592 Notes to pp. 412– 415
anti-Semitic opinions today. It is the anti-Semite at whom the barbs of
society are aimed, whereas in general it is the anti-Semites who have the
greatest and cruellest success in wielding the barbs of society’ (Adorno,
‘Zur Bekämpfung des Antisemitismus heute’, GS, vol. 20.1, p. 363).
4 Adorno’s prominence was due in no small measure to his frequent presence
on the radio, whether as studio guest or as speaker and contributor to
debates. In the New Year broadcast in 1953, ‘The Good Fairy’s Gifts
for the Future – What Prominent Celebrities Want’, Adorno was asked
for his contribution along with Rudolf Augstein, Dieter Borsche, Gottfried
Benn, Fritz Kortner and Ina Seidel. See Conrad Lay, ‘“Viele Beiträge
waren ursprünglich Rundfunkarbeiten”: Über das wechselseitige Verhältnis
von Frankfurter Schule und Rundfunk’, p. 177.
5 Adorno, ‘Auf die Frage: Warum sind Sie zurückgekehrt’, GS, vol. 20.1,
p. 394f. Helmut Dubiel notes that the slogan of Zero Hour [i.e., Germany
in 1945] was highly misleading since the military destruction of the Third
Reich did not also imply the destruction of the mentalities and attitudes of
the period which underpinned the Third Reich. Dubiel’s interpretation of
the first speeches and debates in the West German Bundestag makes it
clear that ‘the ideas of the Third Reich had survived not just in the minds
and hearts of incorrigible Nazis, but also in those of democratic politicians,
and that they endured well into the history of the Federal Republic’
(Helmut Dubiel, Niemand ist frei von der Geschichte, p. 67f.).
6 Adorno, ‘Max Horkheimer’, GS, vol. 20.1, p. 151.
7 Adorno and Mann, Briefwechsel, p. 153.
8 Adorno to Andersch, 18 April 1956, Theodor W. Adorno Archive,
Frankfurt am Main (Br 24/49).
9 Ebbinghaus was a philosopher at the University of Marburg and a
member of the board of trustees of the International Association of the
Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy.
10 Max Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 18, p. 377.
11 This volume was conceived as a kind of sequel to Minima Moralia, one
which would reflect his ‘experiences on his return’ from exile. ‘What he
had in mind was a rehabilitation of those Graeculi, the “little Greeks” of
the Rome of the first pre-Christian century who were mocked by Cicero
and Juvenal because they chattered about all the things they knew noth-
ing about.... Adorno wished to defend them because these Graeculi were
the very same people who acted as tutors to prosperous Romans and can
be credited with transmitting classical culture to them’ (Rolf Tiedemann,
Preface to Adorno, ‘Graeculus’, Frankfurter Adorno Blätter, VII, 2001,
p. 10).
12 Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Frankfurt am Main (Ts 520022).
13 Thus they comment in the new preface to the Dialectic of Enlightenment
in 1969: ‘In a period of political division into immense power blocs, set
objectively upon collision, the sinister trend continues.’ Adorno and
Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. ix.
14 Alex Demirovic, Der nonkonformistische Intellektuelle, p. 367.
15 Jürgen Habermas, ‘Eine Generation von Adorno getrennt’, p. 48.
16 Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 18, p. 478.
17 Adorno and Horkheimer to Herbert Marcuse, 12 February 1960,
Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 18, p. 467ff.