The City of Frankfurt and its University 73Reactionary criticism.. .places the ontological responsibility for
this on the individual as such, as something discrete and internal... .Society is seen.. .as an unmediated community of men, from
whose attitudes the whole follows, instead of as a system not only
encompassing and deforming them, but even reaching down into
that humanity which once conditioned them as individuals.^14
Thanks to his discussions with Siegfried Kracauer, Adorno was
familiar with sociological ways of thinking. He might not have achieved
analyses as succinct as in these remarks, but he certainly believed that
thinking in sociological categories was a specific legitimate method. He
also had the opportunity of learning about the history of social ideas in
the seminars given by the now-forgotten Gottfried Salomon-Delatour.
Salomon-Delatour had taken his doctorate with Georg Simmel in 1915,
and six years later he still passed for a youthful lecturer at Frankfurt
University. He was attached to the Sociology Department, which was
under the direction of Franz Oppenheimer. There he was responsible
for the history of ideas and historical sociology. He took a special inter-
est in the French working-class movement and also the development of
socialism and historical materialism.^15 Since Salomon-Delatour came
from a family that was both French and German, Jewish and Protestant,
Adorno may have felt a certain affinity with him. A further attraction
must have been the circumstance that Salomon-Delatour knew Walter
Benjamin, who even took part in seminar discussions from time to time.
Between 1923 and 1925 Benjamin frequently visited Frankfurt, where
he hoped to obtain the Habilitation with his study of The Origin of
German Tragic Drama, a project which Salomon-Delatour had enthusi-
astically supported – in vain, unfortunately.^16 As philosophers, neither
Cornelius nor Horkheimer could approve Benjamin’s work, and it
was also rejected by Franz Schulz, the only literature expert to be
consulted.^17
A further opportunity to become acquainted with sociology was pro-
vided by the seminars of Franz Oppenheimer, the professor of socio-
logy and economics, who was already in his fifties. Oppenheimer, the
son of a Berlin reform rabbi, was a practising Jew; he had a socially
critical outlook, but no allegiance to any political party. Having quali-
fied for the Habilitation in economics, he accepted the offer of the
foundation chair in sociology that had been endowed by Consul
Kotzenburg. This was the first chair in sociology to be established
anywhere in Germany. At Oppenheimer’s request the title of the chair
was extended to include ‘economics’. Oppenheimer’s experience as a
practising doctor, first in rural East Prussia and then in the slums of
Berlin, meant that the social question and the link between socialism
and land reform were always high on his agenda, a programme that was
reinforced by his intensive study of Karl Marx’s critique of political
economy.^18 It is not known whether Adorno was familiar at least with