Adorno

74 Part II: A Change of Scene

Oppenheimer’s magnum opus, although Horkheimer did refer to it from
time to time.

First meeting with Max Horkheimer

in the seminar on gestalt psychology

The young Max Horkheimer, who had just completed his doctoral
thesis on a problem in epistemology, was Cornelius’s assistant at the
time, though he still managed to be independent enough to put forward
his own ideas. ‘What we must seek out are not formal laws of know-
ledge, which are basically quite unimportant, but material statements
about our lives and their meaning.’^19 This statement stands in stark
contrast to Cornelius and can scarcely have escaped the attention of the
young philosophy student. Can it be Adorno who is being referred to
in a letter Horkheimer wrote to his future wife in November 1921?
‘Yesterday, I lectured a young philosopher about the task of philosophy.
He was very enthusiastic. Unfortunately, I learned today that Cornelius
was next door and must have heard my speech, which was entirely
directed against his opinions.’^20
It was around this time that Horkheimer, whose career was being
so energetically promoted by Cornelius, must have first encountered
Adorno, in a seminar of the gestalt psychologist Adhémar Gelb.^21
Horkheimer, who was eight years Adorno’s senior, ‘did not really look
like a student, but rather, like a young gentleman from a prosperous
family who took an interest in learning, but from a certain distance.’^22
Horkheimer was untouched by ‘that déformation professionelle of the
academic who all too easily mistakes a preoccupation with learned mat-
ters for reality.’ Adorno also recalls his impressions after Horkheimer
had given a paper on aspects of Husserl’s philosophy:

I spontaneously went up to you and introduced myself. Since then

we have been together. Among my early impressions was my sense

of a slightly daring elegance that set you apart both from middle-

class respectability and from the appearance of the other students.

Your face was passionate and ascetically lean. You looked like a

gentleman, and like a born refugee. This applied also to your style

of living. You had bought a house in Kronberg together with Fred

Pollock and lived a secluded life there, but with an evident dis-

taste for furnished rooms.^23

The connection between the two men was limited at first to
Horkheimer’s encouragement of Adorno’s philosophy studies. This
included practical help in preparing for the various compulsory exam-
inations. Adorno wrote about this in a letter to Leo Löwenthal in
July 1924. He had spent, he says, ten days in Kronberg as the guest of