Notes to pp. 55–61 501time and was in contact with Benjamin. For a time Benjamin had a room in
Else Herzberger’s Paris flat. This room was separate from the main flat, but
was otherwise not very comfortable. Else Herzberger did help Benjamin
out with sums of money for a time. Apart from Adorno’s dedication of
his early songs to Else, his closeness to her is expressed in the aphorism
entitled ‘Heliotrope’, in Minima Moralia, p. 177.
10 Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 172.
11 I am indebted here to Rudolf zur Lippe, who was in close contact with
Adorno in the late 1960s and remained close to Gretel Adorno for years
after her husband’s death.
12 Egon Wissing was a doctor and the son of Benjamin’s much-loved aunt
Clara Wissing, née Schoenflies. In emigration in the United States, Theodor
and Gretel Adorno were in frequent contact with Wissing, who held a post
at the Massachusetts Memorial Hospital in Boston. In 1938, for example,
they spent their summer holiday with Egon and Lotte in the Hotel Gregoire
in Maine.
13 ‘Felicitas’ is the name of the principal woman character of Wilhelm Speyer’s
play Ein Mantel, ein Hut, ein Handschuh (Coat, Hat and Glove), in which
Benjamin had had a hand. Gretel Adorno addressed him by his ‘Aryan’
pseudonym Detlef Holz. See Benjamin and Adorno, The Complete Cor-
respondence 1928–1940, pp. 17 and 26f.
14 See W. Benjamin, Briefe, vol. 4, pp. 205ff., 216ff., 229ff., and 249.
15 Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 212.
16 Ibid.
17 ‘From 1937 on, the first versions of all Adorno’s writings were taken
down in shorthand and the transcribed text was then revised by hand.’ See
Rolf Tiedemann, ‘Editorisches Nachwort’. Adorno, GS, vol. 20.2, p. 823.
See also Tiedemann, ‘Gretel Adorno zum Abschied’, p. 150.
18 Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 172.
19 Adorno, ‘Worte ohne Lieder’, GS, vol. 20.2, p. 537.
20 Ibid., p. 539.
21 See Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, vol. 1, pp. 112 and 405.
22 Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 192.
23 Adorno to Horkheimer, 8 February 1938. Horkheimer, GS, vol. 16, p. 386.
24 Gretel Karplus to Walter Benjamin, 17 June 1932. Luhr, ‘Was noch begraben
lag’, p. 85.
25 Adorno to Bloch, 2 October 1937. Adorno and Horkheimer, Briefwechsel,
p. 536ff.
26 Adorno to Horkheimer, 12 March 1953. Horkheimer, GS, vol. 18, p. 247.
27 Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 31.
28 Ibid., p. 30.
29 Ibid., p. 96.
30 Ibid., p. 167.
31 Ibid., p. 168.
32 Ibid., p. 169.
33 Regina Becker-Schmidt, ‘Wenn die Frauen erst einmal Frauen sein könnten’,
p. 210.
34 Adorno, Aus dem Poesiealbum für Renée Nell, 20 May 1943, Theodor W.
Adorno Archive, Frankfurt am Main, TS 51835.
35 Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 31.