554 Notes to pp. 279–281
32 Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. xiii.
33 In line with their general epistemological stance, the two authors devel-
oped a chain of increasingly tightly linked arguments that they would try
out on a number of disparate objects and that would increase in density as
their discussion advanced. Adorno and Horkheimer declined to explain
their procedure in their notes. Not until later did Adorno attempt to
ground the rationale of ‘binding statements without a system’ in Negative
Dialectics and to explain the particular nature of a type of knowledge
based on dialectical thought conceived as ‘an ensemble of analytical
models’. Negative Dialectics, p. 29f.
34 Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. ix.
35 See Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, ‘Die Stellung der “Dialektik der Aufklärung”
in der Entwicklung der kritischen Theorie’, in Horkheimer, GS, vol. 5,
p. 423ff., especially p. 429. Jürgen Habermas, too, after talking to Gretel
Adorno, reported that ‘the authorship of the individual chapters was not
undivided... the title essay and the Sade chapter were largely written by
Horkheimer; the chapters on The Odyssey and the culture industry were
mainly Adorno’s. Moreover, the differences were not merely stylistic’
(Jürgen Habermas, Texte und Kontexte, p. 101).
36 See Horkheimer, ‘Idee, Aktivität und Programm des Instituts für
Sozialforschung’, GS, vol. 1, p. 156f.
37 There is a mention of the ‘age of concentration camps’ as early as an
essay Adorno wrote between 1939 and 1940 and published in 1942 in the
memorial volume for Walter Benjamin. Adorno, ‘George und Hofmanns-
thal’, in Prisms, p. 198.
38 See SPSS, IX, 3, 1941, p. 366ff.
39 A typescript (Ts 52107) in the Theodor W. Adorno Archive refers to both
Adorno and Horkheimer as authors.
40 The attorney William J. Donovan, who had been appointed by President
Roosevelt as the director of the secret service section known as the Co-
ordination of Information (COI) in 1941, had approached the Institute
of Social Research in the summer of that year in order to obtain recom-
mendations for recruiting personnel for the Research and Analysis branch
of the Intelligence Service. The key figure here was Franz Neumann, who,
as the author of Behemoth, deservedly enjoyed the reputation of being
an expert on the Nazi system of rule. In fact, he took up a position on the
Board of Economic Warfare. In spring 1943, Neumann, together with
Herbert Marcuse and Otto Kirchheimer, became a member of the Office
of Strategic Services (OSS). See John H. Herz, Vom Überleben. Wie ein
Weltbild entstand, p. 136; Barry M. Katz, ‘The Criticism of Arms: The
Frankfurt School Goes to War’.
41 See Adorno to Scholem, 19 February 1942, in Frankfurter Adorno Blätter,
V, 1998, p. 153ff.
42 In the Preface Horkheimer had announced: ‘For the duration of the war
the “Studies” will be published as a yearbook instead of three times
per annum’. SPSS, IX, 1941, p. 365.
43 Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe, vol. VI, p. 435f.
44 Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Illuminations, p. 265.
45 Ralf Konersmann rightly remarks that Benjamin’s comments are closely
related to the age in which they were written: ‘There can be no doubt that