Notes to pp. 351–354 573119 Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 18, p. 248. Horkheimer is known
to have liked a glass of kirsch liqueur. As for Adorno, as the son of a
wine-merchant who knew how to distil his own liqueurs, he had grown up
knowing about drinks. The Schlagbaum public house at the Bockenheimer
Warte was a favourite meeting place in the 1950s for all types of academic
staff. The American academic David Riesman had recently achieved great
success with The Lonely Crowd (1950), whose subject, not unlike that
of The Authoritarian Personality, was changes in the social character of
personality.
120 In his letter to Horkheimer of 19 April, Adorno described the difficulties
of the situation in detail: ‘On Wednesday evening at a staff meeting, there
was the first public row between Hacker and me. I wanted to discuss with
the staff how we might achieve closer cooperation between the therapists
and the foundation, despite the huge handicap that the therapists are
labouring under since they are overloaded with their clinical work... , the
fact that they mostly have to perform analyses in the evenings and literally
have no time for research. Hacker suddenly launched an all-out attack on
me. If people had had time for research it would not have been necessary
to recruit big shots like us. He said that all I was doing was to advance the
projects that you and I would have pursued anyway and that I had failed
to identify with the clinic. What I should be doing was to initiate projects
that were in line with the interests of members of staff, however stupid
they were (he literally said that). When I responded that decisions about
the content of research were exclusively a matter for us, he simply denied
that it was so. What he expected from us was to make the impossible
possible, and to inspire the therapists to the point where they would
undertake research without extra payment and even though they did not
have the time. The fact that I had not done this meant that I was a dismal
failure. I was being paid by the majority of the staff, and this could not be
justified.... The entire discussion was conducted in the most shameless,
rude and aggressive manner imaginable’ (Adorno to Horkheimer, 19 April
1953, Horkheimer–Pollock Archive, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek,
Frankfurt am Main.
121 Adorno to Horkheimer, 25 April 1953, Horkheimer–Pollock Archive,
Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, Frankfurt am Main.
122 Adorno, ‘Im Flug erhascht’, GS, vol. 20.2, p. 550.
123 See Kersten Schüßler, Helmuth Plessner: Eine intellektuelle Biographie,
p. 180ff.
124 Monika Plessner, Die Argonauten auf Long Island, p. 63.
125 Adorno, ‘Notes on Philosophical Thinking’, Critical Models, p. 132.
126 These were brought together and published in a final version with the title
Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of his Death. See Illuminations,
p. 111ff. See also ‘Franz Kafka’, in Selected Writings, vol. 2, pp. 794–818.
127 Benjamin and Adorno, The Complete Correspondence, p. 67f.
128 Adorno, ‘Notes on Kafka’, Prisms, p. 246.
129 Ibid., p. 246.
130 Ibid., p. 249. For the concepts of ‘gesture’ and ‘the gestural’ in Adorno,
see Michael Esders, Begriffs-Gesten: Philosophie als kurze Prosa von
Friedrich Schlegel bis Adorno, p. 276ff.
131 Adorno, ‘Notes on Kafka’, Prisms, p. 252.