310 Part III: Emigration Years
and above that, Adorno declared not without pride that his thesis ‘that
Hitler could not survive has been proved correct, albeit with a certain
time lag that is something of an irony. In other words, the forces of
production of more progressive countries have proved to be the stronger
after all... : the war has been won by industry against the military.’^177
Adorno took up the same theme in Minima Moralia:
Germany’s industrial backwardness forced its politicians – anxious
to regain lost ground and, as have-nots, specially qualified for the
role – to fall back on their immediate, narrow experience, that of
the political façade. They saw nothing before them except cheering
assemblies and frightened negotiators: this blocked their view of
the objective power of a greater mass of capital. It was immanent
revenge on Hitler that he, the executioner of liberal society, was
yet in his own state of consciousness too ‘liberal’ to perceive how
industrial potential outside Germany was establishing, under the
veil of liberalism, its irresistible domination. He, who recognized
the untruth in liberalism as did no other bourgeois, could yet not
recognize the power behind it, the social tendency for which Hitler
was really no more than drummer.^178In his letter to Horkheimer, Adorno came to the conclusion that, even
if the historical ‘violence of fascism’ had only ‘changed its domicile’,^179
events had turned out much better than they had always imagined,
since Hitler, that ‘most appalling disaster’, had now been disposed of.
All in all, then, Adorno now had a more hopeful view of the current
situation, and this may explain why he began to toy with the idea of
returning to Europe. But more than four years would pass before the
idea could become reality. He even had to deny himself a rather shorter
journey to New York. For when his mother celebrated her eightieth
birthday on 30 September 1945, he was unable to travel to the East
Coast, partly for reasons of health, and partly because of his duties
in the Berkeley research project. However, the affectionate tone of the
birthday letter he wrote testifies to the closeness of their relationship.
His next trip to see his mother in New York in September 1946 was
a sad occasion. Oscar Wiesengrund had died on 8 July after a long
illness. He was in his seventy-seventh year. Having been informed by
telegram, Adorno at once wrote to his mother. His sadness at his
father’s death, he said, was all the greater as his father had been forced
to die in exile, having been compelled to lead the life of an émigré and
having had to forgo continuity in his lifetime.^180 He was unable to travel
to the East Coast for the funeral, since he had fallen seriously ill. He
was receiving treatment for his blood-sugar levels, a stomach ulcer and
cardiac symptoms. For this reason he asked Leo Löwenthal to give the
oration at his father’s funeral. Not until two months later was he in a
position to offer his mother support in her bereavement. For the moment