Adorno

With his Back to the Wall 479

the hotel. The following day, 6 August, she set out to visit her husband
in the St Maria Hospital and to provide him with reading material, only
to learn that he had suddenly had a heart attack at around 11.20 a.m.
and died. He would have turned sixty-six on 11 September.
The news of his death was reported in the most important media the
same day. Radio and television produced appreciations of the life and
work of the Frankfurt scholar. The death notice in the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung was so decorous that, like a similar notice he had
once read, it avoided ‘the spirit of a communicative language which by
diminishing all distances even manages to do violence to the respect
due to death.’^150

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Born 11 September 1903

died peacefully on 6 August 1969

In deepest sorrow

Margarete Adorno

née Karplus

Frankfurt/Main, Kettenhofweg 123, 9 August 1969

The funeral will take place on 13 August 1969

at 11 a.m. in Frankfurt Central Cemetery.

We hope you will understand the family’s

wish for privacy at this time.

Figure 6 Notice of Adorno’s funeral