to this letter.
50 Adorno to Anders, 24 June 1963, Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Frankfurt
am Main (Br 23/13/14).
51 Adorno to Anders, 31 October 1963, Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Frank-
furt am Main (Br 23/22–25); cf. Konrad Paul Liessmann, ‘Hot Potatoes:
Zum Briefwechsel zwischen Günther Anders und Theodor W. Adorno’,
p. 29ff.
52 Adorno to Schelsky, 28 May 1954. Archive of the Sozialforschungsstelle,
Dortmund. Adorno subsequently cultivated relations with Arnold Gehlen,
the cultural anthropologist who had also incriminated himself through
his open sympathy for National Socialism. But in both cases he knew very
well whom he was dealing with. As early as 3 September 1951, he wrote to
Horkheimer, warning him against Schelsky’s attempts to persuade the
German Trades Union League to adopt an affirmative policy of restraint
and social partnership. Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 18, p. 214.
53 Adorno to Abendroth, 6 November 1954, Archive of the Institut für
Sozialforschung, quoted in Alex Demirovic, Der nonkonformistische
Intellektuelle, p. 238.
54 See the study Betriebsklima: Eine industriesoziologische Untersuchung aus
dem Ruhrgebiet, published by the institute in 1955.
55 Adorno to his mother, 21 October 1951, Briefe an die Eltern 1939–1951,
p. 540.
56 Wolfgang Steinecke had studied music in Kiel with Fritz Stein, a pupil of
Max Reger. He obtained his doctorate in 1934 with a thesis on ‘Parody in
Music’. In Darmstadt, where he was active at first on an honorary basis,
he conducted courses on atonal and dodecaphonic music and arranged for
performances of works by Schoenberg together with the composer and
conductor René Leibowitz. He died in December 1961; Adorno wrote an