Theodor Adorno

Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno (September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German sociologist, philosopher, musicologist and composer. He was a member of the Frankfurt School along with Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas and others. He was also the Music Director of the Radio Project.

Biography

Early Frankfurt Years

Theodor (or 'Teddie') was born in Frankfurt as an only child to the wine merchant Oscar Alexander Wiesengrund (1870-1941, of Jewish descent, converted to Protestantism) and the Catholic singer Maria Barbara, born Calvelli-Adorno. It is the second half of this name that he later adopted as his surname (Wiesengrund was abbreviated to W). His musically talented aunt Agatha also lived with the family. Young Theodor passionately engaged in four-handed piano playing. His childhood joy was increased by the family's annual summer sojourn in Amorbach. He attended the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium where he proved to be a highly gifted student: at the exceptionally early age of 17 he graduated from the Gymnasium at the top of his class. In his free time he took private lessons in composition with Bernhard Sekles and read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason together with his friend Siegfried Kracauer - 14 years his elder - on Saturday afternoons. Later he would proclaim that he owed more to these readings than to any of his academic teachers. At the University of Frankfurt (today's Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität) he studied philosophy, musicology, psychology and sociology. He completed his studies swiftly: by the end of 1924 he graduated with a dissertation on Edmund Husserl. In the meantime he had already met with his most important intellectual collaborators, Max Horkheimer and Walter Benjamin.

Related Topics:
Frankfurt - Wine - 1870 - 1941 - Jew - Protestantism - Catholic - Surname - Piano - Amorbach - Gymnasium - Bernhard Sekles - Kant - Critique of Pure Reason - Siegfried Kracauer - University of Frankfurt - Psychology - 1924 - Dissertation - Edmund Husserl - Walter Benjamin

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Vienna Intermezzo

During his student years in Frankfurt he had written a number of music critiques. He believed this would be his future profession. With this goal envisioned, he used his relationship to Alban Berg, who had made a name for himself with the opera Wozzeck, to pursue studies in Vienna beginning in January, 1925. He also formed contacts with other greats of the Viennese School, namely to Anton von Webern and Arnold Schoenberg. His own musical compositions are shaped by the style of Berg and Schoenberg. Especially Schoenberg?s revolutionary atonality inspired the 22-year-old to pen philosophical observations on the new music, which however were not well received by its proponents. The disappointment over this caused him to cut back on his music critiques to enable his career as academic teacher and social researcher to flourish. He did however remain editor-in-chief of the avant-garde magazine Anbruch. His musicological writing already displayed his philosophical ambitions. Other lasting influences from Adorno's time in Vienna included Karl Kraus, whose lectures he attended with Alban Berg, and Georg Lukács whose Theory of the Novel had already enthused him while attending Gymnasium.

Related Topics:
Alban Berg - Opera - Wozzeck - Vienna - 1925 - Viennese School - Anton von Webern - Arnold Schoenberg - Atonality - New music - Social research - Avant-garde - Anbruch - Karl Kraus - Georg Lukács

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The Intermediate Frankfurt Years

After returning from Vienna, Adorno experienced another setback: after his dissertation supervisor Hans Cornelius and Cornelius' assistant Max Horkheimer voiced their concerns about Adorno's professorial thesis, a comprehensive philosophical-psychological treatise, he withdrew it in early 1928. Adorno took three more years before he received the venia legendi, after submitting the manuscript Kierkegaard: Construction of the aesthetic (Kierkegaard: Konstruktion des Ästhetischen) to his new supervisor, Paul Tillich. The topic of Adorno's inaugural lecture was the Current Importance of Philosophy, a theme he considered programmatic throughout his life. In it, he questioned the concept of totality for the first time, anticipating his famous formula — directed against Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel — the whole is the untrue (from Minima Moralia). However, Adorno's credential was revoked by the Nazis, along with those of all professors of non-Aryan descent, in 1933.

Related Topics:
Hans Cornelius - 1928 - Venia legendi - Paul Tillich - Totality - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - Minima Moralia - Nazi - Aryan - 1933

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Among Adorno's first courses was a seminar on Benjamin's treatise The Origin of German Tragic Drama. His 1932 essay "On the Social Situation of Music" ("Zur gesellschaftlichen Lage der Musik") was Adorno's contribution to the first issue of Horkheimer's Zeitschrift für Sozialkunde ("journal for sociology"); it wasn't until 1938 that he joined the Institute for Social Research.

Related Topics:
1932 - Zeitschrift für Sozialkunde - 1938 - Institute for Social Research

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Commuter between Berlin and Oxford (1934-1937)

Beginning in the late 1920s during stays in Berlin, Adorno established close relations with Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch; Adorno had become acquainted with Bloch's first major work, Geist der Utopie, in 1921. Moreover, the German capital, Berlin, was also home of chemist Margarethe ('Gretel') Karplus (1902-1993), whom Adorno would marry in London in 1937. In 1934, fleeing from the Nazi regime, he emigrated to England, with hopes of obtaining a professorship at Oxford. Though Adorno was not appointed professor of Oxford, as a postgraduate there, he undertook an in depth study of Husserl's philosophy. Adorno spent the summer holidays with his fiancée in Germany every year. In 1936, the Zeitschrift featured one of Adorno's most controversial texts, "On Jazz" ("Über Jazz"). This article was less an engagement with this style of music than a first polemic against the blooming entertainment and culture industry. Adorno believed the culture industry was a system by which society was controlled though a top-down creation of standardized culture that intensified commodification. Extensive epistolary contact with Horkheimer, who was then living in exile in the United States, led to an offer of employment in America.

Related Topics:
1920s - Berlin - Ernst Bloch - 1921 - Chemist - 1902 - 1993 - 1937 - 1934 - Nazi - England - Oxford - Postgraduate - 1936 - Culture industry - United States

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Émigré in the USA (1938-1949)

After visiting New York for the first time in 1937 he decided to resettle there. In Brussels he bade his parents, who followed in 1939, farewell, and said goodbye to Benjamin in San Remo. Benjamin opted to remain in Europe, thus limiting their very rigorous future communication to letters. Shortly after arriving in New York, Horkheimer's Institute for Social Research accepted Adorno as an official member. He served as musical consult on the 'Radio Project' directed by the Austrian sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld. Very soon, however, his attention shifted to direct collaboration with Horkheimer. They moved to Los Angeles together, where he taught for the following seven years he spent as the co-director of a research unit at the University of California. Their collective found its first major expression in the first edition of their book Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektik der Aufklärung) in 1947. Faced with the unfolding events of the Holocaust, the work begins with the words:

Related Topics:
New York - Brussels - 1939 - San Remo - Europe - Radio Project - Austria - Paul Lazarsfeld - University of California - Dialectic of Enlightenment - 1947 - The Holocaust

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:Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity. (2002 translation, 1)

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:Seit je hat Aufklärung im umfassendsten Sinn fortschreitenden Denkens das Ziel verfolgt, von den Menschen die Furcht zu nehmen und sie als Herren einzusetzen. Aber die vollends aufgeklärte Erde strahlt im Zeichen triumphalen Unheils. (1947 German edition)

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It was published in 1947. In this influential book, Adorno and Horkheimer outline civilization's tendency towards self-destruction. They argue that the concept of reason was transformed into an irrational force by the Enlightenment. As a consequence, reason came to dominate not only nature, but also humanity itself. It is this rationalization of humanity that was identified as a cause of fascism and other totalitarian regimes. Consequently, Adorno did not consider rationalism a path towards human emancipation. For that he looked toward the arts.

Related Topics:
1947 - Reason - The Enlightenment - Emancipation - Arts

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After 1945 he ceased to work as a composer. By taking this step he conformed to his own famous maxim: "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric" (Nach Ausschwitz noch ein Gedicht zu schreiben ist barbarisch). (Adorno was, however, to retract this statement later, saying that "Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as the tortured have to scream... hence it may have been wrong to say that no poem could be written after Auschwitz.") He was entrusted with the honorable task to advise Thomas Mann on the musicological details of his novel Doktor Faustus. Apart from that he worked on his 'philosophy of the new music' (Philosophie der neuen Musik) in the 1940s, and on Hanns Eisler's Composing for the films. He also contributed 'qualitative interpretations' to the Studies in Prejudice performed by multiple research institutes in the US that uncovered the authoritarian character of test persons through indirect questions.

Related Topics:
1945 - Thomas Mann - Novel - Doktor Faustus - 1940s - Hanns Eisler - Qualitative interpretation - Anti-semitic - Authoritarian

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Late Frankfurt Years (1949-1969)

After the war, Adorno, who had been homesick, did not hesitate long before returning to Germany. Due to Horkheimer's influence he was given a professorship in Frankfurt in 1949/1950, allowing him to continue his academic career after a prolonged hiatus. This culminated in a position as double Ordinarius (of philosophy and of sociology). In the Institute, which was affiliated with the university, Adorno's leadership status became ever more and more apparent, while Horkheimer, who was eight years older, gradually stepped back, leaving his younger friend the sole directorship in 1958/1959. His collection of aphorisms, Minima Moralia, led to greater prominence in post-war Germany when it was released by the newly founded publishing house of Peter Suhrkamp. It purported a 'sad science' under the impression of Fascism, Stalinism and Culture Industry, which seemingly offered no alternative: "Wrong life cannot be lived rightly." http://www.ldb.org/adorno.htm (Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen) Despite his pessimistic stance, the work raised Adorno to the level of a foundational intellectual figure in the West German republic, after a last attempt to get him involved in research in the USA failed in 1953.

Related Topics:
War - 1949 - 1950 - 1958 - 1959 - Aphorism - Publishing house - Peter Suhrkamp - Fascism - Stalinism - Pessimistic - West German - 1953

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Here a list of his multifaceted accomplishments:

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• In 1952 he participated in a group experiment, revealing residual National Socialist attitudes among the recently democratized Germans (commented on critically by Peter R. Hofstätter).
• From 1954 onwards, he taught musicology in the summer academies in Kranichstein.
• Numerous radio debates (among others with Ernst Bloch, Elias Canetti and Arnold Gehlen)
• Numerous lectures in Berlin and around Europe (Paris, Vienna, Italy, at the 'documenta' in Kassel in 1959, in Czechoslovakia in 1968)
• Release of Walter Benjamin's letters and writings
• In 1961 he initiated the positivism debate (Positivismusstreit) at a meeting of the German Sociological Association in Tübingen.
• In 1964 he headed the 15th sociology conference, Max Weber and Sociology Today and in 1968 he headed the 16th sociology conference, Late Capitalism or Industrial Society.

Final Act (1967-1969)

In 1966 extraparliamentary opposition (APO) formed against the grand coalition of Germany's two major parties CDU/CSU and SPD, directed primarily against the planned Notstandgesetze (emergency laws).Adorno was an outspoken critic of these policies, which he displayed by his participation in an event organized by the action committee Demokratie im Notstand ("Democracy in a State of Emergency"). When the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot by a police officer at a demonstration against a visit by the Shah of Iran, the left-wing APO became increasingly radicalized, and the universities became a place of unrest. To a considerable extent it was students of Adorno who represented the spirit of revolt thus drawing 'practical' consequences from 'Critical Theory'. The leading figures of the Frankfurt School were not prepared, despite empathizing with the students' causes, to support their activism. Therefore Adorno in particular became a target of student action. On the other side of the spectrum, the right accused him of providing the intellectual basis for leftist violence. In 1969 the disturbances in his lecture hall increased to an extent that Adorno discontinued his lecture series.

Related Topics:
1966 - APO - Coalition - CDU - CSU - SPD - Notstandgesetze - Benno Ohnesorg - Demonstration - Shah - Iran - Left-wing - Activism - Right - Violence - 1969

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Adorno became increasingly exhausted and fed up with the situation on campus. His biographer Stefan-Müller Doohm contends that he was convinced the attacks by the students were directed against his theories as well as his person and that he feared that the current political situation may lead to totalitarianism. He left with his wife on a vacation to Switzerland. Despite warnings by his doctor, he attempted to ascend a 3,000 meter high mountain, resulting in heart palpitations. The same day, he and his wife drove to the nearby town Visp, where he suffered heart palpitations once again. He was brought to the town's clinic. In the morning of the following day, August 6, he died of a heart attack.

Related Topics:
Stefan-Müller Doohm - Totalitarianism - Switzerland - Mountain - Heart palpitation - Visp - August 6 - Heart attack

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