500 Notes to pp. 46–55
73 Ibid., p. 70.
74 Ibid., p. 24.
75 Ibid., p. 28. Zivilisationsliteratur was frequently contrasted with ‘Kultur’ in
the debates of the day, e.g., in the quarrel between Heinrich Mann and
Thomas Mann in which the latter, who identified with ‘Kultur’ and its deep
authentic spiritual roots in the nation, criticized ‘Zivilisationsliteratur’ as
cosmopolitan, rationalistic, enlightened and superficial’ [trans.].
76 Adorno, Musikalische Schriften VI, GS, vol. 19, p. 43.
77 Ibid., p. 59.
78 Ibid., p. 23.
79 Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament, p. 138.
80 Ibid., p. 131 (translation altered).
81 Ibid., p. 138f.
82 Siegfried Kracauer, ‘Empfindsame Suite von der Bergstraße’, Schriften,
vol. 5.1, p. 229.
83 Ibid.
84 Siegfried Kracauer, Der Detektiv-Roman. Schriften, vol. 1, p. 116.
85 Ibid., p. 120.
86 Ibid., p. 201.
87 Adorno, ‘Schlageranalysen’, GS, vol. 18, p. 781.
88 Ibid., p. 782.
89 Ibid., p. 785f.
Chapter 4 Éducation sentimentale1 Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, p. 112.
2 Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Max Beckmann: Eisgang, p. 5.
3 Ibid., p. 23.
4 Quoted from the Marbacher Magazin, 47 (1988), p. 39.
5 Siegfried Kracauer, Georg. Schriften, vol. 7, p. 403.
6 Ibid., p. 339.
7 I owe important information to my conversations both with Elfriede Olbrich,
Adorno’s secretary after his return from the United States, and with Stasi
von Boeckmann, who has researched the life of Gretel Karplus in the
context of work on women’s biographies.
8 The tannins left over from processing grapes in the production of wine
were converted into tannic acid. This was indispensable in the leather
industry. In 1911, Karplus & Herzberger had taken out a patent for a new
chemical process for tanning leather.
9 The friendship included Else’s brother Alfons and also Gretel Herzberger,
who became mentally ill early in the 1920s. In fact she took her own life in
the summer of 1921, an event that evidently affected Adorno deeply. It had
been his intention to visit the two women while holidaying in the south,
close to Bad Aussee. Some four years later he chanced to meet a girl in
Vienna who had witnessed Gretel’s suicide.
After the Nazi seizure of power, Theodor and Gretel Adorno repeatedly
begged Else Herzberger in conversations and letters to give financial
support to Walter Benjamin, who was living in Paris in very straitened
material circumstances. Her nephew Arnold Levy was living in Paris at the