570 Notes to pp. 341–344
appreciation of his work in ‘Nachruf für einen Organisator’, GS, vol. 10.1,
p. 346ff.
57 See Rolf Tiedemann, ‘Nur ein Gast in der Tafelrunde’, p. 177.
58 Hans Gerhard Evers (ed.), Darmstädter Gespräch: Das Menschenbild in
unserer Zeit, p. 193.
59 Peter Suhrkamp (1891–1959) founded his publishing house in the summer
of 1950. As editor of the literary magazine the Neue Rundschau, which
he had tried to maintain as a bulwark of independent thinking free of
National Socialist ideas, he had arrived at S. Fischer Verlag in 1932 when
Gottfried Bermann Fischer was forced into exile. He succeeded in bring-
ing the publishing house through the Nazi period despite being arrested
by the Gestapo in 1944, during which he suffered from pneumonia and
heart problems. As Carl Zuckmayer, with whom he was friendly, wrote in
his Geheimreport: ‘Suhrkamp rejected the idea of emigration for himself,
above all, because, like many others, he was convinced that there were
good people in Germany who should not simply be abandoned, that some
people should stay to defend what should be defended and to save what
could be saved, and that Germany was the responsible place to be for
people who were not forced to flee.... Personally, Suhrkamp is a very
profound character, a somewhat brooding, eccentric, difficult person, more
depressive than optimistic’ (Carl Zuckmayer, Geheimreport, p. 20ff.).
After the war, because of a series of disagreements with Bermann Fischer,
Suhrkamp, encouraged by writers such as Hermann Hesse, set up his
own publishing house on 1 July 1950. The programme of 1950 and 1951
revealed a definite character that became even more marked in the years
to follow. Books he published include T. S. Eliot, Ausgewählte Essays;
Max Frisch, Tagebuch 1946–1949; Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia;
Walter Benjamin, Berliner Kindheit um 1900; Bertolt Brecht, Versuche 10
& 11; and Hermann Hesse, Späte Prosa. The University of Frankfurt
conferred on him an honorary doctorate in 1951. See Siegfried Unseld,
Peter Suhrkamp: Zur Biographie eines Verlegers in Daten, Dokumenten
und Bildern; Friedrich Voit, Der Verleger Peter Suhrkamp.
60 See Adorno, ‘So müßte ich ein Engel und kein Autor sein’: Theodor W.
Adorno und die Frankfurter Verleger.
61 See Adorno, ‘Dank an Peter Suhrkamp’, GS, vol. 20.2, p. 488ff.
62 Gershom Scholem, Briefe, vol. II, p. 239.
63 See Alex Demirovic, Der nonkonformistische Intellektuelle, p. 537;
Demirovic, ‘Zwischen Nihilismus und Aufklärung’, p. 153ff.
64 Ibid., p. 154.
65 Quoted in ibid., p. 156.
66 Ibid., p. 538.
67 Adorno and Mann, Briefwechsel, p. 97.
68 Kracauer to Adorno, 4 July 1951, Newspaper Archive of Suhrkamp Verlag,
quoted in Demirovic, Der nonkonformistische Intellektuelle, p. 539.
69 Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 74f.
70 Ibid., p. 50.
71 Ibid., p. 39.
72 Ibid., p. 126f. According to Habermas, ‘Adorno regarded the striking
aphorism as the appropriate form of representation; as a form, the aphorism
can express Adorno’s secret ideal of knowledge, a Platonic idea that cannot