526 Note to p. 184
propaganda against ‘Negro jazz’. The distribution of records by Benny
Goodman’s popular band was not finally prohibited until 1937, when
Goodman’s Jewish origins became known. See Hans Dieter Schäfer, Das
gespaltene Bewußtsein: Deutsche Kultur- und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933–1945,
p. 171ff. Cf. Susanne Keval, Widerstand und Selbstbehauptung in Frankfurt
am Main, p. 65ff.
43 Adorno, ‘Farewell to Jazz’, Essays on Music, p. 497.
44 From among Adorno’s posthumous papers Rolf Tiedemann has unearthed
an essay by Adorno called ‘Radio Authority and the Broadcasting of Hit
Music’ (1933), which has not been included in the Gesammelte Schriften. In
this short text, which the author may have intended for publication in the
Vossische Zeitung but which in the event remained unpublished, Adorno
suggested that the state ownership of radio should be used to improve the
quality of the programmes. His line of argument is bizarre. He begins with
the statement that, ‘as an instrument of the state’, the radio, which had
been centralized by the Nazis, ‘had... demonstrated a public, political
force that no one had expected of the blaring accompaniment to domestic
life’ (Frankfurter Adorno Blätter VII, 2001, p. 90). It was only logical for
‘alienated musical commodities’ like jazz, hits and folk music ‘to be given
short shrift by the radio’. He came out in favour of a kind of music pro-
paganda to improve the taste of listeners. If there was not enough demanding
music, intermissions should be introduced. This would enable the listener
to discover silence. ‘And just think of the effect of a late Beethoven quartet,
coming right after such a silence!’ (p. 92). Adorno went even further.
He proposed a decree banning the broadcasting of hit songs overnight and
at the same time ‘exposing’ this trivial music ‘to public ridicule...in
short, the hit song will be outlawed with the aid of the irresistible methods
available to a modern centralized system of propaganda’ (p. 93). Even if
we were charitably to suppose that Adorno had himself decided not to
proceed with publication, it is hard to disagree with Rolf Tiedemann when
he observes that these embarrassing comments are by no means ‘free from
the opportunism that is prepared to use the enemy’s weapons for one’s
own purposes’ (ibid., p. 95).
45 See ‘Adorno’s Kompositionskritik zu Herbert Müntzel’, GS, vol. 19, p. 331f.
46 Out of interest in the personal motives and possible political intentions
behind the open letter to Adorno, I traced the author and exchanged
letters with him. Today he is a lecturer in psychology in the Fachhochschule
in Munich, and he wrote to me in some detail about the exchange with
Adorno and his own motives. He had learnt of Adorno’s dubious review
from Adorno’s colleague in philosophy Wolfgang Cramer (who seems to
have heard about it from Golo Mann). He wished to learn what Adorno
had been thinking about ‘when he tried to ingratiate himself,... presumably
in the hope of being allowed to stay in Germany. In my opinion at the
time,... since he was attempting to immunize a whole generation against
the return of fascism, he should have... spoken out frankly about any
conflicts he had had at the time, and perhaps have given some thought
to how he might have acted if he had not been the son of a Jewish
wine-merchant. It did not occur to me to try and prove that Adorno had
any skeletons in the cupboard, to say nothing of anti-Semitic motives.... The