Adorno

52 Part I: Origins

4

Éducation sentimentale

‘Don’t forget Monette!’^1

The winter of 1923 had begun with an unusually cold spell. The tem-
perature had fallen sharply in December. The people of Frankfurt, who
were being buffeted by the bitter economic and confused political con-
ditions, were now confronted with the rare sight of the River Main
covered with huge ice floes. The painter Max Beckmann was so im-
pressed by this bizarre winter weather that he made it the subject of his
painting Drift Ice, one of his many paintings of aspects of the city. As in
his picture The Synagogue, which he had painted four years before,
or his well-known Eiserne Steg (The Iron Footbridge), Beckmann’s
concern in his paintings of the city was to bring out the unique features
of the place where he lived and had his studio between 1915 and 1933.
In the 1920s Beckmann was one of the most striking personalities of
cultural life in Frankfurt at the same time as the young Adorno was
emerging as a critical observer of the city, in particular through his
contributions to the Frankfurter Zeitung. At that time, Benno Reifenberg
was about to become editor of the cultural section of that distinguished
paper, and it is natural that he should have felt inspired to react to
Beckmann’s winter scene:

The city cowers as if it were freezing, as if it were afraid of the

violence of the river, as if it were shrinking from the cold, inexorably

grey sky. Frankfurt’s cathedral squats red behind the houses. The

bridge is a blue-steel line from shore to shore, beneath the bare

trees there are bare wisps of green. But the gently swinging arc

lamps, tinged with cinnabar and blue, are like late night revellers,

staggering home with collars turned up. How grey the world is,

how cold and grey. The wan morning soaks up the crescent moon.

Only with effort does it creep over the roofs that stretch out like a

black line, binding the city to the earth. – The ice floes glide down

the dark river. They resemble strange fish with broad backs and

pointed snouts. They pour out of the bend in the Main. They float