The Archives of Critical Theory 3031365852, 9783031365850

Citation preview

Isabelle Aubert Marcos Nobre   Editors

The Archives of Critical Theory

The Archives of Critical Theory

Isabelle Aubert • Marcos Nobre Editors

The Archives of Critical Theory

Editors Isabelle Aubert Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Institut universitaire de France Paris, France

Marcos Nobre University of Campinas (Unicamp) Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap) São Paulo, Brazil

ISBN 978-3-031-36584-3    ISBN 978-3-031-36585-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Preface

This book is a book of memory, history, and living theory. Critical Theory was officially founded with the creation of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, one hundred years ago, in 1923, on the initiative of Felix Weil. To pay homage to this current of thought, also known as Frankfurt School, it seemed important to us to recall what his work represented in its very materiality. The aim was to make the archives speak for themselves, to show the public the quantity of unpublished material still existing by the authors of the Critical Theory which are now in funds in different parts of the world (in Germany, in Italy, or in the United States). In doing so, our wish was also to underline the often unrecognized task of archivists and editors who have brought from shadow to light manuscripts and other material of great theoretical and historical interest which would otherwise remain unknown to most people. These archives remain the living memory of the authors of Critical Theory. This book wishes to remind us of that. But if the archives contain the history of Critical Theory, or rather what remains of it for us, if the writings and recordings of the thinkers of Critical Theory are ultimately accessible to us only through the materials deposited in the archives, these are not mere memories. Archives are not monuments that enclose texts but places that preserve them for new use. The history of Critical Theory continues today through the continuous publication of new, yet untapped documents and the critical commentary they elicit. From the archives to the editorial news of Critical Theory, there is only one step, as the contributions to this volume show. Writing a book on the archives of Critical Theory is a way of recalling its topicality. With this book, finally, we wanted to show that Critical Theory remains alive 100 years after the foundation of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main. While this current of thought was created by a small circle of heterodox Marxist scholars in Germany, today it is widely spread throughout the world. As indicated by the different nationalities of the researchers who have contributed to this volume, Critical Theory is an enterprise that continues in Brazil as well as in the United

v

vi

Preface

States, France, Switzerland, and Germany. This far-from-exhaustive list points not only to the importance of Critical Theory today but also to the possibility of widening the scope of this book in that – so we hope – many other books on the archives of Critical Theory will be published in the future. Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Isabelle Aubert Institut universitaire de France  Paris, France  University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazilian Center Marcos Nobre for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap)  São Paulo, Brazil  

Acknowledgments

This volume is a collective work not only in the sense that it is a collection of individual contributions. It would have been impossible to do it without the active participation of all contributors. We have always counted on the support of all the authors in assembling diverse materials (illustrations and relevant information pertaining to the different archives), checking and correcting sources, translations, and references, and making themselves available for debating their texts. In thanking all the contributors for their constant support, we also thank most especially Rachael Prest for her utmost skillful and committed work proofreading and editing all the texts. We also want to thank our editor Bruno Fiuza for all the encouragement, competence, and support since the very beginning of this project. The active cooperation of the archivists and the various archives contacted was invaluable for the preparation of the book. In addition to their contributions, we would like to thank warmly Ursula Marx, from the Walter Benjamin Archive (Berlin), Michael Schwarz, from the Theodor W.  Adorno Archive (Berlin), and Peter-Erwin Jansen, director of the Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal archives (Frankfurt), for their availability and for making the publications of the images that illustrate their chapters possible. We thank Dirk Braunstein and Maisha Gelhard, from the Institute for Social Research Archive (Frankfurt am Main), for all the information and orientation they provided us. We also thank the Archive of the University of Florence for the authorization to publish Theodor W. Adorno’s last postcard (to Friedrich Pollock), as well as the mediation provided by Philipp Lenhard, who also authorized the publication of a photo he took that shows how the digital access to Horkheimer Papers looks like from a computer screen. Through the mediation and translation of Olavo Ximenes, Rolf Hecker has allowed us to translate and publish a “simplified version” of his “Path of Marx-­ Engels-­Nachlass”, for which we are thankful. Olivier Voirol took the two pictures of the former headquarters of the Institute in Geneva which illustrate his chapter on the exile of the Institute; we thank him for allowing us to publish them. We are very grateful to Jürgen Habermas for his personal involvement in this project and for authorizing the publication of two of his letters. We are also thankful to Dorothea Apel for allowing us to publish a letter from Karl-Otto Apel. We very much vii

viii

Acknowledgments

appreciated the diligence of Oliver Kleppel from the ArchivZentrum of Frankfurt am Main, as well as Roman Yos, for all the efforts he made to make the various materials available for publishing. This volume has received a financial support from the Institut Universitaire de France, to whom we express our sincere thanks. We also want to thank the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) for its support.

Contents

Part I Introduction  Researching the Archives of Critical Theory������������������������������������������������    3 Isabelle Aubert and Marcos Nobre Part II Marx and Engels Archive Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions, and Theoretical Implications��������������������������������������������������������������������������   17 Olavo Ximenes Part III Walter Benjamin Archive Into the Walter Benjamin Archive: An Interview with Ursula Marx��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   37 Fernando Bee Benjamin Anarchivist��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   51 Antonin Wiser Part IV The Institute for Social Research Archive The Attitude of the German People: The Institute of Social Research Archive as Contemporary History������������������������������������������������   69 Dirk Braunstein and Maischa Gelhard The Role of Empirical Research in Theodor W. Adorno’s Thought: A Personal Experience at the Archive of the Institute for Social Research������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   83 Adriano Januário

ix

x

Contents

Part V Max Horkheimer Archive Working on Cultural Memory: The Literary Estate of Max Horkheimer in the Frankfurt University Library ��������������������������   97 Gunzelin Schmid Noerr The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence between Max Horkheimer and Juliette Favez��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  105 Olivier Voirol Not Just Director, Methodologist, or Partner: A Brief History of the Reception of Horkheimer’s Work��������������������������������������������������������  129 Paulo Yamawake Part VI Theodor W. Adorno Archive Adorno and the Archiving of the Ephemeral: Remarks on His Literary Estate��������������������������������������������������������������������  143 Michael Schwarz Adorno and the Post-war Artistic Debates: A Perspective Through the Archives��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  151 Raquel Patriota and Ricardo Lira da Silva T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World” (1955–1969): Unpublished Radio Conversations from the Theodor W. Adorno Archive����������������������������������  165 Aurélia Peyrical Part VII Friedrich Pollock Archive  Symbiosis and Dispersion: The Friedrich Pollock Papers ��������������������������  193 Philipp Lenhard Part VIII Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal Archive Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse: Analysis of the Enemy and Volumes from the Marcuse Archive��������������������������������������������������������  203 Peter-Erwin Jansen and Inka Engel Archive Beyond Files: A Brief Note on a Personal Experience in the Marcuse Archive������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  217 Inara Luisa Marin

Contents

xi

Part IX Between Archives Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working in the Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer Archives����������������������������������������������������������������������  225 John Abromeit Part X Jürgen Habermas Archive  The Habermas Papers: An Interview with Roman Yos��������������������������������  253 Pedro Zan and Rafael Palazi Two Letters Between Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, Dated 1965: Comments on the Exchange������������������������������������������������������  263 Roman Yos Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse, July 10, 1978: Translation of the Letter and Comment��������������������������������  267 Isabelle Aubert Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives����������������������������������������  275 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  281

List of Figures

Fig. 1

The path of Marx-Engels-Nachlass (simplified exposition)����������������� 21

Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

The reading room in the Walter Benjamin Archive������������������������������ 38 The boxes in the Walter Benjamin Archive������������������������������������������� 46 Papers with Walter Benjamin’s handwriting����������������������������������������� 47

Fig. 1

Building of the offices of the Institut für Sozialforschung rue de Lausanne 91, Geneva, 1932–1937, officially known as “Bureau de l’Institut de recherches sociales de l’Université de Francfort”�������������������������������������������������������������� 110 Building of the offices of the Institut für Sozialforschung rue de Lausanne 133, Geneva, 1937–1939, officially known as “Bureau de l’Institut de recherches sociales de l’Université de Francfort”�������������������������������������������������������������� 113

Fig. 2

Fig. 1

Adorno’s preliminary note for the printing of his lecture ‘Kultur und Culture’, 9 July 1958������������������������������������������������������� 149

Fig. 1

The digitized Horkheimer papers on the website of the University Library, Frankfurt am Main������������������������������������ 196 Theodor W. Adorno’s last postcard to Friedrich Pollock. “Su concessione dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze, Biblioteca Umanistica.” With permission from the Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Berlin��������������������������������������������������� 197

Fig. 2

Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal, mid-1970. (Photo: private, P.-E. J)����������������������������������������������������������������������� 204 Front cover of prophets of deceit by Herbert Marcuse and Norbert Guterman������������������������������������������������������������������������ 208 “State and Individual in National Socialism” by Herbert Marcuse���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 210

xiii

xiv

Fig. 1

List of Figures

Fig. 2

Letter 1: Jürgen Habermas’s letter to Karl-Otto Apel, March 25, 1965����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 264 Letter 2: Karl-Otto Apel’s reply to Habermas (undated)�������������������� 265

Fig. 1

Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse, July 10, 1978������ 268

Part I

Introduction

Researching the Archives of Critical Theory Isabelle Aubert and Marcos Nobre

The Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research)1 was founded in 1923  in Frankfurt am Main on the initiative of Felix Weil and brought together researchers from philosophy, humanities disciplines, and social sciences who wanted to develop academic research on Marxism. Although the Research Institute for Social Sciences in Cologne and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy were already producing social research at that time,2 the Institute for Social Research was unique because of its Marxist orientation. As is well-known, in his famous 1937 essay, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” Max Horkheimer, the director of the institute after Carl Grünberg, gave a name to this very specific social philosophy that took Marx’s critique of political economy as its model: the critical theory of

 Which form is correct, “Institute for Social Research” or “Institute of Social Research”? Both are. The English page of the IfS website refers to the “Institute for Social Research” (https://www.ifs. uni-frankfurt.de/home.html) but during the New York period, Horkheimer’s institute was called “Institute of Social Research.” 2  The Königliches Institut für Seeverkehr und Weltwirtschaft an der Universität Kiel (Royal Institute of Shipping and the World Economy at the University of Kiel), as it was originally called, was founded in 1914 by Bernhard Harms, and the Forschungsinstitut für Sozialwissenschaften (Research Institute for Social Sciences) was founded in 1919 in Cologne and since 2013 has been called Institut für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (Institute for Sociology and Social Psychology). As the Institute for Social Research, the two institutes are still active today. 1

I. Aubert (*) Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Institut universitaire de France, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] M. Nobre University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_1

3

4

I. Aubert and M. Nobre

society.3 “Critical Theory” refers both to “Marxism” in a broad sense and to a specific strand within Marxism – that of the group gathered around the institute.4 As a dialectical philosophy and an oppositional and materialist theory, Critical Theory analyzes the processes of social life with a view to liberating human beings from all forms of domination. Its method confronts the data of the specialized sciences with a philosophy nourished by Marx, the German idealism of Kant and Hegel, and the psychoanalysis of Freud.5 This group of German intellectuals is often popularly known as the “Frankfurt School,” a label that the members of the institute accepted progressively even though they had various academic backgrounds and published personal and original works. Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno were known first for their own work and only later as members of the Frankfurt School. As Martin Jay recalls, “the notion of a specific school did not develop until after the Institute was forced to leave Frankfurt (the term itself was not used until the Institute returned to Germany in 1950)” (Jay 1973, p. XV, footnote).6 On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Institute for Social Research, this volume, The Archives of Critical Theory, aims to shed light on the intellectual activity of some critical theorists by investigating their archives. The  There is an ongoing debate about the right way to write “critical theory”: we leave it to each author of the volume to decide whether or not to use capital letters. 4  In the text published together with “Traditional and Critical Theory,” “Philosophy and Critical Theory,” Horkheimer wrote: “Among those who resort today to Critical Theory there are some who, in full awareness, degrade it as mere rationalization of their momentary endeavors; others cling to concepts that have become strange even in their literality, making them a shallow ideology, which everyone understands because they do not think. From the beginning, however, dialectical thinking designates the most advanced state of knowledge; and only from this can the decision ultimately come” (1980, p. 630). If this seems to justify the inclusion of the Marx-Engels archives in this volume, as founders of Critical Theory in a larger sense, it also raises the question of the Marxist thinkers that were not included. The editors thought that this would be impracticable, since determining affinities between Critical Theory (in strict sense) and specific works and/or strands of Marxism would need a justification of their own. If we take the example, that may be considered as the most obvious one, that of Georg Lukács. If it may be shown that his 1923 book History and Class Consciousness (Lukács 1971) had enormous impact in the debates of the Institute, the same cannot be said of Lukács’s later work. 5  Besides their writings, these authors’ links with psychoanalysis is visible through their support of the Frankfurter Psychoanalytische Institut (Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute), founded in 1929 (and closed 4 years later by the Nazis). One of its founders was Erich Fromm, who was a member of the Institute for Social Research. Later, in 1960, Horkheimer encouraged Alexander Mitscherlich to create the Sigmund-Freud-Institut. 6  According to Wiggershaus, “The term ‘Frankfurt School’ was a label first applied by outsiders in the 1960s, but Adorno in the end used it himself with obvious pride” (Wiggershaus 2007, p. 1). And Wiggershaus states that some of the attributes of a school were present: “an institutional framework” (the IfS), a “charismatic intellectual personality” with its director Max Horkheimer, a “manifesto” (Horkheimer’s inaugural lecture of 1931 on “The Present State of Social Philosophy and the Tasks Facing an Institute of Social Research”), a “new paradigm” (a materialist one, namely, the critical theory of society), and a “journal,” The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal of Social Research). But “most of these characteristics only applied to the first decade of the Institute’s Horkheimer period, the 1930s, and to its New York period in particular” (p. 2). 3

Researching the Archives of Critical Theory

5

existence of archives containing the manuscripts, recordings, and other documents of authors like Max Horkheimer, Friedrich Pollock, and Herbert Marcuse is known in relatively few circles, even within academia. Their potential for advancing the understanding of these authors’ works and times is even less widely known. Yet the very history of the institute – which moved several times as its members fled the Nazi regime and was reconstituted each time – already shows that without archives it is impossible to fully understand the work of these researchers. The various places inhabited by critical theorists in exile were repositories of manuscripts, letters, and working documents. Thus, after being published for a year by Hirschfeld in Leipzig, the institute’s journal, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal of Social Research), was published by Félix Alcan in Paris from 1933 to 1939 and then by the Institute of Social Research in New York City until 1941. It is worth recalling the institute’s various homes: in Frankfurt from 1923 to 1933 and from 1951 to date; simultaneously in Geneva, New York, and partially, Los Angeles from 1933 until August 1950. Exile also forced individual trajectories, which explains the stays of Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Marcuse in Paris and Adorno in Oxford. The exile of the members of the Frankfurt School and the different moves of the institute makes searching the archives a necessary task in order to acquire an exhaustive knowledge of those authors’ writings (many of which remain unpublished), to become familiar with the materials they used and their own particularities (e.g., the technique of micrography used by Benjamin), and to grasp the contexts in which the published books were written. Apropos theorists who, in the spirit of Marx, always stressed the relations between theory and practice, highlighting the material conditions in which they worked is not merely anecdotal. As the work in the archives shows, the movements of the institute and its members soon internationalized Critical Theory. This is evidenced by several facts: in the mid-1930s, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung published articles by the philosophers Alexandre Koyré and Raymond Aron, the anthropologist Margaret Mead, and the geographer Albert Demangeon. The institute’s stay in New York also had a lasting influence on the research of its host institution, as evidenced today by many of the research programs of the New School for Social Research. But what perhaps best shows the Frankfurt School’s international intellectual influence, despite all the difficulties encountered, is the extensive and varied correspondence the authors maintained with other intellectuals of their time. Thousands of letters are kept in the different archives; some have been progressively published (the correspondences between Horkheimer and Adorno, Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, and so on), while others are still unknown. The time span covered by this book extends from the mid-1800s to the present day. The volume begins with the archives of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, whose views inspired the foundation of Critical Theory. The study of these newly dematerialized archives, presented here by Olavo Ximenes, should be of interest to any researcher who wonders what documents were available to critical theorists at the time, in contrast to those available to us today. At the other end of the timeline, this volume includes a philosopher who is usually associated with the second generation of critical theorists: Jürgen Habermas. The case of Habermas is unusual, as he is still

6

I. Aubert and M. Nobre

involved in building his own archive. Not all the material is yet available, but the correspondence, that is, has enormous value and interest, as shown by the interview Rafael Palazi and Pedro Zan conducted with Roman Yos.7 Between these two ends, the volume dedicates a section to the archives of the institute itself and several sections to specific critical theorists, in addition to cross-­ referencing the archives of different authors. The archives of the authors studied here are those of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W.  Adorno, Friedrich Pollock, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Löwenthal, and Jürgen Habermas. The book is composed of articles by researchers and editors who worked in the different funds and articles by and interviews with researchers who were or are in charge of some of the archives or who are especially familiar with the material. Unfortunately, not all the members of the Institute for Social Research could be included in this volume, be it for the difficulty of finding a researcher available to write on a specific literary estate or be it (as in most cases) because a proper estate is not available. It does not aim to be exhaustive, but it can be considered as an initial exploratory step into the subject. Hopefully there will be much more to come on the issue of Critical Theory’s archives. Presenting these different archives is also a way to remind us that the Institute for Social Research was itself created as an archive. This is not solely because its first de facto director, Carl Grünberg, was a historian, who edited the famous Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung (Archive for the History of Socialism and of the Workers Movement). The main reason is that one of the previous aims of the institute was to become a unique archive of the workers’ movement. This story is the one depicted by Henryk Grossmann, one of the most prominent members of the institute.8 In a letter written to Paul Mattick in 1931, Grossmann wrote that the institute was “a neutral institution at the university which is accessible to everyone. Its significance lies in the fact that for the first time everything concerning the workers’ movement in the most important countries of the world is gathered. Above all, sources (congress minutes, party programs, statutes, newspapers, and periodicals) … Whoever in Western Europe wishes to write on the currents of the workers movement must come to us, for we are the only gathering point for it” (Grossmann 1969, pp. 85–86; Jay 1973, p. 14). “Neutral” in this case means no affiliation – as a group9 – to a specific party or to a particular political strand of Marxism. The project was to bring together different conceptions and practices of Marxism. The institute as such chose to maintain a prudent distance from direct action, despite its commitment to Marxism. His claimed neutrality notwithstanding,  The review work of Habermas’s correspondence by Luca Corchia (2017) should be remembered here. Regarding the (re)connection of Habermas’ work with Critical Theory’s initial project in the 1930s, see Aubert (2015). 8  Grossmann exemplifies the case of other theorists who could not be included in the volume. There is no well-established archive for Grossmann’s papers. 9  Some of the participants were close to a party or affiliated to one. 7

Researching the Archives of Critical Theory

7

Grossmann’s phrasing of “the most important countries of the world” demonstrates what was then a commonplace Marxist preconception, despite the fact that the very first successful proletarian revolution took place in Russia, a country that was not seen as one of “the most important” before 1917. Of course, one can ask if Grossmann’s description in this letter effectively corresponded to reality. It could have been a project that Grossmann and others were working on because, in another part of the letter not quoted by Jay, he asks Mattick if he could provide the institute with the material it still lacks. In Grossmann’s words, “We have a lot, if only on larger books; we are missing brochures, posters, factory newspapers, photos of important personalities of the labor movement, their letters (which we especially collect in our manuscript department)” (Grossmann 1969, p. 86). In fact, by this time, the institute had already collected a significant mass of books and documents concerning the workers’ movement – for the library alone, Martin Jay speaks of “over sixty thousand volumes” (Jay 1973, p. 29). All these precious materials were almost entirely lost after the Nazis, in March 1933, “entered the building in the Senckenberganlage, then Viktoria-Allee 17, confiscated it and sealed it”.10 The abrupt closure of the institute and the dark events that followed make one realize in retrospect how hard the authors included in this volume had to fight to preserve their writings from destruction or from being scattered into different hands in different places. Let us recall, for example, the case of Walter Benjamin. Some of the letters he received were lost because he had to flee Berlin in a hurry. Other papers from him were found in Israel because Benjamin had sent them to Gershom Scholem. In Paris, where the Gestapo seized his belongings just after he got on the last train out of the city, Benjamin had been able to give some manuscripts to Georges Bataille. Others came to Adorno in New York. In the interview conducted by Fernando Bee with Ursula Marx, the reader will not only learn about the turbulent and difficult process of building up the Walter Benjamin Archive but also that there are still other collections in this archive, such as those of Florens Christian Rang or Gisèle Freund. Even when the members of the institute were relatively safe from Nazi prosecution, as they were in the United States in the mid-1930s, their position as immigrants put them in constant danger. They had to hide their Marxist affinities in one way or another to avoid being labeled communists and a threat to a country whose mission was to fight the then Soviet Union. The various peregrinations of the authors, moves of the institute, and the conditions of exile comprised a large part of their writings. Those that were not simply lost were difficult to collect and unite in a single place and archive. For a long time, this has also resulted in varying degrees of accessibility. Whoever undertakes to visit all the archives of the critical theorists would have to make a long journey around the world. As the different contributions to this volume explain, after being moved to different places, most of the documents were  Schmid Noerr’s entire text presents a precious reconstruction of the fate of the premises and of the documents of the institute from the Nazi period until Horkheimer’s return to Frankfurt after the end of World War II. 10

8

I. Aubert and M. Nobre

progressively repatriated after World War II and centralized in Germany: in Frankfurt am Main for Adorno, Horkheimer, and Leo Löwenthal in particular, in Berlin for Benjamin (and for Adorno later on), and in Tübingen for Erich Fromm. But there are some documents archived in other countries: as Philipp Lenhard shows in his contribution, some of Pollock’s papers are in Florence, Italy. On the other side of the Atlantic, in various places in the United States, we can find the papers of the thinkers who did not return to Germany after the war: Marcuse, Löwenthal, Franz Neumann, and Otto Kirchheimer, for instance. Today, organization ranges from the complete digitization of some of the archives – or at least the complete cataloging of the documents – to literary estates that are not yet effectively archived. Franz Neumann’s papers, for example, are scattered between the estates of Marcuse and Otto Kirchheimer. It is not so surprising that many estates are not (fully) archived when one considers the human and financial resources needed to catalog all an author’s remaining papers. At that time, long letters were common – approximately half of the Horkheimer-Pollock estate consists of letters, for instance – and manuscripts, in the original sense of the word, were rather the rule for books, courses, collective research projects, public interventions, and so on. There is also the question of the preparation of the archives by the authors themselves. Michael Schwarz, for instance, reminds us at the very beginning of his contribution to this volume that at the time of his sudden death Adorno had not yet thought about organizing his own estate. According to Schwarz, Adorno had no archival attitude toward his own works, which include musical compositions. Another difficulty regarding the archival work around most of these authors is that the conditions in which the materials were preserved were not homogeneous and were sometimes extremely poor. To understand the amount of work involved to establish a proper archive, one need only look at Gunzelin Schmid Noerr’s chapter in this volume as an example. Schmid Noerr, a dedicated researcher, spent 11 years cataloguing Horkheimer’s literary estate with the support of numerous university librarians. A separate group of about ten people took care of the inventory. In Horkheimer’s case, the editorial work lasted more than 18 years. This should be enough to prove that this volume is also dedicated to highlighting the invisible work of archivists and editors, and their frequently double or triple workload as archivists, researchers, and editors of an author’s works. We should remember that what a researcher can do with archive material depends on the materiality itself, as Olivier Voirol points out in his contribution. And such a materiality has not only to do with the content of the authors’ estates but also with their materialization, so to speak, through the work of archivists and editors. That is why this volume gives a voice to archivists and editors, as well as to researchers. The question of the material media itself has been always of decisive importance to the history of Critical Theory. In the case of Marx and Engels, we obviously have no recordings and, for Benjamin, only a few, but we do for the authors who were still alive after World War II, when television, film, and radio recordings became relatively abundant and could be preserved. Thus, the critical theorists represented

Researching the Archives of Critical Theory

9

in this book deliberately chose to intervene in the public sphere, taking advantage of the various instruments available at a particular moment. It is certainly very important to distinguish between archives that have been so far extensively digitized or published in book format and others that still await publication. Opposite cases in this respect may be the Marx-Engels and the Horkheimer estates on the one hand and those of Marcuse or the Institute for Social Research on the other. But even when archives are extensively digitized, such as the Marx-Engels estate, researching the archives is still important, as Olavo Ximenes’s chapter clearly shows. Given the differing current states of the archives, we tried to balance between different objectives and aspects in the composition of this book. Readers will find information about the content of each archive and the history of its constitution. The various contributions present many ways in which the materials may be explored and explain how such explorations affected or may yet affect the state of the research. The contributors develop theoretical reflections on what it means to work in such archives, sometimes relating their own personal experience of this work. John Abromeit’s contribution, for example, shows the realities of archival work in the early 1990s, what is still required today, and the difficulties faced. For example, although he took a course on reading eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German scripts, he and Stephan Bundschuh, another Marcuse specialist, tried in vain to decipher Martin Heidegger’s handwriting in a letter to Marcuse. This collective volume on the archives of Critical Theory is published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the institute, known for its innovative and groundbreaking interdisciplinary approach. However, despite a section devoted to the archives of the institute, to which the various authors were attached in different ways and at different times, the vast majority of the existing archives are those of individual authors. This poses particular problems. Adriano Januário’s contribution to this volume emphasizes the interdisciplinary character of the work of the institute in the sense of collective empirical interdisciplinary research work. This is not always sufficiently emphasized, in our view, when it comes to interpreting the legacy and the contributions of Critical Theory, which are often treated in terms of individual works, of contributions of only philosophical and theoretical nature, or in terms of a generic and empty label such as “Frankfurt School.” This constant back and forth between individual and collective/ interdisciplinary works is essential to understanding both dimensions, especially when it comes to empirical research, which is often very innovative, as Januário’s analysis of the Gruppenexperiment (1955) clearly shows. Another dimension to considering both individual and collective work as a whole may be found, in our view, in a passage by Adorno that stands as the epigraph of Dirk Braunstein and Maischa Gelhard’s contribution: “In setting up his own archives, the subject seizes his own stock of experience as property, so making it something wholly external to himself. Past inner life is turned into furniture just as, conversely, every Biedermeier piece was memory made wood” (Adorno 2006, p. 166). These words from Adorno allude to the saying – probably Jean Paul’s, he adds  – that memories are the only property no one can take from us. It is not

10

I. Aubert and M. Nobre

surprising, then, that Adorno associates such an “impotently sentimental consolation” with the Biedermeier style, with that kind of bourgeois despair of “leaving traces behind,” as Walter Benjamin said of the bourgeois form of life. The aphorism ends with another Benjaminian touch: “it is foolish and sentimental to try to keep the past untainted by the present’s turbid flood” (Adorno 2006, p. 167). This book takes Adorno’s words seriously in reflecting on the archives of Critical Theory. His message is the guiding thread of this enterprise, as it should be for any examination of the archives of Critical Theory. Archives are not only about private persons as private persons, if there is such a thing as a figure of privacy that corresponds to its current, mostly ideological image. Archives are public facilities in which scholars and the public can conduct research. While it is certainly “foolish and sentimental” to try to seal them from the turbulent present, they acquire a special objectivity when they are researched and when they are published. This objectivity should not be misunderstood. There is always a risk that the content of newly discovered material will be taken as the unquestionable truth about the authors. Yet it would be wrong to be so resolute. As Inara Marin shows, referring to the editions of Marcuse’s essays, when archival texts are published, editorial choices are made that sometimes unintentionally influence the selection of texts and give a different view of the author’s thinking. When considering thinkers who have stressed the need for social theory to evolve to better account for the present time, fixed interpretations would be misplaced. An element of contextualization is obviously important to avoid this pitfall. In any archival research, the question always arises as to why certain materials were not made public: were they unfinished versions of later published work or mere drafts? Were they avenues of thought left untouched? Was it private correspondence? Or why, after their broadcast, were they archived, as is often the case with radio recordings? In the case of critical theorists, the importance of their reflections on the times makes it impossible to take the materials discovered about them in the archives as museum pieces. It seems more accurate to consider them as moments in evolving thought. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr agrees with Jan Assmann in distinguishing three dimensions of memory – individual, communicative, and cultural – and this volume emphasizes memory’s cultural dimension. But this is not its unique focus. As Paulo Yamawake reminds us in his contribution on Horkheimer, the critical theorists portrayed occupied different positions, often simultaneously, in the administration of the institute, in the collective and individual research itself, and in the personal relationships they cultivated (“the director, methodologist, and partner”). And let us not forget those who even now remain largely unknown and invisible, such as Juliette Favez, sometime director of the Geneva branch of the institute, who is portrayed by Olivier Voirol in this volume through her correspondence with Horkheimer. These different positions influence not only the theoretical and empirical work of the authors presented here through their archives but also the very reception of the work, the various interpretations evolving over time according to the weight attributed to each of the positions they occupied. They also influence their personal relationships, as shown by Peter-Erwin Jansen and Inka Engel in the case of the lifelong friendship and intellectual

Researching the Archives of Critical Theory

11

companionship between Marcuse and Löwenthal. And, one of the objectives of this book being to highlight experiences of working with the archives, some of the contributions to this volume are about sharing the individual and communicative dimensions of experience. The book aims to capture several perspectives on the archive in the same way that critical theorists have had several relationships with it. First, some of them did archival research themselves. This is true for Marx and Engels before the Frankfurters, for example, and among them for Benjamin and Pollock. Second, quite remarkably, some theorists have also reflected on the very idea of being archived. This can be seen as another specificity of what the archiving of critical theorists entails: their work was itself thought to be resistant to archiving, just as the work of some artists resists museumization, so to speak. As already shown by Adorno’s quote, critical theorists aimed to resist objectification. A good illustration is Benjamin’s idea of the “salvation of phenomena,” according to which every document of civilization is at the same time a document of barbarism. In this sense, the specter of Walter Benjamin is always present. There are many ideas to be saved, some of which we are still unaware of. Are there other possibilities for the development of capitalism in Marx’s writings that we are oblivious to? Are there possibilities that have remained hidden because of editorial choices that favored certain materials over others? The reflections made by Antonin Wiser in his contribution on Benjamin’s own thinking about archives and archiving, and his position as an “anarchivist,” are essential to understanding this point. All researchers should be aware that the first publication of previously archived documents can change the way one looks at all the previously published texts. One example among many is that of Adorno. Since the early twenty-first century, various new works on Adorno have interpreted things differently, for example, Brian O′Connor’s landmark book.11 But much remains to be done with the archival material that are unpublished, as the chapter by Raquel Patriota and Ricardo Lira demonstrates. Dirk Braunstein’s book Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy  (Braunstein 2022) is a good example of how unpublished texts can change readings: it shows how the critique of economics was central to Adorno’s theory of society and was not, as is generally thought, a relic of the past. Aurélia Peyrical’s contribution to this volume is also based on archival work, but from a different perspective, highlighting the pedagogical dimension of Adorno’s thought. While pointing to the growing number of works on Adorno and education, Peyrical draws on four radio interviews between Adorno and Hellmut Becker that have not received much attention, in contrast to four others that are well-known thanks to their publication in the volume Erziehung zur Mündigkeit (1971). The publication of original documents from the archives of individual members of the institute is an undertaking which has been growing steadily since the 1970s.  O’Connor 2004. Although it is also fair to say that some books before it had already pointed to an alternative interpretation of Adorno’s work that did not presuppose a straight line and a mere development in his thought from the Dialectic of Enlightenment on. Examples of this alternative consideration are Eichel (1993); Borio and Danuser (1997); Nobre (1998); and Rebentisch (2003). 11

12

I. Aubert and M. Nobre

Critical theorists were the first to oversee the publication of their deceased colleagues’ unpublished writings: together with Scholem, Adorno and his wife Gretel took care of Benjamin’s manuscripts (Benjamin 1955), while Marcuse edited various of Neumann’s essays (Neumann 1957). Some contributors to this volume have made efforts to edit and publish archived documents. Thanks to the long-term work of Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, many of Max Horkheimer’s writings are available, including his complete works (the last of 19 volumes was published in 1996)  (Horkheimer 1996). In addition to the correspondence between Löwenthal and Kracauer that he published with Alfred Schmidt (Leo and Kracauer 2003), Peter-Erwin Jansen edited six volumes of unpublished writings by Herbert Marcuse between 1998 and 2006 and, more recently, several series of lectures (Marcuse 2015, 2017). Dirk Braunstein published Adorno’s Philosophie und Soziologie (Adorno 2011) and four volumes of his “Frankfurter Seminare” (Adorno 2021), while Michael Schwarz edited a volume of 20 lectures and speeches given by Adorno between 1948 and 1969 (Adorno 2019). In parallel with an exhibition held in Paris in 2011 at the Museum of Jewish Art and History, the book Walter Benjamin’s Archive: Images, Texts, Signs (Benjamin 2007), edited by Ursula Marx, Michael Schwarz, Gudrun Schwarz, and Erdmut Wizisla, develops Benjamin’s portrait by presenting various collections of all kinds of his papers (notebooks, loose sheets, letterhead, reused papers). Together with Jaeho Kang and Graeme Gilloch, John Abromeit recently edited Siegfried Kracauer’s Selected Writings on Media, Propaganda, and Political Communication (2022). Finally, Philipp Lenhard is editing the complete writings of Friedrich Pollock in six volumes; two are currently available (Pollock 2021; Pollock Forthcoming).12 Before closing this introduction, as editors of this volume, we would like to raise some self-critical questions. One of the merits of archival research is that it brings to light forgotten elements of history, whether individual, biographical, intellectual, political, or even diplomatic. Certainly, each of the contributions in the volume brings to light unknown or little-known aspects of a particular author or of the institute – who remembers, for example, the role of Juliette Favez when the institute was in exile? More generally, who pays attention to the role of women (like Gretel Adorno) in the creation and development of the Frankfurt School? It is also certain that each of the proposed studies provides objective and indisputable elements that allow us to sort out certain competing interpretations and to open the way to new lines of thought. Nevertheless, all the research gathered in this volume reflects the accessibility of certain archives compared to others or how the enterprise of archiving the writings of one or another of the authors currently stands. Hence the question, by widening the gap between theorists who are increasingly in the light and those who remain more in the shade, are we not contributing, despite our own  Philipp Lenhard is also preparing a book about the history of the Institute for Social Research from 1923 to 1973, due to be published in 2024. Let us mention here also the essays of Franz L. Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer edited by William Scheuerman (Neumann and Kirchheimer 1996) and the complete writings of Otto Kirchheimer edited recently by Hubertus Buchstein (Kirchheimer 2019). 12

Researching the Archives of Critical Theory

13

intentions, to making the best-known authors (Marx, Adorno, Benjamin) even better known, to the detriment of other members of the institute whose papers have been less well preserved (Neumann, for instance) or who are not present in this volume (Erich Fromm, to mention one)? We very much hope not. This should also remind us that interpretations and research are marked by their place and context of production. In this volume we have contributors (including interviewees) from five different countries: 10 from the so-called Global South (Brazil, in this case), 14 from the Global North (France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States). Such a combination cannot change or compensate for the unequal exchanges within academia – to say nothing of the gender imbalance that we must answer to in editing this volume – much less the unequal exchanges within capitalism more broadly. However, it may at least draw attention to these inequalities, as it may do for the different interpretations that different contexts may produce. For instance, in his introduction to his interview with Ursula Marx, Fernando Bee recalls Jeanne Marie Gagnebin’s remarks on the connection between the Brazilian reception of the writings of Benjamin and the political situation of the country, which was under a military dictatorship for most of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Given all these considerations, it is clear that the overview presented in this volume cannot be comprehensive; the project of reflecting on the archives of Critical Theory in light of the current state of research can only be a work in progress. We hope that reading The Archives of Critical Theory will help to uncover more of the critical theorists’ still unpublished materials.

References Adorno, Theodor W. 1971 [2021]. Erziehung zur Mündigkeit. Vorträge und Gespräche mit Hellmut Becker 1959 bis 1969. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 2006. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. London and New York: Verso. ———. 2011. Philosophie und Soziologie, ed. Dirk Braunstein. Berlin: Suhrkamp. ———. 2019. Vorträge 1949–1968. Nachgelassene Schriften. Abteilung V: Vorträge und Gespräche, ed. Michael Schwarz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 2021. Die Frankfurter Seminare. Gesammelte Sitzungsprotokolle 1949–1969. ed. Dirk Braunstein. Berlin: De Gruyter. Aubert, Isabelle. 2015. Habermas: Une théorie critique de la société. Paris: CNRS Éditions. Benjamin, Walter. 1955. Schriften. Vols. 1–2, ed. Theodor Adorno, Gretel Adorno, and Friedrich Podszus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 2007. Walter Benjamin’s Archive: Images, Texts, Signs, ed. Ursula Marx, Gudrun Schwarz, Michael Schwarz, and Erdmut Wizisla. London: Verso. Borio, Gianmario and Hermann Danuser. (Eds.) 1997. Im Zenit der Moderne: Die Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musike Darmstadt 1946–1966. Vols. 1-4. Freiburg: Rombach. Braunstein, Dirk. 2022. Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy. Trans. Adam Baltner. Boston: Brill. Corchia, Luca. 2017. Vorlass Jürgen Habermas. Korrespondenzen (1954–1994). J. W. Goethe-Universität/Archivzentrum. Eichel, Christine. 1993. Vom Ermatten der Avantgarde zur Vernetzung der Künste: Perspektiven einer interdisziplinären Ästhetik im Spätwerk Adornos. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

14

I. Aubert and M. Nobre

Grossmann, H. 1969. Marx, die klassische Nationalökonomie und das Problem der Dynamik. Frankfurt am Main and Vienna: Europäische Verlagsanstalt and Europa. Horkheimer, Max. 1996, Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 1–19, ed. Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Berlin: Fischer. Jay, Martin. 1973. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kirchheimer, Otto. 2019. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 1–6, ed. Hubertus Buchstein. Baden-­ Baden: Nomos. Kracauer, Siegfried. 2022. Selected Writings on Media, Propaganda, and Political Communication, ed. John Abromeit, Graeme Gilloch, and Jaeho Kang. New York: Columbia University Press. Löwenthal Leo and Siegfried Kracauer. 2003. In steter Freundschaft. Briefwechsel 1922–1966, ed. Peter-Erwin Jansen. Lüneburg: Zu Klampen. Lukács, Georg. 1971 [1923]. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. London: The Merlin Press. Marcuse, Herbert. 2015. Herbert Marcuse’s 1974 Paris Lectures at Vincennes University: Global Capitalism and Radical Opposition, ed. Peter-Erwin Jansen and Charles Reitz. Kansas City and Frankfurt am Main: CreateSpace. ———. 2017. Transvaluation of Values & Radical Change. Five Lectures 1966–1976, ed. Peter-­ Erwin Jansen, Sarah Surak, and Charles Reitz. Toronto: York University. Neumann, Franz L. 1957. The Democratic and the Authoritarian State. Essays in Political and Legal Theory, ed. and with a preface by Herbert Marcuse. Glencoe: The Free Press. Neumann, Franz L. and Otto Kirchheimer. 1996. The Rule of Law Under Siege. Selected Essays, ed. William Scheuerman. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nobre, Marcos. 1998. A dialética negativa de Theodor W. Adorno: a ontologia do estado falso. São Paulo: Iluminuras. O’Connor, Brian. 2004. Adorno’s Negative Dialectic. Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality. Cambridge: MIT Press. Pollock, Friedrich. 2021. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 1–2, ed. Philipp Lenhard. Berlin: ça ira. ———. Forthcoming. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 3–6, ed. Philipp Lenhard. Berlin: ça ira. Rebentisch, Juliane. 2003. Ästhetik der Installation. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Wiggershaus, Rolf. 2007 [1986]. The Frankfurt School. Its History, Theory and Political Significance. Cambridge: MIT Press. Isabelle Aubert  is an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-­ Sorbonne, and a member of the Institut universitaire de France. She is the author of Habermas. Une théorie critique de la société (CNRS, 2015). She is the coeditor of Dialogues avec Habermas (CNRS, 2018), Niklas Luhmann: Une théorie générale de la société (Editions de la Sorbonne, 2023) and Adorno: Dialectique et négativité (Vrin, 2023). Marcos Nobre  is a professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), and senior researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap). He has books on Adorno, Lukács, Hegel, and on Critical Theory more broadly. In 2022, Springer published his Limits of Democracy: From the June 2013 Uprisings in Brazil to the Bolsonaro Government.

Part II

Marx and Engels Archive

Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions, and Theoretical Implications Olavo Ximenes

1 Introduction Marxist scholarship is becoming gradually more philologically oriented, to the extent that Marx and Engels are now considered classic authors (Neuhaus 2013). Consequently, academic reception and research relate to praxis increasingly indirectly. For this reason, I am proposing to separate, at least analytically, Marxism’s broader reception from the academic reception. The difference between reception and academic research appears, for instance, in Pagel’s Der Einzige und die Deutsche Ideology (The Unique and the German Ideology) (Pagel 2020) where he argues in his introduction (pp. 1–42) that his approach and philological interpretation and reconstruction of Marx and Engels’s key concepts would allow him to bypass the long history of “The German Ideology’s” broader reception. Other examples of how this difference appears in the secondary literature can be found in Johnson’s articles (2019, 2022). However, in the latter case, Johnson uses a philological approach to reevaluate the historical reception of “The German Ideology”. In any event, the history of Marxism’s genesis as a theoretical and political field and that of the different published versions of Marx and Engels’s works (MEGA-1, MEGA-2, MEW and MECW) (Marx & Engels 1975) relies on this distinction; its reception both by the wider public and by academia shapes the field of Marxism. I argue that there are at least four intertwined aspects that Marx and Engels scholars and the general public must keep in mind while reading their work:

O. Ximenes (*) Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_2

17

18

O. Ximenes

• Marx and Engels’s reception in a broad sense, which for the most part was connected to pressing issues of praxis. • The academic reception, which is increasingly more philologically oriented and consequently less connected to praxis. • The history of publishing Marx and Engels’s oeuvre. • Access to the Marx-Engels-Nachlass.1 This background informs the sections of this essay to come. Precisely for that reason, I would like to acknowledge the very important work that has been carried out by the editors associated with the MEGA-2 project,2 for it is mainly they who research the Marx-Engels-Nachlass. However, one could ask: what relevance does such research hold for the field of Marxism?3 One could argue that it is unlikely anything could still be found that has not already been published in one of its various forms. This objection seems sound, except for some overlooked facts. The MEW edition was intended as a study edition, not a comprehensive research edition (Draper 1985, appendix II).4 That edition bore marks of politically and ideologically oriented commentaries, particularly in its prefaces and notes.5 Another very different kind of problem regarding MEW editions is how “The German Ideology” and Das Kapital were published (Carver and Blank 2014a; Anderson 2010). As for the MEGA,6 all 114 volumes (Sperl 2005, pp. 344–345) were due to be published by the 2020s, bringing the project to a close; however, at the time of writing, its conclusion is still open to question.7  Among specialist scholars, it is customary to use the German term Marx-Engels-Nachlass to refer to Marx and Engels’s literary estate. There is a unique German word to describe the notion of preservation (of the Nachlass) and its transmission: Überlieferung. 2  See Rojahn (2001) for a brief recollection of the Marx-Engels-Nachlass’s history and the history of its publication. 3  For a dated but historically interesting description of Marx-Engels research centers until 1985, see Draper (1985, Appendix IV). 4  MEW is a selection of Marx and Engels’s works, correspondence, and some manuscripts that comprises about 44 volumes. They are known for their famous blue hardcovers. I must express my thanks to Prof. Dr. Rolf Hecker for indicating to me that, contrary to what I believed, the MEW project is not halted. New volumes with new prefaces are still being published by the Dietz and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. For more information, see: https://marxforschung.de/mew/, https:// marxforschung.de/mew_2/, https://dietzberlin.de/reihe/mew/, and https://www.rosalux.de/dokumentation/id/14064/ (Accessed 5 January, 2023). 5  Draper also addresses MEW’s politically motivated prefaces and notes (1985, p. 209). Years later, Sperl (2005, p. 351) would also criticize the editorial prefaces and the Apparat, which consisted mainly of German translations of the same texts in the second edition of the Russian Socinenija (Hubmann 2007). However, in the same vein, Draper argued that the overall outcome of the texts the MEW were positive. For another critical approach to MEW, see Hubmann (2007), and for an analysis of MECW, see Anderson (2010, Appendix). 6  For a critical appraisal of the second section of MEGA, finished in 2012, see Van der Linden and Hubmann (2018). 7  Some volumes of the third and fourth section will be published only in a digital format. See https://www.bbaw.de/forschung/marx-engels-gesamtausgabe (accessed 5 September 2022). Each volume published in MEGA-2 comprehends two books: the first contains the primary text, which is faithfully reproduced; the second book is the Apparat, with editorial indications for variations, corrections, explanations, and miscellaneous material. 1

Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions, and Theoretical Implications

19

To answer in detail the question of what remains to be found in the Marx-Engels-­ Nachlass, I would have to delve into a series of interconnected issues, which would far exceed the scope of this text. For instance, I would need to provide an account of how the transmission and preservation (Überlieferung) of the Marx-Engels-­ Nachlass8 was carried out (Mayer 1966; Hecker 1996); then, I would have to tell the story of how the Marx-Engels-Nachlass, originally under the protection of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), was sold to the International Institute of Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam; and, last but not least, it would be necessary to explain the story behind the general access to Marx and Engels’s works and manuscripts through their different forms of publishing. Many hours of study have been dedicated to each of these topics, and, consequently, innumerable articles, book chapters, notes, and conferences have been published (Rubel 1974; Hundt 2000; Vollgraf et al. 1997, 2001; Hecker et al. 2000; Sgro’ 2016).9 It is certainly impossible to encompass all that work here; therefore, before I venture into some general answers to such difficult topics, I think it is important to start with some basic facts regarding the Marx-Engels-Nachlass and its foundations.

2 The Marx-Engels-Nachlass Two-thirds of the estate is currently housed in the IISG in Amsterdam, which began collecting this material in 1938.10 Much of the remaining material is located in Russia, at the Russian State Archives of Socio-Political History (RGASPI). Here one can find part of the Marx-Engels correspondence,11 a draft of the preface to “The German Ideology” (1845–1847), as well as parts of the Grundrisse (1857–1858) and other economic manuscripts. In the Russian archive, in addition to original materials, there is a vast trove of photocopies; notably, this includes copies of the manuscripts of “The German Ideology” made by David Borisovič Rjazanov

 Hecker’s 1996 paper included some new details about the failed Russian attempt to buy the Marx-­ Engels-­Nachlass from the exiled SPD. A new version has now been published (Hecker 2021). For the history of the allegedly stolen “economic manuscripts,” see Mis’kevic (2013) and Rojahn (2013). For how Rjazanov came into possession of The German Ideology’s “Vorrede”, see Rjazanov (1971 [1928], p. 217). For a brief account about Rjazanov’s background and later arrest on Stalin’s orders, see Rokitjanskij (1993). For a map of the line of possession of Marx and Engels’s literary estate, see Hecker (1999, p. 234; and Fig. 1). A very short version of the history of the Nachlass can be found in Hecker (1999, pp. 231–233). 9  All the published volumes of the Beiträge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung (Neue Folge) are filled with very important articles. One should also monitor the Wissenschaftliche Mitteilungen edited by Berliner Verein zur Föderung der MEGA-Edition e.V. 10  For a complete overview of the Marx-Engels-Nachlass as held by the IISG, visit: https://hdl. handle.net/10622/ARCH00860 11  According to the IISG website, part of the Marx-Engels correspondence that was in the possession of the Longuet family until the 1950s was later moved to the RGASPI. 8

20

O. Ximenes

at the beginning of the twentieth century, from the originals then in the possession of the SPD.12 Fortunately, with the advent of the internet and the popularization of digitization, it is no longer necessary to go in person to the IISG headquarters in Amsterdam to consult the original manuscripts of Marx and Engels.13 The institute makes almost all its services available on its official website, and, if a manuscript has not yet been digitized, it is even possible to ask for a digital copy.14 Thus, any researcher can potentially consult the manuscript in its authentic form when necessary.15 To summarize, the Marx-Engels-Nachlass – cataloged and classified – is spread mainly between two different institutions, of which only one grants virtual access to Marx and Engels’s collected manuscripts (see Fig. 1 for a graphic overview of the path of Marx-Engels-Nachlass). It is also necessary to note that the availability of digital copies of manuscripts, letters, and other documents only partially solves the accessibility problem. An arbitrary list of the difficulties involved in dealing with these historical documents encompasses the following: • A reasonable command of the German language and, more specifically, of nineteenth-­century written German is essential.16 The orthography and the use of commas, among other things, changed during the twentieth century. From this point of view, the researcher will also need to know how to decipher the German Gothic script used at the time. • The fragmentary state of manuscripts, disfigured by time and use, requires great effort and, often, guesswork on the part of the reader. In addition, there are frequent abbreviations of definite and indefinite articles, pronouns, and proper names, and nicknames are even used. In this aspect, especially when dealing with letters, newspaper articles, or occasional texts, it is necessary to have at least a basic knowledge of the historical context (that precise information is provided by the working groups of MEGA in each MEGA volume). • Finally, Marx’s poor penmanship is infamous, and it is indeed very difficult to decipher.17  According to Rokitjanskij (1993), Rjazanov collected an archive of more than 15,000 documents and 175,000 copies. 13  The Marx-Engels-Nachlass as it is preserved in the IISG extends to 5.6 meters; its access is not restricted, and about 2678 items are available online. The archive was digitized between 2012 and 2016. See https://hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00860 (accessed on September 4, 2022). 14  Unfortunately, in the case of RGASPI website, it appears to be entirely in Russian. I do not know if it is possible to consult the collection virtually. See http://rgaspi.org/ 15  An interesting use of IISG’s online collection and its rather collaborative attitude towards demands can be consulted in both articles by Dr. Sarah Johnson (2019 and 2022). For instance, Johnson (2019) used some of The German Ideology’s digitized manuscripts to provide complementary information to the critical Apparat. Even if the use of such digitized manuscripts was not the core of her article, it is still remarkable she was able to refer to that material to enrich the story of the complex process of writing and then publishing the manuscripts of “The German Ideology.” 16  It should also be noted that Marx and Engels wrote in several languages (e.g., German, English, French, and classical Latin and Greek), and they often mixed those languages together in the same document. 17  See, for instance, Stern & Wolf (1972, pp. 176–184). 12

Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions, and Theoretical Implications

Private collection (Letters/Books with dedication among other things)

Karl Marx (-1883†) Laura/ Paul Lafargue

Jenny/ Charles Longuet

Eleanor / Edward Aveling

Friedrich Engels (-1895†) Kautsky

Engels’ Family

Rjazanov/Wien

21

SPD Archive and Library in Berlin

Bernstein Nikolaevskij

Kriger

Marx-Engels Institute Moscow

Marx-EngelsLenin Institute

Institute of MarxismLeninism in the Central Committee of CPSU Party Archiv

Longuet Paris

Russian Center for Conservation and Research Moscow

Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History

Copenhagen

Prussian Secret State Archives Berlin-Dahlem

Donations, purchases, and sales (auctions)

International Institute of Social History Amsterdam

Institute of MarxismLeninism in the Central Committee of SED England

Party Foundation and Mass org. (SAPMO)

IISG Amsterdam Karl Marx House in Trier

Archive of social democracy Friedrich-Ebert Foundation

Private collection and/or libraries and Archives, e.g., in Japan.

© Rolf Hecker, 1999 (2022) Translated by Olavo Ximenes

Fig. 1  The path of Marx-Engels-Nachlass (simplified exposition)

Once these barriers have been overcome, one fundamental piece of information is still missing: after all, what constitutes Marx and Engels’s literary estate, which for the most part is kept by the IISG? The archive brings together manuscripts, about 200 notebooks of excerpts and notes, letters from and to Marx, and even books that Marx commented on. The collection at the IISG also contains Marx and Engels’s personal documents and official records, including documents and correspondence from Marx’s wife Jenny. Documents from the rest of the Marx family can also be

22

O. Ximenes

found in the archive, as can, of course, the manuscripts, notebooks, and letters to and from Engels. All these items were inventoried in categories (from A to S, receiving their own number within each category).18 It is possible to consult the numerous notebooks of excerpts, notebooks, and studies of Marx, as well as preparatory materials for works such as Das Kapital. As Hecker (1999, p. 224) shows, Marx’s notebooks indicate that his range of interests encompassed, among other fields, history, philosophy, geology, mineralogy, and ethnology. It is also particularly interesting to look at the material grouped under the editorial title “The German Ideology”.19 Much of the aforementioned material has, in fact, already been published in MEGA-2, and some are still only available as an original manuscript in the collection. There is another way to understand this rich archive, which is to consider the four sections of MEGA-2.20 The first section comprises Marx’s and Engels’s published and unpublished writings on economics, politics, and history, as well as newspaper and conference articles (including “The German Ideology” and The Holy Family); the second section is dedicated to everything related to the book project Das Kapital, including the Grundrisse.21 The third section brings together all of Marx and Engels’s correspondence (Hubmann 2020b)22; and finally, the fourth section covers notebooks and studies, excerpts, and diverse marginalia from Marx and Engels’s pens. Here it is important to make a quick detour. Evidently, the MEGA edition, its sections, and what has been and will be published from the archive in each section are a byproduct of a series of decisions and editorial guidelines. For that reason, it is necessary to take a step back to the 1990s, when the MEGA-2 project was resumed after the USSR stopped supporting it.23 The overall problem of a Gesamtausgabe project consists mainly in how to publish the Marx-Engels-Nachlass, which  For a detailed inventory of the archive, see the IISG website. It should, however, be noted that the most recent inventory of the archive was carried out between 1959 and 1965 with funding by the Ford Foundation. At that time it was divided into two volumes: volume I (part A to E) for Marx and volume II (parts H to M) for Engels. See the appendices in https://hdl.handle.net/10622/ ARCH00860 19  The two first inventory lists of the Marx-Engels-Nachlass can be consulted in Mayer (1966, pp. 168–189). Both lists have their intrinsic historical value, as for, among other things, one can see that the so-called “The German Ideology” manuscripts were listed in very different positions. Another point of historical interest is that the latter list shows Marx’s missing economic manuscripts, which were sold by Dr. Marek Kriger to the Soviets. 20  See also Internationale Marx-Engels-Stiftung (n.d.). 21  For a critical appraise of the MEGA and an account of the criticism of its second section (dedicated to The Capital and preparing works), see Marxhausen (2006). For an older criticism of the second section of MEGA-1, which was copied by MEGA-2, see Veller (2001 [1936], p. 281). For an encompassing history of MEGA, see Hecker et al. (2018). 22  Hubmann (2020b, p. 1274) informs us that the majority of the Marx/Engels correspondence is being stored in the RGASPI in Moscow. Interestingly, the first MEGA did not plan to edit the correspondence from third parties (Hubmann 2020b, p.  1275). That is why the correspondence as edited in MEW was of importance. Lastly, the first MEGA was published without an all-­ encompassing planning; see Sperl (2005, pp. 347–8). 23  The MEGA-1 was abandoned in the 1940s. The new MEGA-2 was launched in the 1970s, but with the fall of the USSR at the end of the 1980s, it was once again left without funding. 18

Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions, and Theoretical Implications

23

consists mainly of unfinished materials (Grandjonc and Rojahn 1996, p. 65). A different set of issues, linked with the more prosaic one of funding, concerned the ways in which the scope of MEGA-2 could be reduced according to strict scientific reasoning. It is worth remembering – as Grandjonc and Rojahn (1996) did – that the first MEW should not have bypassed the number of volumes of the complete works of Lenin; still, a curtailment was the order of the day. Those issues have now been resolved: the new 1993 Editionsrichtlinien (editorial guidelines) (Grandjonc and Rojahn 1996, p. 63) should provide the editors with enough scientific criteria for curtailment of the new volumes of MEGA-2. By describing the new plan for MEGA’s four sections (pp. 66–78), the authors also made explicit mention of parts of the Nachlass that could be left out of the published volumes, which underlines that one must not only be aware of what goes into MEGA volumes but also of what may have been left out. A closer look at Grandjonc and Rojahn’s article is of great help to understand the countless editorial choices made when compiling MEGA. Let us leave aside, for the moment, the inherent editorial choices. It is not difficult to imagine that Marx and Engels’s literary estate, the access to it, and, consequently, its publication were and are of paramount importance to forming a correct and historically accurate understanding of their contributions. For example, the publication and dissemination of Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and “The German Ideology” in the 1930s, as well as Grundrisse in the 1940s,24 completely changed the reception of the authors’ work (Hobsbawm 1978, p. 366). More recently still, the full publication of the manuscripts of “The German Ideology,” published within the scope of MEGA-2 I/5 (Marx and Engels 2017), is faithful to the text and philologically accurate, promising to shake the Marxist reception of historical materialism, in addition to proving wrong the almost century-­ old reception of that so-called work (Pagel 2020, pp. 1–42).25 There are specialists in dealing with the Marx-Engels-Nachlass, organized into MEGA working groups, spread internationally, including in the United States, Russia, Germany, and Japan.26 The MEGA project, in its turn, is linked to different institutions: the International Marx-Engels Foundation (IMES); the IISG; the RGASPI; and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW), at last  All these titles were later editorial attributions, and they are therefore not present in the manuscripts’ corpus. For instance, regarding the Grundrisse, there were, at the time of is publishing, a handful of possible editorial titles. The famous title Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie was, in fact, a late decision of its editor, Paul Veller. For a list of possible titles for the Notebooks of 1857–8, see Vasina (2011, p. 39). In fact, the Grundrisse title problems influenced how it was first edited and its subsequent reception, but to delve into that issue would require an entirely different essay. In the case of “The German Ideology,” it is particularly difficult to summarize the problems concerning the traditional use of “The German Ideology” as a title to a supposed work. For a brief account of these problems, I strongly recommend Hubmann and Pagel (2018). 25  Pagel (2020, Einleitung) argues that his manuscript-based approach could allow him to bypass the reception regarding the manuscripts to “The German Ideology” and its relation to Max Stirner. 26  MEGA’s third and fourth sections were divided between groups in Moscow and Berlin (Grandjonc and Rojahn 1996, p. 64). Grandjonc and Rojahn also provide a series of appendices, detailing how the workload of the MEGA was allocated at the time across an international network of scholars. 24

24

O. Ximenes

financed indirectly by the German state.27 The working groups, which gather the material cataloged in the IISG and RGASPI collections, are responsible for publishing Marx and Engels’s letters, notebooks, and unpublished materials as faithfully as possible, following the editorial guidelines.28 Current editions of MEGA are accompanied by extensive introductory material on the edited text, an accurate description of the physical condition of the material, and the history of the transmission and preservation (Überlieferung) of these texts. In a way, the editors, as well as the other researchers in the MEGA working groups, make a bridge between the material in the archive and Marx and Engels scholars. They are the ones who overcome the numerous barriers to access that I mentioned earlier. It is they who, by trade, read, decipher, and prepare for publication each item of text, contextualizing each item historically for a wider audience. This means that there is intense, interesting, and current research into the Marx-­ Engels-­Nachlass, and, moreover, it seems to be confined primarily to a group of specialists who have all the necessary knowledge to deal with and to decipher the manuscripts. However, the question of what relevance the Marx-Engels-Nachlass has for the field of Marxism when answered in these terms seems to be of little interest either to specialists – who know how the editorial process of the complete works of Marx and Engels operates – or to the wider public, who do not have the necessary technical knowledge to deal with the collection, relying mainly on study editions. However, appearances can be deceiving, and our topic is not yet done. There are still two more aspects to cover.

2.1  “The German Ideology” and Researching the Nachlass: A Brief Account It is theoretically possible to independently decipher and even edit manuscripts from the Marx-Engels Archive, even those that have already been published either in MEW or MEGA. Thus, it is possible to create one’s own versions of established texts without necessarily relying on the editorial choices either of MEGA or of  See Union der Deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften (2018/19). See also: https://mega. bbaw.de/de/projektbeschreibung. First, after a meeting in 1989, the IISG and the Karl-Marx-Haus (which at the time was not only a museum but also a research center under the Friedrich Ebert Foundation) launched a new institution – the IMES in 1990. Two years later the MEGA project was joined by the BBAW, which granted it the access to Germany’s Akademienprogramm des Bundes und der Länder. 28  To my knowledge, one of the first articles about the then new plan for MEGA-2 and its new guidelines is Grandjonc and Rojahn (1996). Reading this article, the first striking thing is that the 1990 MEGA planning, as laid down by Grandjonc and Rojahn, has been pretty much followed to the letter, with exception made for the more recent publication of volumes in a digital format. According to Grandjonc and Rojahn (1996, p. 63), until 1990 and under Russian/Soviet administration, 43 volumes of MEGA-2 were released, and in 1991/1992, 4 more volumes, which had already been prepared by the Russians, were also made available to the public. 27

Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions, and Theoretical Implications

25

MEW.29 The most emblematic case of this happening concerns “The German Ideology.”30 The first complete edition of these manuscripts appeared in the first version of MEGA-1 in 1932,31 when the project was being overseen by the Soviets. At the time, most of the estate was stored by the SPD, which meant that the first MEGA edition of those manuscripts was only possible because Rjazanov was allowed to photocopy the Nachlass in Berlin. It follows that much of what was published in MEGA-1 was edited from those copies – their editorial work was not based on the original manuscripts.32 In that same year, Landshut and Mayer independently and autonomously published their own version of “The German Ideology” (in Marx 1932a), based on the manuscripts in Berlin. See also Marx (1932b) where Landshut and Mayer provide a very brief account of their work in the SPD Archive. Their version, although it contained similarities to the MEGA-1 I/5, was a wholly different creature. Between 1937 and 1938, a French translation of Landshut and Mayer’s edition of “The German Ideology” (Marx 1937, 1938) appeared in Paris, which included other manuscripts33 from the SPD archive. To some extent, this version was a new and different edition of this material. A few decades later in 1974, again autonomously and independently, a version of “The German Ideology” appeared in Japan, published by Wataru Hiromatsu. In 2019, after the publication of MEGA-2 I/5 (Marx and Engels 2017), a group of Sino-Japanese researchers, using both the edited material in the MEGA-2 I/5 and the manuscripts in the archive, launched an online and interactive version of the first part of “The German Ideology,” presenting and editing the text in a completely original form.34

 IISG owns the rights to the manuscripts. On their website, it is stated that access to the archive is free of charge, as long as that the use of the manuscripts does not affect the interests of the MEGA-2 project. Each published edition has its own copyright policy. See Appendices, “Zugänglichkeit”, on: https://search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/ARCH00860 30  For a brief recollection of the history behind “The  German Ideology”, see Hubmann (2020a, pp. 868–870). 31  Here is not the place to revisit the story behind the first attempt in a complete work of Marx and Engels. For that information, see Vollgraf et al. (2001, 2010) and Sperl (2005). A very brief account by Hecker (1996, p. 5) informs us that 21 volumes would be released in the first section (Work, Articles); 13 volumes would form the second section (Das Kapital and preparatory works); 10 more volumes would constitute the third section (Correspondence); and 2 more the last section (Register). Hecker also tells that until World War II, 13 volumes of MEGA-1, both full and partial, were published in addition to Engels’s Anti-Dühring and Dialectic of Nature and Marx’s Grundrisse. These three last volumes were published outside the official MEGA-1 listing. 32  For example, small text losses in the manuscript could be recovered by comparing the original currently preserved in the IISG and the photocopies still available in Moscow. 33  The French edition published The Leipzig Council and “Saint Bruno,” manuscripts which were left out of the Landshut and Mayer’s edition. This is a small testimony to the editorial amalgamation of “The German Ideology” book. 34  See http://www.online-dif.com/index.html. There is also another version (or translation) of the first part of “The German Ideology” that I want to register here. In 2014, Carver and Blank (2014b) translated and published “I. Feuerbach” based on texts already edited in the Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 2003 (Marx et al., 2004.). I, personally, cannot determine whether Carver and Blank’s version fills the criteria to be considered an independent edition or if it is simply a translation. In any case, 29

26

O. Ximenes

Meanwhile, two different events occurred that demonstrate the importance of archival work. In the 1960s, Siegfried Bahne discovered unpublished handwritten sheets belonging to the German Ideology project in a folder that belonged to Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein was one of the first to publish parts of the “III. Saint Max” (of “The German Ideology”). Bahne’s discovery shed light on the level of bias in the ongoing editions, which contrived an (un)finished “work” out of a collection of documents and manuscripts35 that were, in fact, composed over a long period of time and for changing purposes. Years later, another remarkable thing happened: during the preparation of the first two volumes of Marx and Engels’s correspondence (comprising the letters up to December, 1848), within the framework of the new MEGA-2 (which was launched at the end of the 1960s, beginning of the 1970s), Galina Golovina (1979) also made a surprising discovery about the German Ideology manuscripts: they were written for a quarterly magazine and not, as almost universally supposed, for a book. In fact, the book form of the manuscripts was an editorial amalgamation from the 1920s. Golovina’s thesis went unnoticed for a long time,36 but later, in the new MEGA-2 I/5 edition of the manuscripts to “The German Ideology” (Marx and Engels 2017), it would be proven absolutely correct. Those discoveries led to a new approach to “The German Ideology,” as one can see in the MEGA-2 I/5 (Hubmann and Pagel 2018). For instance, we now know that the so-called chapter “I.  Feuerbach” was pieced together from different sources. Marx and Engels did not write any such chapter at that time. Indeed, most of its contents originate in “III. Saint Max” and “II. Saint Bruno,” which raise another fact: Marx and Engels’s goal was originally to criticize Max Stirner, not Feuerbach. It was a relatively late decision to separate some parts of Bauer’s and Stirner’s manuscripts in order to later compose – from those sources – a new chapter or a new article. Last, but not least, the term “historical materialism” does not exist in the manuscripts, and Marx and Engels’s own concept of history and critique of ideology was a byproduct of their criticism of Bauer and Stirner. This means that “ideology” as a critical weapon and Marx and Engels’s conception of history were not starting points in the manuscripts themselves – they were a product of Marx and Engels’s criticism. In both Bahne’s and Golovina’s cases, dealing with the archive prompted a series of editorial changes and opened potential avenues to new interpretations of that period of Marx and Engels’s cooperation. This is just one small example of the complex situation regarding archival work, its theoretical implications, and its publishing forms.

Carver and Blank’s acknowledgments mention that they based their work on that Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch. 35  The new manuscripts prompted new editions of “The German Ideology.” For the long version of this long history, see “Introduction” of MEGA-2 I/5 and the book by Pagel (2020), particularly the introduction and the chapters dedicated to “The German Ideology.” 36  For that point, see the interview with Hubmann and Pagel (2022, p. 51–56).

Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions, and Theoretical Implications

27

2.2 Reading Marx Today: The Nachlass and a Scientific Revolution There is still a potentially rich field of exploration in the Marx-Engels-Nachlass as discussed above, even if mediated by MEGA-2 and other editions. The larger issue at hand is the often overlooked fact that Marxism was politically and theoretically constituted before there was an edited corpus of works by its founders (Musto 2007, p.  485).37 For this precise reason, the successive generations38 of editors of the Marx-Engels-Nachlass played key roles in opening the field to new possibilities for the reading and interpretation of Marx and Engels’s achievements, as by doing that editorial work, they were ideally placed to publish new texts or manuscripts. Whether they were up to the task and if they failed the wider public in the cases of “The German Ideology,” the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and other instances are issues that I will not address here.39 The underlying fact remains that through their editorial work it was possible to create (sometimes, apocryphally) a Marxist theory40 and, in many cases, to popularize Marx and Engels’s oeuvre. I believe, although I cannot prove it, that some previous MEW editions and perhaps even some of MEGA in its Soviet version were inspired by the political goals that, to some extent, may have prejudiced the very editions of some volumes that were published with a politically motivated, critical Apparat (Hubmann 2007; Anderson 2010), which consequently prejudiced the reception of some manuscripts. Many Marxists, such as Marcello Musto (2007, p. 447), have attested that Marx and Engels published relatively little during their lifetime  – barring some  For an overall view of the term “Marxist” and how the theory behind it began to be spread, it is worth reading Haupt (1978) and Andreucci (1979). 38  Hundt (2000, pp. 11–13), in his memorable tribute to the editors Rolf Dublek and Richard Sperl, pinpoints four generations of Marx-Engels-Nachlass editors. The first generation was born from labor movements and left-wing organizations and parties. This generation knew Marx and Engels or, at least, Marx’s daughters personally. Among them were names like Kautsky, Bebel, Mehring, and Rjazanov. They independently edited the archive; the prospect of a Werke or a Gesamtausgabe was mainly a dream. The second generation consisted of the professional editors of MEGA-1, to cite just a very few: Rjazanov, Adorastkii, and Paul Weller (who were responsible for editing the Grundrisse). The following generations are MEGA-2’s Soviet team and, finally, the current editors of the MEGA-2, which was resumed in the 1990s. According to Hobsbawm (1978, p. 363), what Hundt later called the second generation was not directly influenced by Engels’s judgment of his and Marx’s achievements. 39  I do not write this essay to assign blame or praise, especially of the editorial work done specially in MEW or in the MEGA. In fact, for the most part, the editors worked under political surveillance, and so the question is not about individual blame. As far as I am concerned, I do think that the judgment of Draper, Sperl, Hubmann, and many others on that issue can be trusted. The two most famous cases of unreliable editions of the Nachlass are precisely “The German Ideology” and the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. In the case of MEW, besides the problem with “The German Ideology,” the criticism was mainly that this edition did not make available all the manuscripts of Das Kapital and others (Anderson 2010, appendix). 40  As is the case of “The German Ideology,” which was produced to be a fundamental work of historical materialism. 37

28

O. Ximenes

well-known exceptions, e.g., their newspaper contributions  – given the extent of their archive. Some works or books considered fundamental to Marxist theory were, in general, posthumously published, including Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, “The German Ideology,” the Grundrisse, and even the last two volumes of Das Kapital (Hobsbawm 1978; Fineschi 1999, 2008). In the last part of this essay, I argue that the access to Marx’s manuscripts – when reliable or philologically accurate  – led to a “true revolution” (Fineschi 1999, pp.  199–200) in how those theoretical achievements can be interpreted (Johnson 2019, 2022; Pagel 2020). Even the notorious debate, much in vogue in the 1960s, regarding the difference between a young Marx and a mature one relies on access (be it through translations or direct reading of a German edition) to the Marx-­ Engels-­Nachlass. In fact, the increasing accessibility and the new critical editions (mainly the post-1990 MEGA-2) shed new light on Marx and Engels’s overall intellectual output. This does not mean that we should ignore the previous reception but rather reappraise it. The most acute formulation of new issues facing Marxist scholars is by Fineschi (1999, pp. 199–200), who speaks of MEGA’s achievements since 1975 as a true “scientific revolution.” Similarly, in Musto’s (2020) view, MEGA-2 presents a new “profile” of Marx, because MEGA’s volumes (sections II and IV in particular) allow a new reception of Marx that is no longer overshadowed by Soviet socialism. As is now clear, such a “scientific revolution” is now possible because the public has been gradually granted broader access to Marx and Engels’s manuscripts (especially for “The German Ideology”, the economic manuscripts of the MEGA’s second section, and Marx’s notebooks of the fourth section41). This situation even presents the question of what kind of manuscripts, notebooks, and works should be considered a part of the Marxian oeuvre. To some degree, Hundt (1993) is right to call the Marxian oeuvre a Werk im Werden (a work in development), as, so he argues, on one hand, many wrong interpretations of Marx’s achievements can be diluted by a broader access to Marx’s own oeuvre; on the other, one must uphold the notion of unity in the Marx-Engels-Nachlass. Such discussion is not new. Veller (2001 [1936], pp. 279–291), who was not only responsible for publishing the Grundrisse, despite Stalin, but also for publishing it with an appendix volume with notebooks, argued in the 1920s and 1930s that the Grundrisse and other economic manuscripts could only be correctly understood when read together with Marx’s notebooks and Books of Crisis, because Marx, in many instances, copied material directly from his notebooks. In his view, it was a mistake for MEGA-1 to not publish all the notebooks. Fortunately for us, this mistake was addressed in MEGA-2’s fourth section, dedicated entirely to marginalia, excerpts, and notebooks.

 Among many other notebooks that are now available are the Paris Notebooks (MEGA-2 IV/3), the Manchester Notebook (MEGA-2 IV/4–5), and Marx’s notebooks on the crisis of 1857 (MEGA-2 IV/14). For an analysis of the Manchester Notebooks, see Bohlender (2018). For a dated, but still valuable, overview of Marx’s notebooks, see Rubel (1974, pp. 301–359). 41

Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions, and Theoretical Implications

29

2.3 Conclusion The new MEGA-2, as many others have already testified, continues to effect a true revolution in the reception of Marxism.42 The relatively new, completed Part II (concerning Das Kapital) provides new insight into how mature Marxist theory could have been developed. The true, deconstructed version of “The German Ideology” is presented in the MEGA-2 I/5; for now one can access its manuscripts without the almost century-old sedimented layers of reception and interpretations, which had formed a true palimpsest. The MEGA-2 has rendered the manuscripts in their authentic form. In addition, the access to the Marx-Engels-Nachlass opens the field to potential new editions and interpretations of those manuscripts. The different forms of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 in MEGA are also of real importance, as they provide a chronological account of its composition by Marx. More evidence of the relevance of the MEGA and the work in the archive is that even before the post-1990 new version, the MEGA-2 III/8 (1990) was able to correct the dates over which the first notebook of the Grundrisse was written (January 1857, not October 1857 as it is stated in MEGA-2 II/1 from 1976 and 1981).43 This was made possible by the editing work on Marx and Engels’s correspondence of the period (1856–1858). Finally, the new MEGA-2, by editing the Marx-Engels-Nachlass, has been providing a large public with access to Marx’s notebooks. There is a very long-running discussion about the place that such notebooks have in the Marxian oeuvre and its interpretation. For some scholars, those notebooks are to be taken as wholly a part of Marxist oeuvre (Hundt 1993; Veller 2001 [1934]). However, the fact remains simple: the access to these notebooks grants us an inside view on Marx’s “way of doing research” (or the famous Forschungsweise). Ultimately, the history of Marxism (both as a theory and as political movement) depends to some degree on the history of the publishing of Marx and Engels’s works, letters, and manuscripts, which in turn depends greatly on the many researchers that delve into the Marx-Engels-Nachlass. Considering that MEGA-2 has not yet come to an end, one suspects that a variety of novelties are still to surface in the MEGA volumes to come.

 Perhaps a grimmer vision of this can be found in Kurz (2018, p. 81), where he wonders if the new evidence (and editions) that could render Marx’s theory more problematic would lead to a revision of the interpretations done so far. A more optimistic view regarding the resumption of MEGA-2, which followed strict academic criteria and, consequently, was supposedly immune to political motivations, see Neuhaus (2013). 43  MEGA was able to correct itself on the go. In 1976 and 1981 (see Marx, 1976 and 1981), the Grundrisse was published under MEGA-2. As it can be consulted both in the “Einleitung” and in the Apparat, it was said that Marx began working in these notebooks mainly from October 1857 onwards. Ten years later, as one can read in the “Einleitung” in Marx & Engels (1990, Einleitung, 22*–24*), the MEGA corrected itself by figuring out an earlier and more precise beginning to the Grundrisse. 42

30

O. Ximenes

After reading this paper, one could still be puzzled as to why the publishing format should matter at all for Marxist scholars and the general public. However, that question is badly formulated from the start. The publishing format continues to influence the study and interpretation of Marx and Engels’s ideas because, and this cannot be stressed too much, a great deal of their literary estate remained unpublished and was a collection of manuscripts and notebooks. In addition, in some cases, their work was published under the influence of propaganda and political motivations. Taking that into account, it is not farfetched to state that the field, both in terms of its general reception and, more narrowly, how it was received academically, has been both formed and informed by that same history of publishing. Particularly with the new MEGA-2, the history of publishing Marx and Engels’s works is becoming increasingly more relevant to both the general public and academia. Equally, a more philological academic approach to Marxism is becoming standard. Perhaps the true question that remains to be answered by scholars is how critical can that philological approach still be. I would like to finish by saying that, despite the numerous barriers to access, intense research in the archive continues, although as a rule few specialists use the manuscripts daily; most rely on the appraised work done by the editors of MEGA-2. However, having access to the Marx-Engels-Nachlass – even if virtual and digital – is essential to keep abreast of what is still missing in MEGA’s editions, what has been done so far, and what could be left behind in such enormous undertaking. Acknowledgments  I would like to thank Felipe Mello for first reading this paper. It is also very important to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Rolf Hecker for allowing me to translate and reproduce his illustration of Der Weg des Marx-Engels-Nachlass (“The Path of Marx-Engels-Nachlass”), and for recommending a new bibliography and for making some remarks about my draft. Any errors of translation are mine. I was very lucky for all support provided by Dr. Gerald Hubmann during my research period in Berlin. I am still deeply in his debt for his continuing support. It goes without saying that I am responsible for my views (and errors) expressed in this essay.

References Anderson, Kevin B. 2010. Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Andreucci, Franco. 1979. La diffusione e la volgarizzazione del marxismo. In Storia del marxismo, ed. E. Hobsbawm, G. Haupt, F. Marek, E. Ragionieri, V. Strada, and C. Vivanti, vol. 2, 5–58. Torino: Giulio Einaudi. Bohlender, Matthias. 2018. Marx Meets Manchester. The Manchester Notebooks as a Starting Point of an Unfinish(ed)able Project? In Marx’s Capital: An Unfinishable Project? ed. M. Van der Linden and G. Hubmann, 228–249. Leiden; Boston: Brill. Carver, Terell, and Daniel Blank. 2014a. A Political History of the Editions of Marx and Engels’s “German Ideology” Manuscripts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2014b. Marx and Engels’s “German ideology” Manuscripts: Presentation and Analysis of the “Feuerbach chapter”. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Draper, Hal. 1985. The Marx-Engels Register: A Complete Bibliography of Marx and Engels’ Individual Writings. Vol. 2. Marx-Engels Cyclopedia. New York: Schocken Books.

Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions, and Theoretical Implications

31

Fineschi, Roberto. 1999. Karl Marx dopo l‘edizione storico-critica (MEGA2): un nuovo oggetto di ricerca. In Marxismo oggi, anno XXI, n. 1–2, 199–240. Gennaio-Agosto. ———. 2008. Un nuovo Marx. Filologia e interpretazione dopo la nuova edizione storico-critica (MEGA2). Roma: Carocci editore. Golovina, Galina. 1979. Das Projekt der Vierteljahrsschrift von 1845–1846. Zu den ursprünglichen Publikationsplänen der Manuskripte der Deutschen Ideologie. In Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch, vol. 3, 260–274. Dietz. Berlin DDR. Grandjonc, Jacques, and Jürgen Rojahn. 1996. Der revidierte Plan der Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe. MEGA-Studien 2: 62–89. Haupt, Georges. 1978. Marx e il marxismo. In Storia del marxismo, ed. In Hobsbawm, J. Eric, et al., vol. 1, 289–314. Torino: Giulio Einaudi. Hecker, Rolf. 1996. Die Verhandlungen über den Marx-Engels-Nachlaß 1935/36. Bisher unbekannte Dokumente aus Moskauer Archiven. MEGA-Studien 2: 3–25. ———. 1999. Die Entstehungs-, Überlieferungs- und Editionsgeschichte der ökonomischen Manuskripte und des “Kapital”. In Kapital.doc. Das Kapital (Bd.1) von Marx in Schaubildern mit Kommentaren, ed. Elmar Rolf Hecker Altvater, Michael Heinrich, and Petra Schaper-­ Rinkel, 221–242. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Hecker, R. 2021. Russische Episode  – Über Nikolaevskijs Rolle beim versuchten Ankauf des Marx-Engels-Nachlasses 1935/36. In Beiträge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung Sonderband 6  – Boris Ivanovič  Nikolaevskij, ed. Rolf Hecker, Richard Sperl, and Carl-Erich Vollgraf, 123–148. Berlin: Argument. Hecker, Rolf, Diethard Behrens, and Galina Danilovna Golovina, eds. 2000. Erfolgreiche Kooperation: Das Frankfurter Institut Für Sozialforschung Und Das Moskauer Marx-­ Engels-­Institut (1924–1928). Beiträge Zur Marx-Engels-Forschung, Sonderband 2. Hamburg: Argument Verlag. Hecker, R., M. Neuhaus, and R. Sperl. 2018. MEGA. In Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch Des Marxismus, e. Haug, Wolfgang Fritz, ed. 1994, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 387–400. Hamburg: Argumente. Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1978. La fortuna della edizioni di Marx ed Engels. In Storia del marxismo, ed. Eric J. Hobsbawm et al., vol. 1, 355–374. Torino: Giulio Einaudi. Hubmann, Gerald. 2007. Von der Politik zur Philologie: Die Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe. In Editionen – Wandel und Wirkung, ed. Annette Sell, 187–201. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. ———. 2020a. Karl Marx (1818–1883). In Vormärz-Handbuch, ed. N.  Otto Eke, 863–872. Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag. ———. 2020b. Der Briefwechsel Karl Marx  – Friedrich Engels. In Handbuch Brief. Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Jörg Schuster Matthews-Schlinzig, Gesa Steinbrink, and Jochen Strobel, vol. 1, 1274–1281. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter. Hubmann, Gerald, and Ulrich Pagel. 2018. Introduction. In Deutsche Ideologie: Zur Kritik der Philosophie. Manuskripte in Chronologischer Anordnung, ed. Gerald Hubmann and Ulrich Pagel, XIX–XXIX. Berlin: De Gruyter. ———. 2022. “A ‘Ideologia alemã’ não é um livro”: Conversa sobre a nova edição dos manuscritos da Ideologia alemã. Entrevista feita por Olavo Ximenes. Dissonância: Revista de Teoria Crítica 6: 28–56. Hundt, Martin. 1993. Einige Besonderheiten der Entwicklung des Begriffs “Marxsches Werk”. In Beiträge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung Neue Folge 1993 – Marx-Engels Forschung im historischen Spannungsfeld, ed. Carl-Erich Vollgraf, Richard Sperl, and Rolf Hecker, 64–69. Berlin: Argument. Hundt, M. 2000. Zur Geschichte der zweiten MEGA.  In Beiträge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung Neue Folge 2000  – Marx-Engels-Edition und biographische Forschung, ed. R.  Hecker, C.-E. Vollgraf, and R. Sperl, 5–12. Berlin: Argument. Internationale Marx-Engels-Stiftung. n.d. Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe MEGA. (Press Information). Johnson, Sarah. 2019. The Early Life of Marx’s ‘Mode of Production’. Modern Intellectual History 18: 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244319000374.

32

O. Ximenes

———. 2022. Farewell to The German Ideology. Journal of the History of Ideas 83: 143–170. Kurz, Heinz D. 2018. Marx after the MEGA2 Edition: A comment. In Marx’s Capital: An Unfinishable Project? ed. M. Van der Linden and G. Hubmann. Leiden; Boston: Brill. Marx, Karl. 1932a. Der historische Materialismus. Die Frühschriften. Vol. 2, ed. S. Landshut and J.P. Mayer. Leipzig: Alfred Kröner Verlag. ———. 1932b. Der historische Materialismus. Die Frühschriften. Vol. 1, ed. S.  Landshut and J.P. Mayer. Leipzig: Alfred Kröner Verlag. ———.1937. Oeuvres Philosophiques. Tome VI.  Economie politique et philosophie. Idéologie allemande. Vol. 1, ed. S. Landshut et J-P Mayer. Trans. J. Molitor. Paris: Alfred Costes. ———. 1938. Oeuvres Philosophiques. Tome VII. Idéologie allemande (suite), ed. S. Landshut et J-P Mayer. Trans. J. Molitor. Paris: Alfred Costes. ———. 1976. Ökonomische Manuskripte 1857/58. Texte Teil 1. In Gesamtausgabe (MEGA). II/1.1, ed. Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. Berlin: Dietz. ———. 1981. Ökonomische Manuskripte 1857/58. Apparat. In Gesamtausgabe (MEGA). II/1 Apparat, ed. Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. Berlin: Dietz. Marx, K., and F. Engels. 1975. Collected Works. Vol. 40. London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd. ———. 1990. Briefwechsel April 1856 bis Dezember 1857. In Gesamtausgabe (MEGA)/MEGA III/8, ed. K. Marx and F. Engels. Berlin: Dietz. ———. 2017. Deutsche Ideologie. Manuskripte und Drucke. 2 vols. (Gesamtausgabe/MEGA I/5). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and Joseph Weydemeyer. 2004. Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 2003. Die Deutsche Ideologie: Artikel, Druckvorlagen, Entwürfe, Reinschriftenfragmente und Notizen zu “I. Feuerbach” und “II. Sankt Bruno”. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Marxhausen, Thomas. 2006. “MEGA-MEGA” und kein Ende. UTOPIE kreativ 189/190: 596–617. Mayer, Paul. 1966. Die Geschichte des sozialdemokratischen Parteiarchivs und das Schicksal des Marx-Engels-Nachlasses. Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 6/7: 5–198. Mis’kevic, Larisa. 2013. Wie kamen ökonomische Manuskripte von Marx nach Moskau? In Marx-­ Engels-­Jahrbuch 2012/13, 7–21. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Musto, Marcello. 2007. The Rediscovery of Karl Marx. International Review of Social History 52: 477–498. ———. 2020. New Profiles of Marx after the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2). Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 49: 407–419. Neuhaus, Manfred. 2013. Klassiker unter Klassikern. Geschichte, editionsphilologische Grundlagen und Perspektiven der Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA). In Prüfstein Marx. Zu Edition und Rezeption eines Klassikers, ed. Matthias Steinbach and Michael Ploenus. Berlin: Metropol. Pagel, Ulrich. 2020. Die Einzige und die Deutsche Ideologie. Transformationen des Aufklärerischen Diskurses im Vormärz. Berlin; Boston: de Gruyter. Rjazanov, D. 1971 [1928]. Einführung des Herausgebers. In Marx-Engels-Archiv. Zeitschrift des Marx-Engels-Instituts in Moskau, ed. D. Rjazanov. Erlangen, vol. 1. Politladen-Reprint. (Neudruck der Ausgabe Frankfurt am Main, 1928). Rojahn, Jürgen. 2001. Publishing Marx and Engels after 1989: The Fate of the MEGA. Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory. 29: 196–207. https://doi.org/10.1080/03017600308413467. ———. 2013. Der Schattenmann: Wer war Marek Kriger? In Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 2012/13, 22–25. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Rokitjanskij, J. 1993. Das tragische Schicksal von David Borisovič Rjazanov Einige Besonderheiten der Entwicklung des Begriffs “Marxsches Werk”. In Beiträge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung Neue Folge 1993  – Marx-Engels Forschung im historischen Spannungsfeld, ed. Carl-Erich Vollgraf, Richard Sperl, and Rolf Hecker, 3–16. Hamburg: Argument. Rubel, Maximilien. 1974. Marx Critique du Marxisme. Paris: Payot. Sgro’, Giovanni. 2016. MEGA-Marx. Studi sulla edizione e sulla recezione di Marx in Germania e in Italia. Naples: Orthotes.

Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions, and Theoretical Implications

33

Sperl, R. 2005. Marx-Engels-Editionen. In Editionen Zu Deutschsprachigen Autoren Als Spiegel Der Editionsgeschichte. Bausteine Zur Geschichte Der Edition, ed. Rüdiger Nutt-Kofoth and Bodo Plachta, vol. 2, 329–360. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer. Stern, Heinz, and Dieter Wolf. 1972. Das große Erbe. Eine historische Reportage um den literarischen Nachlaß von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels. Berlin: Dietz Verlag. Union der Deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften. 2018. Die Wissenschaftsakademien  – Wissenspeicher Für Die Zukunft. (PDF). Van der Linden, M., and G.  Hubmann, eds. 2018. Marx’s Capital: An Unfinishable Project? Leiden, Boston: Brill. Vasina, Ljudmila L. 2011. Pavel Veller und die Edition der Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (1939–1941). In Beiträge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung Neue Folge 2011  – Zum Wirken von Marx und Engels und zur Editionsgeschichte ihrer Werke, 35–42. Berlin: Argument. Veller, P. 2001. Marx‘ ökonomische Manuskripte von 1857–1858 (Zu ihrer Herausgabe), 3. August 1934. In Stalinismus und das Ende der ersten Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (1931–1941). Beiträge Zur Marx-Engels-Forschung, Sonderband 3, ed. Carl-Erich Vollgraf, Richard Sperl, and Rolf Hecker, 277–292. Hamburg: Argument Verlag. Vollgraf, Carl-Erich, Richard Sperl, and Rolf Hecker, eds. 1997. David Borisovič Rjazanov Und Die Erste MEGA. Beiträge Zur Marx-Engels-Forschung, Sonderband 1. Hamburg: Argument. Vollgraf, Carl-Erich, Richard Sperl, Rolf Hecker, and Rossiǐskiǐ gosudarstvennyǐ arkhiv sotssial′no-politicheskoǐ istorii, eds. 2001. Stalinismus Und Das Ende Der Ersten Marx-­ Engels-­Gesamtausgabe, 1931–1941. Beiträge Zur Marx-Engels-Forschung, Sonderband 3. Berlin: Argument. Olavo Ximenes holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Campinas (Brazil), with a Dissertation on “Marx’s ‘German Ideology’ and the Grundrisse”.  

Part III

Walter Benjamin Archive

Into the Walter Benjamin Archive: An Interview with Ursula Marx Fernando Bee

1 Introduction In the 1960s, Theodor W. Adorno had already spoken of a “Benjamin Archive.” He used this expression to refer to the collection of Benjamin’s documents found in Potsdam (Marx et al. 2009, p. 176), although, in this decade, he had in fact managed, together with the efforts of the Institute for Social Research, to build himself a “Benjamin Archive,” first in New  York and then in Frankfurt. This was the Benjamin-Archiv Theodor W.  Adorno, and it continued to exist after Adorno’s death within the Theodor W.  Adorno Archive in Frankfurt am Main. Gershom Scholem also had an archive of Benjamin manuscripts in Jerusalem at the same time (Marx et al. 2009, pp. 176–178; p. 197).1 It is striking how widely distributed are the collections of writings bequeathed by Walter Benjamin and how each of them has a story to tell, involving different friends, cities, and interesting events that happened during his moving and emigration. However, the creation of an archive separate from Adorno’s literary estate has been a more recent enterprise. The Walter Benjamin Archive was founded in 2004 by the Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur (Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture), a nonprofit private foundation under civil law, created by Jan Philipp Reemtsma in April, 1984. One of its objectives was to make Benjamin’s and Adorno’s archives accessible to the public

 See specially the excerpts of Rolf Tiedemann and Hildegard Brenner in the first of these two selections. 1

F. Bee (*) Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_3

37

38

F. Bee

and to promote their legacy, as we were informed by Ursula Marx, who has worked at the archive since March, 2004.2 Since its foundation, the Walter Benjamin Archive has been housed at the Akademie der Künste, at 60 Luisenstraße in Berlin.3 Founded in 1696, the Akademie is one of the oldest cultural institutions in Europe and is now funded by the German federal government’s Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Despite bearing his name, the Walter Benjamin Archive contains more than one collection. In addition to Benjamin’s bequest and an extensive and ever-growing library, the archive contains other archival holdings, including those of Florens Christian Rang and Gisèle Freund. It is also possible to access the library of Leo Löwenthal, as well as the reproductions of manuscripts held at the Theodor W. Adorno Archive in Frankfurt am Main. For visitors, the reading room on the second floor is the heart of the archive (see Fig. 1). There, they can check the archives, the collections, and the library. But there is a lot more behind the scenes. The archive is not just a reading room. As a research associate of the archive, Ursula Marx, our interviewee, will help us understand a little more about its role, structure, history, and the procedures necessary for safeguarding the different kinds of documents contained within it, such as restoration

Fig. 1  The reading room in the Walter Benjamin Archive  www.adk.de/en/academy  Marx et al. (2007) is a very informative and visually rich resource for those interested in knowing more about Benjamin’s collection of documents. See also Marx (2011, pp. 15–16). 2 3

Into the Walter Benjamin Archive: An Interview with Ursula Marx

39

and specialized storage. She and her colleagues are responsible for handling Benjamin’s manuscripts and assisting the visitors. Furthermore, they also contribute to the new editions of his works – Werke und Nachlaß. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Works and Bequest. A Critical Complete Edition) (Benjamin 2008–2024) – and the website project Walter Benjamin Digital.4 But why build an archive? What could be its significance and effect today? We know that Benjamin, from the beginning of his adulthood, was interested in preserving his work. In a letter dated 1911, he asks his friend Herbert Blumenthal to save his letters so that he can create a diary of his activities (Marx et al. 2009, pp. 134–135). He kept  this interest until his escape from Paris at the beginning of the Second World War. However, at this critical moment, he was moved by the fear of losing all his writings, his personal library, and other carefully selected documents archived during his life, rather than by the wish to build something new. Hannah Arendt mentions that this concern was realized when the Gestapo entered his flat in Paris and confiscated his belongings (Schöttker and Wizisla 2006, p. 64). “He managed to get on the last train to leave Paris. He had nothing with him but a small suitcase with two shirts and a toothbrush. (…) I only heard from him by letter until September. Meanwhile, the Gestapo had been to his flat and confiscated everything. He wrote me very depressed. His manuscripts have been saved in the meantime, but at that time he was right to think he had lost everything,” Arendt wrote to Scholem in 1941 (Marx et al. 2009, p. 156).5 Some of those manuscripts she forwarded to Gretel and Theodor Adorno and the Institute for Social Research after Benjamin’s death, as he had wanted (Marx et al. 2009, p. 162).6 Luckily, before his escape from Paris, Benjamin had split his archive into three smaller parts (Marx et al. 2009, p. 196). One was confiscated, but the other two were entrusted to friends in different places. His intent was to protect his archives from the current circumstances and, if possible, to reassemble them in the near future. In fact, a few years before the outbreak of the Second World War, he was already trying to put his documents back together, with Scholem’s help: “My archive (...) must – whatever my relations with Scholem may be – remain with him. Since my life in emigration has become the most inconvenient, it has taken on a doubled importance as the only almost all-encompassing collection (besides my own archive, which is not even completely centralized at present) of my writings, which are scattered everywhere,” he wrote to Kitty Marx-Steinschneder in 1936 (Marx et  al. 2009, p. 148).7 After Benjamin’s death, Adorno and Scholem immediately considered publishing a collection of his works: “It seems most important to me to collect all of Benjamin’s texts that are attainable at all, with the ultimate goal of a complete

 www.walter-benjamin.online  My translation 6  Dora Benjamin mentioned this in a letter. 7  To have a better understanding of the archive’s meaning for Benjamin, see Antonin Wiser’s essay in this volume. 4 5

40

F. Bee

edition,” wrote the former to the latter in November, 1940 (Marx et  al. 2009, pp. 154). Retrieving Benjamin’s documents was essential to achieving this aim, but accomplishing it was certainly more difficult than they had expected. The war and the severance of the documents acted against them. Two years after the plan had been established, on 19 February, 1942, Adorno wrote again to Scholem highlighting the difficulties: “The whole question of an edition of Walter’s works can be approached only after the war. Happily enough, however, there are several people who have a kind of Benjamin archive. Besides his own material, our private material, and the extensive material of the Institute, Walter’s old friend Cohn has a pretty complete archive, which he certainly would make available. I feel confident that you also have many things which are otherwise inaccessible and, if we combine our efforts, it should be possible to reconstruct Walter’s oeuvre to a rather great extent” (Marx et al. 2009, p. 157). Since those years, the building of an archive has been considered a solid foundation from which to share Benjamin’s ideas with the public and for posterity. The German Illuminationen (Benjamin 1961) and the English Illuminations (Benjamin 1968), which included a preface by Arendt, were examples of editions published from materials gathered through the efforts of his friends. These editions opened a path to broader reception of his writings, even outside German- and English-­ speaking countries; the same happened with the French and Italian translations that appeared from the 1960s onward. For example, in the 1960s, the German editions of Benjamin’s writings weren’t available and accessible for Brazilian researchers and students, so he was mostly received through the Italian and French editions and translations. Jeanne-Marie Gagnebin wrote that, in Brazil of the 1960s, Benjamin was received as a theorist of allegory, translation, and language and as a Marxist critique focused on the emancipatory aspects of the art. This latter perspective was especially interesting for a country experiencing extremely strong censorship by the military dictatorship at the time – a situation that would continue in the following years (Gagnebin 2021). In addition to that, Benjamin had not to confront in Brazil the “fame” of being a marginal theorist of the Baroque, as he had to in the German context (Haas and Weidner 2014). In fact, these editions not only expanded but influenced the reception of Benjamin’s writings. After all, the process of editing and publishing concerns the selection of materials and how they will be made available. It necessitates an interpretation of the material. Sometimes this entails strong disagreement and institutional and political restraints, as we have seen with the archives and editions of Karl Marx (Hubmann et al. 2022). And sometimes it is influenced by the views of the editors and academics, as we can see in the exclusion of some texts and the focus on others in the editions of Benjamin’s works. For example, the essay “Karl Kraus,” included in the German book Illuminationen (Benjamin 1961, pp. 374–408), was not included in the English edition Illuminations (Benjamin 1968). Similarly, reviews and critiques from this same period have still not been translated into Brazilian-Portuguese, while some writings of his youth and the different versions of the essay “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit” have even been retranslated (Benjamin 1972–1991, vol. 1, pp. 431–469).

Into the Walter Benjamin Archive: An Interview with Ursula Marx

41

These effects on the publication and reception of an author’s writings show us that an archive is not a mortuary for dead works but a living repository. The projects undertaken by the archive in the present day demonstrate its active life. In the following interview, Ursula Marx tells us how the presence of Benjamin’s legacy can be observed in many places: in new book editions, in the educational and cultural fields, in the digital world, and in art exhibitions, to mention only a few. She shows us, in other words, how the archive is a safe home for a legacy that likes to promenade across different genres, study areas, and cities, as Benjamin himself liked to. This interview has been translated from German.

2 Interview with Ursula Marx Fernando Bee  Ursula Marx, can you please introduce yourself and talk a little bit about your background? Ursula Marx  I studied German literature, theater studies, and English philology in Marburg an der Lahn and Berlin. After graduating, I completed an internship at the Literature Archives Department of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 2003. During that time I learned to work with literary estates and assisted the former head of the department in the preparations for an exhibition on the author Christa Wolf. FB  How does your history with the Benjamin Archive begin? UM  During the preparations for the exhibition, the idea of founding a Walter Benjamin Archive at the Akademie der Künste was being considered. It was initiated by the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture, the funder of the Theodor W. Adorno Archive in Frankfurt am Main. The foundation had been in possession of Benjamin’s estate since 1996 and at the same time represented the copyrights to his works. Berlin, as Benjamin’s birthplace, seemed to be the appropriate place for an independent Benjamin Archive, especially since the archive of the Akademie offered ideal conditions for securing Benjamin’s legacy and making it visible. In addition, Erdmut Wizisla, a proven Benjamin expert and director of the Akademie’s Bertolt Brecht Archive, was appointed head of the Benjamin Archive. So I had the rare and great good fortune to be able to remain at the Akademie der Künste and to work as a research assistant in the Benjamin Archive. FB  How is the archive structured? Who visits it? UM  In addition to Benjamin’s estate, the Benjamin Archive preserves the archives of Florens Christian Rang (a lawyer, theologian, and friend of Benjamin) and Rolf Tiedemann (the former director of the Theodor W. Adorno Archive and editor of Benjamin’s Gesammelte Schriften); the bequest library of Leo Löwenthal, the liter-

42

F. Bee

ary sociologist and collaborator of the Institute for Social Research; and collections on the photographer Gisèle Freund and on Fritz Fränkel, an addiction physician, neurologist, and friend of Benjamin. Moreover, reproductions of the Theodor W.  Adorno Archive, located in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research and directed by my colleague Michael Schwarz, can be viewed in our reading room. Visitors to the archive also have access to an extensive international specialist library, audio documents and newspaper clippings on Adorno and Benjamin. Currently we are a staff of five: apart from those already mentioned, they are my colleague Julia Bernhard (also responsible for Benjamin as well as for the Rang Archive) and my colleague Oliver Kunisch (digitization and photo requests, Alexander Kluge Archive of the Akademie der Künste). In 2019, before Covid-19 restricted the access to the archive, researchers from over 16 nations traveled to Berlin to work in our reading room. Visitors are students, doctoral candidates, professors, visual artists, filmmakers, actors, architects, curators, translators, writers, publishers – in short, anyone who is interested in literature and is involved with Benjamin either professionally or privately. It is remarkable how present and relevant Benjamin’s ideas still are in current academic and cultural debates, not only in the German-speaking world but also internationally. This is impressively demonstrated by the many translations of his writings (at present Benjamin is translated into more than 50 languages) as well as a growing number of worldwide conferences, exhibitions, and university seminars. FB  Which documents of the estate are kept in the archive? Are there documents that have not survived? UM  Benjamin’s estate includes manuscripts from all phases of his work (with drafts and fragments), working materials (including notes, excerpts, and notes on the Baudelaire book and Arcades Project), notebooks, hand copies and proofs with corrections, personal documents (address books, card indexes, private records, documents on internment, inheritance and divorce documents, will and farewell letters from 1932, photographs), and correspondence from the years 1922–1940, with, among others, Gretel and Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Dora Benjamin (his sister), Dora Sophie Benjamin (his wife), Stefan Rafael Benjamin (his son), Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Norbert Elias, Elisabeth Hauptmann, Hermann Hesse, Max Horkheimer, Siegfried Kracauer, Werner Kraft, Gertrud Kolmar, Leo Löwenthal, Asja Lacis, Jula Radt-Cohn, Ernst Schoen, Gershom Scholem, Jean Selz, Wilhelm Speyer, and Margarete Steffin. Contracts, correspondence with publishers, accounts, and manuscripts by other authors have also been preserved. From his early years, only those materials that Benjamin gave to friends or acquaintances for safekeeping have survived. Many papers must be considered lost, as evidenced by an early overview of his archive that he prepared and which are preserved among his papers. Even before the French exile, Benjamin led a rather unsteady life, marked by numerous moves and travels, and so from the beginning of his literary activity, he made (or had made) copies of his writings and sent them,

Into the Walter Benjamin Archive: An Interview with Ursula Marx

43

with precise instructions and adequately insured, to selected friends. It is thanks to this strategy alone that his work has survived so extensively. In particular, the safeguarding of those writings that Benjamin was unable to publish helped to preserve his literary legacy. After his death, these materials were tracked down by his friends and, in substantial measure, were brought together. Apart from the bequests in the Benjamin Archive, other larger Benjamin collections exist in the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem (from the estate of Gershom Scholem), at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen (from the estate of the lawyer Martin Domke), and in the Russian State Military Archives in Moscow (from Benjamin’s last Paris apartment). Unfortunately, Benjamin’s extensive library remains lost to this day; only the children’s book collection (which survived the turmoil of the war in the care of his wife Dora Sophie) is now kept at the Department for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Research in Frankfurt am Main. It has just been restored and is open to the public. FB  How were Benjamin’s papers found and how did they get into the Benjamin Archive? UM  After Benjamin died, a major part of his papers, which had been left behind with his sister Dora in Lourdes, were forwarded to Theodor W. Adorno, who was working with the Institute for Social Research in New York at the time. Benjamin had chosen Adorno to be his designated literary executor. The manuscripts were handed over by Martin Domke, a German lawyer and student friend of Benjamin’s who emigrated to the United States in 1941. In his luggage he took such important writings as the notes “Central Park” for Benjamin’s book project on Charles Baudelaire, the theses “On the Concept of History,” and the early study “Fate and Character.” The manuscript of the Arcades Project, however, was not among them, as Adorno remarked to Gershom Scholem: there had been rumors, he wrote in February 1942, that it was deposited in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. The rumors were confirmed, and in 1947, the Arcades Project was given to Adorno, along with other papers housed in the library. Georges Bataille, to whom Benjamin had given these manuscripts before fleeing Paris in 1940, commissioned Pierre Missac to secure them. After Adorno’s return to Germany in November 1949, they were transferred to the reestablished Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main as part of the Adorno Archive. Over the years, Adorno was able to complete his Benjamin collection through his own research. However, some early writings and letters to Benjamin from the period of exile are, sadly, still missing. Benjamin had been forced to leave a large part of these and other materials behind in his last apartment in Paris. They were confiscated by the Gestapo and, together with other looted property, were probably taken to the archives of the Reich Security Main Office8 in Berlin. Later, due to the approaching war, they were moved from there to Silesia. After the end of the war, the Red Army transferred the

 Reichssicherheitshauptamt

8

44

F. Bee

holdings to Moscow, where they were placed in the so-called “Special Archive.”9 In the course of the repatriation of cultural property to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Benjamin manuscripts were transferred to the German Central Archive in Potsdam in 1957 and, for reasons of jurisdiction, to the Akademie der Künste of the GDR in East Berlin in 1972. Of particular note among these papers, in addition to the letters, are the works for radio, which have been preserved almost exclusively in this part of Benjamin’s estate. Only afterward did it become known that the Moscow materials had not been returned in their entirety to the GDR. A small stock of newspaper clippings, journals, correspondence, handwritten notes, drafts, and texts by other authors are, as already mentioned, still preserved in the Russian State Military Archives in Moscow. A third part of the literary estate was discovered by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben during his research at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris in June, 1981. These were manuscripts that Georges Bataille had received from Benjamin for safekeeping and had hidden there himself. While he later forwarded most of them to Adorno, as described, he kept some of them in his possession. After Bataille’s death in 1962, his widow gave the writings – including the hand copy of Berlin Childhood around 1900, a typescript of the essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” materials for the Brecht commentaries, the planned book on Charles Baudelaire, and early sonnets – to the Bibliothèque nationale, where Agamben tracked them down almost 20 years later. In 1996, the Hamburg Foundation, authorized by Walter Benjamin’s heirs, brought together all three parts of the estate in the Theodor W. Adorno Archive in Frankfurt, where they were kept until the Benjamin Archive was founded in Berlin in May 2004. FB  How do you see the relationship between the work of the Benjamin Archive compared to the earlier actions of friends, colleagues, and editors to preserve Benjamin’s manuscripts? To what extent has the professionalization and development of the archive changed the work? UM  As early as November 1940, barely 6 weeks after Benjamin’s death, Gershom Scholem wrote to Adorno: “I believe that it is the duty of his friends to rescue his papers, in whatever way the current circumstances allow, and to ensure the arrangement of a dignified memorial” (Adorno and Scholem 2021, p. 16). In the following years, this duty was duly fulfilled. With the support of many others, they tracked down and brought together the estate, which was scattered all over the world. With editions such as the Schriften (Writings) (Benjamin 1955), Briefe (Letters) (Benjamin 1966), and later the Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings) (Benjamin 1972–1991), they made Benjamin’s oeuvre known to a wider public in the first place. The present work of the Benjamin Archive is thus based on a solid foundation. It is incumbent upon us to continue this important legacy. The foundation of an independent Benjamin Archive in May 2004 and the associated transfer  Sonderarchiv

9

Into the Walter Benjamin Archive: An Interview with Ursula Marx

45

of the estate to a federal institution were important steps in this direction. With its professional infrastructure, the archive of the Akademie der Künste fulfills essential prerequisites for the long-term safeguarding and preservation of Benjamin’s papers. FB  Can you explain what measures were taken to preserve the collection? What technical procedures were involved? What must be considered when handling the originals? UM  At first, all papers and photographs were examined by external restorers and, if necessary, treated. Following the restoration, the entire estate was digitized and the digital reproductions secured in various locations. To ensure long-term preservation, it is also essential that the manuscripts are not exposed to major fluctuations in temperature, light, and humidity. For this reason, the originals, packed in acid-free folders and archive boxes (see Fig.  2), are housed in a dark, climate-controlled storeroom (room temperature between 14 and 18 degrees, relative humidity at a minimum of 35 and a maximum of 50 percent) and are only consulted on rare occasions. This is why visitors to the archive do not receive originals but work with scans on computers in our reading room. Benjamin’s manuscripts are thus protected from new damage and contamination. In Benjamin’s case, working with digital reproductions actually has advantages: he first drafted his texts with a pen or fountain pen (and sometimes with a pencil) before having them typed, and although his handwriting is relatively legible, it is mostly very, very small (see Fig. 3). The scans make it possible to enlarge Benjamin’s handwriting and make it more legible. FB  What is everyday life like in the archive? What are your tasks? UM  The tasks in the archive are very diverse and varied: in addition to taking care of visitors on site, we process written inquiries and loan requests from curators who would like to show Benjamin manuscripts in their exhibitions. We give guided tours of the archive and organize conferences and workshops on Benjamin and curate exhibitions, such as the most recent one in 2017 on Benjamin and Brecht. The Benjamin Archive also contributes to Werke und Nachlaß. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Benjamin 2008–), which has been published by Suhrkamp Verlag since 2008. The edition, commissioned by the Hamburg Foundation and edited by Christoph Gödde, Henri Lonitz, and Thomas Rahn, comprises a total of 21 volumes, 10 of which have been published already. In addition to various ancillary work, we are also involved as editors: while Julia Bernhard and Erdmut Wizisla are responsible for volume 12 (Essays zur Literatur (Essays on Literature), I am editing volume 4 (Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften (Goethe’s Elective Affinities)) together with Martin Kölbel. FB  Can you tell us something about this work? What are the procedures from the source documents to the production of a volume? How does this edition differ from the Gesammelte Schriften?

46

F. Bee

Fig. 2  The boxes in the Walter Benjamin Archive

UM  The first step is the text compilation, i.e., the transcription of all manuscripts, typescripts, and prints assigned to the respective volume. At the same time, research is carried out in other archives for possible further versions of a text. Benjamin often sent his manuscripts or copies of his writings to friends and colleagues. These copies can be important for editing work if they contain corrections, additions, or com-

Into the Walter Benjamin Archive: An Interview with Ursula Marx

47

Fig. 3  Papers with Walter Benjamin’s handwriting

ments. As soon as a reliable text corpus is available, work on the commentary begins. This means identifying quotations used by Benjamin, comparing them with the original sources, and documenting possible discrepancies. Factual explanations, references to parallel passages in Benjamin’s writings, and variants on other

48

F. Bee

s­ urviving versions of the texts are also noted in the line commentary. Research in archives and library databases is necessary for the document section of each volume. This includes testimonials on the genesis and reception of the edited texts, such as contemporary reviews, publisher’s advertisements and announcements, and letters. This task sometimes resembles that of criminologists: after an initial search for clues in Benjamin’s estate and correspondence, one expands the search to the personal environment (research in archives of friends, acquaintances, and c­ olleagues, as well as in newspapers and journals close to them). We also ask experts, archive staff, and professional colleagues for advice. On the basis of all this work, the history of the genesis and publication (from the first mention by Benjamin to the first publication) is written, as well as the editorial epilogue, which locates the texts assigned to the respective volume in Benjamin’s oeuvre and reveals important thematic references. From the editors, the finished manuscript first goes to the main editors, the Benjamin Archive, and Suhrkamp Verlag for further editing (illustrations, rights acquisition) and proofreading before it is handed over to Friedrich Forssman, the designer of the edition, for typesetting. In contrast to previous editions, Werke und Nachlaß provides insights into the creative processes of Benjamin’s writing. What he deleted, replaced, rearranged, or added is reproduced true to type. All modifications, errors, and detours remain transparent and comprehensible to the reader. The various surviving versions are of equal importance to the printed text or the “latest version,” which the Gesammelte Schriften mainly focused on. The title of the edition – Werke und Nachlaß (Works and Bequest) – already draws attention to this difference. The latter refers not only to Benjamin’s writings that have survived in the archives but also to their materiality. The external form and shape of the manuscripts is attributed a meaning-creating significance. Therefore, every commentary includes a detailed description of the texts: paper types and formats, watermarks, ink colors, traces of rust from paper clips, ink stains, or paper folds can provide decisive clues to the dating, transmission, and classification of the texts in the respective oeuvre. Volumes with particularly complex manuscripts additionally appear with a partial digital edition of the manuscripts that can be found at Walter Benjamin Digital.10 Benjamin’s manuscripts can be enlarged and overlaid with the transcription created for the book edition. With the help of a full-text search and the name index, they can also be filtered according to certain criteria. In addition to volume 11 (Berliner Chronik/Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert (Berlin Chronicle/Berlin Childhood around 1900)), which was published in 2019, volumes 17 (Pariser Passagen/Paris, die Hauptstadt des XIX.  Jahrhunderts (Paris Arcades/Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century)), 18 (Charles Baudelaire. Ein Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus (Charles Baudelaire. A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism)), and 20 (Notizhefte und Notizblocks (Notebooks and Notepads)) will be completed with a partial digital edition of the manuscripts. Benjamin’s translations will be documented on this platform, as well. 10

 www.walter-benjamin.online

Into the Walter Benjamin Archive: An Interview with Ursula Marx

49

Another difference concerns the handling of the notebooks and notepads: while the texts preserved in them were either published in volume 6 of the Gesammelte Schriften under the heading “Fragmente” (Fragments) or assigned to other volumes according to their appropriate thematic framework, an additional, separate volume is reserved for them in Werke und Nachlaß. These texts are printed a second time, in their original context. The neighboring relationships that are revealed in this way uncover new intellectual connections that are very difficult to reconstruct from the previous edition. FB  What impact do you think the archive has had on readers, research, and the publication of Benjamin’s writings (both in German and in other languages)? UM  The archive is still the only place where Benjamin’s work can be seen in its entirety. Digitization provides a new basis for the reception of his writings. It allows researchers to explore the estate with their own eyes, independently of the published texts, and to develop new research perspectives that may have received little or no consideration. The Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Benjamin 2008–) also contributes to this. By emphasizing the entire estate and the dynamic process of writing, it opens up new approaches to Benjamin’s oeuvre. The Kritiken und Rezensionen (Critiques and Reviews) (Benjamin 2008–, vol. 13, ed. Heinrich Kaulen), for example, contains more than 200 pages of previously unprinted texts, compared to volume 3 of the Gesammelte Schriften. If the focus is not only on the result, the finished text, but equally on what was rejected, the detours and aberrations of Benjamin’s writing, this also changes how it is understood. For this reason, too, Werke und Nachlaß is being translated into French before completion. The Œuvres et Inédits. Édition intégrale critique is published by Éditions Klincksieck in Paris and is the responsibility of Michel Métayer. So far, volume 8, Sens unique (One-Way Street) (Benjamin 2019); volume 13, Critiques et recensions (Critiques and Reviews) (Benjamin 2018); and volume 19, Sur le concept d’histoire (On the concepto of history) (Benjamin 2023) have been translated; volume 3, Le concept de critique esthétique dans le romantisme allemand (The Concept of Aesthetic Criticism in German Romanticism) (Benjamin 2009), was published by Librairie Arthème Fayard. It would be desirable if other publishers followed this example, so that Benjamin’s writings can be disseminated as widely as possible internationally.

References Adorno, Theodor W., and Gershom Scholem. 2021. Correspondence: 1939–1969, ed. Asaf Angermann. Trans. Paula Schwebel and Sebastian Truskolaski. Cambridge; Medford: Polity. Benjamin, Walter. 1955. Schriften. Vol. 1–2, ed. Theodor W. Adorno, Gretel Adorno and Friedrich Podszus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1961. Illuminationen, ed. Siegfried Unseld. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

50

F. Bee

———. 1966. Briefe, ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W.  Adorno. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1968. Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books. ———. 1972 [1991]. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 1–7. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 2008. Werke und Nachlaß. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Vols. 1–21. Berlin: Suhrkamp. ———. 2009. Le concept de critique esthétique dans le romantisme allemand, ed. Uwe Steiner. Trans. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Anne-Marie Lang, Alexandra Richter. Oeuvres et inédits. Vol. 3. Paris: Fayard. ———. 2018. Critiques et recensions. Vol. 13, ed. Heinrich Kaulen and Michel Métayer. Trans. Marianne Dautrey and Philippe Ivernel. Oeuvres et inédits. Paris: Klincksieck. ———. 2019. Sens unique. Vol. 8, ed. Detlev Schöttker and Michel Métayer. Trans. Christophe Jouanlanne. Oeuvres et inédits. Paris: Klincksieck. ———. 2023. Sur le concept d’histoire. Vol. 19, ed. Gérard Raulet and Michel Métayer. Trans. Jacques-Olivier Bégot. Oeuvres et inédits. . Paris: Klincksieck. Gagnebin, Jeanne-Marie. 2021. Sur la réception de Walter Benjamin au Brésil. Dissonância: Revista de Teoria Crítica 5: 31–54. Haas, Claude, and Daniel Weidner. 2014. Einleitung. In Benjamins Trauerspiel. Theorie  – Lektüren – Nachleben, 7–25. Berlin: Kultur Verlag Kadmos. Hubmann, Gerald, Ulrich Pagel, and Olavo Ximenes. 2022. A ‘Ideologia alemã’ não é um livro: Conversa sobre a nova edição dos manuscritos da Ideologia alemã. Dissonância: Revista de Teoria Crítica 6: 28–56. Marx, Ursula. 2011. Das Walter Benjamin Archiv. In Benjamin-Handbuch: Leben  – Werk  – Wirkung, 15–16. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler. Marx, Ursula, Gudrun Schwarz, Michael Schwarz, and Erdmut Wizisla, eds. 2007. Walter Benjamin’s Archive: Images, Texts, Signs. Trans. Esther Leslie. London; New York: Verso. ———, eds. 2009. Dokumentation. Von Walter Benjamins Archiven zum Walter Benjamin Archiv. Eine Geschichte in Dokumenten. In Heft 31/32/Neufassung. Walter Benjamin, ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold, 134–210. Munich: Verlag. Schöttker, Detlev, and Erdmut Wizisla, eds. 2006. Arendt und Benjamin. Texte, Briefe, Dokumente. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Fernando Bee  has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Campinas (Brazil). He wrote his Dissertation on the work of Walter Benjamin. His research interests include Critical Theory and the effects of digital technologies on society.

Benjamin Anarchivist Antonin Wiser

There are perhaps only two manners, or rather two greatnesses, in this madness of writing by which whoever writes effaces himself, leaving, only to abandon it, the archive of his own effacement. Two greatnesses to measure that act of writing by which whoever writes pretends to efface himself, leaving us caught in this archive as in a spider’s web. Jacques Derrida, Two Words for Joyce Wir ordnens. Es zerfällt. Wir ordnens wieder und zerfallen selbst. R. M. Rilke, Duineser Elegien

 I The nature, history, and state of Walter Benjamin’s archive have been well-­ documented for many years.1 When the first volume of the Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings) was published in 1974, the editors Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser gave an initial overview of the Benjaminian estate available at the time, following the efforts made since 1941 by Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem to bring together the dispersed writings. While stressing that the history of the passing-on of this estate was still incomplete, they traced the broad outlines of the process of its dispersion, which occurred despite the fact that Benjamin, “collector that he was, had archived his manuscripts and prints of his works with unusual care” (Tiedemann and Schweppenhäuser 1974, p. 758). His emigration in March 1933 forced him to leave most of his documents behind in Berlin, although a large number of them were brought back to him in Paris by friends, as he informed Scholem in a letter of 16 October of the same year. When he

 I would like to thank Levon Pedrazzini for his careful proofreading and valuable assistance in the preparation of the English version of this text. 1

A. Wiser (*) Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_4

51

52

A. Wiser

left Paris in the summer of 1940, he proceeded to a new partition: “The material that was least important to him remained in the flat. The most important part – the handwritten sketches of the book of passages, the typescripts of the memorandum on the Passages and the unpublished section of the work on Baudelaire – were hidden by George Bataille in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. Benjamin took the rest of his archive with him on his escape, the most substantial part in volume” (p. 759). The fate of these three fractions was diverse and is better known now than it was 50 years ago: the documents that remained in Paris – in particular the large volume of letters received by Benjamin and the texts and recordings of his radio interventions – were seized by the Gestapo, brought back to Berlin, and then stored in Upper Silesia; some were destroyed toward the end of the war, some seized by the Red Army, then transferred to the special archives in Moscow, and finally repatriated to East Germany in 1957. In 1972, they were entrusted to the Akademie der Künste. It was not until 1996 that they were added to the archive that Adorno set up in Frankfurt (Marx 2011, pp. 15–16). The manuscripts Benjamin took with him on his escape ended up largely in the hands of his sister Dora, who sent them to Adorno in America in early 1942. But the leather briefcase he had with him when he tried to cross the Spanish border at Portbou, containing a presumably important manuscript, is known to have been lost. The last part, which had been entrusted to Bataille, was given to Pierre Missac at the end of the war, who sent it to Adorno in 1947. However, some of the documents hidden in the Bibliothèque nationale, particularly those relating to the Passagen-­ Werk (Arcades Project), were only discovered in 1981 by Giorgio Agamben and repatriated to Germany in 1997.2 Founded in 2004 as an autonomous section of the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture,3 the Walter Benjamin Archive (WBA) preserves all the material that has been collected since 1940 at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. In 2006, to mark this foundation, the WBA published a volume entitled Walter Benjamins Archive: Bilder, Texte und Zeichen (Walter Benjamin’s Archive: Images, Text and Symbols) (Marx et al. 2011), which provides an overview of the diversity of the material preserved. Richly illustrated with facsimiles and accompanied by a critical commentary describing “the activity of the author as an archivist of his own writings” (p. 11), it details Benjamin’s method and procedures as a collector, as well as identifying certain philosophical underpinnings present in the author’s texts, thereby shedding light on his overall work. More recently, the digitization of some 12,000 pages of documents – manuscripts, typescripts, notebooks, letters, postcards, newspaper cuttings, photographs, etc. – provides easy access to the author’s work to researchers from all over the world, many of whom it is possible to meet in the small workroom at Luisenstrasse 60 in Berlin-Mitte.

 For a more detailed discussion of these aspects, see the interview with Ursula Marx by Fernando Bee in this volume. 3  Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur. 2

Benjamin Anarchivist

53

Since the aforementioned historical and technical elements are known, well-­ documented, and widely accessible,4 I here propose to examine an original conception of the archive that emerges from a reading of Benjamin’s writings.

 II When one discovers the meticulous care Benjamin took in preserving his documents, when one reads of his passion for collections and collectors, when one knows how many hours he spent accumulating vast documentary material on the nineteenth century at the Bibliothèque nationale, it is perhaps surprising that an archive as a major concept never fully crystallizes in his writings. Furthermore, among the extensive gallery of conceptual characters that one encounters in his work, one looks in vain for the figure of the archivist – although a few of them, as I will mention later, come close. However, reflections on the archive are not absent in Benjamin’s pages. Indeed, in his correspondence, these reflections unfold most explicitly. As early as 1931, in his letters to Scholem, Benjamin refers on several occasions to his writings as an “archive.” The letter of 28 October, 1931, is particularly significant: Du bist ja Kenner meiner Arbeit und vor allem: Bibliograph genug, um, auch ohne daß ich Dir je Andeutungen darüber gemacht hätte, mein Verhältnis zu meinen Sachen und insbesondre zu der Art meiner Publizität vorstellen zu können. Der mir selbst manchmal störenden Bedenklichkeit, mit der ich dem Plan irgendwelcher 'Gesammelten Schriften' von mir gegenüber stehe, entspricht die archivalische Exaktheit, mit der ich alles von mir Gedruckte verwahre und katalogisiere und wenn ich von der ökonomischen Seite der Schriftstellerei absehe, darf ich sagen, daß für mich die paar Blätter und Blättchen, in denen sie auftreten, mir das anarchische Gebilde einer Privatdruckerei darstellen. Daher ist auch das Hauptobjektiv meiner publizistischen Strategie, alles, was ich verfasse  – von einigen Tagebuchnotizen abgesehen – um jeden Preis zum Druck zu befördern und ich darf sagen, daß mir das  – unberufen  – seit etwa vier oder fünf Jahren gelungen ist. Das Ensemble meiner Schriften dürfte – mit Ausnahme von Ernst Bloch […] – wohl überhaupt nur Dir bekannt sein. (Benjamin 1978, p. 541) You are, of course, a connoisseur of my work and, above all, enough of a bibliographer to be able to imagine my relationship to my own work and especially to the nature of my publicity, even without my ever having made mention of it to you. The scruples, sometimes disturbing even to me, with which I view the plan of some sort of “Collected Works” correspond to the archival precision with which I preserve and catalog everything of mine that has appeared in print. Furthermore, disregarding the economic side of being a writer, I can say that for me the few journals and small newspapers in which my work appears represent for me the anarchic structure of a private publishing house. The main objective of my promotional strategy, therefore, is to get everything I write – except for some diary entries – into print at all costs and I can say that I have been successful in this – knock on wood! – for about four or five years. You are probably the only one who knows the totality of my writings, if you disregard Ernst Bloch. (Benjamin 1994, p. 385)  They are also the subject of specific and valuable insight in Fernando Bee’s contribution to this volume. 4

54

A. Wiser

Before commenting, I would like to underline that what we have just read is formulated in a private correspondence that has now been made public, exposed to eyes other than those of the intended recipient. We know, through the “postal effect” analyzed in detail by Jacques Derrida (1987), that a letter can in law (de jure) always be lost, go astray, or be read by someone other than its addressee. Moreover, all this is still at stake when it arrives perfectly at its destination – as if a remnant had been lost as soon as it began its journey, possibly reappearing elsewhere, later, otherwise, or never. Benjamin writes to Scholem, who knows his work but, most importantly, knows about books, about bound and published writings. Benjamin, in this private letter to his intimate friend, the only one who has knowledge of all his work, is going to speak of an even more intimate relationship, from within himself to himself. “Mein Verhältnis zu meinen Sachen”: my relationship to my own affairs, to those things that concern me; that’s what the letter is about. Let me specify that this does not yet concern the question of Benjamin’s relationship in exile to his books, abandoned in Berlin, or to his notebooks left in Paris – we are not yet at that point in October 1931. So, in this private letter to his intimate friend, Benjamin is about to evoke the intimate relationship to his own affairs. But before saying anything about it, he asks Scholem to represent it to himself, without preliminary allusion. This shows the closeness he postulates. Not only does Scholem know him so well that Benjamin need not tell him anything, but he is familiar with Benjamin’s ongoing work – and his books. Thus, in the element of the written word lies the closeness that needs no words, no allusion, thereby relying to representation alone. The intimate relationship that he is on the verge of talking about would, in fact, hardly need to be presented to his friend, because the latter could represent it based on what he is already familiar with. It will not be a revelation and will present nothing new, because, essentially, what Scholem is about to read, he – the connoisseur – already knows: he has already read it. Benjamin’s writings speak for him, before he does, anticipating and representing him even before he needs to present anything. Needless to say, Benjamin will say it all the same – and all this seems to be an announcement or advertisement. What is this personal thing, this relationship to his own affairs, about? It’s about “in particular” the relationship zu der Art meiner Publizität, to the way of presenting oneself publicly as part of a promotional strategy. I interrupt this close reading for a moment to emphasize that the question of the archive is situated in a space divided between private and public, intimate and extimate. At the opening of Archive Fever, Derrida recalls the topo-nomology of the archive: As is the case for the Latin archivum or archium […], the meaning of “archive,” its only meaning, comes to it from the Greek arkheion: initially a house, a domicile, an address, the residence of the superior magistrates, the archons, those who commanded. The citizens who thus held and signified political power were considered to possess the right to make or to represent the law. On account of their publicly recognized authority, it is at their home, in that place which is their house (private house, family house, or employee’s house), that official documents are filed. The archons are first of all the documents’ guardians. They do not only ensure the physical security of what is deposited and of the substrate. They are also accorded the hermeneutic right and competence. They have the power to interpret the

Benjamin Anarchivist

55

archives. Entrusted to such archons, these documents in effect state the law: they recall the law and call on or impose the law. (Derrida 1996, p. 9–10)

The archive was therefore primarily a private place, a home, where public documents were collected and sheltered in order to better circulate publicly, under the authority of their interpreter, their public content: the law. Such would be the topo-­ nomological order organized by the archive, the distribution of the space it commands, and where it settles. Benjamin’s letter, as we shall see, outlines a strategy for his archive that will subvert this order. But first, the correspondence seems to confirm the terms of two gestures of reserve that he describes to his correspondent. The first is a störende Bedenklichkeit (Benjamin 1978, p. 541), a hesitation, a doubt, a scruple, if not quite an objection, which disturbs the author and does not leave him at ease in the place that should rightfully be his. This hesitation concerns a project that had been discussed nearly 2 years earlier, in a letter to Scholem dated 20 January, 1930, written, unusually, in French: Quant aux travaux j’espère en pouvoir rendre compte publiquement en quelque temps, Rowohlt étant disposé de publier sous forme d’un livre, un choix de mes essais, comme tu as été assez gentil de me le proposer, dans une de tes dernières lettres. (Benjamin 1978, p. 507) I soon hope to be able to submit my work for publication. Rowohlt is inclined to publish a selection of my essays as a book, something you were kind enough to suggest in one of your last letters to me. (Benjamin 1994, p. 359)

We understand that the suggestion to publish a volume of collected writings comes from the “connoisseur of his work” and that this project has not yet been made public: it remains known solely to two intimate friends. Twenty months later, this project is still unfinished because Benjamin doubts, hesitates, and objects. What bothers him is not the project itself, nor the choice of writings. What bothers him is the arrangement and layout, the principle of their organization: the plan. Standing in the way of the publication of these Gesammelte Schriften, Benjamin’s qualms  – those that Scholem, who had suggested the idea and who knows Benjamin’s work well, can imagine on his own – are concerned with his reluctance to put these collected essays in order. This reservation is matched (entspricht) by another. “The scruples, sometimes disturbing even to me… correspond to the archival precision with which I preserve and catalog everything of mine that has appeared in print” (Benjamin 1994, p. 385). It is here that the motif of the archive appears, to qualify the scrupulous accuracy with which Benjamin preserves (verwahren) and catalogs (katalogisieren) his own published writings. One scruple refers to the other – and in contrast to the English translation, in the German text, it is the “archival precision” (archivalische Exaktheit) that responds to the “disturbing concern” (störende Bedenklichkeit) (Benjamin 1994, p. 385). Benjamin has reservations about the public presentation of the order of his writings – an order he scrupulously reserves for himself in the private conservation of his archive. Of course, a plan is not a catalog: the latter records and holds the paratactic list, while the former presupposes an intentional, thoughtful

56

A. Wiser

arrangement, according to some internal or intimate principle of the collected works, but both arrange and organize. In this way, Benjamin accommodates himself to the archival arrangement, while its publication obviously disturbs him. The archive is thus kept in a private place, where the author keeps it safe, perhaps even secret (verwahren, the dictionary tells us, can mean “to store, carefully” (sorgfältig aufbewahren) but also “to keep captive” (gefangen halten) – maintenir au secret in French). However, this does not mean that Benjamin renounces publication or refuses to reveal himself to the public. On the contrary, it is worth remembering that here he exposes to Scholem the nature of his publicity (die Art meiner Publizität). The archive’s reserve is at the end of a promotional strategy (publizistiche Strategie) that it completes. Indeed, the fonds that Benjamin, the archivist, preserves and catalogs are made up of his published writings. Thus, the archive is found or placed at the end of a circular path, where the author’s works initially took on the public form of texts printed in journals and newspapers (Blätter und Blättchen) before returning to their sender as their private recipient. What, then, is Benjamin’s strategy? To make public everything he writes, to leave nothing as a private text (except, as he specifies, some diary entries that escape this destination). It is a strategy of (nearly) continuous or complete public presentation, (almost) without rest. But that strategy has two facets, or a double bottom: it is not the publication but the private archive that constitutes the real end, inverting the traditional order of the archive and subverting its subsumption to the arkhé, to the command of the public order. For if the archive was initially, according to Derrida, the preservation of public law in the private home of the archon, it was by this very fact under the control of the representative of public authority. Its destination, through the hermeneutic medium of the archon, is the public sphere. Benjamin explicitly reverses this paradigm: it is only a diversion which he uses for private purposes. He himself describes this gesture as anarchic: “I can say that for me a few journals and small newspapers in which my work appears represent for me the anarchic structure of a private publishing house” (Benjamin 1994, p.  385). But I would go as far as to define this operation as both anarchic and anarchistic, since what he describes to Scholem is a real diversion of public fonds to a private end  – the constitution of a personal archive – as he privatizes the publishing circuit. In so doing, he also reverses, conceptually as well as through his archival practice, the order of subordination of the private pole to the public pole, challenging the archontic – and public – authority over the archive. Finally, the operation is also anarchic-anarchistic in contrast to the plan of the collected works: published to the winds, scattered like leaves in autumn in various newspapers – Blätter und Blättchen – Benjamin’s writings are dispersed in a disordered manner with no regard to the centripetal movement of the collected works that should come to organize them and place them under the authority of a plan. Benjamin’s archival practice thus unfolds or represents itself (sich darstellt) in a complex movement removed from the economic logic of what Marx calls the sphere of circulation. The strategy turns away from the economic aspects of writing – “disregarding the economic side of being a writer”  – by which it could represent a

Benjamin Anarchivist

57

pecuniary profit for the author and implies, instead, publishing “at all costs” (Benjamin 1994, p. 385). The movement, however, resembles the Hegelian ruse of Darstellung: externalization as an unreserved loss or expenditure (Entäußerung) serves the return to the self, the interiorization through the Aufhebung of this moment of exteriority. The Benjaminian archive can be seen as the Aufhebung of the publication of one’s work (and verwahren means also, für eine Weile aufheben, “to keep for a while”) where the expenditure of funds is reversed: the gain of fonts. What has been gained, between the handwritten works and what is collected by archival meticulousness, is the universal form of the printed word. The erasure of the handwritten line, of the ductus, of any trace of the body of writing, the operation is therefore also carried out à corps perdu, to use another Hegelian expression: but it is a game where he who loses wins. It becomes economic again in a roundabout way, by subjecting the game of gains and expenses in the public sphere to the order or law (nomos) of the home (oikos), the private place where the archive ends up. “Anarchival economy” is how I would like to refer to this threefold anarchistic operation by which Benjamin publishes – in a disordered manner – everything but the whole, which he subtracts and reserves for himself in private through the subversive diversions of a public presentation in which the corpus of what will become the archive is spread out, dismembered, in the open. In the drawing of this loop, Benjamin gains a “publicity” that is not his being-known – this, on the contrary, is disguised in its unity by the fact of public dispersion – but his being-published and, by this, the possibility of a secret, remembered unification of his body of work in the universal form of the printed words. This economic operation produces “anarchival” effects: it exposes by preserving, makes public by keeping secret, or, more precisely, makes public to allow secrecy5; its paradoxical figure thus proceeds to a diversion of the public end of the publishing, a reversal of the order of public and private ends. However, one of the effects of the structure of the anarchival economy is the possibility that, at the point of this reversal, something may be lost, purely and simply, without any possible reappropriation (or what Hegel called Erinnerung) for the archive. The operation always involves the risk that a nonrefundable expense (or Entäusserung) sent into the public sphere will not return. This is what Benjamin would be confronted with in the years to come. Benjamin’s approach to the archive challenges the traditional vision and practice of archiving and stands in an ambiguous relationship to what Derrida describes as the archontic principle:  We recognize here one of the possible parent figures of what Derrida (1994) names the “visor effect,” by which the specter of the king in armor presents itself to Hamlet, looking at him without being recognized by him. “A spectral asymmetry interrupts here all specularity. It de-synchronizes, it recalls us to anachrony. We will call this the visor effect: we do not see who looks at us. Even though in his ghost the King looks like himself (‘As thou art to thy selfe,’ says Horatio), that does not prevent him from looking without being seen: his apparition makes him appear still invisible beneath his armor” (p.  6). In the public sphere, Benjamin’s corpus is a spectral apparition that shows itself while veiling itself. By disarticulating the time of the presentation and its recognition, of its recollection in presence, the anarchival dissymmetry becomes an anachrony. 5

58

A. Wiser Recording tends to coordinate a single corpus, into a system or synchronicity in which all the elements articulate the unity of an ideal configuration. In an archive there must be no absolute dissociation, no heterogeneity or secrecy that would separate (secernere), partition, in an absolute way. The archontic principle of the archive is also a principle of consignment, that is to say of gathering. (Derrida 1996, p. 14)

By aiming to gather his texts close to him, Benjamin subscribes to the commandment of unity, the ideal of an organic unification of his own work (meine Arbeit, in the singular). But by desiring secrecy, by increasingly organizing it through the anarchival strategy, he deploys centrifugal forces that operate de facto against the reconstitution of the corpus, to the point that one wonders whether the effects of anarchive may fundamentally hinder the archiving process as much as the hypotheses on which its legitimization is built.

 III In the years that followed, the strategy mentioned by Benjamin in the letter of 28 October, 1931, proved increasingly difficult to implement. Exile forced him to separate himself temporarily from his archive. Although he sometimes managed to retrieve parts of it – as he rejoiced in a letter to Scholem dated 16 October, 1933 (Benjamin 1994, p. 429) – he more often than not suffered from its absence. In the course of the correspondence, the anarchival economic strategy becomes discreetly duplicated. Benjamin refers more and more to Scholem’s archive. In January 1933, he sent to his friend, who had emigrated to Palestine in 1923, two short prose stories “to honour your archive, even if at my own expense” (Benjamin 1994, p. 401). The following month, he mentioned it again, but to apologize for not being able to include his recent texts for Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk: “As to your other requests for your archive, i.e. my work for the radio, even I haven’t been successful in collecting them all” (pp. 403–404). In parallel with the attempts to reconstitute the archive of his own publications in the face of the aforementioned difficulties, which were to become increasingly acute, Benjamin duplicated his collection by depositing, when possible, a copy of his publications into Scholem’s hands, making the “connoisseur of his work” (p. 385), from then onward, the archon of his archive. On 1 May, 1933, in a letter to Kitty Max-Steinschneider, he mentioned “a quite curious piece about the novel, which, once it is printed, may yet arrive in the harbour of the Scholem archive – probably as one of the last ships to do so” (p.  412). Sometimes Benjamin even stopped referring to his friend’s collection in the second person. In July 1934, he wrote, “[…] I am prepared, however, to promise you a manuscript of the final version [of the work on Kafka] for the archive [für das Archiv]” (p. 449). Soon Benjamin would present the Palestinian archive as the place where almost all of his published writings were collected. In a 1936 letter to Werner Kraft, to whom he apologized for not being able to provide a copy of Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction), he

Benjamin Anarchivist

59

wrote: “The need to send the French text of the essay to a number of interested parties in Paris has resulted in my having hardly any copies left for my friends. I sent one to Scholem, since he has an almost complete archive of my works” (p. 532). The following year, having just published the article on collector and historian Eduard Fuchs, Benjamin wrote to Scholem: I hope you will be getting the printed article before the year is out. It always pleases me to hear of the care you bestow upon the collection of my writings. Troubled premonitions tell me that perhaps only our combined archives could present an exhaustive collection of them [eine lückenlose Sammlung von ihnen heute vielleicht nur unsere vereinten Archive darstellen könnten]. For as conscientious [exact] as I am in administering [Verwaltung] my own, I most likely lost several pieces through the hasty departure from Berlin and the unsettled existence of the early years of emigration. (Benjamin 1994, pp. 538–539)

The archive has not only been duplicated; in the face of political circumstances and material difficulties and despite Benjamin’s meticulousness, it has now been divided. It is known that, during his lifetime, the author neither saw Scholem again, nor lived to see the reunited archive. Soon, the very possibility of a reconstitution of the entire corpus was to be threatened: in 1939, on the eve of the war, the hypothesis of a partial loss of the collection became real, while the sources for its completion were drying up. Even the published but incomplete list of his writings could no longer be sent to “the harbour of the Scholem archive” (p. 412): If I haven’t sent you any of my scarce publications in the recent past, the reason is that only seldom do editorial boards these days feel obliged to provide the author with more than a single author’s offprint. You have no cause to assume negligence on my part in these matters, since it has been my intention all along to keep your archives of my writings complete. That has become all the more urgent now, since the only fairly substantial collection, apart from yours, is in the hands of a third party and must be considered lost by now. It is among the effects a friend of mine had to leave behind in Barcelona. (As a curiosum, let me tell you that just recently an extremely cursory bibliography of my writings appeared in a small English report by the institute, alongside bibliographies of its other collaborators.) The latest issue of the Zeitschrift 7:3 contains an essay of mine on Julien Benda in the review section; I am sure you will like it. But what am I to do? I don’t have a duplicate copy. (Benjamin 1994, p. 593)

Henceforth fragmented, the anarchive escapes the archontic command of consignment. This circumstance also corresponds, during the same period, to an increase in the index of dispersion within the public sphere. Indeed, it is known that Benjamin had been publishing texts under pseudonyms since 1933, including that of Detlef Holz. This reinforces the anarchival effect by which the writer conceals himself in the very act of his public presentation. In July 1933, he alluded to this in a letter, again to Scholem: A few pages have come into being under the title “Loggien” [Loggias], and I can only say very good things about them and add that they contain the most precise portrait I shall ever be able to give of myself [das genaueste Porträt enthalten das mir von mir selbst zu machen gegeben ist]. I hope you will see the piece in print in the near future. With it, of course, the Detlevian wood [das Deltefsche Holz] – which I have thrown upon the flame of my life – will flare up for more or less the last time. The new press laws are already taking shape, and after they go into force, my appearances in the German press will

60

A. Wiser require a far more impenetrable disguise than heretofore [denn schon zeichnen die neuen Pressegesetze sich ab, nach deren Inkrafttreten mein Erscheinen in der deutschen Presse noch um vieles undurchdringlicher werden wird als bisher]. (Benjamin 1994, p. 424, modified translation)

So, at the moment he paints his “most precise portrait,” Benjamin steals it from recognition and veils it beneath the pseudonym, reserving the collation of the painted image and its subject to himself and to the intimates who are in on the secret, including Scholem and Felicitas (the pseudonym of Gretel Karplus-Adorno). The anarchival effect – the exhibition that evades identification, the publicity that privatizes itself, the reversal that houses the private incognito in the heart of the public – is at its height, but so is the disassociation of Benjamin’s body from its archival corpus. In the aforementioned passage, Benjamin’s formulation remains partially obscure: assuming that the “Detlevian wood” will crackle for the last time because of the Nazi press laws, one might think that he fears that he will no longer be able to penetrate the public sphere, but the end of the sentence suggests otherwise; it is not his public disappearance but a further opacity in his appearance or, in other words, the intensification of his concealment. The text “Loggias” concerns his childhood and, notably, archives the asynchrony that runs through it: “the rustling of the branches initiated me into a knowledge to which I was not yet equal” (Benjamin 2002, p. 345), and while “everything in the courtyard beckoned me,” it is only when he is distanced from it by exile, as much as the adult is from childhood, that he will grasp the meaning of the Berlin loggias: “the solace that lies in their uninhabitability for one who himself no longer has a proper abode” (p. 346). Unpublished during Benjamin’s lifetime, Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert (Berlin Childhood around 1900) (2002) gathers the memory of childhood from the standpoint of a wandering future that collects each fragmentary echo. The recollection and collation, however, do not aim at the lost unity of the small subject; here, there is no fantasy of coherence that archiving should allow to reconstruct. In the chapter “Die Mummerehlen,” before camouflaging himself with a photographic portrait of the young Kafka – which he passes off as his own – Benjamin says of himself: “Early on, I learned to disguise myself in words, which really were clouds. The gift of perceiving similarities is, in fact, nothing but a weak remnant of the old compulsion to become similar and to behave mimetically. In me, this compulsion acted through words” (Benjamin 2002, p. 374). This should be enough to raise doubts about the purely circumstantial nature of Benjamin’s use of pseudonyms.6 But more broadly, I would like to suggest that if Benjamin’s consignments are subject to centrifugal forces that drive each strand to their escape velocity, thereby making their appearance “impenetrable,” this is not only an indication of the failure of the anarchival strategy but also of its other facet by which the author works, in dissimulation, toward his dissimilation, his différance (as defined by  A doubt that is reinforced by the almost systematic use of the name Detlef Holz to sign the private correspondence with Felicitas, without any considerations of censorship and security. I will come back to this in another work in progress. 6

Benjamin Anarchivist

61

Derrida) from himself. The anarchival effect is not a regrettable accident: it allows Benjamin to evade the injunctions to identify with himself. The child who refuses to be identical to himself in front of the camera’s mirror affirms at the same time this possibility of being similar to that which he is not. This is evoked in the text “Hiding Places”: “The child who stands behind the doorway curtain himself becomes something white that flutters, a ghost. The dining table under which he has crawled turns him into the wooden idol of the temple; its carved legs are four pillars. And behind a door, he is himself the door.” And if he camouflages himself among words, as the writer will later do, it is because “[…] the mimetic gift, formerly the foundation of occult practices, gained admittance to writing and language. In this way, language may be seen as the highest level of mimetic behavior and the most complete archive of nonsensuous similarity [unsinnliche Ähnlichkeit]” (Benjamin 1999d, p. 721). Against the logic of the personal archive, which, as Derrida noted, “tends to coordinate a single corpus” in “the unity of an ideal configuration” (1996, p. 14) arises here the possibility of an archive open to the overflow of the self, to dispersion: an archive of words that would be a fund and resource for the anarchistic mimesis of everything that goes beyond the limits of the proper body and the confinement in ipseity.

 IV The anarchival economy draws in its loop a movement of conservation, but it is coupled with an opposing force. This force is familiar to Benjamin’s readers. We know its expression in the essay published in 1931, entitled “Het Destructieve Karakter” (“The Destructive Character”). The author praises the man who “knows only one watchword: to make room. And only one activity: clearing away” (Benjamin 1999b, p. 541). Such a person opposes with all his might the bourgeois desire to preserve his traces, to leave them as a legacy in the velvet-covered interiors – which is why Benjamin praised the glass architecture of Scheerbart and the Bauhaus in 1933’s “Erfahrung und Armut” (“Experience and Poverty”): “They have created rooms in which it is hard to leave traces” (Benjamin 1999e, p. 734). The attire of the classical archivist would not suit the destructive character well, since the latter “obliterates even the traces of destruction” (Benjamin 1999b, p. 541). The destructive character opposes transmission to conservation and chooses the former, which proceeds from a different logic; transmission is anarchistic in that it shatters its very object so that others can take hold of it freely: “Some people pass things down to posterity, by making them untouchable and thus conserving them; others pass on situations by making them practicable and thus liquidating them. The latter are called the destructive” (p. 542). So, the portrait of Benjamin as the unhappy archivist of himself, forced by mere circumstance to move forward in disguise and to scatter his work to the winds, would be too coherent and therefore incomplete if we neglect the destructive aspect or, as Benjamin refers to it in July 1929, in an article on Proust, “Penelope’s work

62

A. Wiser

of forgetting” (Benjamin 1999a, p.  238). As such, the intent to conserve and the work of forgetting are in opposition to each other. But if, like the ancient heroine, forgetting continuously unravels what archival memory has woven, is it not to keep open the possibility that what has been lost on the way, like Ulysses, might be returned? If the destructive character “reduces [what exists] to rubble – not for the sake of the rubble, but for that of the way leading through it” (Benjamin 1999b, p. 542), it enables a way to return for the future of that which has not yet taken place. It is within this paradoxical logic that the Benjaminian anarchive moves. “In the eyes of the destructive character, nothing is lasting” (Benjamin 1999b, p. 542). We know how much Benjamin distrusted monumentalization and the transformation of the past into “cultural goods,” the vanquishers’ loot. In “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” (“On the Concept of History”), the materialist historian is more than reserved about archiving heritage: he is ready to fight it. Where the accumulated traces of the unbearable “course of things” (p. 542) clutter the future, it is through the rubble that the anarchival rescue of what did not take place in this course of things is perhaps at stake: memories of the vanquished, the “spark of hope” (Benjamin 2003, p. 391), or, on the lined and wrinkled face, “registration of the great passions, vices, insights that called on us [while] we, the masters, were not home” (Benjamin, 1999a, p. 245). Let us follow the trail of this rubble for a moment. In a letter to Scholem dated 26 July, 1932, Benjamin again mentions the project of collected works, reconfigured as collected essays on literature. His plan seems even more compromised than it had been a few months earlier, and Benjamin refers to the place it now occupies alongside other deadlocked projects as “the real site of ruin or catastrophe”: Ich will nicht von den Plänen reden, die unausgeführt, unangerührt bleiben mußten, aber doch an dieser Stelle jedenfalls die vier Bücher aufzählen, die die eigentliche Trümmeroder Katastrophenstätte bezeichnen, von der ich keine Grenze absehen kann, wenn ich das Auge über meine nächsten Jahre schweifen lasse. Es sind die ‘Pariser Passagen’, die ‘Gesammelten Essays zur Literatur’, die ‘Briefe’ und ein höchst bedeutsames Buch über das Haschisch. Von diesem letztern Thema weiß niemand und es soll vorläufig unter uns bleiben. (Benjamin 1978, p. 556). I do not want to speak of the projects that had to remain unfinished, or even untouched, but rather to name here the four books that mark off the real site of ruin or catastrophe, whose furthest boundary I am still unable to survey when I let my eyes wander over the next years of my life. They include the Pariser Passagen, the Gesammelte Essays zur Literatur, the Briefe, and a truly exceptional book about hashish.7 Nobody knows about this last topic, and for the time being it should remain between us. (Benjamin 1994, p. 396)

 We know from the few pages published in 1932 that the philosophical-poetic record of the effects of the drug taken by the author in Marseilles in the summer of 1928 archive a state of the subject that is both outside of itself and paradoxically very close to itself. The text opens with a quotation from an article by Ernst Joel and Fritz Fränkel on hashish intoxication, where we read: “Images and chains of images, long-submerged memories appear; whole scenes and situations are experienced” (Benjamin 1999c, p. 673). Thus, the drug operates like an archivist diving into the depths of memory to retrieve the forgotten treasures. It is by withdrawing from oneself that memories suddenly become available. 7

Benjamin Anarchivist

63

The image of destruction was to be found again a few years later in another letter to Scholem, dated 24 October, 1935, in connection with Berlin Childhood around 1900 and the collection of letters by German authors that Benjamin had been publishing in the press since 19358: Manchmal träume ich den zerschlagenen Büchern nach – der berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert und der Briefsammlung – und dann wundere ich mich, woher ich die Kraft nehme, ein neues ins Werk zu setzen. (Benjamin 1978, p. 695) From time to time I dream about the shattered book projects – the Berliner Kindheit um 1900 and the collection of letters  – and then I am surprised when I find the strength to embark on a new one. (Benjamin 1994, p. 513, modified translation)

The figure of the ruin is significant here in that it does not evoke the result of a catastrophe but the state of what has not yet been assembled, the collapse in advance of the collation and recollection of the fragments dispersed by the anarchival strategy. We come across the rubble more than once in Benjamin’s pages; I will only mention two of its appearances. The first one brings out the melancholic nature of a rescue’s purpose: it is on the ruins that the angel of history, empathetic and impotent, bends over, wanting to gather the scattered pieces of the possible, while the irresistible march of progress prevents him from doing so (Benjamin 2003, p. 392). The angel is animated by an archivist’s desire for organic collation, the restoration of unity and life: the awakening of the dead. It is not certain, contrary to what the end of the fragment asserts, that his failure is solely due to the power of the storm of progress; his desire, oriented toward the putting together (Zusammenfügen), also neglects the anarchistic claim of dissimilation. In order to accommodate the latter, one must turn to another encounter with the rubble, which we read in the Passagen-­ Werk (Benjamin 1991), and meaningfully so, by means of a quote from Baudelaire’s Artificial Paradises: Voici un homme chargé de ramasser les débris d’une journée de la capitale. Tout ce que la grande cité a rejeté, tout ce qu’elle a perdu, tout ce qu’elle a dédaigné, tout ce qu’elle a brisé, il le catalogue, il le collectionne. Il compulse les archives de la débauche, le capharnaüm des rebuts. Il fait un triage, un choix intelligent; il ramasse, comme un avare un trésor, les ordures qui, remâchées par la divinité de l’Industrie, deviendront des objets d’utilité ou de jouissance. (Baudelaire 1975, p. 381) Here is a man in charge of collecting the debris of a day in the capital. Everything that the great city has rejected, everything that it has lost, everything that it has disdained, everything that it has broken, he catalogs it, he collects it. He compiles the archives of debauchery, the hodgepodge of rejects. He makes a sorting, an intelligent choice; he collects, like a miser a treasure, the garbage which, rehashed by the divinity of Industry, will become objects of utility or enjoyment. (Translation by the author)

As Benjamin will do with “everything of his that has appeared in print” (Benjamin 1994, p. 385), the intoxicated ragpicker, whose portrait Baudelaire paints here, catalogs and collects. He is not a museographer: if he treats the debris of the day as an archive, his intention is by no means simple conservation. The archive is waste, by

 These letters, however, would be published in 1936 in Lucerne, under the title Deutsche Menschen.

8

64

A. Wiser

new purpose alchemically transformed from mud to gold. For the ragpicker, the archive is only as valuable as its possible future, a new context in which it will be made “practicable” (Benjamin 1999b, p. 542). Just as the author’s citation practice is held up through anarchistic brigandage (Benjamin 2016, p.  84) by tearing the citation away from its co-text in order to open up new perspectives, irreverent though they are with regard to the law of the genre, the ragpicker’s practice has nothing to do with the old order and inherited uses. He is the anarchivist par excellence: his practical and aesthetic intelligence (for utility is not the only end of the reject – it can be enjoyment as well) is concerned with disorder; it is among the capharnaüm that he sees new potentialities emerge. He subverts the fundamental division that the order of the day has established between the useful and the useless and substitutes his own critical principle, a sorting devoid of any fetishism of relics. Far from feeling the melancholy of a lost unity – his intoxication keeps him at a safe distance by taking him out of himself – the ragpicker does not reconstitute anything: he diverts. In so doing, he rearranges into an unprecedented future constellation the abandoned archive of what has been. In his hands, the strategic economy of the anarchive is no longer limited to undoing the archive’s spatial ordering; it reverses its order on the chronological axis, the entire archeologic that assigned to it the place of a past preserved at the end of the “triumphal procession [of] the masters of today” (Benjamin 2003, pp. 391–392). With the ragpicker, the anarchive turns, literally, into the avant-garde.

 V The archive is incomplete, as we know. The documents Benjamin took with him on his flight to Spain are lost, probably forever. Their importance in relation to what remains will always be unknown. This incomplete corpus is matched by the absence of the body of its author, whose place of burial is unknown. But the division of the archive, as we have seen, began long before, from the moment it was exposed to the effects of the anarchive. In Benjamin’s work, these effects create tensions, contrary gestures, divergent lines, and centrifugal and centripetal movements that no systematic hypothesis seems to be able to bring back to a perfect coherence. It seems to me that this observation, like the path I have outlined here, can lead us to question our own relationship to the Benjaminian archive. There is undoubtedly a violence in the destructive character, just as there is violence in the integral conservation (one thinks of Max Brod’s broken promise to destroy Kafka’s manuscripts upon his death). We could therefore reflect on the uses of the archive using Benjamin’s categories of violence (Benjamin 1996), even if the parallel lacks rigor: there would thus be, in the archive, a conservative use, a founding or instituting use, and a destructive use. One aspect of Benjamin’s complex archival behavior represents the conservative use as far as he strives to preserve, in the midst of historical turmoil, the unity of his personal archive; but there is also an instituting use, the one applied by the WBA, i.e., gathering under the author’s name of all the dispersed

Benjamin Anarchivist

65

members of the corpus – an institution which is also that of Benjamin as name, as a unity, a principle, and arkhé of collation and preservation. It is from the same act of instituting a name that the posthumous Gesammelte Schriften proceed, as well as the manifold academic uses: the study of an object (or even a monument) of the history of ideas, the scholastic appropriation, the accumulation of scholarly knowledge, and the doxographic reconstructions that flush the author out from under his masks make it the object of colloquiums, debates, and, sometimes, scientific conflicts around the establishment of the truth (of the text, of the work, of the author). And then there remains the open question of a destructive use of the archive, of what the archive keeps or institutes: the organic, ordered, and organized unity. This last use, anarchic, anarchistic, or anarchival, encounters the violence of the quotation, which undoes context, disregards the unity of the (body of) work, mocks the authority of the proper name as much as the readings that authorize it, and forgets a little about “Benjamin” as the common thread weaving through the archive, giving it coherence. But, in doing so, does it not secretly agree with the centrifugal movements of dissimulation and dissimilation that run through the scattered texts signed by Walter Benjamin, Detlef Holz, C. Conrad, K. A. Stempflinger, Karl Gumlich, or J. E. Mabinn? Without in the least neglecting or devaluing the fundamental importance of the founding principle and always dependent on an infinite debt to the conservative one, I am inclined to think that a future for Benjamin lies in the third, destructive use. As annoying as it may be at times – when fashion tends to cite his name indiscriminately (but precisely, it is then first and foremost his name that is cited) – this usage seems to me to be the one most capable of tearing Benjaminian thoughts, concepts, and images away from the pinprick of a truth embedded in the patronymic, in order to make them available to take their place in new, radically critical constellations, still to be drawn (along lines of anarchistic convergence with the archives named, e.g., and among others – Derrida, Foucault, Butler, or Haraway) and necessary to imagine a possible future “while fanning the spark of hope in the very heart of past events” (Benjamin 2003, p. 391).

References Baudelaire, Charles. 1975. Paradis artificiels. In Œuvres completes. Tome 1, ed. Claude Pichois, 377–398. Paris: Gallimard. Benjamin, Walter. 1978. Briefe. Vols. 1 and 2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———, 1991. Passagen-Werk. In Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5–2, ed. R.  Tiedemann, H. Schweppenhäuser. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1994. The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910–1940, ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno. Trans. Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1996. Critique of Violence. In Selected Writings.1: 1913–1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, 236–252. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press.

66

A. Wiser

———. 1999a. On the Image of Proust. In Selected Writings. 2,1: 1927–1930, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Trans. Rodney Livingstone, 237–247. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ———. 1999b. The Destructive Character. In Selected Writings. 2,2: 1931–1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Trans. Rodney Livingstone, 541–542. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ———. 1999c. Hashish in Marseilles. In Selected Writings. 2,2: 1931–1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Trans. Rodney Livingstone, 673–679. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ———. 1999d. On the Mimetic Faculty. In Selected Writings. 2,2: 1931–1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Trans. Rodney Livingstone, 720–722. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ———. 1999e. Experience and Poverty. In Selected Writings. 2,2: 1931–1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Trans. Rodney Livingstone, 731–735. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ———. 2002. Berlin Childhood around 1900. In Selected Writings. 3: 1935–1938, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Trans. Edmund Jephcott, Howard Eiland and others, 344–414. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ———. 2003. On the concept of history. In Selected writings. 4: 1938–1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, 389–400. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ———. 2016. One-Way Street, ed. Michael Jennings. Trans. Edmund Jephcott.Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1987. The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1994. Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international. New York: Routledge. ———. 1996. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marx, Ursula. 2011. Das Walter Benjamin Archiv. In Benjamin-Handbuch, ed. B. Lindner, 15–16. Stuttgart, Weimar: J.B. Metzler. Marx, U., G. Schwarz, M. Schwarz and E. Wizisla, Eds., 2011. Walter Benjamin, Archives: Images, Textes Et Signes. Trans. Philippe Ivernel. Berlin; Paris: Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaïsme Akademie der Künste, Archiv Klincksieck. Tiedemann, Rolf and H. Schweppenhäuser. 1974. Editorische Bericht. In Walter Benjamin. 1991. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. I-2, ed. R. Tiedemann, H. Schweppenhäuser, 749–796. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Antonin Wiser  holds a PhD in literature and is the author of several translations (W. Benjamin, Th. Adorno, M. Frisch) as well as a monograph devoted to the utopia of literature in Adorno’s work: Vers une langue sans terre. Adorno et l’utopie de la littérature (Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2014). He currently teaches at high school in Lausanne (Switzerland).

Part IV

The Institute for Social Research Archive

The Attitude of the German People: The Institute of Social Research Archive as Contemporary History Dirk Braunstein and Maischa Gelhard

In setting up his own archives, the subject seizes his own stock of experience as property, so making it something wholly external to himself. Past inner life is turned into furniture just as, conversely, every Biedermeier piece was memory made wood. –Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia

1 History of the Archive In November 1931, Friedrich Pollock wrote a letter to the president of the Reichsarchiv1 in Potsdam, revealing that Max Horkheimer, the new director of the Institute of Social Research (IfS), was planning “to postpone the purely historical work of the Institute and [to concentrate] all resources on sociological and social-­ philosophical work.” Therefore, it would not be possible to “further expand the archive of the Institute. We are considering the idea of selling the archive,” namely, to the Reich Archive. Pollock continues: “The entire archive consists of 629 boxes in which 3461 folders are filed […]. The content of this collection consists of various kinds of documents on the history of the political, the trade union and the cooperative labor movement as well as some […] peripheral works. The material is composed of leaflets, posters, circulars, brochures, organizational statues, etc.” (Bundesarchiv R 1506/1134, sheet 119). At that time, the so-called Archive of the Institute of Social Research was not the product of collecting self-developed

 The Reichsarchiv (Archive of the German Reich/Reich Archive) was the precursor to the present-­ day Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives) as the national German archive. 1

D. Braunstein (*) · M. Gelhard Institut für Sozialforschung (IfS), Frankfurt am Main, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_5

69

70

D. Braunstein and M. Gelhard

documents but rather comprised documents that one would today expect to find in a research library. As it turned out, the Reich Archive did not have to give any further thought to the question of the cost incurred by that acquisition. In the spring of 1933, the IfS as an institution having already gone into exile in the United States, along with some of its employees, the building in Frankfurt was confiscated by the Gestapo2 and shut down. The measure was based on the Reich Law on the confiscation of communist assets implemented shortly before. This law allowed the state authorities to seize the assets of communists and institutions deemed to be communist without compensation. What would have been given to the Reich Archive as a contribution was appropriated, distributed, or destroyed by Karl Demeter, the head of the Reich Archive Department in Frankfurt, on behalf of the Führer. In a letter to the board of trustees at the Frankfurt University dated April 19, 1940, Demeter wrote: “An approximately 5-kilogram portrait bust of an unknown man and a portrait plaque of the economic and social science faculty of Frankfurt given on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Karl Grünberg. I immediately arranged for both bronze objects to be collected for metal donation. Heil Hitler!”3 (Bundesarchiv R 1506/1107, sheet 10). Thus, almost no material from the period before the National Socialists took power was preserved at the institute or by its employees. Only the study “Workers and Employees on the Eve of the Third Reich,” conducted by Erich Fromm with the participation of Hilde Weiss,4 survived. These documents include a fragment of the study mentioned with its survey material from 1929 to 1931, the interim report from 1936, and papers regarding the evaluation in English from the years 1937 and 1938. In addition, material has been conserved from four studies that the institute carried out in exile in the United States, including letters that arose during the “prize contest” project, which will be discussed below. The remainder of the archive material, i.e., more than 95% of it, dates back to the post-World War II period and was initially simply stored as accumulated material in secretariats, administration offices, and in the library of the institute, as there was no prospect of a permanent archive. “In 1986, a commissioned employee of the Institute began to systematically organize the archive inventory and to develop a concept for filing its records. This became possible due to the designation of one room solely as an archive, the archive materials are accommodated in this room to the present. Steadily, the written material as well as the data media have been and are being collected to this very day” (Sonnenfeld 2016, p. 209) – namely, by the author of these lines herself: in 2006, the first archivist of the IfS, Dr. Christa Sonnenfeld (1945–2015), began to compile, structure, file, and register the stored material. Virtually single-handedly she began to establish what is today the Archive of the Institute of Social Research. Since the IfS as a private foundation under public law is not part of the Goethe University Frankfurt, there was initially no legal framework in which the archive

 The Geheime Staatspolizei, (Gestapo), was the secret police force of Nazi Germany.  Carl Grünberg (1861–1940) was founding director of the Institute of Social Research in 1924. 4  After emigrating to the US in 1939, Weiss changed the spelling of her first name to Hilda. 2 3

The Attitude of the German People: The Institute of Social Research Archive…

71

could have been situated. It remained, so to speak, a private collection held together only by the goodwill of the institute committee. In order to transform this situation and, in addition, to benefit from the accumulated knowledge of an established archive, the IfS entered into a cooperation with the archive center of the library of the Goethe University Frankfurt (Sonnenfeld 2017, p. 398). Consequently, the IfS Archive as an institution has come under the jurisdiction of the Hessian Archives Law, which sets a legal framework for its remit. In terms of the size of the collection, the IfS Archive can be estimated to be of medium size. Differing from, for example, a personal estate archive, the collection is constantly growing: the current extent of the archive material is about 150 linear meters. In 2015, the Institute of Social Research as an institution was evaluated by the German Science and Humanities Council (Wissenschaftsrat)5 on behalf of the Hessian Ministry of Science. The evaluation report states that the Theodor W. Adorno Archive and the IfS Archive offer “collections of great importance for the contemporary history of the Federal Republic of Germany. On an international level, there is no other institute with a similar research profile and range of activities in the tradition of the Frankfurt School” (Wissenschaftsrat 2015, p. 8). Furthermore, it states that the archive at the Institute of Social Research holds “connected collections of fundamental importance for the scientific, cultural, and contemporary history of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as for the history of ideas and the current further development of Critical Social Theory worldwide. However, the current conditions of use, the lack of a scientifically sound concept for the development and digitization of the holdings, as well as the available technical equipment and networking do not do justice to the importance of the collections” (p.  11). This appraisal is still valid in large part, although due to this evaluation in August 2016 the part-time position of archivist was created with funds from the Hessian state. Since October 2019, there has also been a position for a graduate assistant (10 h/ week) whose initial task was to process an extensive photo collection (ordering, indexing, cassation), which had gone to the archive as a collection the same year. Even though these implementations had an impact on the condition of the archive, due to its constant growth and its costs, it cannot fulfill its tasks satisfactorily.

2 Tasks of the Archive The tasks of the IfS Archive can roughly be divided into four areas.

 This council is an official scientific body sponsored by German federal and state governments.

5

72

D. Braunstein and M. Gelhard

2.1 Collection The collection of documents worthy of archiving, namely, text, image, audio, and video documents, is the first task of the archive. It is primarily a document archive without any museum-like character. Its area of collection includes material from internal administration (mostly at the level of the directorate); from internal research (including preparation and findings as well as failed research projects); from lectures, courses, and (public) events at the institute; and from collaborative research.

2.2 Preservation The conservational long-term preservation of the archive material is carried out in several steps: from the stock-securing storage of the archive material and the regulation of accessibility, through to deacidification and cleaning measures for paper documents, and finally to the digitization of the archive material for the purpose of long-term information security. One of the tasks is the complete archival preparation of the paper material, i.e., reviewing; removing any pieces of iron; organizing and collecting, either in special folders or archive binders; and the final horizontal storage of the material in acid-­ free archive boxes. In the early days, the archival material was collected in standing folders. This has proven inadequate because, first, the used folders were not acid-­ free and thus attacked the material and, second, older paper material cannot withstand its own weight when stored upright and begins to disintegrate. It is estimated that between one-fifth and a quarter of the total material has up to now been repackaged to or immediately collected into archival boxes, and approximately 120 linear meters of material have yet to be repackaged. In addition, a thus far undetermined number of archive boxes contain, for unknown reasons, entirely unsorted and unprocessed paper documents that were not archivally filed but were merely temporarily stored in boxes during the construction of the archive. These boxes must be identified, and their contents completely sorted and individually processed. Although new material is being added, by far the largest part of the archive documents contain acid, as the institute used acidic paper up until the 1980s. In order to preserve the components in the medium term, deacidification measures must be taken to protect the paper from decay (which has already begun in a small number of cases). The archive staff are in contact with the relevant offices of the federal government’s Special Program for the Preservation of the Written Cultural Heritage, who are in favor of assuming the costs for mass deacidification. The IfS Archive contains a relatively large quantity of floppy disks, most of which have not been assigned to the archive records and some of which are of unclear provenance and unknown content. To ensure that the material can be viewed and subsequently processed, image files of the diskettes need to be created. This has the advantage of initially saving their content without having to check and weigh up

The Attitude of the German People: The Institute of Social Research Archive…

73

their archival value; it also saves formats that cannot be checked in situ, i.e., on a PC with a currently common operating system and appropriate software. In addition, several hundred audio cassettes, audio tapes, audio reels, VCR tapes, and shellac records with radio recordings can be found. Some of these have been assigned to the respective projects from which they originate and have been integrated into the collection, but others are of unclear provenance and unknown content. If one wishes, one can also turn the partial state of archival indexing in one’s favor: “The higher the degree of indexing, the more perfectly the holdings are arranged, the smaller the chance for accidental finds” (Ehrsam 2021, p.  48). For example, during an examination of the material, the archivist came across a manuscript by Felix Weil (1945), which researchers had previously considered lost.6 The material in question here is currently being packed in archive folders, transferred to archive boxes, and provisionally catalogued while being freed from metal and foil. It is initially being protected as far as possible from further decay; more in-depth evaluation and indexing of the documents will take place after the conservation measures have been completed. It would be the ultimate goal of the conservational, organizational, and exploratory measures  – and this certainly applies to every archive – to achieve a state in which the collection is processed to such an extent that at least as much existing material can continue to be processed as new material is added. With the current available financial resources, however, this is unrealistic. While a deacidification measure is to be carried out in the next 2 years with funds from the federal government, as well as the IfS’s own budget, there is currently no financing plan for digitization, even though it is urgently needed.

2.3 Usability According to the Hessian Archives Law, the IfS Archive must also ensure the usability of the archive material for internal and external researchers and institutions, as well as nonscientific entities and institutions. However, the contents of 146 of the archive boxes, some of which were repackaged from upright stored folders into horizontal and acid-free boxes, have not yet been recorded in public finding aids nor have the contents of the 120 linear meters still stored in standing files nor, inherently, the material that has not yet been processed at all. The means of choice for setting up a database to provide information about the holdings of the IfS Archive has so far been to enter them into the Archive Information System Hesse (Arcinsys)7: this approach, however, was and is connected to considerable disadvantages. The underlying software is not user-friendly either for the

 The study refers to a simple functional concept of antisemitism, less developed than anything the IfS had worked out at that time. Therefore, the publication of Weil’s text is not planned at present. 7  See arcinsys.hessen.de. 6

74

D. Braunstein and M. Gelhard

processor or the customer, and the depth of indexing is unregulated and, in this respect, inconsistent within the archive material itself, as well as between the main archives in Frankfurt and Hesse. The descriptions provided are at times impractical and partly misleading. In short, the public database often does not assist research. However, this circumstance can only be improved by a concerted effort on the part of the Hessian archives as well as the Hessian government. In reference to user support, due to the multiple tasks that the archivist and the graduate assistant have had to perform, with a part-time position and 10 h per week, respectively, they have often been forced to offer interested parties appointments that were not always user-friendly, because timely support, assistance, and supervision could not be offered at short notice. Unrestricted traffic (where users are not required to register in advance) will not be possible at the IfS Archive, because the lack of resources – i.e., the limited personnel, as well as the insufficient amenities, prevent it. It is urgently required that all projects carried out at the IfS so far are listed, including information on which of these projects archive material can be found on. This list, in the form of a migratable database, would be the basis for the internal order of the archive, for the subsequent data migration into any external database, and for any further use and research of the archive material. The data obtained would have to be curated in the long term and thus kept usable and up to date.

2.4 Research out of the Archive Employees’ activities include improving the external perception of the IfS Archive, contributing to research and enabling follow-up research, and publishing out of the archive. Accordingly, more than a dozen publications have been produced so far (Adorno 2015, 2016, 2018a, b; Adorno and Popper 2019; Becker et  al. 2020; Braunstein 2015, 2016,  2018, 2019, 2021; Braunstein and Link 2019a, b, c; von Haselberg 2020). Currently, an IfS working paper is being prepared by the archivist and the graduate assistant, which will present all the projects that have been realized at the IfS in the past 100 years. In addition, the correspondence between Adorno and Ludwig von Friedeburg is being prepared for publication by Suhrkamp Verlag.

The Attitude of the German People: The Institute of Social Research Archive…

75

3 Examples of the Archive Material 3.1 Group Experiment After Horkheimer, Adorno, and Pollock returned to Frankfurt in the late 1940s, they found the old institute building a bombed-out ruin. The new building – today’s institute  – was inaugurated in 1951, but in the winter of 1950/1951, in the basement rooms of the old building, the plan for the most time- and manpower-consuming empirical study ever realized by the institute (to date) was compiled (Demirović 1999, p. 357; von Friedeburg 2000, pp. 25–6). The US High Commission for Occupied Germany (HICOG), i.e., the military government of the American occupation zone in Germany, not only provided the financial means for the construction of a new institute building, but its Reactions Analysis Branch also financed the survey of the political consciousness of West Germans (Crespi 1952, p. 215; Hoeres 2010, p. 70). HICOG, concerned about the continuing nationalism of West Germans, commissioned extensive reports on West German public opinion in the first phase after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (Merritt and Merritt 1980). The aim of the study conducted by the IfS was to find out whether and how the population of the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany was capable of democracy and which reeducation measures would be required to advance the political and cultural democratization of West Germans (Braunstein and Link 2019b). In order to determine the political conscience of the population, the IfS decided to invite members of different strata of the population to group meetings and to have them talk to each other. They wished to achieve a deeper understanding of the attitudes present in the population toward certain political topics which were the subject of these talks: on the one hand, National Socialism, World War II, the Holocaust, and the question of guilt for what had happened, and on the other hand, the political future of Germany, nationalism, the current occupation policy, relations with America and Russia, the question of the remilitarization of the Federal Republic, and the participants’ attitudes toward democracy (Becker et al. 2020). In order for the discussions within the Group Experiment to be topic-centered, the IfS developed a “basic stimulus,” which is still standard in group discussion procedures (Lamnek 1998, pp.  136–9). This basic stimulus was the so-called Colburn Letter (Pollock 1955, pp. 501–3): a fictitious letter written by a fictitious sergeant named Colburn from, as the case may be, the US or British occupation forces, in which he conveys his impressions of Germany to his home country (p. 41; p. 53). Each discussion was conducted by an investigator and an assistant. While the main researcher moderated the discussions to a basic extent, the assistant was responsible for the technical setting on site. The Colburn Letter, which had been recorded onto vinyl, was played before each round of discussion. The ensuing discussion was tape-recorded. Social-statistical data were collected from all participants, but not the names of the participants: they were all given aliases so that they

76

D. Braunstein and M. Gelhard

could express themselves as freely as possible without fear of potential consequences; not even the main researcher and the assistant knew the subjects’ names. Finally, a report on the mood in the group, its composition, peculiarities, etc. was prepared for each discussion by the investigator (von Haselberg 2020, pp. 197–240). The audio tapes with the discussions were listened to by stenographers at the IfS in 1951. They transcribed the recordings, and from those transcriptions, double carbon copies were made so that more than one researcher could work with a protocol. It was found that the transcriptions were still insufficient; it became apparent during the study that it was important not only to have the pragmatic content of the statements but to reproduce exactly what was said. So, in a second correction process, each typescript was revised by hand based on the recordings. The composed written material was not retyped but used directly as the basis for the subsequent evaluations. The audio tapes, some of which were only rentals, were eventually either returned or taped over during later research projects; no tape with material from the group sessions has survived, probably also because poor sound quality made listening very difficult. After completion of the project, the written material was bound into books and given to the institute’s library. There exists a red, a gray, and a blue series, corresponding to the bindings. Handwritten corrections were made in all three series, so that three approximately but not completely identical versions of all protocols were produced. To be able to evaluate the material qualitatively and quantitatively, a “scoring manual” was created in 1951 (IfS Archive, F2/70). With its help, constituent passages of the discussion contributions could be assigned specific topics (Osmer 1952, p. 168). Within these topics further distinction was made, depending on assessment. For example, coding “16,8” meant “Attitude to the Jews: attempt to break off topic,” whereas the code “16,9” meant “Attitude to the Jews: detection of renewed antisemitism in Germany.” These coding numbers were noted in the margins of the transcripts, occasionally with dashes indicating to which section of the text this assignment applied. In addition, annotations and internal procedural instructions for further evaluation of certain passages can be found as marginal notes in the documents. This means that textual differences between the three series can be found, primarily regarding the subsequent evaluation of the transcriptions, which, as explained, were only working material for the following interpretation. The original plan was to publish the research results from the Group Experiment in several independent texts devoted to different subfields. These so-called monographs were written between the end of 1951 and the beginning of 1955, under Adorno’s direction. The political reservations that ultimately prevented the publication of the monographs became clear in one of Adorno’s speeches in April 1954 (by which time the preliminary versions of the texts were available), when he said in a staff meeting: “Today I would like to talk to you about the group study, which is the child of our love, but also of our concern. The question of its publication presented us with serious difficulties. […] Almost all monographs of the group study were not suitable for publication; their content would have caused too great a shock among readers” (Becker et al. 2020, p. 21). Similar concerns were expressed a month later

The Attitude of the German People: The Institute of Social Research Archive…

77

by René König, to whom some discussion protocols were sent for reviewing and evaluation, because the research group considered publishing one or more protocols as examples. König wrote to Adorno: “Do you think it is good and ‘advisable’ to print the protocols in extenso? The conclusions they open up are shocking” (König 2000, p.  450). Consequently, the IfS invited selected experts to a conference in 1953  in order to discuss the “disturbing” results of the study, which, as Pollock wrote, “have no public character whatsoever” (Becker et al. 2020, p. 20). Only a little – prominently Adorno’s contribution “Guilt and Defense” (“Schuld und Abwehr”) (Adorno 2010), which was included in his Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings) (Adorno 2003) – finally made it into the only contemporary publication that the IfS organized on the Group Experiment: in 1955 within the institute’s then current series of publications (Pollock 1955). The foreword by Franz Böhm8 gives an idea of the extent to which the published discussion parts of the group study presented themselves to a democrat as “the most harassing and heartless superior-thinking [Herrendenken]” (Böhm 1955, p. XVI). The institute’s Group Experiment is regarded in research circles as a milestone of empirical social research. The underlying methodology is considered the first of its kind; sometimes it is even referred to as “the legendary group study, also called Group Experiment” (Klingemann 2014, p. 488). This is probably related to the fact that, although the explosive nature of the material had been anticipated due to the historical situation – the population speaks very openly about its past and its political attitudes 1 year after the founding of the Federal Republic – remarkably little is known about the content or procedure of the Group Experiment: it offers nothing less than insight into the “non-public opinion” (Böhm 1955, p. XI) of West Germans immediately after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany. This was why the IfS was so extremely reluctant to publish results. Yet the story told by the accumulated material of the Group Experiment study continues to this day. Accordingly, the material does not merely constitute the founding documents of research into West German authoritarianism but can also be considered as a record of the genesis and prehistory of West German authoritarianism itself. Most of the material on the Group Experiment has been preserved as project documentation in the IfS Archive, contained in 33 archive boxes comprising 121 units. To do justice to the special scientific significance of the material, the IfS is currently preparing an application for third-party funding, the aim of which is to make the material available to the public. One means to this end is a digital edition, which will be offered as an open-access service. For the experts, this offer provides the opportunity for follow-up research within the disciplines of the history of science, especially the history of sociology, empirical methodological research, the history of mentality, contemporary history, historical sociology, political theory (theory of democracy), research on authoritarianism, psychoanalytical research, research on antisemitism, racism, and sexism.

 Franz Böhm was chairman of the IfS Foundation Council and member of the Bundestag for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. 8

78

D. Braunstein and M. Gelhard

This edition will pursue two aims: first, to offer a reconstruction of the procedure, in this respect, an analysis with a scientific-methodical-historical goal is required. The edition will make the genesis of the Group Experiment transparent and disclose its historicity without restriction. The archival documents are thereby recorded as cultural artifacts in their own right and made accessible as a digital archive. That way, a reconstruction of the process enables follow-up research within the fields of history of science (especially sociology) and methodological research. Second, the largely unknown contents  – i.e., the discussion transcripts themselves as source material in addition to the monographs and the accompanying material – are to be made fully accessible. It is of crucial importance to curate the group discussions as an indexed and annotated text corpus, which comprises a readable text and ensures the order, internal interconnectedness, and searchability of the material. Only the scientifically reliable processed corpus and its digital publication will provide for follow-up research within the history of mentality, contemporary history, historical sociology, and political theory.

3.2 The Contest on the German People and Antisemitism Another project is the edition and publication of all letters that have been preserved in the archive from the institute’s so-called prize contest. In October 1943, the institute launched an appeal in the German-Jewish New York exile newspaper Aufbau, which stated, among other things: “The Institute of Social Research at Columbia University in New York is engaged in a study of German anti-Semitism. One aim of these studies is to bring facts to light, knowledge of which may contribute to a correct treatment of the defeated [Germans]. For this purpose, also the experiences of German Jews and non-Jewish anti-Fascists are to be made fruitful” (Anonymous 1943, p. 5). To this end, those readers who had fled Germany were called upon to share their “experiences with Nazi anti-Semitism” with the institute by letter. A brief “Preliminary Report on The Contest on the German People and Antisemitism” provides information on the course of this action and some of its results. They can be found in the first volume of the still unpublished “Studies in Antisemitism”: The Institute of Social Research thought it would be useful to ask Jewish refugees from Germany to describe their personal experiences with the attitude of the German people toward Jews after 1933, especially with those Germans who were not militant Nazis. A prize contest was conducted in German-language newspapers in the United States read by this group. We asked them write letters telling of their experiences. The judges of the contest, which has not yet closed, are Thomas Mann; Prof. Paul Tillich of the Union Theological Seminary; Max Horkheimer, director of the Institute of Social Research and Manfred George, editor of Aufbau. So far 110 letters have been received. After eliminating those which contained no information or whose contents were mere complaints, we were left seventy scripts whose authors could be identified as to the scope of their experience. These scripts contained about 260 individual episodes relating to our subject.

The Attitude of the German People: The Institute of Social Research Archive…

79

The sample is a fairly homogeneous cross section of the assimilated Jewish middle-­ class. Fifty writers can easily be identified as liberal Jews. There are many intellectuals (doctors, lawyers, writers) among them, and many who seemed to have occupied high positions in business. Most of them refer to their Aryan acquaintances in high positions. No man forgets to mention his participation in World War I and his decorations. Nearly all were more or less patriotic Germans. One writer was a socialist newspaperman and lawyer, two are Zionists, none seem to be of Eastern origin, and very few are orthodox Jews. Many admit that they write in an effort to be just to the German people or to show either that German people are not Nazi or that they are not antisemitic. Out of twenty-nine who are explicit about their positive attitude toward Germany, only eight say that they have changed their opinion on the nature of the Germans. Two writers are Aryan members of the underground movement. Seven are interested in politics and state their experience in political terms. Nearly half the writers look upon National Socialism as a plebeian revolution against which they have a common front with decent people of the upper income brackets. Half of those who make explicit statements on their attitude of the workers express some amazement at their anti-fascist stance. All those who made their first acquaintance with Aryan anti-fascists in a concentration camp report their surprise at being treated so well by their companions in suffering. Reports of acquaintances in concentration camps were not included in the following survey. We have also omitted a number of episodes or reports which are based on the susceptibilities of the victim of antisemitism and reflect merely their effort to find some comforting idea in an adverse world. Such instances abound in the content. They consist of statements like “my companion was deeply moved when I told him about the death of my brother”, in reports of order or correctness in the execution of Nazi orders, in gratitude for the slightest sign of consideration on the part of a Nazi official. Most of these instances actually refer to shifting of the burden from one Jew to another. (IfS Library 113598/1, pp. 241–3; original in English)

The 110 entries have been preserved in the IfS Archive. The “contest” has attracted great interest both among archive users and in contemporary history, so that the publication of the material  – thoroughly edited and annotated  – was an obvious choice. It will be published in the present IfS publication series.

4 What of It? With this essay, we want to demonstrate two things in particular: first, that the internal structure of the IfS Archive, as well as the research possibilities at the archive, is currently lacking due to inadequate resources and capabilities, both financial and human, and second, that the archive houses documents the importance of which, for historical research as well as for contemporary analysis, the German Science and Humanities Council is convinced, as are we. In short, the archive’s equipment and resources are disproportionate to its importance. Undoubtedly, a great many archivists (as well as employees at public institutions in general) can join in this lament. Is this reason for despair? Rather, it is reason to demand a fundamental change to the existing conditions!

80

D. Braunstein and M. Gelhard

References Adorno, Theodor W. 2003 [1975]. Schuld und Abwehr. Eine qualitative Analyse zum Gruppenexperiment. In Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 9.2, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, T.  W Adorno, 121–324. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. ———. 2010. Guilt and Defense. On the Legacies of National Socialism in Postwar Germany, ed. and Trans. Jeffrey K. Olick and Andrew J. Perrin. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ———. 2015 [1960], November 8. Einleitung in das soziologische Hauptseminar “Probleme der Bildungssoziologie.” WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 01: 153–167. ———. 2016 [1961]. Einleitung in das soziologische Hauptseminar “Probleme der qualitativen Analyse.” WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 01: 187–204. ———. 2018a [1953, November 16]. Brief an Herbert Marcuse. WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 01: 159–162. ———. 2018b [1958], July 18. Ansprache vor dem Vorstand der Stiftung “Institut für Sozialforschung”. WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 02: 179–183. Adorno, Theodor W. and Karl Popper. 2019 [1961]. Briefwechsel. WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 02: 205–219. Anonymous. 1943. Erfahrungen mit dem Nazi-Antisemitismus. Ein Wettbewerb des “Institute of Social Research”. Aufbau IX (41): 5. Becker, Michael, Dirk Braunstein, and Fabian Link. 2020. Postnazistisches Sprechen. Einführung in Peter von Haselbergs Beitrag zum Gruppenexperiment. In Schuldgefühle. Postnazistische Mentalitäten in der frühen Bundesrepublik. Eine Studie aus dem Gruppenexperiment am Institut für Sozialforschung, ed. Michael Becker, Dirk Braunstein, and Fabian Link, 11–31. Frankfurt and New York: Campus. Böhm, Franz. 1955. Geleitwort. In Gruppenexperiment. Ein Studienbericht, ed. Friedrich Pollock, IX–XVII. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Braunstein, Dirk. 2015. Theodor W.  Adornos Einleitung in das soziologische Hauptseminar “Probleme der Bildungssoziologie”. WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 01: 147–152. ———. 2016. Theodor W. Adornos Einleitung in das soziologische Hauptseminar “Probleme der qualitativen analyse”. WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 01: 181–186. ———. 2018, July 18. Anmerkungen zu Theodor W. Adornos Ansprache vor dem Vorstand der Stiftung “Institut für Sozialforschung.”WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 02: 175–178. ———. 2019. “Seien Sie also unbesorgt …”. Einleitung in den Briefwechsel zwischen Theodor W. Adorno und Karl R. Popper. WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 02: 197–204. ———, ed. 2021. Die Frankfurter Seminare Theodor W. Adornos. Gesammelte Sitzungsprotokolle 1949–1969. Vol. 4. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter. Braunstein, Dirk, and Fabian Link. 2019a. Die “Heimkehrerstudien” des Instituts für Sozialforschung und ihr politisches Scheitern. In Zyklos 5. Jahrbuch für Theorie und Geschichte der Soziologie, ed. Martin Endreß and Stephan Moebius, 433–447. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. ———. 2019b. Demokratisches Denken durch die Praxis der Soziologie. Die Reeducation-­ Konzepte des Instituts für Sozialforschung in den 1950er Jahren. In Erinnern, Umschreiben, Vergessen. Die Stiftung des disziplinären Gedächtnisses als soziale Praxis, ed. Karin Amos, Markus Rieger-Ladich, and Anne Rohstock, 187–209. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft. ———, Eds. 2019c. Beginn einer Gruppendiskussion aus dem Projekt “Zum politischen Bewußtsein ehemaliger Kriegsgefangener”. In Zyklos 5. Jahrbuch für Theorie und Geschichte der Soziologie, ed. Martin Endreß and Stephan Moebius, 448–459. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Bundesarchiv, Koblenz. (n.d.). Crespi, Leo P. 1952. America’s interest in German survey research. In Empirische Sozialforschung. Meinungs- und Marktforschung. Methoden und Probleme. Wissenschaftliche Schriftenreihe des Instituts zur Förderung öffentlicher Angelegenheiten, vol. 13, 215–217. Frankfurt am Main: Institut zur Förderung öffentlicher Angelegenheiten.

The Attitude of the German People: The Institute of Social Research Archive…

81

Demirović, Alex. 1999. Der nonkonformistische Intellektuelle. Die Entwicklung der Kritischen Theorie zur Frankfurter Schule. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Ehrsam, Thomas. 2021. Vom Suchen und vom Finden. Erfahrungen in Nachlassarchiven. In Ins Archiv, fürs Archiv, aus dem Archiv, ed. Michael Töteberg and Alexandra Vasa, 46–50. München: edition text+kritik. Hoeres, Peter. 2010. Aneignung und Abwehr der Demoskopie im intellektuellen Diskurs der frühen Bundesrepublik. In Zweite Gründung der Bundesrepublik. Generationswechsel und intellektuelle Wortergreifungen 1955–1975, ed. Franz-Werner Kersting, Jürgen Reulecke, and Hans-Ulrich Thamerdie, 69–84. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. IfS Archive. n.d. Institut für Sozialforschung. Frankfurt. IfS Library. n.d. Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt. Klingemann, Carsten. 2014. Die Verweigerung der Analyse des Nationalsozialismus in der westdeutschen Soziologie. Zur Kontinuität empirischer Soziologie vor und nach dem Ende des NS-Regimes. In Soziologie und Nationalsozialismus. Positionen, Debatten, Perspektiven, ed. Michaela Christ and Maja Suderland, 480–507. Berlin: Suhrkamp. König, René. 2000. Briefwechsel. Vol. 1, ed. Mario König and Oliver König. Opladen: Leske + Budrich. Lamnek, Siegfried. 1998. Gruppendiskussion. Theorie und Praxis. Weinheim, Basel: Beltz. Merritt, Anna J., and Richard L. Merritt, eds. 1980. Public opinion in Semisovereign Germany: The HICOG Surveys, 1949–1955. Urbana, Chicago, and London: University of Illinois Press. Osmer, Diedrich. 1952. Das Gruppenexperiment des Instituts für Sozialforschung. In Empirische Sozialforschung. Meinungs- und Marktforschung. Methoden und Probleme. Wissenschaftliche Schriftenreihe des Instituts zur Förderung öffentlicher Angelegenheiten, vol. 13, 162–171. Frankfurt am Main: Institut zur Förderung öffentlicher Angelegenheiten. Pollock, Friedrich, ed. 1955. Gruppenexperiment. Ein Studienbericht. Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Sonnenfeld, Christa. 2016. Das Archiv des Instituts für Sozialforschung. WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 01: 209–215. ———. 2017. Das Archiv des Instituts für Sozialforschung (IfS), Frankfurt am Main. In Handbuch Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Soziologie. Band 2: Forschungsdesign, Theorien und Methoden, ed. Stephan Moebius and Andrea Ploder, 397–399. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. von Friedeburg, Ludwig. 2000. Soziologie als angewandte Aufklärung. Zum Wiederbeginn in den fünfziger Jahren. In Soziologie als angewandte Aufklärung. Weniger als erwartet, aber mehr als zu befürchten war. Die Entwicklung der Nachkriegssoziologie aus Sicht der frühen Fachvertreter, ed. Heinz Sahner, 23–33. Baden-Baden: Nomos. von Haselberg, Peter. 2020. In Schuldgefühle. Postnazistische Mentalitäten in der frühen Bundesrepublik. Eine Studie aus dem Gruppenexperiment am Institut für Sozialforschung, ed. Michael Becker, Dirk Braunstein, and Fabian Link. Frankfurt and New York: Campus. Weil, Felix J. 1945. The Social Function of the Race Philosophy in Nazi Germany, 120 pages, typescript with many handwritten corrections, IfS-Archive. Wissenschaftsrat. 2015. Stellungnahme zum Institut für Sozialforschung (IfS) an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main. (Drs. 4904–15). https:// www.wissenschaftsrat.de/download/archiv/4904-­15.html. Accessed: 01 Aug 2022. Dirk Braunstein  holds a PhD. He is an archivist and research assistant at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. He is the author of Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy (Brill, 2023). He is the editor of the four volumes of Die Frankfurter Seminare Theodor W. Adornos. Gesammelte Sitzungsprotokolle 1949–1969 (de Gruyter, 2021). Maischa Gelhard  is a research assistant at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. Since 2020, she has also been working in the collection department of the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt am Main.

The Role of Empirical Research in Theodor W. Adorno’s Thought: A Personal Experience at the Archive of the Institute for Social Research Adriano Januário

The purpose of this chapter is to show how the Institute for Social Research archives can contribute to shedding new light on Adorno’s writings, especially by bearing in mind the history of publications of his texts in Brazil and, perhaps, throughout the Americas. Over the years, the image of Adorno’s work was traced from the monumental Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas 1984; mainly Chap. 4). However, that image is no longer dominant, and meaningful publications have recently to cast it into doubt (Thyen 1989; O’Connor 2004; Hullot-Kentor 1989; Sommer 2016). Knowledge of the archives of the Institute for Social Research can help to frame and reinforce a new perspective on Adorno’s writings, to understand conceptual constellations that were left aside. In this chapter, I want to draw attention to a specific constellation: education, resistance, and democracy in Adorno’s late works. This constellation could only arise from the research developed at the Institute for Social Research between 1950s and 1960s. On the theme of democracy, Adorno did not deepen his analysis of a democratic organization of society in a specific work or book, either because of the limitations and concerns expressed in his critical model of the period or because he did not have the time to develop the implications of considering democracy as a potential. However, it does not mean that he neglected this topic. What we want to show here is that the theme of democracy appears linked to the themes of education and resistance in his writings. Adorno did not look at these themes externally. The themes of democracy and education were subjects of diverse research projects at the Institute for Social Research throughout the 1950s and 1960s, in which Adorno participated at different levels. With this objective in mind, I will (1) make a brief presentation of some empirical studies developed at the institute throughout the 1950s and 1960s and (2) present the constellation formed by education, democracy, and resistance in some of his works. A. Januário (*) Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_6

83

84

A. Januário

1 The Research on Democracy and Education at the Institute for Social Research The purpose of this section is not to be exhaustive in explaining the extent and the importance of the archive in Frankfurt; Dirk Braunstein and Maischa Gelhard’s masterful chapter in this volume fulfills this role. I want only to mention some of the research carried out at the institute during the period in which Adorno was director. The objective is to indicate to what extent there was a very rich framework of data, research, and reflection from which Adorno was able to elaborate his most famous interventions, such as “Education after Auschwitz” (1966) and from which I could formulate the conceptual constellation of democracy, education, and resistance. For the purpose of this chapter, understanding the return from exile of the institute to Frankfurt am Main is meaningful. The return project was primarily designed by Max Horkheimer. He thought that it would be possible to influence the paths of reconstruction in West Germany in the late 1940s and early 1950s. For him, Critical Theory had the potential to play a big role in this process. The German cultural climate, so Horkheimer thought, was characterized by sustaining a critique of the dominant pattern of scientific production, a type of environment that was increasingly rare in the United States (Adorno 1969). Based on this and other diagnostic assessments, Horkheimer and his “inner circle” decided to return to Frankfurt by invitation of the state of Hessen, the city of Frankfurt, and the Goethe University Frankfurt. The first negotiations on the reconstruction of the Institute for Social Research took place from early 1948 and 1949, and began in September 1950 with funding from the McCloy-Fonds (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 17), the city of Frankfurt, and the Gesellschaft für Sozialforschung (Society for Social Research). At the inauguration of the reconstructed building, Horkheimer recalled his opening speech of 1931, highlighting that his diagnosis and proposal for an institute was still valid. He hoped that the institute could indirectly intervene in the development of students and in the process of rebuilding the university. Education in the social sciences and the understanding of social processes could be an indispensable element of academic study, and the institute could also influence the reconstruction of sociology in Germany. According to Horkheimer, students should learn to read and understand Plato and Aristotle, “but we believe that, by reading and understanding them, they will gain something for the social problems of the present time and could freely understand in view of today’s problems, if they study the shared ideas of Western culture” (Horkheimer 1952, p. 10). Sociology could assume the philosophical tradition, and while it could not replace the role of philosophy, it could be guided by modern and empirical methods mediated by a compression and by a figure that would establish the mediation between philosophy and sociology. In his own words, in the “current” social and historical stage, philosophy should be ascertained and confirmed by these empirical methods of sociology, so that such a concept of reason would represent the figure of life relations in its totality.

The Role of Empirical Research in Theodor W. Adorno’s Thought: A Personal…

85

Following this orientation, several research projects were carried out in the 1950s and 1960s with the objective of investigating German society. Adorno officially assumed the directorship of the institute in 1958, participating more directly in research and also in public-facing institutional activities. What follows is a brief description of these studies based on the material in the Archive of the Institute for Social Research.

1.1 Research on Democracy in West Germany In the winter of 1950/1951, one of the best known and richest studies of this period began: the Group Experiment (Gruppenexperiment) funded by the High Commission for Occupied Germany (HICOG) (Pollock 1955). It is important to start with this study because it ended up becoming the best-known model of the institute, being internationally recognized as the “Method of the Institute for Social Research” (Mangold 1960). The study aimed to investigate the behavior and opinions of characteristic groups of the German population in relation to political issues and their worldview. The results demonstrated how some political ideologies are coined in the public sphere and how these ideologies determine individual opinion. The participants in the discussions on the theme “German guilt” with respect to the war and the annihilation of the European Jews were indicative of the social psychological potential of the population in general, so the question of guilt organized the field of ideological politics in the early 1950s. One of the results of that study was Adorno’s Schuld und Abwehr (Guilt and Defense) (Adorno 2003). In this specific study, 25 discussion protocols were recorded, resulting in a large record of arguments that supported the “defense syndrome” (p.  121). The arguments that denied, diminished, or relativized what happened served as a defense (Abwehr) against knowledge of what actually happened and helped to build a collective identity. The evaluation of the content of the discussion contributions was confirmed in a very sustainable way through Volker Hagen’s analysis of group dynamics. The group discussion method was applied in the following studies, being combined with other methods of empirical research (i.e., collecting more classic data such as profession, age, family situation, children, etc.). The central issue of group integration was also taken as a starting point for research in 1952–1953, in collaboration with seven other European countries, with the aim of promoting a comparative study. The study, named Oslo-Studie (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 22), was funded by the Ford Foundation and is now in the institute’s archive. The aim of the research was to ascertain the similarities and differences between the populations of different nations and their overt or covert authoritarian tendencies. This aspect of the unmanifested potential for authoritarian tendencies in light of the prejudice present in the German population regarding the Allied army’s continuing presence in West Germany ended up being the foundation of the research on “The effectiveness of foreign radio programs in West Germany” (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 22), conducted in 1951 and funded by Voice of America

86

A. Januário

and Columbia’s Bureau of Applied Social Research. The initial objective was to observe the German view on the traditions and democratic culture of the Allied soldiers. The study interviewed 180 experts, each one giving four interviews. The objective was to evaluate the transmissions of Voice of America and the BBC in addition to transmissions that came from the East – that is, from the Soviet Union. In the same year, the institute directed the research on Project Candor (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 24), funded by Voice of America and Columbia’s Bureau of Applied Social Research. This study, unlike the previous one, which was carried out with experts on radio broadcasts, was conducted with German listeners regarding their opinion on the position of the United States. In 1953 and 1954, the study Image de la France. Un sondage de L’opinion publique allemande (“Image of France: a poll of public opinion in the German Federal Republic”) (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 24) was produced, with the aim of ascertaining the opinion of the 1792 participants on the character and typical characteristics of the French; in a second round of the study, 188 interviews were conducted. As a result of this research, the nationalist and ethnocentric tone was the most decisive in relation to opinions about France. What is very clear in this study is that as the Germans spoke about the French, they also said something about themselves, which was reinforced by a survey of various data from the interviewees. The institute’s research program also produced another study with great research potential for the period: “Totalitäre Tendenzen in der deutschen Presse, 1966” (On Radical Right Tendencies in the German Press, 1966). The study, as the title suggests, investigates the potential of the extreme right in Germany, by monitoring changes in the population’s attitude toward democracy. In the second half of the 1960s, the subject of far-right propaganda in the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) was systematically researched by the institute. The NPD understood itself to be a constructive opposition to the coalition in Bonn, defending the parliamentary system. Between 1966 and 1968, during the biggest economic crisis of the recent German Republic, the NPD had a significant electoral result. In the investigation “For the reception of the propaganda of the extreme right” (Jaerisch 1975), a catalog of slogans, unmodified from the propaganda of the NPD, was presented. The results confirmed that the role of the shock caused by the economic crisis on the one hand and the aggravation caused by the mass demonstrations of the student movement on the other were crucial to acceptance of the nationalist propaganda and the perception of minorities as public enemies. State and social reactions were seen as very fragile, which means that material actions would be much more effective in combating authoritarianism than broader cultural notions of changing the psychological characteristic. In other words, studies showed that democracy should solve more practical economic and strategic issues. This solution would be much more effective than mere propaganda for democracy. The studies presented so far had as their principal theme democratic culture in West Germany. They can be understood as directed and systematic studies with the objective of understanding the authoritarian syndrome present in the population of the German Republic at the time. Additionally, in the same spirit, the Institute conducted the research “Study on the consequences of denazification on

The Role of Empirical Research in Theodor W. Adorno’s Thought: A Personal…

87

small and medium-sized communities in the three zones [of occupation] of the national republic [of Germany]” (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 28), carried out in 1953 and funded by HICOG. Several projects were brought together within the framework of the Johns Hopkins University, coordinated by John Montgomery; these also had their counterparts in Italy and Japan on exactly the same theme. It is important to note that the study did not refer exactly to the denazification process but rather to its consequences from the point of view of the population at the time. One of the most important works for the institute in the 1950s was the Heimkehrerstudie (“Study of Returnees”) carried out in 1957. It was funded by the Bundeszentrale für Heimatdienst (National Center for the Service of the Nation) together with the Verband der Heimkehrer (Association of Returnees). The central question was about the prisoners of war and their negative experiences of returning to Germany, i.e., after experiencing captivity during the war, what would be the conceptions of the soldiers when they returned to a completely different, democratic Germany? A quick glimpse of these studies allows us to understand the amount of data available on democracy and the functioning of the German public sphere in that period. The statements we find in the intervention texts of Theodor Adorno, as I emphasized in the first part of this  chapter, found a good part of their empirical basis here.

1.2 Education and Democracy Among the Students Horkheimer and Adorno focused their attention on the change in the function of Bildung based on the transformation of capitalist society and how these changes reverberated in the development of the subject. The diagnosis in several texts of the period points to the domination of industrial production over culture, which ended up spreading to what Adorno called a Halbbildung (semi-formation) (Januário 2020), as well as humanist formation (Bildung), which is opposed to the functionalism of an “administered world”  – a tradition to which some of their theoretical works could be linked from the beginning; it is noteworthy that Horkheimer and Adorno taught various courses on Hegel and dialectics. Their objectives included not allowing these subjects to be either scapegoated as part of the anti-communist campaign or completely determined by the Communist Party of Soviet Union. “Research on Frankfurt students” (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 32) was carried out between the winter of 1951 and 1952 within the framework of empirical sociological practice. The study had a pedagogical character. It aimed to investigate the independent work of students and a way of thinking that expressed responsibility for their own actions. In fact, this study ended up being integrated into another much larger, the almost unfathomable “Universität und Gesellschaft” (“University and Society”) (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 33), carried out between 1952 and 1954. There is an immense number of documents related to this study, which deserves a more adequate investigation (impossible to cover in this chapter). The

88

A. Januário

study focused on the opinions that students had about the universities they attended. The objective was to map the students’ opinions about the connection between the university and society, taking into account the various student stages, from freshman to graduate, including any professional internships, and without neglecting technical university students. The evaluation of the research results was developed by both the institute and the University of Leipzig (Anger 1960). Student und Politik (The Student Research) (Habermas 1961), conducted in two parts between 1952 and 1953, followed a random sample of 507 students who completed a survey that comprised 50 open-ended questions. As the first phase of this study showed, the material situation of the students was exceptionally bad. The main reason for the research was to investigate the students’ motives and attitudes toward the university and to measure the relationship between technical and nontechnical knowledge. It intended to differentiate students who had a pragmatic view of their own training – who saw it as a means to an end – from those who were interested in a more comprehensive type of training, more closely linked to their course subject. The results showed quite significantly that a large proportion of the students had no interest in the subject they were studying. These results were confirmed by the Expertenbefragung (Research of Experts) (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 33). This research aimed to isolate academic competence from psychological attitudes that were not shown in the final course exam. The research was primarily directed at the immediate impressions of the examinees, their clothing, and spiritual independence, as well as their forms of behavior and disposition toward self-direction in future studies – that is, their capacity for autonomy. There is an important point in this study about the position of women in German society after Nazi domination. It was from this theme that the famous study Student und Politik (Student and Politics) (Habermas et al. 1961) emerged, in which Jürgen Habermas participated. When we observe the second part of the “Student and Politics” study, the courses were also investigated from the point of view of content and method and, mainly, their role in the students’ political development. At the end of 1959, the investigation Politik und Gesellschaft im Unterricht (Politics and society in the classroom) (Teschner 1968) was prepared. The study carried out by the institute was “Zur Wirksamkeit politischer Bildung. Eine soziologische Analyse des Sozialkundeunterrichts an Volks-, Mittel- und Berufsschulen” (Towards the effectiveness of political formation: a sociological analysis of Social Studies classes in secondary, professional and adult education schools) (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 40). The results showed once again that the effectiveness of the social studies discipline on students’ democratic attitudes, as well as their political positioning, was ostensibly small (Habermas 1969; Friedeburg 1989). The results of this research were hotly debated by Adorno and Helmut Becker throughout the 1960s.1 These debates and others’ interventions on education will be the theme of the next section.

 See the chapter in this volume “Th. W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an ‘Administered World’ (1955–1969): Unpublished radio Conversations from the Theodor W. Adorno Archive,” by Aurélia Peyrical. 1

The Role of Empirical Research in Theodor W. Adorno’s Thought: A Personal…

89

2 Education, Democracy, and Resistance in Theodor Adorno’s Thought2 In their  “preface” to the new edition (1969) of Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno wrote some ponderations related to the diagnosis of that book, which was originally published in 1947: “The development toward total integration identified in the book has been interrupted but not terminated: it threatens to be consummated by means of dictators and wars. Our prognosis regarding the associated lapse from enlightenment into positivism the myth of that which is the case, and finally of the identity of intelligence and hostility to mind, has been overwhelmingly confirmed” (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002, pp. XI–XII). “Total integration” – how Horkheimer and Adorno qualified the new form of social domination based on instrumental rationality  – had not yet taken place; it had been suspended. The question that arises after reading this excerpt from the 1969 preface is as follows: why would total integration still not have reached its goal, maintaining itself as a trend? What did the authors consider this momentary suspension of it? The answer appears in the thesis that this chapter defends, namely, that total integration did not take place because something that had not been diagnosed in 1947 would be available in a society dominated by the late industrial capitalism of the 1960s: potentials of resistance. As mentioned at the beginning, Erziehung (education) appears as one of these resistance potentials – for Adorno, a special potential. Nevertheless, the specificity of the position of education in Adorno’s thought cannot be formulated without understanding the problems linked to Bildung (formation)3 and its history in Germany (Bollenbeck 1994). At the beginning of “Theory of Pseudo-Culture (1959)” (Adorno 1993), Adorno states that the problems of education and formation are not only linked to the pedagogical scope but also to the problem of culture – that is, the crisis of “bourgeois culture” (p. 16).4 In the development of bourgeois society, after its rise, culture would have become something merely “spiritual,” separated from social praxis itself. At the same time, the idea of formation would have been limited merely to describing an education aimed at a practical end, in a very restricted sense, referring to the development of technical knowledge. That conception of formation ​​ would be understood simply as specialization, while “culture” would have become mere erudition or, worse, raw material from which the cultural industry would produce its goods and put them on the market. Opposed to and, at the same time, derived from Bildung, Halbbildung   I developed some of  these arguments in  Educação e resistência em Theodor Adorno (Januário 2020). 3  I prefer to translate Bildung as “formation” rather than “culture.” I developed that question in my book – see (Januário 2020). 4  Unfortunately, it will not be possible to address all the theses about the notion of “culture” and its specific problem, which were presented by Adorno. 2

90

A. Januário

(pseudo-culture/formation) occupies the place that was previously destined for formation, that is, the formation of the “subjective side” (Adorno, 1975. p  66).5 Therefore, pseudo-culture would be precisely what the “alienated spirit” imposed throughout history. According to Adorno, pseudo-culture would have been “socialized” and would not necessarily be linked to a social class. Not only has it become possible for almost all people living in advanced capitalist societies, it has also become one of the constituent elements of advanced capitalist society. However, according to Adorno, the critical option would not be reaffirming something as the formation was, because its emergence is closely linked with the rise of the bourgeois class at modernity. In other words, neither the “current” bourgeoisie nor any other class would support such a “formation.” In Erziehung – wozu? (“Education – for what?”) (Adorno 1971), Adorno states that “the idea of a​​ mode of harmony, as Humboldt still had in mind, between what works socially and people that are formed (ausgebildeten Menschen) cannot be more reached” (Adorno 1971, pp. 118–119).6 However, that bourgeois Bildung (formation) developed an important potential, namely, the idea of ​​autonomy. Although it is no longer possible to aspire to the potential of “bourgeois education” due to the evolution of capitalist society, it is in the field of education that Adorno points out that it would be possible to stimulate exactly this “individual” aspect, that is, Mündigkeit (majority/maturity). The educational field, even in social conditions dominated by the late industrial capitalism, aims to educate, socialize, and prepare individuals to live in society. At the same time, it would be possible to allow, in pedagogical practice, the conditions for the expression of individual autonomy. That expression appears as resistance in late industrial capitalism. Adorno considers that it would be possible to update that potential of autonomy, the core of the notion of Bildung. While potentials for emancipation are not available from the point of view of Critical Theory, since social organization in late industrial capitalism blocks the profound transformation of society, Adorno sees the old notion of Bildung as capable of critically pointing to the limits of Halbbildung.7 The central question is as follows: what is the goal of education? That question was discussed in the debate between Adorno and Helmut Becker in Erziehung – wozu?. According to Adorno, those principles through which the characterization of Bildung was constituted (mainly around the idea of ​​autonomy) were formulated in a way that they could have become principles that would be available to everyone at the moment the bourgeoisie emerged as a revolutionary class. These principles did not need to be questioned in the past (during the ascension of bourgeoisie society);  The idea of ​​Halbbildung is associated with the products of the cultural industry. However, it will not be possible to develop all the theses related to these hypotheses here. 6  The evolution of scientific knowledge expressed in numerous scientific disciplines. In other words, a “complete” formation and the “complete” formation of the “personality” are guidelines that are impossible to carry out in the present time, according to Adorno. 7  That consideration of pseudo-culture (Halbbildung) appears in different essays and empirical research led by Adorno at the Institute for Social Research. 5

The Role of Empirical Research in Theodor W. Adorno’s Thought: A Personal…

91

they were culturally “given.” Therefore, the question “education, for what?” was not an issue; its potential emancipatory meaning was already given in the culture. In the twentieth century, that “given” character of Erziehung is not obvious. Asking “education, for what?” indicates that the goal is no longer given in the current culture. For Adorno, when the meaning of wozu has become lost, it is impossible to “restitute it through the sake [Willen]” (Adorno 1971, p.  106). However, Adorno suggests a goal for education in his writings. One of the most critical events selected by Adorno was the Holocaust, and education can fulfill its role as a potential of resistance in this case: “The claim, that Auschwitz not happen again, is the premier demand of all education” (p. 88). Auschwitz was not a coincidence. The organization of society allowed this kind of event and the tendencies for National Socialism remained similar in 1960s society, and still do today. The objective organization of society, pointed out by Adorno in his diagnosis of the 1960s, ends up requiring as a presupposition a subject adapted to the social situation as it is given through the capitalist organization of society. The dominant rule in this form of organization is uncritical adaptation to the status quo. However, Adorno proposes an education for contradiction and resistance which is part of a common base: Mündigkeit and the consequent development of individual autonomy based on the public clarification of the different issues and social taboos. From the point of view of political organization, Germany was a democracy and as such required autonomous subjects as a presupposition for its legitimacy. Adorno presents his notion of education precisely in that sense. For him, education would not be a kind of “training” (Menschenformung) or only a “transfer of knowledge” (Wissensübermittlung) accumulated by scientific research, although this transfer is included in educational activities. Simple knowledge transfer is not a satisfactory goal for any educational program, or this knowledge would lose its proper meaning. According to Adorno, education consists of “the production of a true conscience” (Herstellung eines richtigen Bewußtseins) (Adorno 1971, p. 107). This statement has several important implications for the purposes of this article. The main one consists precisely of a political implication: “a democracy, that not only works but also operates according to its concept, demands Mündigkeit.” This characterization of democracy requires what Adorno considers a “true conscience.” The potentials of resistance in a capitalist society are in the democratic political organization. However, according to Adorno, that kind of society would require “interested people” that can influence “the education as education for contradiction and resistance.” For Adorno, “an effective democracy only can be imagined in a society where the individuals are mature (mündigen Menschen) ” (Adorno 1971, p. 107). In the connection between democracy and Mündigkeit, Adorno finds the ground on which his proposal for an education for resistance can be established. The link between democracy and Mündigkeit is so close that whoever defends ideals against Mündigkeit is an anti-democrat, which means that the opposite is also correct: whoever defends the democratic organization of society necessarily ends up defending the demand that people be able to make conscious decisions independently. However, according to Adorno, to speak about Mündigkeit is “too abstract” (Adorno 1971, p. 108). Education by itself is not capable of modifying the social

92

A. Januário

structure as a whole. Adorno’s proposal for an “education for contradiction and resistance” relies on education for Mündigkeit in the Enlightenment movement’s sense and occupies a central position in the diagnosis of the 1950s and 1960s. In the debate that closes the book Erziehung zur Mündigkeit, Adorno begins by stating that “in a democracy,” “Mündigkeit seems self-evident.” To be “more precise,” says Adorno, it is possible to resort to Kant’s famous essay, “Answering the question: What is Enlightenment,” in which Kant defines Mündigkeit by positioning its opposite, Unmündigkeit (self-imposed immaturity). Adorno points out that the famous phrase “enlightenment is the exit of men from their self-blaming immaturity” is true when its cause is not the “lack of understanding [Mangel des Verstandes]” but the lack of resolution and courage (Mut) to make use of one’s own understanding. It is precisely at this point that Mündigkeit raises the notion of autonomy defended in Adorno’s texts on education (Januário 2020; Schneewind 1998). Although this program of enlightenment belongs to the end of the eighteenth century, Adorno argues that “this program of Kant, which even with the greatest ill will [bösesten Willen] could not be reproached as something that lacks clarity, still seems to me to be extraordinarily current” (Adorno 1971, p. 133). With regard to the obliviousness to the rise of Nazism in Germany, Adorno affirms: “This refers immediately to democratic pedagogy” (Adorno, 1971, p. 24), which requires clarification of the reasons why a process of “forgetting” the past would be underway in Germany. It is this aspect of clarification that brings with it the possibility for individuals to reflect and decide with much more certainty about the given conditions. It allows the clarification of certain processes that could be obscured by the social situation. The objective is clarifying those principles on which the rise of Nazism was based and how they are still in operation in “current society.” The elaboration of the past would take place through a democratic pedagogy and enlightenment, which should be aimed at the interlocutors of the antisemites, “making them aware (bewüsst zu machen) of the mechanisms that rise to racial prejudice” (Adorno, 1971, p. 27). The elaboration of the past as clarification would mean an inflection toward the subject, reinforcing his self-awareness through the idea of democratic pedagogy. These aspects of clarification, employed by Adorno in the period of the 1960s, are also present in the text “Erziehung nach Auschwitz” (“Education after Auschwitz”) (Adorno 1971). At one point in the text, Adorno states that openly discussing the “configuration of politics” means, at the same time, making the mechanisms of political power expressly “clear.” For him, political education should be transformed into “sociology,” that is, to present and “clarify” the play of social forces that underlie the “surface of political forms” (Adorno, 1971, p. 27). Again, this form of enlightenment can reinforce self-awareness and individual judgment. Both the clarification and the notion of Bildung are related to Adorno’s more general consideration of bourgeois subjectivity. Although domination has reached such a degree that it intends to annul individual autonomy, Adorno does not advocate a complete abandonment of bourgeois subjectivity. An example of this position can be seen with the very concept of Bildung, which also allows us to glimpse potentials that, in this social organization of late industrial capitalism, appear as resistance.

The Role of Empirical Research in Theodor W. Adorno’s Thought: A Personal…

93

Returning to the debate on Erziehung zur Mündigkeit, Adorno resorts to Kant’s text to continue presenting his arguments. For him, Kant provided a negative answer to the question “Do we currently live in an enlightened age?.” Kant’s is emphatic: “No, but we certainly live in an age of enlightenment [Zeitalter der Aufklärung].” With this answer, Kant gave a “dynamic” character to the category of enlightenment. However, if this question were asked “today,” it would be difficult to ensure that because of “the unimaginable pressure on people” (Adorno, 1971, p. 144). This unimaginable pressure is surely the one expressed in that tendency toward total integration: The reason is evidently the social contradiction. The social organization [gesellschaftliche Einrichtung] in which we live continues to be heteronomous, that is, no one can really exist in today’s society according to their own determinations. While this is happening, that society forms people [Menschen] through innumerable channels of mediating instances, in such a way that they absorb and accept everything in terms of this heteronomous configuration, which has deviated from itself. That situation reaches the institutions, and reaches the controversy about political education and other similar subjects. (Adorno, 1971, p. 144)

Social organization plays a determined role in the adaptation of subjects to capitalist society. It tends to shape the individuals through innumerable channels. In the social situation in which individuals find themselves in late industrial capitalism, an education which is concerned with achieving Mündigkeit must be focused on contradiction and resistance, that is, it must be focused on aspects that are against the tendency to total integration: I would say, even at the risk of you reproaching me for being a philosopher, which in fact I am, that the figure in which majority [Mündigkeit] takes shape today, which cannot simply be presupposed because, first of all, it would have to be produced in everyone, in everywhere, that also the only effective realization of Mündigkeit is in this: some people, who are concerned about it, influence with all their energies that education would be an education for the contradiction [Widerspruch] and for the resistance [Widerstand]. (Adorno 1971, p. 145)

Despite the heteronomous configuration of a capitalist society, democracy allows support of the defense of Mündigkeit. However, in contemporary society, Mündigkeit is not merely presupposed; on the contrary, what is pointed out in a contemporary diagnosis is that there is a tendency toward total integration. This does not mean, as we have seen, that there is no concrete possibility of resisting social domination. Resistance and contradiction are prefigured as a possibility for the concrete realization of Mündigkeit.

References Adorno, Theodor. 1969. Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie. Neuwied/Berlin: Hermann-­ Luchterhand Verlag. Adorno, Theodor W. 1971. Erziehung zur Mündigkeit: Vorträge und Gespräche mit Hellmut Becker 1959–1969, ed. Gerd Kadelbach. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1975. Gesselschaftstheorie und Kulturkritik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

94

A. Januário

———. 1993. Theory of Pseudo-Culture (1959). Telos. Critical Theory of the Contemporary 95 (Spring): 15–38. ———. 2003. Schuld und Abwehr. Eine qualitative Analyse zum Gruppenexperiment. In Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, vol. 9.2, 121–324. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Anger, Hans. 1960. Probleme der deutschen Universität: Bericht über eine Erhebung unter Professoren und Dozenten. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Bollenbeck, Georg. 1994. Bildung und Kultur: Glanz und Elend eines deutschen Deutungsmusters. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Habermas, Jürgen. 1961. Student und Politik : eine soziologische Untersuchung zum politischen Bewusstsein Frankfurter Studenten. Neuwied am Rhein: Luchterhand. ———. 1969. Protestbewegung und Hochschulreform. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1984. Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Trans. Thomas A. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, Jürgen, L. von Friedeburg, C. Oehler, and F. Weltz. 1961. Student und Politik. Eine soziologische Untersuchung zum politischen Bewußtsein Frankfurter Studenten. Neuwied/ Berlin: Luchterhand. Horkheimer, Max. 1952. Ein Bericht über die Feier seiner Wiedereröffnung, seine Geschichte und seine Arbeiten. Frankfurt am Main: Institut für Sozialforschung. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W.  Adorno. 2002. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hullot-Kentor, R. 1989. Back to Adorno. Telos. Critical Theory of the Contemporary 81 (Fall). Institut für Sozialforschung. 1999. Forschungsarbeiten. Mitteilungen. Heft 10/September 1999. Jaerisch, Ursula. 1975. Sind Arbeiter Autoritär? Zur Methodenkritik Polit. Psychologie. Studien Zur Gesellschaftstheorie. Frankfurt am Main; Köln: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. ———. 2020. Educação e resistência em Theodor Adorno. São Paulo: Edições Loyola. Mangold, Werner, 1960. Gegenstand und Methode des Gruppendiskussionsverfahrens. In Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie, vol. 9. Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. O’Connor, Brian. 2004. Adorno’s Negative Dialectic: Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality. Cambridge: MIT. Pollock, Friedrich. 1955. Gruppenexperiment. Ein Studienbericht. In Frankfurt Beiträge zur Soziologie, vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Schneewind, Jerome B. 1998. The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sommer, M. 2016. Das Konzept einer negativen Dialektik. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Teschner, Manfred. 1968. Politik und Gesellschaft im Unterricht: Eine soziologische Analyse der politischen Bildung an hessischen Gymnasien. Frankfurt Beiträge zur Soziologie. Vol. 21. Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Thyen, Anke. 1989. Negative Dialektik Und Erfahrung: Zur Rationalität des Nichtidentischen Bei Adorno. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. von Friedeburg, Ludwig. 1989. Bildungsreform in Deutschland: Geschichte und gesellschaftlicher Widerspruch. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Adriano Januário  studied Philosophy, and received his PhD from the University of Campinas. He did a research internship at the Humboldt Universität of Berlin between 2014 and 2015. His postdoctoral research was conducted at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap) with a research internship at the Institute for Social Research (IfS) in Frankfurt am Main (2017–2018). He published the book Education and Resistance in Theodor W.  Adorno (Loyola, 2020).

Part V

Max Horkheimer Archive

Working on Cultural Memory: The Literary Estate of Max Horkheimer in the Frankfurt University Library Gunzelin Schmid Noerr

On the occasion of the digital activation of the online portal for the literary estate of Max Horkheimer,1 I would like to report on my previous work processing these materials and combine this with reflections on the archive as cultural memory. To help me visualize the corresponding external processes once again, I interviewed some people and looked through selected files in the university library and in the Institute for City History in Frankfurt. While reading some of the documents, I was able to remember myself as someone else; I returned to – in my imagination or, once again, in reality – the once familiar places and watched myself plan and carry out activities that in reality had long since been completed. I experienced (even if only in a small way) what it is like to become “historical to oneself” – an expression that my teacher Alfred Schmidt liked to use and which, in a broader sense, also corresponds to the self-understanding of Critical Theory, which was grounded in the awareness of its historical situation. From this experience, one can see that memory – as Jan Assmann has theorized on various occasions – has three dimensions: an individual one, it contains what one remembers personally; a communicative one, what contemporary witnesses remember and what they tell others about it; and a cultural one, what is handed down in

 The digitized reproduction can be found on the website of the university library of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main at URL: http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/horkheimer. 1

This chapter is a translation of Schmid Noerr, Gunzelin. 2015. “Arbeit am kulturellen Gedächtnis: Der Nachlass Max Horkheimers in der Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main.” Zeitschrift für Kritische Theorie, 40/41, pp. 186–195. G. S. Noerr (*) Hochschule Niederrhein, Mönchengladbach, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_7

97

98

G. S. Noerr

symbolic media and is part of our collective self-image. In this report, I would like to explore the question of the extent to which the archive functions as cultural memory. The documents reveal that, in Horkheimer’s own view, the core of his material legacy to the city of Frankfurt initially consisted less in his manuscripts and letters than in his book collection. The first draft of a donation agreement bears the date of February 14, 1956 – his 61st birthday. This was 3 years after the end of his rectorship and 3 years before his early retirement. He formulated a few conditions for his gift, one of which was that he could reverse it if political conditions in Germany darkened again. Horkheimer was never able to completely free himself from this basic fear of a possible “fascicization” of the democratic state (as it was later called in student circles). In this respect, the widespread assumption that he established himself all too quickly in restorative postwar Germany is incorrect. A decade later, in September 1966, the then director of the library, Clemens Köttelwesch, traveled to Montagnola near Lugano, where Horkheimer had since moved, to take a look at the future bequest. In the same year, the city of Frankfurt officially accepted the donation by magistrate’s resolution, incidentally without the clause, which the city administration did not want to accept. In his report on this visit to the Office for Science, Art and National Education, Köttelwesch was impressed by the rare complete editions he had seen, especially of French philosophers of the eighteenth century but also of more recent editions such as a complete collection of Karl Kraus’s Die Fackel. In addition, he reported that Horkheimer had said in conversation that he would also leave his archive of numerous, partly unpublished manuscripts and letters to the Frankfurt library. The same applied to the books, manuscripts, and materials of Friedrich Pollock. Pollock died in 1970, Horkheimer in July 1973. A few months later, in October 1973, the legal representative of the Horkheimer Foundation approached the library to arrange the actual transfer of the books and materials. This was then carried out in 1974. The 1975 annual report of the city and university library mentions that Mr. Friesenhahn was engaged in cataloguing the estate. Friesenhahn was a retired senior librarian who had formerly worked in the German Library and who had since spent 2 to 3 hours a day in the mornings in the Horkheimer Archive, then situated on the first mezzanine floor of the Frankfurt library, then overlooking Zeppelinallee, actively filling his retirement by taking inventory of Horkheimer’s letters. The directors in office after Köttelwesch, Klaus Dieter Lehmann, and Wilhelm R. Schmidt, as well as the head of the manuscript department at the time, Gerhardt Powitz, created the organizational framework conditions, stable in the long term, for the development of this and other Frankfurt scholars’ archives. In December 1977, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) approved a research assistant position for the further indexing of the archival holdings, which I took up in March 1978 through the mediation of Alfred Schmidt, Horkheimer’s literary executor. I had completed my rather extensive dissertation with him in 1977, and he obviously expected me to have enough staying power for the forthcoming editing work. In fact, I needed it, because the cataloguing and editing work lasted until 1995  – more than 18  years. Both the ordering and

Working on Cultural Memory: The Literary Estate of Max Horkheimer in the Frankfurt…

99

cataloguing of the archive and the editing work were regularly supported by library staff. The annual report of 1979 mentions a separate working group that dealt with the inventory; according to my recollection, there were about ten people over the years. The extraordinarily extensive inventory comprises more than 200,000 sheets of (often double-sided) letters, manuscripts, and other materials. It was made accessible to the scientific public in 1984, after 11 years of archival processing. About half of the Horkheimer-Pollock Archive consists of letters, primarily from the 1930s to the 1960s. The core holdings include the correspondence between Horkheimer and Pollock, as well as with collaborators of the (temporarily emigrated) Institute for Social Research: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Henryk Grossmann, Leo Löwenthal, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Neumann, Karl-August Wittfogel, and many others. The other half of the double estate contains collections of manuscripts and materials, including, notably, those from the institute’s work with the research projects on anti-Semitism, authoritarianism, and prejudice that it had been carrying out since the 1930s, as well as tape recordings, photographs, newspaper clippings, and documents. The construction of such an archive requires meticulous and lengthy work. What were once open-ended learning processes, effects on other people, and confrontations with those who think similarly or differently have found expression here in an almost incalculable abundance of paper, in scribbles that are difficult to read, in corrections and corrections of corrections, in the detritus of writerly productivity, and in material that was collected and filed away for occasions and purposes that are now unknown. Many sheets  – of poor quality from the 1930s and 1940s  – have become brittle from paper acid and are disintegrating around the edges. Film from old adhesive strips has long since peeled away from the glue. Photos are yellowed. One must not imagine the work of archiving is mere filing. In fact, in the case of a disorderly beginning, references to content must also be reconstructed from the very outset. This requires open interpretations, i.e., interpretations that do not stand in the way of further interpretations but rather make them possible in the first place. The order to be created is a reconstruction of the meaning hidden behind the diversity of the material. The archivist – and then, even more so, the editor – must classify, for example, isolated correction sheets into hierarchies of text drafts, of separated and adopted text parts. He must identify individual pages or whole treatises to assign them to an author, a period of time, or a factual context. Or he has to guess at the intention which once moved the author to collect certain materials; did they support his views, or did he regard them as symptoms of a view contrary to his own, worthy of his opposition? The answers to such questions may depend on the formation of the schemes of order, which, in turn, affect the possibility of further work with the material. Archives are not an end in themselves. Beyond their functions to collect and preserve, they have two main tasks. First, they are the indispensable prerequisite for estate editions, critical complete editions, or historical-critical editions. Second, they are sites of research, where answers to the most diverse questions of theoretical history are sought. This involves not only the work of the respective author, the reconstruction of the preconditions, developmental stages, and reception

100

G. S. Noerr

consequences of theoretical concepts but also more removed discourse formations. It is the often richly branching corridors that lead to or away from the formations of thought elaborated in the work that need to be constructed. Thus, the archive is more than just a material and institutionalized special case of everyday understanding. In everyday interaction we understand statements and events by interpreting them against the background of our previous understanding in relation to changed, new contexts. In this process, personal memory ensures the individual’s need for identity and continuity. In contrast, the archive is a form of memory that outlasts personal death and thus enables linkages far beyond personal and communicative memory. It becomes part of the cultural memory that helps to satisfy the need for social identity and continuity of experiences and forms of thought in the current of historical change and also against the resistance of collective repression. Archives – in the broadest sense – arise wherever anything at all is recorded in any medium and stored permanently. At the inception of written cultures, archives served state administration. In contrast, historical archives, which preserve something in order to serve historical knowledge, have only been in use since the end of the eighteenth century. Archives can be assigned the same metaphor as Critical Theory once used in its self-designation during emigration, a “message in a bottle” to unknown future addressees. The link to past thought that has coagulated into writing is a culturally indispensable but precarious undertaking. Arthur Schopenhauer drew attention to this difficulty: “thoughts reduced to paper are generally nothing more than the footprints of a man walking in the sand. It is true that we see the path he has taken; but to know what he saw on the way, we must use our own eyes” (Schopenhauer [1851] 2000: 555). Accordingly, written accounts do not actually convey knowledge directly but, at best, mark stopping points for such knowledge. With the death of an author, even if his writings are preserved, a piece of the intelligibility of his thinking also disappears. His life contexts, his open questions, and drafted answers ceaselessly melt away. What was originally part of a communicative exchange becomes an object of external appropriation. “To be dead is,” in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre, “to become prey to the living. That means therefore that a person who tries to grasp the meaning of his future death is obliged to discover himself to be the future prey of others” (Sartre 2018: 678). In this respect, the publication of the archive, especially digitally, is an ambivalent thing. On the one hand, it removes organizational barriers to its use, which may encourage “looting” by less scrupulous recipients, but on the other hand, it reveals, at least potentially, the living people and circumstances behind the works. This can help to make this booty, if not snatched away, a little bulkier and more indigestible for those who come after. Dealing with tradition can basically fall into two opposing extremes – traditionalism and traditionlessness. In traditionalism, the past is codified, consecrated, and ritualized. In traditionlessness, on the other hand, ignorance and a failure to recognize what has been handed down become the prevailing attitudes. In modernity, which was precipitated not least by the idea of perpetual progress for the better, traditionalism is generally rather marginal and requires

Working on Cultural Memory: The Literary Estate of Max Horkheimer in the Frankfurt… 101

special justification. It becomes a matter for specialists and professional custodians of lore such as historians, collectors, librarians, archivists, editors, museum staff, preservationists, canonists, etc. They stock and guard their treasuries, where the lore is preserved and, to a lesser extent, exhibited. Popular opinion associates this work primarily with one particular substance: dust. This view comes from the perspective of passionate housewives or househusbands and cleaning managers, but in truth there is no more dust in archives than in, say, offices or railway carriages. The alleged dust of the archive is rather a metaphor for history that has become tiresome in the face of the questionable pipe dream of an ever-new tabula rasa. Traditionalism or forgetfulness of tradition, monument or dustbin – at least that makes a difference in the end. But one is certainly not a sensible alternative to the other, for what these two forms of reaction have in common is that they thereby withdraw themselves from critical analysis and examination. In contrast, a self-­ reflexive attitude is closely related to a productive, present- and future-oriented engagement with tradition. Incidentally, this also applies to the treatment of the “tradition” of Critical Theory itself. By inviting an emotionally impregnated commitment to a great cause, it has also provoked an overidentification in some and a no less exaggerated repulsion in others. We see something similar in the unresolved parental relationships of adolescents. Instead, an “adult” approach to the tradition of Critical Theory involves a critical recognition of its achievements. Adorno repeatedly dealt with such a dialectic of tradition and its “certain negation” in relation to literature, theater, music, and the visual arts. Because he was particularly interested in the historical-social content of the works, he found it intolerable to reproduce their traditional form independently of the respective state of the “historico-philosophical sundial” (Adorno 1991, p.  46; see also Adorno 1992a: 269), as he attributed this, for example, to the musical traditionalists of modern neoclassicism. But he also distanced himself just as resolutely from a secretly economically determined ignorance of tradition: “What does not prove socially useful to the market here and now is not valid and is forgotten. Even if one dies, it is as good as if he had never been, and he is as absolutely replaceable as anything functional” (Adorno 1992b, p.  76). Instead, he was concerned with “a behavior that raises tradition to consciousness without bowing to it.” “What is alive in works is to be sought within them; for layers that were concealed in earlier phases and only manifest themselves when others die and fall away” (p. 79). Adorno made the relationship to tradition a paradox by stating apodictically: “Tradition can only return in that which inexorably denies itself to it” (p. 82). Whether this postulate is ultimately tenable or represents an exaggeration that leads into aporia is not – fortunately – for archivists to judge. They must, however, decide what, of the countless written manifestations, they should preserve and thus make part of cultural memory. Archivists create an important prerequisite for what Adorno demanded, namely, neither to ignore tradition nor to adopt it with faith in authority but instead to get to the bottom of the historical conditions of culture. In addition to the general work of preservation and indexing, there is then the further decision of whether and to what extent a cultural heritage remains in the

102

G. S. Noerr

realm of the only latently or potentially accessible or occupies a recognized place in contemporary culture: whether it belongs, according to a designation by Aleida Assmann, to the “cultural archive” or to the “cultural canon.” While the “cultural archive” (or “memory store”) consists of the totality of what is preserved as material culture, the much more narrowly defined “cultural canon” (or “functional memory”) consists of what is (or is to be) appropriated by the present – the “classics,” so to speak. The decision as to whether something is archive or canon is not made by archivists alone, but also by them. Now, with the possibility of digitizing the cultural archive, something new is obviously coming into play that goes far beyond the mere technical change of the storage medium. It is part of a profound structural change, comparable at least to the upheavals in the wake of the invention of printing in the fifteenth century. Digitization democratizes, as it were, the decision as to whether something moves from the cultural archive into the cultural canon. The traditional stock tends to become available to all interested parties and can also become the subject of public discourse in a completely new form. The two components of cultural memory  – “archive” and “canon” – become more mutually permeable. This is by no means intended to lead to a general celebration of the digital society. It is also obvious that the advantages of digital information transfer are accompanied by considerable threats to personal rights and democracy. Technical progress threatens to undermine both individual freedom and public social life. For this very reason, however, it is important to strengthen and make use of the progressive aspects of digital technologies. What is productive about culture is, not least, its critical potential, its ability to transcend that which derives its legitimacy merely from the fact of its existence. “There is,” says Horkheimer, “no cultural study without cultural criticism, because criticism is the truth of culture itself” (Horkheimer 1989 [1950], p. 17). Historical consciousness, as cultural memory, acquires a crucially important significance for Horkheimer within the framework of his critical materialism. According to materialist insight, the individual and cultural longing for happiness and justice is under the dictate of death. This affects not only the individual but ultimately the entire human species. This is the starting point for every effort to create a better future. Horkheimer’s materialism  – in contrast to that of Marx-Engels – builds on the metaphysical mourning of the recognition of human finitude. A possible progress for the better does not justify the sufferings of previous generations – an “idea which,” as Horkheimer wrote in a letter to Adorno, “I only wondered that those bearded fathers were so far from” (Horkheimer 1996, p. 50). “No future heals any more that which has happened to humans who have passed away (…). In the middle of this immeasurable indifference [of natural history], only human consciousness can be the place in which suffered injustice is sublated, the only instance which is not satisfied” (Horkheimer 2005 [1935], pp. 18–19). This is the central task of historiography. Against this background, it may become clear how Horkheimer himself would have viewed projects such as the archiving of estates, the edition of his writings, and

Working on Cultural Memory: The Literary Estate of Max Horkheimer in the Frankfurt… 103

now also the digital portal. He would not have legitimized them in the sense of codifying a doctrine but as documenting a historical stage of theory formation, and that means the preservation and enrichment of cultural memory for the purpose of understanding the present.

References Adorno, Theodor W. 1991 [1957]. On Lyric Poetry and Society. In: Adorno, Th. W. Notes to Literature. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1992a [1961]. Trying to Understand Endgame. In: Adorno, Th. W. Notes to Literature. Vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1992b. On Tradition. Telos. December, 1992, pp. 75–82. Horkheimer, Max. 1989, Korreferat zu Rothacker’s Probleme und Methoden der Kulturanthropologie (1950). In: Horkheimer, M. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 13: p.17. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer. ——— 1996. Letter to Adorno of 11.6.1949. In: Horkheimer, M. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 18. pp. 49–51 Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer. ———. 2005. On Bergson’s Metaphysics of Time [1934]. Radical Philosophy. n. 131 (May/June 2005): pp. 9–19. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2018. Being and Nothingness. New York: Washington Square Press. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 2000 [1851]. Parerga und Paralipomena. Short Philosophical Essays. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr studied philosophy and social sciences in Munich and Frankfurt am Main. Together with Alfred Schmidt, he edited Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften und Briefe (Collected Writings and Letters) at S. Fischer Verlag. From 1978 to 1996, he was the director of the Max Horkheimer Archive in Frankfurt. After professorships in Dortmund and Darmstadt, he taught from 2002 to 2016 as a professor of social philosophy and ethics at the University of Applied Sciences in Mönchengladbach  

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence between Max Horkheimer and Juliette Favez Olivier Voirol

By reading the texts published by the authors of Critical Theory, one discovers a synthetic theoretical construction disclosed by an elaborate conceptual language.1 Critical Theory thus presents itself to the given reader by means a complete and “finished portrait” so to speak. As such, multiple aspects of the process of theorization implied by the finished conceptual construction are shunned by these clear-cut elaborations. This “finite” result is what social philosophy primarily considers the content of the “finite” theory and its concepts, without giving much attention to the rough practices and hesitant activities of theorization. However, as Charles Taylor points out, following an idea already formulated by Charles S. Peirce (Taylor 1985; Peirce [1907] 1934), social theory is as important in its “finite” dimension as in its practices of elaboration – in its “doing” – in order to fully grasp its hesitant and often contingent paths of elaboration. What is true for any practice of theorization in social theory is also true for Critical Theory. Perhaps even more so, since it was elaborated in the midst of a singular social and historical experience – marked by persecution and exile – forcing its authors to systematically reflect on the conditions of their own “theoretical doing” and obliging them to permanently rethink and remake the theorization process according to the sociohistorical experience they were undergoing. Exile necessarily implies a disruption of the framework of research and theorization and therefore cannot but affect it. Above all, Critical Theory was mainly elaborated  I would like to thank Levon Pedrazzini for his proofreading and counsel in the writing of the English version of this text. 1

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence Between Max Horkheimer and Juliette Favez O. Voirol (*) Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_8

105

106

O. Voirol

based on its practice of social research thanks to the “interdisciplinary materialism” (Bonß 1993; Gangl 1986; Honneth 1993; Horkheimer 1993a [1931]; Voirol 2012) from which it proceeds, articulating social research and social philosophy (Abromeit 2011; Schmidt 1974, 1986,  1993). Such anchoring of theory in social research makes theorization partly dependent on the development of sociological inquiries. I would like to address this question of the material part of theory by focusing on certain aspects of theorizing activity, of which the archives of Critical Theory – and more particularly those of Max Horkheimer – offer a privileged view behind the scenes of the text. Seen from the archives’ perspective, theoretical construction appears in its contingencies and its practical difficulties, in its concrete trials and tribulations, as much as it can be seen in the context of its effective and required ongoing elaboration – thus including its material aspect. By examining the theory from this perspective, a series of elements that have been erased from the surface of the “finished” theory emerge: difficulties of and obstacles to the research, temporal or financial constraints, administrative complications, abandoned paths or hypotheses, discarded data, and also several research activities made by the dexterous touch of social inquiry, without which theoretical work would remain a dead letter. Only archival work makes it possible to carry out this work of revealing what the “finished” theoretical constructions conceal. As one dives into the archives, starting from the “ready-made” theory that can be read on the surface of texts and concepts, what suddenly appear are the underground practices of theorization and the craftsmanship of Critical Theory, with all their diverse activities, their “modi operandi” and practical materialities. In order to address this question, I will focus on a specific period in the history of Critical Theory, namely, the IfS’s exile in Geneva in the early 1930s, which preceded the American exile by a few years (Abensour 1977). Using archival research, I will examine this period in Switzerland focusing on the correspondence between Max Horkheimer and Juliette Favez – secretary of the IfS from 1932 and then director of the Geneva branch between 1938 and 1940. I will first review the political context of the IfS’s exile in Geneva between 1931 and 1935 and then identify elements of the extensive and prolonged correspondence between Max Horkheimer and Juliette Favez, which potentially will contribute to my discussion of the issue of the “material part of theory.”

1 The First Exile of the IfS Only a few weeks after Hitler came to power in January 1933, Max Horkheimer was banned from teaching by the Nazis, thereby losing his position as a professor of social philosophy at the University of Frankfurt a few months later, in April. He was, in fact, one of the first academic victims of the anti-Semitic policies of National Socialism, along with Paul Tillich, Karl Mannheim, and Ugo Sinzheimer. The house in which he lived with Friedrich Pollock on the heights of Frankfurt, in Kronberg im Taunus, was searched and expropriated. As for the IfS, of which Horkheimer had

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence…

107

been the director since 1931, it was requisitioned by the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) and used by the Hitler Youth organization. Between February and April of 1933, Horkheimer continued to teach at Frankfurt University, ready to flee at the slightest threat. In reality, he was already living in Switzerland and “had spent most of 1932 in Geneva” (Jay 1973, p. 29). The IfS had succeeded in setting up its headquarters in the city in the course of 1932, and it was from Geneva that Horkheimer made short trips to Germany, traveling by car and not by train in order to escape police controls at the railroad border posts. “During February, the last month of the winter semester, he suspended his lectures on logic to speak on the question of freedom, which was indeed becoming more questionable with each passing day. In March he slipped across the border to Switzerland, just as the Institut was being closed down for ‘tendencies hostile to the state’” (Jay 1973, p. 29). Meanwhile, several IfS me Wiggershaus mbers such as Hilde Weiss and Karl Otto Wittfogel were encountering serious problems at the border, the latter being arrested and interned in a concentration camp for 9 months, escaping death only thanks to the tireless efforts of his wife Olga Lang, who succeeded in mobilizing the intellectual community on his behalf. There is no doubt that the IfS members would have faced concentration camps, leading to an almost certain death, had they not managed to escape the Nazis (Jay 1973: p. 29; Wiggershaus 1994: p. 128).

1.1 The Political Context of an Exile The IfS’s choice of Geneva as its first place of exile is not coincidental nor is it simply related to the fact that Switzerland, being spared by fascism, seemed to be an ideal exile destination. Above all, it was the IfS’s research on labor, the working class, and employees that led its members to develop a close collaboration with the International Labour Organization (ILO), founded in 1919 and headquartered in Geneva alongside the League of Nations, in the district of the city housing international institutions (Ghebali 1989; International Labor Organization n.d.). The contacts established by Friedrich Pollock and Erich Fromm with its director Albert Thomas (1878–1932), whose interest in empirical research on labor and the working class was profound, provided the IfS with an institutional framework. This enabled analysis of the empirical data on the German working class gathered by Erich Fromm and Hilde Weiss – the first IfS research conducted under Horkheimer’s direction (Fromm 1984; Bonß 1984; Weiss and Garz 2006). Partly because of this research (Löwenthal 1987), IfS members became aware of the low level of progressive political consciousness among a significant part of the German working class and petty bourgeoisie, therefore bringing to the fore the presence of a dangerous vulnerability to authoritarianism (Fromm 1984; Horkheimer 1934; Marcus and Tar 1984). Long before the Nazis came to power, the IfS felt the need to search for exile destinations and to open other branches abroad. Geneva (along with the Netherlands and, later, Paris, London, and New York) initially presented the most promising solution. The ILO offered an ideal framework for research

108

O. Voirol

and reflection on labor and its institutions, harboring sociologists, psychologists, economists, and lawyers, in accord with the interdisciplinary and theoretical spirit of the institute. In January 1931, Horkheimer’s inaugural lecture as director of the IfS  – entitled “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research” – evokes this collaboration with the ILO in Geneva. He states this cooperation after having specified the role of social philosophy in its relations with social research: “we will have to consult extensively with expert specialists. (…) It will be important, furthermore, to compile and evaluate documents not available in book form. A branch office of our Institute will be opened in Geneva in order to facilitate the scholarly evaluation of the sociologically important material contained in the rich archives of the International Labor Office. Mr. Thomas, the director of the ILO, greeted our plan with approval, and has most cordially promised his cooperation” (Horkheimer 1993a [1931], pp. 13–14). At the same time, Geneva provided an international setting that allowed the institute’s members to develop contacts with other countries and other social realities in a rather “cosmopolitan” space (Meyer 2013; Kott and Droux 2013). Members joined Geneva gradually: Herbert Marcuse as early as 1932, Leo Löwenthal and Friedrich Pollock the following year. As Germany sank into Nazi barbarism in 1933, many IfS members were in Geneva, continuing their research under new conditions, temporarily sheltered from the threat of Nazi persecution. However, their situation remained precarious, as Leo Löwenthal testifies in his autobiographical account: We were not too sure about our situation in Switzerland. (…) You have to imagine our situation in Geneva. Only Horkheimer had an unlimited residency permit, so only he could have a home with all his furniture there. Pollock, Marcuse, and I could not do this; we had to keep our libraries and furniture in a bonded warehouse. We remained visitors. We had only tourist visas, and every few weeks or so we had to go across the border to Bellegarde and reenter with a new visa. And there was much more. We often found that Jewish emigrants were scrutinized closely, and in their cases regulations were enforced most strictly. We took this as an indication that fascism would eventually spread to all of Europe; at that time we still did not anticipate a war. (Löwenthal 1987, p. 30)

Probably thanks to its strong liberal heritage in the wake of the 1848 Constitution, Switzerland seemed to be partly protected from a heavy thrust toward fascist authoritarianism, without being entirely spared from the phenomenon (Wolf 1969). However, after the financial crisis of 1929, the tensions between labor and capital increased considerably, and from 1932 onward, the economic situation deteriorated, leading to several demonstrations and strikes. In Geneva, the left managed to favorably occupy the social and political terrain: the period of “Red Geneva” began when the left won the 1932 elections, leading to a cantonal government with a leftist and extreme left majority. This political situation was socially underpinned by a high number of demonstrations, blockades, and worker strikes (Rey 1978; Grounauer 1975). On the other side, “the economic crisis, the nationalist context, the rise of Italian fascism in the late 1920s, and especially Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 led to the emergence of a multitude of Frontist movements in Switzerland, beginning in late

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence…

109

1932 and in the years that followed, with a peak during the ‘Spring of the Fronts’ in 1933” (Gaffino 2013: p. 843; Joseph 1975). These tensions culminated in November 1932 in Geneva, the epicenter of class conflicts in Switzerland, when at the end of an anti-fascist demonstration against a rally of the fascist “Union Nationale” under the leadership of George Oltramare, the militia army fired on the workers’ demonstration, leaving 13 dead and dozens injured. This remains a unique event in Swiss history, as the only time that the militia army fired it happened to be against the working class of its own population. Following this brutal repression, it was not the fascist leader who was imprisoned; the socialist deputy Léon Nicole, a key figure of “Red Geneva,” was indicted for riots and sentenced to 6 months prison by the court – a sentence which epitomizes the anti-socialist repressive climate of the time (see Batou 2012). Therefore, Switzerland was not spared the rise of a threatening fascist far right, even if these movements remained relatively weak in comparison to the international situation. The Geneva-based Union Nationale (1932–1938), whose explicit aim was to lead a fascist revolution, had at best some 1,000 members, ardent admirers of Hitler and Mussolini. The attitude of the “classical” bourgeois right was particularly disturbing; their marked hostility to the working class, aversion to socialism, and fear of communism motivated a sympathy for fascism. The years during which the members of the IfS stayed in Geneva corresponded with this tense “Red Geneva” period, to the rise of fascist movements in Switzerland, and to these inconstancies on the part of the bourgeois right. From their location at rue de Lausanne 91 (see Fig. 1), at the crossroads of the popular Pâquis district and the very cosmopolitan district of international Geneva, not far from the locations of demonstrations and strikes, the IfS members could not fail to notice this universe of political tensions.

1.2 Social Research and Social Philosophy In Geneva, the IfS continued the empirical research it had begun in Germany on the question of authority and authoritarianism, examining the processes of its formation within the family. By crossing the contributions of Freudian psychoanalysis and historical materialism, the idea was to analyze the way in which the new configurations of capitalism, particularly since the economic crisis of 1929, affected the structures of socialization, and in particular the family, considered to be a “small society” in which social subjects begin their existence along with the self-formation (Fromm 1970a, 1970b [1932b]; Funk 2000). The question was to examine to what extent the impact of growing unemployment and the decomposition of traditional family structures under the pressure of modernization opened up possibilities that contributed to the formation of a mature individual or, conversely, to the formation of a vulnerable individual, to the rise of authoritarianism, and to the decline of democratic commitment. A remarkable sociological study on mass unemployment made in Marienthal, a small town in the suburbs of Vienna whose population became unemployed after the closure of the textile factory on which it depended, seemed to

110

O. Voirol

Fig. 1  Building of the offices of the Institut für Sozialforschung rue de Lausanne 91, Geneva, 1932–1937, officially known as “Bureau de l’Institut de recherches sociales de l’Université de Francfort”

indicate the latter. In the struggle for survival, half of the inhabitants sank into despair and apathy; less than a fifth of them still hoped and continued their social and political engagement (Jahoda et al. 2002 [1933]; Fleck 1990).

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence…

111

In connection with this research on family, other studies were undertaken regarding the transformations of culture, and especially the future of working-class culture, which was impacted by the reduction of the working day thanks to class struggles and the emergence of the growing phenomenon of free time, enabled by the structures of capital (Sternheim 1932; Marcuse 1937). For a research institute whose initial project was rooted in Marxism, the effort to understand the transformations of capitalism and the future of economic planning in the post-financial crisis remained a major axis of investigation (Migdal 1981; Pollock 1932; Lenhard 2019). Surprising as it may seem, the only social research really carried out within the framework of this collective interdisciplinary research was in Switzerland during the institute’s exile in Geneva, on the relationship to authority, family, and sexuality in adolescents – a social inquiry based on questionnaires distributed to more than 1000 adolescents in large cities across the country (Lazarsfeld and Leichter 1987 [1936]). Moreover, Horkheimer and his colleagues had embarked on a long-term program reviving the so-called social philosophy associated with Hegel and Marx, whose point of reference was not the individual  – contrary to liberal philosophy  – but “social formations” (Horkheimer 1993b [1932]). In a similar Hegelian spirit (Hegel was seen by Horkheimer as the last thinker to have succeeded in articulating empiricism and philosophy, science and metaphysics), the project of Critical Theory consisted in taking on, from top to bottom, a reconstruction of social philosophy hinged to an interdisciplinary materialism. In order to produce a critique based on the concept of a “whole” society, the perspective of a “social totality” was to be construed through the synthetic articulation of different contributions in specific scientific disciplines (political economics, social psychology, cultural criticism), under the aegis of social philosophy (Abromeit 2011; Voirol 2012). Horkheimer’s attention to both sociology and philosophy, to the empirical and the metaphysical, is reflected in Dämmerung (Horkheimer 1934; Horkheimer 1978 [1934]), published under the pseudonym Heinrich Regius by Oprecht and Hebling in Zürich (Stahlberger 1970). Through the enmeshment of poetical and speculative aphorisms, Horkheimer depicts social situations in order to elicit socioeconomic questions regarding issues of class and social structure. He also reflects on capitalism’s mutations, thereby proposing a clear view of its inherent violence and the distress it generates in human beings. Through sociological sketches, he tries to grasp the “spirit of the times” by situating himself not outside or above these depicted situations but within them – like the philosopher he criticizes in the aphorism “Sky Scraper,” perched on the top of his tower, contemplating the world yet unable to grasp that which sustains his overhanging view. Although empirical and theoretical work was intensive at the IfS during this period, putting together, among other things, the collective volume Studien über Autorität und Familie (Studies on Authority and the Family) (Horkheimer, Fromm, Marcuse 1936; Institute of Social Research 1937), which was completed in 1935 and published the following year, the stay in Geneva turned out to be the first stage in the institute’s exile. Having been able to develop fruitful contacts in New York, particularly thanks to Fromm’s knowledge and contacts with the psychoanalytical

112

O. Voirol

milieu, the IfS was offered conditions in the United States that were ideal for the pursuit of its research  – a welcoming context certain to shelter the IfS members from the barbaric turmoil hovering in Europe (Marcuse 1945;  Jay  1986, 1993; Wheatland 2004a, b, 2009). Switzerland, situated at the heart of the continent, was not being spared these upheavals. The IfS hence decided to move to New  York, gradually traveling to the metropolis in the course of 1934 – Fromm and Horkheimer in May, Marcuse in July, Pollock and Löwenthal in August. However, all the infrastructure set up during the IfS’s exile in Geneva remained in place, providing an indispensable anchorage for the functioning of the IfS in Europe (see Fig. 2), starting with its secretariat and office at rue de Lausanne 91 and including the links they had established during their stay, notably with the scholarship holders. It would henceforth be the IfS’s main point of contact on the continent, alongside the Parisian antenna, the Felix Alcan publishing house, and the Dutch antenna, which served as treasury and was Horkheimer’s official address up until 1942.

2 The Correspondence Between Max Horkheimer and Juliette Favez Within the previous context, a correspondence between Max Horkheimer and Juliette Favez emerged. The first letter available in the archives was sent to Geneva from New  York by Horkheimer on October 12, 1934 (Nachlass Horkheimer 177.I.6.011). It begins, “Liebe Frau Favez”  – a greeting that was to be repeated regularly thereafter  – to which the latter replied with “Lieber Herr Professor Horkheimer.” The letter indicates from the outset that this exchange follows on from other letters in a correspondence that had probably been initiated when Horkheimer left Geneva for New York in the summer of 1934, although the initial links in the chain appear to have been dispersed. This inspires an initial remark on the material conditions of archives, which provide unique access to these exchanges, and the existence of which ensures that they will not be erased forever. Only traces that have been archived make it possible to revive these exchanges with all their themes and concerns. The loss or absence of a single document in the archive can cause an entire epistolary exchange to be misunderstood. One cannot but be filled with satisfaction and admiration for the considerable amount of effort and work that has been and continues to be done by former archivists and researchers, all of whom are highly dedicated to the conservation and organization of the archive. The absence of this continuous effort would thwart any further investigation. On this material level of archival research, it should be emphasized that the Horkheimer archive is particularly well organized, thanks to the meticulous work done over the years, starting with the edition of Max Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings) by Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr and the Horkheimer Nachlass at the University of Frankfurt  (Horkheimer 1996). The documents are numbered and well classified, and the directory is largely

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence…

113

Fig. 2  Building of the offices of the Institut für Sozialforschung rue de Lausanne 133, Geneva, 1937–1939, officially known as “Bureau de l’Institut de recherches sociales de l’Université de Francfort”

digitized and partially accessible online (Jehn and Knepper 2015). Almost all the epistolary exchanges are typescripts, and so it is rare to have to stare at almost unreadable handwriting as can often be the case in this kind of research.

114

O. Voirol

The correspondence between Juliette Favez and Max Horkheimer is extremely rich, extending from October 1934 to 1942 and consisting of 611 letters. The frequency of the exchanges was sustained, often with few days’ interval, but it could also be more relaxed when the day-to-day affairs of the institute in Geneva were less intense. In any case, within the abundance of the Horkheimer collection, his correspondence with Juliette Favez is one of the most important, lengthy, and sustained, compared to those maintained with his many other regular correspondents, the most important being Adorno, with whom he exchanged thousands of letters between 1927 and 1969 (Adorno and Horkheimer 2004). For example, the correspondence with Erich Fromm includes 129 letters exchanged between 1934 and 1946, and that with Walter Benjamin comprises about 200 letters between 1934 and 1940 (Wiggershaus 1994, 2013). Obviously, the number of letters alone does not indicate the intensity of an exchange, which could have been conducted through other means, like regular discussions or phone calls  (Schmid 2012). However, everything indicates that from the moment Horkheimer left Europe in 1934, his epistolary communications intensified to such an extent that it became an essential part of his activity. His links with a part of the outside world developed henceforth through his correspondence, so much so that his letters are a reliable indicator of his way of working, his preoccupations, his contacts and network, and, finally, his whole relational and intellectual “ecosystem.”

2.1 The Content of the Exchanges The correspondence between Juliette Favez and Max Horkheimer deals with different questions relating to the organization of the IfS’s research activities, the administration of the Geneva branch (which was, in fact, the center of the institute from the end of 1932 to the end of 1934), editing, publication, and also the management of sources and contacts with authors and readers of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal for Social Research) (International Institute of Social Research 1934; Horkheimer 1939). The letters also address less directly professional questions about the present political situation, how to deal with it, and how to help people in difficulty along with different prospects of exile, as had been the case for Horkheimer’s own parents in Bern. In addition to numerous exchanges on current administrative and management issues and these contextual elements, these letters also contain intellectual and philosophical aspects – although the latter do not dominate the mass of exchanges – about substantive theoretical issues. Juliette Favez’s capacity for dealing with these theoretical issues displays her sharp intellectual skills, making her an important partner in the research and editing processes, although her role was largely secretarial and organizational. To be accurate, the content of this correspondence deals primarily with administrative questions related to the functioning of the IfS in Geneva. It concerns the management of funds, the operating costs of the office, questions about the premises (at 91 rue de Lausanne), relations with the ILO and the city of Geneva, as well

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence…

115

as requests for support addressed to the institute by scholars, researchers, and former students. The institute constantly supported a number of people whose situation in Germany was critical and who requested financial support, grants, or funding for their research (or survival, as the situation deteriorated); these requests were often for small sums, which the institute provided in most cases. In addition to this, the management of journals, newspapers, publications, relationships with editing houses, and the management of funds and their distribution were also part of the main Geneva office’s work. At the request of Horkheimer, publications or reprints were sent to various colleagues or scholars from the Geneva office, which thus served as a publishing and distribution post for IfS writings in Europe. The whole process was handled by the Geneva secretariat and thus by Juliette Favez. To these predominantly administrative aspects of the correspondence are added conceptual questions, which can often be found in these exchanges. An important part of these exchanges comprises the theoretical questions which arose from Juliette Favez’s editing work on manuscripts she received. The readings she carried out – in particular on the massive volume of the Studien über Autorität und Familie (the Studies on Authority and Family) – often raised conceptual questions demanding further clarification and reformulation, which led her to regularly address Horkheimer or other IfS researchers like Fromm or Pollock regarding the considered issues. Another part of the Geneva office’s activity concerned research activities and the acquisition of books, articles, journals, and newspapers. Such activities might also involve attending seminars, conferences, or colloquia and even providing accurate reports on the discussions being held there. It is one of the ways in which IfS members kept abreast of ongoing discussions within the European scientific community after having left the old continent. Furthermore, at Horkheimer’s request, Juliette Favez was invited to research and document articles and books and to write detailed reviews on them, such as the complete review she wrote on Sade for Horkheimer. Finally, the exchanges display a more personal dimension, in which the relationships between the members come to the fore. The letters provide instances of Favez caring for people close to her, of sensitive feelings, of impressions on the sociopolitical situation, of nostalgia, of fear and uncertainty regarding nature or the environment, of nature’s beauty, or simple and prosaic statements on the weather both in Geneva and in New  York. These elements are present in a very scattered way throughout a correspondence that shifts between different registers, administrative and intellectual, thereby nourishing the exchanges with an important sensitive dimension (Reinlein 2003). Added to this is an element, as Juliette Favez takes it upon herself to ask a series of personal, even sometimes quite intimate, questions about the life of Horkheimer and his wife: she sometimes manages his medical mail, retrieves some of Maidon Horkheimer’s X-rays, and deploys all her energy to helping Horkheimer’s parents find refuge in Switzerland and to settle in the best conditions. They finally found these in Bern, where they both died at the end of the war. These exchanges are marked by mutual respect, recognition, sometimes even tenderness, and also a significant enthusiasm for the intellectual and editorial activities of the institute. It is obvious from these exchanges that their collaboration,

116

O. Voirol

always characterized by a respectful distance, is the fruit of an intense cooperation during the first years of the IfS in Geneva.

2.2 The Juliette Favez Enigma It is a paradox that someone who, from looking at his correspondence, seems to have been most significant to Horkheimer has remained completely ignored by the history of the institute and, more widely, of Critical Theory. Her material and relational contribution was nevertheless decisive because it intersected with fundamental exchanges concerning the functioning of the institute itself. Moreover, she was the first woman to take on the role of director after Andries Sternheim left Geneva for Amsterdam in 1938. Despite this important role in the history of Critical Theory, it remains difficult to know who Juliette Favez really was, where she – a polyglot, fluent in German, English, and French – came from, and how she came to participate in this intellectual experience. We know nothing about her origins, her activities preceding her work at the IfS, or what she did after her collaboration there. These things can only be discovered using material available in the archives, and only a consequent search of other archives in the cities and institutions she passed through can answer these questions. In the existing literature, Juliette Favez appears only once in Martin Jay’s book The Dialectical Imagination, where reference is made to her role as director of the Geneva branch (Jay 1973: p. 113); she is also mentioned four times in Rolf Wiggershaus’s book The Frankfurt School, where she is described as Horkheimer’s secretary and correspondent, and little more is learned about her (Wiggershaus 1994: p. 177, 248, 253). While research in the archive of Critical Theory tells us little about these matters, it does tell us several notable things about her existence during her collaboration with the IfS. We learn incidentally that she was in Frankfurt in the late 1920s, for she herself refers to the fact. In a letter of October 4, 1938, Favez writes to Horkheimer about a student who wrote to the IfS requesting a copy of its journal and who she says was “not known to us from the period in Frankfurt” (frankfurter Zeiten). From her letters, one can only deduce an excellent knowledge of philosophy and the social sciences, and one can assume that she studied philosophy and sociology in Frankfurt, probably having attended Horkheimer’s and his colleagues’ classes. Between the lines, we also learn that she had a son who was about to begin his schooling in Geneva in 1938 and who was now “fluent in French,” which indicates that he had been socialized in another language until then. A letter dated May 15, 1935, briefly states why a package could not be delivered, explaining that “her man does not understand German” and therefore could not act as mediator (Nachlass Horkheimer 130.VI.7.523). This may indicate that she married a Genevan, the name “Favez” having indeed been associated with the city for generations. In another letter, dated July 22, 1935, we learn that she attended at least some of her classes in the Frankfurt area. A written answer to Horkheimer points out that a certain Frau Madeleine Scherer-Hahn, who was being discussed, used to be her

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence…

117

classmate: “By the way, I went to a class with Madeleine Han, so we’re schoolmates” (Ich bin übrigens mit Madeleine Han in ein Klasse gegangen, wir sind also Schulkameraden). In the same letter, she speaks of her son’s playful activity enabling her to carry out her secretarial work and write the letter: “As you probably know, my son is here at the moment. He has grown up a lot and gives me a lot of pleasure. At the moment, he is on the roof talking to the trains that go by, so I can work quietly” (Wie Sie sicher wissen, ist augenblicklich mein Junge da, der sehr gross geworden ist und mir viel Freude macht. Augenblicklich ist er auf dem Dach und unterhält sich mit den Zügen, die vorbei fahren, so kann ich ruhig arbeiten) (Nachlass Horkheimer 172.I.6.011). Finally, it must be noted that the question of languages is of paramount importance to one of the most enigmatic people in the history of the IfS in view of the role she played in its material aspect and the importance she had for Horkheimer in the 1930s.

2.3 Elements of a Correspondence I would like to examine in detail a series of examples from this correspondence by highlighting the elements that are relevant among the dimensions identified above. In doing so I shall examine the “material part of the theory” to which Juliette Favez rigorously committed herself. The first aspect concerns the important work of documentation, but also of receiving, returning, and sending manuscripts to different places in the world. The Geneva office became a hub where manuscripts arrived and were redistributed to New York, London, Paris, and several cities in Germany. This work, carried out by Juliette Favez, also involved very delicate aspects related to the persecution of members of the IfS and other opponents to Nazism in Germany. In a letter dated March 25, 1935, Horkheimer asks Juliette Favez to get the Völkischer Beobachter2 and send it to him by “the quickest way,” assuming that this German newspaper is easy to find in the Naville kiosks in Geneva: “Dear Mrs. Favez, Please, get me the Völkischer Beobachter of February 19, 1935, and send it here by the quickest way. I believe that you can obtain it without further ado through Naville. With warmest regards” (Liebe Frau Favez, Bitte, besorgen Sie mir den Völkischen Beobachter von 19. Februar 1935 und senden Sie ihn auf dem raschesten Weg hierher. Ich glaube, dass Sie ihm ohne weiteres durch Naville beziehen können. Mit  Founded in Munich in 1887 under the title Münchener Beobachter, the Völkischer Beobachter (unnamed in 1919) was published by Franz-Eher-Verlag (which also edited Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf). It was the press organ of the NSDAP from 1920 to 1945 and was edited by Hitler until 1933  – he wrote numerous articles in the VS until 1922. The Völkischer Beobachter was more interested in agitation than in information and described itself as a “fighting journal” (“Kampfblatt”) in sharp differentiation from the “bourgeois newspapers”. Starting with a circulation of about 8,000 copies, it reached 100,000 copies during the Reichstag elections of 1930, making it as one of the largest newspapers in Germany. The circulation increased enormously with the success of Nazism during the 1930s, reaching 1.7 million copies in 1944. It ceased publication a few days before the German capitulation in April 1945 (Heider 1997; Tavernaro 2004). 2

118

O. Voirol

herzlichem Gruss) (Nachlass Horkheimer 135.VI.7.523). Juliette Favez responds to Horkheimer’s request with a message whose content says a lot about her work, as well as about the context of enduring political repression, particularly linked to the surveillance that the Frankfurters felt and palpably suffered, including during their stay in Switzerland. It also says something about the relations between the different countries (Nazi Germany, Switzerland, France, the United States) at that time and about the way the IfS found itself in the middle of this hellish turmoil. Addressing Horkheimer from Geneva on April 10, 1935, she replied as follows: Thank you for your last letter and card. The offprints, which arrived a week later than the letter, were sent to the addresses indicated as soon as they arrived. Concerning the Völkischer Beobachter that you asked for, it is as follows: Switzerland has banned the import of the Völkischer Beobachter as a countermeasure to Germany’s banning of Swiss newspapers. It is impossible for me and for Naville to obtain a copy that I could send on to you. However, the Völkischer Beobachter is now being sent to the Paris branch, since we cannot obtain it in Switzerland. Now that the subscription fee will be paid by us, Geneva, I have written to Eher [the editor of the journal] to send the desired issue to the Paris branch, where it is needed, since it is missing there. I could have ordered it from Eher directly for the New York Institute, but I did not know whether you would be keen on communicating the name of the N.Y. branch to Germany. However, as the publisher knows the Paris branch, I found the chosen way to be the easiest to get the issue to you. Paris is informed that it will be sent to you as soon as it is received. Ich danke Ihnen für Ihren letzten Brief und die Karte. Die Sonderdrucke, die erst eine Woche später als der Brief eintrafen, wurden sofort als sie ankamen an die angegebenen Adressen geschickt. Mit dem Völkischen Beobachter, um den Sie bitten, hat es folgende Bewandtnis: die Schweiz· hat als Gegenmassnahme, dass Deutschland die Schweizer Zeitungen verbietet, die Einfuhr des Völkischen Beobachters in die Schweiz verboten. Es ist mir und auch Naville unmöglich, eine Nummer zu beschaffen, die ich Ihnen weiterschicken könnte. Der Völkische Beobachter wird aber nun, da wir ihn in der Schweiz nicht beziehen können an die Pariser Zweigstelle geschickt. Ich habe nun, da die Abonnementsgebühr von uns, Genf, bezahlt wird, an Eher geschrieben, dass er die gewünschte Nummer an die Pariser Zweigstelle schickt, wo sie benötigt wird, da sie dort fehlt. Ich hätte sie bei Eher auch direkt für das New Yorker Institut bestellen können, ich wusste aber nicht, ob es Ihnen angenehm ist, wenn der Name der N.Y.  Zweigstelle nach Deutschland mitgeteilt ist. Da der Verlag jedoch die Pariser Zweigstelle kennt, fand ich den gewählten Weg den einfachsten, um Ihnen die Nummer zukommen zu lassen. Paris ist unterrichtet, dass sie Ihnen sofort nach Eingang zugeschickt wird. (Nachlass Horkheimer 134.VI.7.523)

In this reply it is worth noting the tact with which she proceeds in her activity as “post officer” across Europe, keeping in mind the context of persecution and avoiding any maneuver that might enable the Nazi regime to obtain the IfS New York address. This awareness of the danger of the situation, which recurs throughout the correspondence, can also be found in another letter, dated January 9, 1936, where Juliette Favez wonders whether it is wise to bring a certain Karl Dörter – whose brother Willy, a former doctoral student at the IfS, was incarcerated by the Nazi regime – “to 91.” She suggests meeting him somewhere else “where the walls have no ears”: Dear Professor Horkheimer, (…) This morning Mr. Dörter, the brother of our Dörter [Willy], who will probably be released in a few days, called from Mainz and announced his visit for Sunday. He will come to my house, and we shall there be able to discuss everything

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence…

119

in peace. The walls there have no ears, and his visit will not be noticed at all. I don’t know if it would mean anything if he came to 91, but if we do something for “Bub” afterwards, which will certainly become known, it might be better for Mr. D. himself. I will then report to you what I have heard. I, myself, have little hope that “Bub” D. will be able to leave. Lieber Herr Professor Horkheimer, (…) Heute morgen rief Herr Dörter, der Bruder unseres Dörters [Willy], der in diesen Tagen wohl freikommen wird, aus Mainz aus hier an und kündigte seinen Besuch für Sonntag an. Er wird zu mir nach Hause kommen und wir können dann dort in Ruhe alles besprechen. Dort haben die Wände keine Ohren und sein Besuch fällt auch gar nicht auf. Ich weiss zwar nicht, ob es irgend etwas auf sich hätte, wenn er nach 91 käme, aber falls wir nachher, was sicher bekannt werden wird, etwas für “Bub” tun, ist es vielleicht für Herrn D. selbst besser so. Ich werde Ihnen dann berichten, was ich gehört habe. Ich selbst habe wenig Hoffnung, dass “Bub” D. wird verlassen können. (Nachlass Horkheimer 91.VI.7.523)

The case of the Dörter brothers occupies a significant place in the correspondence between Favez and Horkheimer during these years. Willy Dörter was a young researcher who was linked to the IfS in Frankfurt and, being politically active, had been arrested, condemned before a Nazi “people’s court,” and subsequently imprisoned in a concentration camp. His brother Karl wrote to Favez and Horkheimer asking for their help in this complicated situation. His exchanges shed light on the political situation in Germany and the changes taking place in the country, in connection with the quick Nazification of society. In a letter dated November 12, 1934, Juliette Favez reports a conversation she had with him in Geneva during one of his stays: On Friday, Mr. Dörter [Karl] was here, until now he had not been able to pick up my first letter sent to Forbach, it came back after not being picked up within four weeks, yours neither, which is still in Forbach. He had business in Basel and also had to go to Zürich. So, he stopped by in Geneva. (…) Mr. Dörter told us a lot about the mood in Germany, which is increasingly affecting circles that had been best-disposed toward Hitler: an understanding that Hitlerism had brought Germany to the brink of the abyss, a foresight of the collapse of the economy with unforeseeable consequences, discontent and loud grumbling everywhere. (…) The elite of the old S.A. is taken over into the S.S., whose name was mentioned with horror. The people hate and fear them. They were informed about the mistreatment in the concentration camps, but even outside the concentration camps they felt as if they were in a prison and everybody who was halfway reasonable and had not got a job through Hitlerism, grumbled that this state of affairs was unbearable. Am Freitag war Herr Dörter [Karl] hier, der bis jetzt weder meinen ersten nach Forbach gerichteten Brief, der zurückkam, nachdem er innerhalb von vier Wochen nicht abgeholt wurde, noch den Ihren, der noch in Forbach liegt, hatte abholen können. Er hatte geschäftlich in Basel zu tun und musste auch nach Zürich. So kam er in Genf vorbei. (…) Herr Dörter erzählte viel von der Stimmung in Deutschland, die auch die Hitler bestgesinnt gewesenen Kreise immer mehr ergreife: ein Einsehen, dass die Hitlerei D’land an den Abgrund gebracht hat, ein Vorsichsehen des Zugrundegehens der Wirtschaft mit unabsehbaren Folgen, Unzufriedenheit und lautwerdendes Murren überall. (…) Die Elite der alten S.A. wird in die S.S. übernommen, deren Namen man mit Grausen erwähnte. Das Volk hasst und fürchtet sie. Über die Misshandlungen in der Konzentrationslagern sei man unterrichtet, man fühle sich aber auch ausserhalb der Konzentrationslager wie in einem Gefängnis und jeder, der halbwegs vernünftig sei und nicht durch die Hitlerei ein Pöstchen ergattert habe, murrt, dass dieser Zustand unerträglich sei. (Nachlass Horkheimer 175.I.6.011)

120

O. Voirol

The letters describing the political situation in Germany are rich in descriptions of a system of terror that invaded everyday life, breaking down the barriers of civilization one by one. In a letter from Geneva addressed to Horkheimer on January 13, 1937, Willy Dörter describes this political and ideological situation and with his own words formulates in political terms the broad outlines of what will later on be philosophically conceptualized in the “dialectic of enlightenment”: My very personal experiences in Germany specifically pointed to an ideological consolidation of fascism. Experiences with bearers of the practical Marxist movement revealed closed-mindedness and theoretical disorientation. Both showed an increasing dissolution of all those categories grouped around the concept of ‘humanitas’. We are largely accustomed to think through these categories, we have grown up with them. In a very broad sense, one could speak of the ‘dismantling of the human’. One could perhaps put it this way. It has become difficult, I would say almost impossible, to be or to remain a decent human being in Germany, and probably not only in Germany. But the splendor of these categories is revealed precisely by the hatred to which they are subjected and the longing that springs from the awareness of their lack. The question of terror is only a partial question in this context (…). Today, however, I read the following words from a letter of Goethe to Zelter: ‘Let us hold on as much as possible to the spirit in which we came here. We will, with perhaps a few more, be the last of an epoch which will not return as soon’, and I must confess that these sentences seem to me today also to have a more general meaning. Meine ganz persönlichen Erfahrungen in Deutschland speziell deuteten auf eine ideologische Festigung des Faschismus hin. Erfahrungen mit Trägern der praktischen marxistischen Bewegung enthüllten Unaufgeschlossenheit und theoretische Desorientierung. Beide zeigten eine zunehmende Auflösung aller derjenigen Kategorie, die sich um den Begriff der ‘Humanitas’ gruppieren. In diesen Kategorien sind wir weitgehend gewohnt zu denken, mit ihnen sind wir gross geworden. Man könnte in sehr weitem Sinn von einem ‘Abbau des Menschlichen’ reden. Man kann es vielleicht so ausdrücken. Es ist schwer, fast mochte ich sagen unmöglich geworden, in Deutschland ein anständiger Mensch zu sein oder zu bleiben, und wahrscheinlich nicht nur in Deutschland. Aber den Glanz dieser Kategorien enthüllt gerade der Hass, dem sie ausgeliefert sind und die dem Bewußtsein ihres Mangels entspringende Sehnsucht. Die Frage des Terrors ist in diesem Zusammenhang nur eine Teilfrage (…). Ich las heute jedoch die nachstehenden Worte aus einem Brief Goethes an Zelter: ‘Lasst uns soviel wie möglich an der Gesinnung festhalten, in der wir herankamen. Wir werden, mit vielleicht noch Wenigen, die Letzten sein, einer Epoche, die sobald nicht wiederkehrt’, und ich muss gestehen, dass mir diese Sätze heute auch eine Allgemeinere Bedeutung zu haben scheinen. (Nachlass Horkheimer 157.I.6.011)

2.4 Mail Management Another example of the “material part of theory” also concerns this practical organization of the institute’s correspondence, as well as its writings and publications. Juliette Favez asked Horkheimer if he wished to extend the subscription to an animal rights association’s magazine, Le Chien. An enthusiastic answer came a few days later in a letter sent from New York, dated July 2, 1935: “Only in memory of

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence…

121

the good Doy do we want the old journal. You know he is dead, don’t you? Now all our animals in Cronberg are dead. This is already a bit sad” (Schon in dem Gedächtnis an den guten Doy wollen wir die Zeitschrift alten. Sie wissen doch, dass er tot ist? Jetzt sind alle unsere Tiere in Cronberg tot. Das ist schon ein bisschen Traurig) (Nachlass Horkheimer 173.I.6.011). This material dimension of the subscription to an animal magazine and the support given by Horkheimer to an association for animal protection clarifies elements present in Horkheimer’s philosophical texts in regard to the domination of nature, such as the thematization of the misery and mistreatment of animals. In an aphorism from Dämmerung (1934), Horkheimer uses the metaphor of the skyscraper to describe the modern capitalist society we live in: at the very top are the rulers, the “magnates of the trusts of the various capitalist power groups, who rule but fight each other”; then the managers, the liberal professions, “the small magnates,” and the “staff of important collaborators”; the middle classes made up of military men, teachers, “small employees,” “political executors,” “engineers, and office managers”; then “the remnants of small independent existences, the craftsmen, merchants, peasants, and so on”; followed by the proletariat, from the “perpetually unemployed” to the “poor, the old, the sick”; the “coolies of the earth” who are crumbling in misery; and then, at the very bottom, the animals. “Below the spaces where the coolies of the earth are dying by the millions, one would still have to represent the indescribable, unimaginable suffering of the animals, the animal hell in human society, the sweat, the blood, the despair of the animals” (Horkheimer 1934: pp. 81–82). Horkheimer’s awareness of the misery inflicted on animals by human societies, and the domination of nature that underpins it, was acute and was not a purely philosophical gesture divorced from any practice. It was an attitude toward existence and toward animal life, which manifested itself, among other ways, through membership of an animal rights association and subscription to its journal.

2.5 The Materiality of Thinking The third example concerns intellectual work and its materiality. After having received the manuscript of the “Sammelband” (the collective volume Studies on Authority and Family) in order to type it, Juliette Favez wrote to Horkheimer from Geneva in a letter dated June 8, 1935, to confirm receipt. In the letter, she incidentally manifested an obvious enthusiasm for these texts. She wrote these few sentences testifying to the material part of theorization and of the concrete aspects of typewritten thought: As you know, I am also reading the corrections for the volume. I have just finished your essay. How I admire you, what tremendous work has gone into it. I hope I will also be able to work with you again; when I read it, I can see you so clearly in front of me, how you dictated, corrected, and changed until finally everything turned out to your complete satisfaction. That is what makes one happy when one is allowed to work with you, that one

122

O. Voirol

experiences for oneself how you struggle, so to speak, to say the best in the most beautiful form, and that is why one is then also happy with you when everything has turned out in such a way that you are satisfied. Does your current secretary feel the same way or is that typically German? Hopefully it will be true that you will come here next year for a little longer time. If you saw the sky, the lake, the park and the mountains now! Simply indescribably beautiful. I think of you so often. Poor Dr. P. [Pollock] had to leave so soon, too. Of course, when duty calls, everything has to take a back seat, but it would have been nice if he could have enjoyed the early summer here. Wie Sie wissen, lese ich auch die Korrekturen für den Sammelband. Jetzt gerade bin ich mit Ihrem Aufsatz fertig geworden. Wie bewundere ich Sie, welch ungeheuere Arbeit steckt darin. Hoffentlich kann ich auch wieder einmal mit Ihnen arbeiten; beim Lesen sehe ich Sie so genau vor mir, wie Sie diktierten, feilten und änderten bis dann endlich alles zu Ihrer vollkommenen Zufriedenheit ausgefallen war. Das macht einem gerade Freude, wenn man mit Ihnen arbeiten darf, dass man selbst erlebt, wie Sie sozusagen darum ringen, das Beste in der schönsten Form zu sagen und deshalb ist man dann auch mit Ihnen glücklich, wenn alles so ausgefallen ist, dass Sie zufrieden sind. Empfindet Ihre jetzige Sekretärin auch so oder ist das typisch deutsch? Hoffentlich wird es wahr, dass Sie nächstes Jahr für etwas längere Zeit hierher kommen. Wenn Sie jetzt den Himmel, den See, den Park und die Berge sähen! einfach unbeschreiblich schön. Ich denke so oft an Sie. Der arme Dr. P. [Pollock] hat auch so schnell wieder fortgemusst. Natürlich, wenn die Pflicht ruft, dann muss ja alles zurückstehen, aber es wäre doch schön gewesen, wenn er gerade diesen Vorsommer hätte hier geniessen können. (Nachlass Horkheimer 128.VI.7.523)

The body in action, the fingers striking the keys with regular pressure, her sensitive description of this situation allows us to perceive the material dimension of thinking through writing, the rhythm of the voice, the hesitant formulations, and the progressive construction of thought. We see in this passage how much theory is not only an “ideal” process but it is made up of tangible activities anchored in bodies and situations. Furthermore, it is achieved through different tools: the voice, the pencil, the paper, and the machine. This extract also shows us a very “gendered” relationship between Juliette Favez and Max Horkheimer: a secretary and her boss (philosopher) not only involving a caring, listening dimension but also one of power specific to a professional relationship.

3 The Archive of Reconstruction A few concluding remarks should be made about the specificity of archival work in the research on Critical Theory, its history, and the parts of it that are ignored. Unlike other currents of thought that have not been the subject of consistent research in the history of ideas and whose archives have not been methodically organized, Critical Theory has given rise to a great deal of research. Its history is documented; it is known and recognized, at least in its most important themes and periods. An important theoretical, historical, sociological, and philosophical corpus presents this theory and its developments, its different aspects and historical moments, with its authors, research experiences, disputed conceptual issues, and internal and external debates and disputes. All these works of research on Critical Theory may today be

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence…

123

considered an integral part of its corpus, just as are its founding texts, all figuring among its major achievements. Indeed, how could one imagine Critical Theory today without the works of Martin Jay (1973), Rolf Wiggershaus (1994), Susan Buck-Morss (1977), or Alex Demirović (1999) or without the critical reconstructions of Jürgen Habermas (1987) and Axel Honneth (2007), not to mention Seyla Benhabib, Helmut Dubiel, Nancy, Fraser, Douglas Kellner, Stefan Müller-Doohm, Albrecht Wellmer, and many others? And this is to cite only the most canonical contributions that illuminated different aspects of Critical Theory no less than the history of the institute. Thus, engagement in Critical Theory today is inseparable from the making and remaking of its history, thereby reconstructing its possibilities for the present. Archival research on Critical Theory is currently founded in these fertile achievements. Consequently, to materially handle and consult these archives means to strip oneself from any “immaculate” point of view, thereby committing to the complex history of the archive itself whose traces are well organized on the material level (presence and organization of archives) as much as on the semantic level (existence of research and interpretations). By entering the archives, one is therefore far from setting foot on a terra incognita made up of traces (notes, letters, manuscripts, typescripts, press articles, transcriptions, radio recordings, etc.) appearing like hieroglyphs to be deciphered to construct their signifying framework. Consequently, research on Critical Theory is nourished by an organized theoretical and historical narrative from which one cannot be abstracted. It is thus a “ready-made” theory and a history already written. But even if one knows the history of Critical Theory very well in advance, meddling in its archives is always an experience: it is bodily contact with the material paper, the handwritten documents, telegrams, postcards, photographs, typescripts, and recordings, many of which have not been touched for decades, waiting for someone to “wake them up” (Farge 2013; Gumbrecht 2003). From the outset, it is thus a different view and grasp of Critical Theory: one discovers people (like the Dörter brothers) who were never mentioned before, who were relevant to the main actors during a specific period of time only to disappear later on and be forgotten. One discovers concepts and concerns that were salient at a specific period and that have, again, been forgotten. One can find sensitive writings that echo an experience of a past situation or the thread of prolonged exchanges and similar conversations that span several years. Entering an archive is therefore an experience of research characterized by permanent astonishment. When reading letters, for example, at times one discovers a whole new world whose content resists the researcher’s comprehension, without being nevertheless completely unfamiliar  (Link 2017). It is thus the equivalent of a practice that experiences newness through familiarity. Consequently, a question arises regarding the nature of the archival experience of Critical Theory: following the canonical books on the history of Critical Theory already mentioned, are archival researchers condemned to fill in blank pages of this history to complete a picture that is already substantially filled in (although a considerable amount of work remains to be done) or is the archival experience on the threshold of producing novel and updated information? In my view, it is less a

124

O. Voirol

question whether the new research experience can fill an epistemic void, thereby completing an already rich history with elements that have been heretofore neglected (themes, research, places, contacts, people, etc.), than one of whether it changes something in the main picture of Critical Theory or affects its overall structure. I shall here adopt the latter perspective: the research in the archive of Critical Theory – and thus on the past – is not an addition to a grand narrative to which each piece of research would contribute in its own way. It is a contribution to a theoretical reconstruction in the sense that themes and investigations from the past that have been “silenced” for contingent reasons start to speak again at the heart of our present. This allows us to rediscover these themes and to revisit an existing theory. It is in this sense that archival research allows us to carry out a theoretical reconstruction, whose operation consists less in drawing out past elements that respond to the concerns of the present (Habermas 1987[1981]), than in asking different questions of the past, thereby opening the present to other possibilities (Voirol 2022). Unlike the reconstruction of a concept or a theory that starts from the issues of our present time, archival research makes possible a “dialectical reconstruction” (Voirol 2022: pp. 62–65) based on our archival experience of the past: we immerse ourselves in an era – in our case the early 1930s – embracing its difficulties, tensions, preoccupations, and problems. Dealing with correspondence implies experiencing exchanges and conversations, narrated by impressions, people, places, and situations and affected by the possibilities that their contemporary existence encapsulated. Archives connect us with life in its most sensitive and dramatic sense: they awaken voices that have been silenced forever, along with all the issues that animated them. In our case, they bring back the “material part of theory,” simultaneously allowing a “dialectical” reconstruction grounded in the processual experience of research itself. Far from being a mere conceptual or idealistic reconstruction, this dialectical reconstruction operates by means of a sensitivity experienced through contact with the archives. Although this approach is most certainly fraught with an initial knowledge of the “finished” theoretical corpus, it accesses the archive not only by means of this knowledge but also against it, thereby striving to make the archive speak to our present by extracting the words from its entrails. For the current generation working on the history of Critical Theory, archives are now their unique interlocutors (Dirks 2002). Unlike the previous generation of scholars who were able to interact directly with the people they were researching – as it is the case with the members of the so-called second generation who interacted with members of the first, such as Martin Jay, whose manuscripts were discussed with Horkheimer and Pollock  – the current generation must now delve into the archives and other publicly available theoretical works. Archives have become the only way to revive this universe of relationships, thought, and research and to live these manners of thought and social investigation and modes of theoretical writing. Archives have become the only subtext of the known and recognized text of “finished” theory: as partners in discussion and research, brought to life by our experience, they are the material and practical basis for a further reconstruction of a Critical Theory destined to be anchored in its current time.

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence…

125

References Abensour, Miguel. 1977. Une pensée de l'exil. In L'imagination dialectique, ed. Martin Jay, 417–437. Paris: Payot. Abromeit, John. 2011. Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. 2004. Briefwechsel, vol. I: 1927–1937. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main. Batou, Jean. 2012. Quand l’esprit de Genève s’embrase. Au-delà de la fusillade du 9 novembre 1932. Lausanne: Éditions d’En-bas. Bonß, Wolfgang. 1984. Critical Theory and Empirical Social Research: Some Observations. In The Working Class in Weimar Germany. A Psychological and Sociological Study, ed. E. Fromm, 1–30. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1993. The Program of Interdisciplinary Research and the Beginnings of Critical Theory. In On Max Horkheimer. New Perspectives, ed. S. Benhabib, W. Bonß, and J. McCole, 99–126. Cambridge: MIT Press. Buck-Morss, Susan. 1977. The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W.  Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt School. New York: The Free Press. Demirović, Alex. 1999. Der nonkonformistische Intellektuelle. Die Entwicklung der Kritischen Theorie zur Frankfurter Schule. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Dirks, Nicholas B. 2002. Annals of the Archive: Ethnographic Notes on the Sources of History. In From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures, ed. B.K. Axel, 47–65. Durham: Duke University Press. Farge, Arlette. 2013. Le goût de l’archive. Paris: Gallimard. Fleck, Christian. 1990. Rund um “Marienthal”: von den Anfängen der Soziologie in Österreich bis zu ihrer Vertreibung. Wien: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik. Fromm, Erich. 1970a [1932a]. The Method and Purpose of an Analytical Social Psychology. In The Crisis of Psychoanalysis, 110–134. New  York/Chicago/Winston/San Francisco: Rinehart & Holt. ———. 1970b [1932b]. Psychoanalytic Characterology and its relevance for Social Psychology. In The Crisis of Psychoanalysis, 135–158. New  York/Chicago/Winston/San Francisco: Rinehart & Holt. ———. 1984. The Working Class in Weimar Germany, a Psychological and Sociological Study. Trans. B. Weinberger. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. Funk, Rainer. 2000. Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas. An Illustrated Biography. New  York: Continuum. Gaffino, David. 2013. Frontismes et Seconde Guerre mondiale. In Histoire de Bienne, ed. D. Gaffino et R. Lindenegger. Baden: hier + jetzt. Gangl, Manfred. 1986. Le programme interdisciplinaire de l’Institut de recherche sociale sous la direction de Max Horkheimer. Archives de philosophie 49: 205–223. Ghebali, Victor-Yves. 1989. The International Labour Organisation: A Case Study on the Evolution of UN Specialised Agencies. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. Grounauer, Marie-Madeleine. 1975. La Genève rouge de Léon Nicole 1933–1936. Genève: Editions Adversaires. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. 2003. The Powers of Philology: Dynamics of Textual Scholarship. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1987 [1981]. The Theory of Communicative Action: Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Trans. T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. Heider, Angelika. 1997. Völkischer Beobachter. In Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, and Hermann Weiss, 785. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

126

O. Voirol

Honneth, Axel. 1993. Horkheimer's Original Idea: The Sociological Deficit of Critical Theory. In The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, 5–31. Cambridge: The MIT Press. ———. 2007 [2000]. Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Horkheimer, Max [Heinrich Regius] 1934. Dämmerung. Notizen in Deutschland. Zürich: Oprecht & Hebling Verlag. ———. 1939. International Institute of Social Research: A Report on Its History, Aims and Activities 1933–1938. Nachlass Horkheimer, IX 51a.4. ———. 1978 [1934]. Dawn and Decline. Notes 1926–1931 and 1950–1969. Trans. M.  Shaw. New York: The Seabury Press. ———. 1993a [1931]. The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research. In Between Philosophy and Social Science. Selected Early Writings. Ed. M. Horkheimer, trans. G. F. Hunter, M. S. Kramer, and J. Torpey, pp. 1–14. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press. ———. 1993b [1932]. History and Psychology. In Between Philosophy and Social Science. Selected Early Writings. Ed. M. Horkheimer, trans. G. F. Hunter, M. S. Kramer, and J. Torpey, pp. 111–128. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press. ———. 1996. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 1–19. Eds. Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Berlin: Fischer. Horkheimer, Max, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse. 1936. Studien über Autorität und Familie. Forschungsberichte aus dem Institut für Sozialforschung. Lüneburg: zu Klampen Verlag. Institute of Social Research. 1937. Authority and the Family: A Partial Translation of the Investigations by the International Institute of Social Research Published in Autorität und Familie. New  York: Department of Social Welfare, Columbia University. Dept. of Social Science. International Institute of Social Research. 1934. International Institute of Social Research: A Short Description of its History and Aims. Retrieved from New York. International Labor Organization, Archive of the ILO, Geneva. Jahoda, Marie, Lazarsfeld, Paul F. and Zeisel, Hans. 2002. [1933]. Marienthal: The Sociography of an Unemployed Community. London: Routledge. Jay, Martin. 1973. The Dialectical Imagination. A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press. ———. 1986. Permanent Exiles. Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1993. Urban Flights: The Institute of Social Research between Frankfurt and New York. In Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Critique, 10–24. New  York: Routledge. Jehn, Mathias, and Marko Knepper. 2015. Dimensionen der Überlieferung: die Digitalisierung des Nachlasses von Max Horkheimer in der Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg. ABI Technik 35 (1 (April)): 1–9. Joseph, Roger. 1975. L’Union Nationale, 1932–1939: un fascisme en Suisse romande. Neuchâtel: Editions La Baconnière. Kott, Sandrine, and Jacques Droux. 2013. Globalizing Social Rights: The International Labour Organization and Beyond. London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lazarsfeld, Paul F., and Käthe Leichter. 1987 [1936]. Erhebung bei Jugendlichen über Autorität und Familie. In Studien über Autorität und Familie. Forschungsberichte aus dem Institut für Sozialforschung, ed. M.  Horkheimer, E.  Fromm, and H.  Marcuse, 353–415. Lüneburg: zu Klampen Verlag. Lenhard, Phillip. 2019. Friedrich Pollock: Die graue Eminenz der Frankfurter Schule. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence…

127

Link, Fabian. 2017. Korrespondenzen als Daten der Soziologiegeschichte. In Handbuch Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Soziologie, ed. S.  Moebius and A.  Ploder, 165–177. Wiesbaden: Springer. Löwenthal, Leo. 1987. An Unmastered Past. Berkeley: University of California Press. Marcus, Judith T., and Zoltán Tar. 1984. Foundation of the Frankfurt School of Social Research. New-Brunswick: Transaction Books. Marcuse, Herbert. 1937. Über den affirmativen Charakter der Kultur. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 6: 54–94. ———. 1945. Ten Years on Morningside Heights: A Report on the Institute’s History 1934 to 1944. Frankfurt am Main: Institute of Social Research. Meyer, Gregory. 2013. Genève et les organisations internationales: une histoire locale de l’international. Bulletin de la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Genève 43: 86–94. Migdal, Ulrike. 1981. Die Frühgeschichte des Frankfurter Instituts für Sozialforschung. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Nachlass Max Horkheimer, Archivzentrum der Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. Peirce, Charles S. 1934 [1907]. How to Theorize. In Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, 413–422. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Pollock, Friedrich. 1932. Die gegenwärtige Lage des Kapitalismus und die Aussichten einer planwirtschaftlichen Neuordnung. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 1: 8–27. Reinlein, Tanja. 2003. Der Brief als Medium der Empfindsamkeit. Erschriebene Identitäten und Inszenierungspotentiale. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann. Rey, Michel. 1978. Genève 1930–1933. La Révolution de Léon Nicole. Bern-Frankfurt am Main-­ Las Vegas: Peter Lang. Schmid, Irmtraut. 2012. Briefe. In Die archivalischen Quellen. Mit einer Einführung in die Historischen Hilfswissenschaften, Eds. Friedrich Beck und Eckart Henning, 5. Aufl., pp. 125–134. Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau. Schmidt, Alfred. 1974. Zur Idee der Kritischen Theorie. Elemente der Philosophie Max Horkheimers. München: Hanser. ———. 1986. Die ursprüngliche Konzeption der Kritischen Theorie im frühen und mittleren Werk Max Horkheimers. In Die Frankfurter Schule und die Folgen, ed. A. Honneth and A. Wellmer, 89–112. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. ———. 1993. Materialismus zwischen Metaphysik und Positivismus: Max Horkheimers Frühwerk. Darstellung und Kritik. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Stahlberger, Peter. 1970. Der Zürcher Verleger Emil Oprecht und die deutsche politische Emigration, 1933–1945. Zürich: Europa Verlag. Sternheim, Andries. 1932. Zum Problem der Freizeitgestaltung. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 1: 336–355. Tavernaro, Thomas. 2004. Der Verlag Hitlers und der NSDAP.  Die Franz Eher Nachfolger GmbH. Wien: Edition Praesens. Taylor, Charles. 1985. Social Theory as Practice. In Philosophy and Social Sciences. Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, 91–115. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Voirol, Olivier. 2012. Matérialisme interdisciplinaire et critique de la culture. In Les Normes et le possible. Héritage et perspectives de l'École de Francfort. Pierre-François Noppen, Gérard Raulet, Ian Macdonald (cont.), pp. 19–50. Paris: Editions MSH. ———. 2022. Benjamin: critica immanente e ricostruzione dialettica. In Walter Benjamin non finite, ed. Nicola Emery, 123–161. Milano-Udine: Mimesis. Weiss, Hilde, and Detlev Garz. 2006. Hilda Weiss  – Soziologin, Sozialistin, Emigrantin. Ihre Autobiographie aus dem Jahr 1940. Hamburg: Imago Vitae. Wheatland, Thomas. 2004a. Critical Theory on Morningside Heights: From Frankfurt Mandarins to Columbia Sociologists. German. Politics and Society 22, vol. 4: 57–87. ———. 2004b. The Frankfurt School’s Invitation from Columbia University: How the Horkheimer Circle Settled on Morningside Heights. German. Politics and Society 22 (3): 1–32.

128

O. Voirol

———. 2009. The Frankfurt School in Exile. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wiggershaus, Rolf. 1994. The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance. Trans. M. Robertson, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ———. 2013. Max Horkheimer: Unternehmer in Sachen “Kritische Theorie”. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Wolf, Walter. 1969. Faschismus in der Schweiz. Die Geschichte der Frontenbewegungen in der deutschen Schweiz. Zürich: Flamberg Verlag. Olivier Voirol studied social sciences and social philosophy. He is Senior Lecturer at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), Lecturer at the University of Paris-Descartes (France), as well as an associate researcher at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main. He published on recognition theory, social invisibility, culture industry and digital capitalism. His current research deals with the pathologies of the public sphere and the rise of authoritarianism as well as the early history of Critical Theory.  

Not Just Director, Methodologist, or Partner: A Brief History of the Reception of Horkheimer’s Work Paulo Yamawake

Horkheimer was reluctant to republish his works. For instance, during the 1960s, it was not easy to find his Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal for Social Research) writings, even in Germany – the issues were locked in the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research [IfS]) basement for years (Benhabib et  al. 1993, p. 10). The Dialektik der Aufklärung became an “underground classic” (Jay 1976, p. 255) and could be read only in unofficial editions. Decades after the publication of his writings, there was a clearly growing demand for a republication. Why did Horkheimer resist for so long? The main reason is a theoretical one. In accordance with Critical Theory’s founding principle, he maintained that the truth is historical and has a temporal core. In 1968, when at last Horkheimer republished his 1930s essays, he wrote in the preface of the new edition: I have always been convinced that a man should publish only those ideas which he can defend without reservation, and I have therefore hesitated to reissue these long-out-of-print essays from the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. These early philosophical efforts would require a more exact formulation today. More than that, they are dominated by economic and political ideas which no longer have any direct application; to relate them properly to the present situation requires careful reflection. (Horkheimer 1968, 1975a, p. v)

Horkheimer was emphatic and did not want to be misunderstood: the republication of the essays did not suggest that they could interpret the political, economic, social, and theoretical conditions of the 1960s. Hence, this edition has a subtitle: Eine Dokumentation. Horkheimer seemed to be more comfortable if the republication set a temporal limit on the diagnosis within it. And 1 year later, in the preface to the new edition of the Dialektik der Aufklärung, Horkheimer and Adorno wrote something similar:

P. Yamawake (*) Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_9

129

130

P. Yamawake

Dialectic of Enlightenment was published in 1947 by Querido in Amsterdam. The book, which found readers only gradually, has been out of print for some time. We have been induced to reissue it after more than twenty years not only by requests from many sides but by the notion that a few of the ideas in it are timely now and have largely determined our later theoretical writings. (...) We do not stand by everything we said in the book in its original form. That would be incompatible with a theory which attributes a temporal core to truth instead of contrasting truth as something invariable to the movement of history. (Horkheimer and Adorno 1969, p. xi)

It is true that Horkheimer’s writings from the 1930s and the Dialektik der Aufklärung offer us many insights that help us interpret our own time. But if we want to be loyal to the theoretical principles of Critical Theory and to the authors who wrote the book, we must keep to the idea that truth has a temporal core. Hence, the essays and books of the 1930s and 1940s should be read in the context of their contemporary diagnoses. When Horkheimer passed away in 1973, his books, letters, drafts, and writings began to be organized and catalogued, becoming the Max Horkheimer Archive as we know it today (Schmid Noerr 2015). As Schmid Noerr describes, the archive essentially consists of two halves. The first comprises letters, especially with Friedrich Pollock, but also with other IfS members, such as Adorno, Benjamin, Fromm, Löwenthal, and Marcuse. The other half contains the manuscripts and other materials (photos, newspaper clippings, and documents), collected and catalogued. Since 2015, the documents have been digitized and made available online.1 It is not my intention to discuss the history of the Max Horkheimer Archive here, but rather to show how the research within it has facilitated a deeper understanding of Horkheimer’s works, especially those from the 1930s. I argue that the initial interpretations of Horkheimer’s work tended to portray him as the IfS director, who organized and brought the brilliant minds of the early Critical Theory together; the methodologist, who laid the theoretical foundation of the interdisciplinary work of the IfS; and the partner, who wrote the Dialektik der Aufklärung with Adorno. But as research in the archive developed and the volumes of the Gesammelte Schriften were published, it became possible to highlight Horkheimer’s own theory and diagnosis – and his own philosophy.

1 The Director, the Methodologist, the Partner: The Reception of Horkheimer’s Work During the 1970s and the 1980s As John Abromeit describes, Horkheimer’s reception within the Anglo-American circle was eclipsed by that of other writers, such as Adorno and Marcuse (Abromeit 2013, pp. 5–10). There were, however, good reasons for this: after Horkheimer left  Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, “Nachlass Max Horkheimer,” accessed October 15, 2022, https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/archive/horkheimer.html. 1

Not Just Director, Methodologist, or Partner: A Brief History of the Reception…

131

the directorship of the IfS in 1950, he became Rector of the Goethe University Frankfurt and was involved with the institutional reconstruction of West Germany after the war. It is true that his philosophical writings did not completely come to a halt, but he was far less productive than he was in the 1930s. Conversely, the writings and political positions of Adorno and Marcuse became even better known, and not only in intellectual and academic circles. Their best known books were published after the war: Negative Dialektik (Negative Dialectics) (1966) and One-­ Dimensional Man (1964), respectively. The authors and their works were discussed far more widely than Horkheimer’s writings of the 1930s, which at this point had not been republished. At the end of the 1960s, Horkheimer conceded and agreed to a reprint of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, which was published in 1970. After his death in 1973, the cataloging of his writings heralded a new dawn for the reception of Horkheimer’s work. In 1973, Martin Jay published his well-known Dialectical Imagination (Jay 1976), which deals with the institutional and theoretical formation of the IfS and features a short foreword written by Horkheimer himself. Martin Jay’s Dialectical Imagination is a great book, indispensable to anyone who is interested in the history of the IfS and the tradition of Critical Theory. The main character in the book is the IfS itself, rather than Horkheimer. Because of that, what Jay stressed as Horkheimer’s contribution was his crucial role in the institutionalization of the IfS, its day-to-day administration, and its theoretical foundations. Although Jay does point out important highlights of Horkheimer’s diagnosis of the social situation and his philosophical contribution  – which does not only relate to methodological foundations  – the book’s focus on the IfS leads to an emphasis on his roles as director and methodologist. Chapter 1  “The Creation of the Institut für Sozialforschung and Its First  Frankfurt Years” details his participation in the conception of the IfS, together with Friedrich Pollock and Felix Weil. Here, Horkheimer is portrayed as a common link between the future members, even before the foundation of the IfS.  Indeed, every biographical note about a member tells us how he met Horkheimer: old friend, friend of a friend, Hans Cornelius’s student, etc. Then, Jay shows how Horkheimer was “the clear choice to succeed Grünberg” (Jay 1976, p.  24), a young and brilliant leader who took on the direction after the departure of Carl Grünberg. The emphasis here is on his well-known inaugural speech “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute of Social Research,” where he laid the foundations of “interdisciplinary materialism” and his relationship with Marxism and the traditional sciences. In chapter 2 “The Genesis of Critical Theory”, Jay describes Horkheimer’s writings, in which he deals with the theoretical foundation underpinning the institute’s research; he also discusses the relationship between Marxism, philosophy, psychology, empirical research, and the traditional sciences, which he then develops in the following chapters of the book. In chapter 8 “Toward a Philosophy of History: The Critique of the Enlightenment”, Horkheimer’s third role arises: the partner. Jay carefully stresses the partnership between Horkheimer and Adorno during the writing of the Dialektik der Aufklärung

132

P. Yamawake

and tries to understand what influenced each author in the process. But while Adorno kept writing at “his characteristically furious pace” (Jay 1976, p. 256) and became the director and main figure of the IfS after the war and return to Germany, from the 1950s onwards Horkheimer, who had never been a prolific writer, seemed to have even greater difficulty (pp. 254–255). Jay’s highlights could explain why the reception of the Dialektik der Aufklärung inclined toward understanding Adorno’s work more than Horkheimer’s. For this reason, Horkheimer was seen as the partner. In the literature on Adorno, for example, the Dialektik der Aufklärung could be read as a development of Adorno’s work, influenced by Walter Benjamin, as Buck-­ Morss wrote in 1977: For Dialektik der Aufklärung was not a radical departure from Adorno’s earlier methodology. It could in fact be seen as a concrete working out of the idea of “natural history” which he outlined in his 1932 speech. (...) Dialektik der Aufklärung showed just as clearly the influence of Benjamin’s Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen. (Buck-Morss 1977, p. 59)

Although this is not a unanimous interpretation of Adorno’s intellectual development, it was very influential at the time and still is to some degree. But the influence of Buck-Morss’ books shows that the writers on early Critical Theory at the time, even Martin Jay, were not interested directly in Horkheimer’s work. Rather, the interpretation of Horkheimer’s writings was a means to understanding the history of the IfS, early Critical Theory as a whole, the main authors of the 1960s (Adorno and Marcuse, for instance), and even the Marxist tradition (Anderson 1979). That could explain why the roles of director, methodologist, and partner were used to understand Horkheimer. I do not want to suggest that these roles are unjustly ascribed or that they were not crucial to Critical Theory’s history – they certainly are – but to focus solely on them obscures the development of Horkheimer’s own work and contemporary diagnosis. In the early and mid-1980s, these roles seem to be confirmed once again. In 1984, Jay published Marxism and Totality (1984), in which Horkheimer is analyzed within the context of the Marxist tradition. Although here Jay dedicates a whole chapter to understanding Horkheimer himself, the main discussions are methodological, dealing with the interdisciplinary materialism of the 1930s and its relation to Marxism. Wiggershaus’ The Frankfurt School (1986) interpreted Horkheimer in a similar way; he stresses Horkheimer’s roles as director and methodologist when he describes Horkheimer as a “managerial scholar.” Wiggershaus argues that early Critical Theory could be understood as a “school,” which reinforces the designation of these roles for Horkheimer. This is far from being undisputed, but our goal here is to understand how Wiggershaus observes Horkheimer’s role in the “school,” which should have: 1. An institutional framework: the Institute of Social Research, which existed throughout the whole period, even if at times only in a fragmentary way

Not Just Director, Methodologist, or Partner: A Brief History of the Reception…

133

2. A charismatic intellectual personality filled with confidence in a new theoretical program, able and willing to co-operate with qualified scholars: Max Horkheimer as a “managerial scholar” who constantly reminded his associates of the fact that they belonged to a chosen few in whose hands the further development of “theory” lay 3. A manifesto: Horkheimer’s inaugural lecture of 1931 on The Present State of Social Philosophy and the Tasks Facing an Institute of Social Research which later accounts of the institute always harked back to and which Horkheimer himself repeatedly referred to, for example, at the ceremony in Frankfurt in 1951 when the Institute reopened 4. A new paradigm: the “materialist” or “critical theory” of the general process of social existence (…) 5. A journal and other outlets for publishing the school’s research work: the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (…) (Wiggershaus 1995, p. 2) Throughout the book, the role as a “managerial scholar” becomes Wiggershaus’ main interpretation of Horkheimer’s participation in the intellectual environment of the IfS.  This is because the focus is on the IfS and, consequently, Horkheimer’s works should be read if one is to understand the intellectual history of the institute. However, Wiggershaus later wrote a biography of Horkheimer, the subtitle of which is “Unternehmer in Sachen ‘Kritische Theorie’” (“An Entrepreneur of Critical Theory”) (Wiggershaus 2013), which once again reinforces the idea of Horkheimer as director and methodologist. However, when Wiggershaus draws attention to the Dialektik der Aufklärung, he carefully describes the role the book played in each author’s development.2 For him the Dialektik der Aufklärung is seen as a paradigm which guides Critical Theory as a whole, not limited to Horkheimer and Adorno, but including Marcuse, and not only during the 1940s, but up until 1969 with the publication of Negative Dialektik – a “continuation of Dialectic of Enlightenment” (Wiggershaus 1995, p 259). Again, this opinion is not unanimously expressed in the literature about Adorno’s work, but the point here is to observe that this interpretation suggests that the Dialektik der Aufklärung is more important to Adorno’s work than to Horkheimer’s. Wiggershaus argues that Horkheimer also has his own Dialektik der Aufklärung in Eclipse of Reason (Horkheimer 1947), which was conceived in the same context and environment of the 1940s.

 See, for example, “From the point of view of Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s development as theoreticians, it is clear that for Adorno starting work on the dialectics book represented the moment at which he was able to begin writing a protohistory of idealism, of immanence, of the self-satisfied intellect and of domineering subjectivity, in contrast to Benjamin’s project of writing a protohistory of the nineteenth century. (…) For Horkheimer, on the other hand, it was a question of placing his critiques of positivism and bourgeois anthropology in a broader context, and pursuing the implications of his critique of the repression of religious problems and his acceptance of Benjamin’s critique of merciless progress” (Wiggershaus 1995, p. 326). 2

134

P. Yamawake

2 After the Collected Writings and the Max Horkheimer Archive Research: Horkheimer as the Philosopher After Jay and Wiggershaus’ crucial books about early Critical Theory and the IfS as a whole and after years of work by Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr in publishing Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften between 1985 and 1996 (Horkheimer, 1985-1996), it is possible to observe a burgeoning in the reception of Horkheimer’s work, especially in the Anglo-American philosophical environment. From here on, the literature leaned toward a more independent interpretation of Horkheimer’s work, unrestricted by a broader context, whether that be the IfS or another author. The general tendency to interpret Horkheimer’s roles as director, methodologist, and partner came into question. But this dawn was not sudden. There were already some interpretations that tried to read Horkheimer’s work and development, as well as his own philosophy. For example, Alfred Schmidt (1977) tried to emphasize the philosophical content of Horkheimer’s work by understanding the well-known influence on it of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. Gerd-Walter Küsters (1980) understood that Horkheimer’s work in the 1930s tended to be more methodological, but he shows how productive and insightful his ideas were during the 1920s and how, according to Küsters, he became increasingly dehistoricized until the Dialektik der Aufklärung. Michiel Korthals (1985) tried to understand how Horkheimer criticized Lukács’ philosophy and its relationship to the theoretical foundations of interdisciplinary materialism. However, these readings were restricted to the German language. Although more books were being dedicated to Horkheimer’s legacy, it does not mean that the main interpretations of his roles as director, methodologist, and partner were less important. For example, in 1993 two translated works of importance for the English-speaking Critical Theory circle were published together: Between Philosophy and Social Science (Horkheimer 1993a), a collection of Horkheimer’s essays from the 1930s, and On Max Horkheimer (Benhabib et al. 1993), a collection of essays on Horkheimer’s work by great thinkers such as Alfred Schmidt, Jürgen Habermas, Wolfgang Bonß, Thomas McCarthy, Herbert Schnädelbach, Axel Honneth, and Martin Jay, among others. The books recognized that Horkheimer’s work was at that time insufficiently studied. In the introduction to On Max Horkheimer, the editors wrote: Horkheimer has been relatively neglected in the scholarly literature. He has sometimes been seen through the lens of journalistic memory, appearing as a historical witness whose lifetime spanned the rise and fall of Weimar Republic, the rise and fall of National Socialism and the Third Reich, the mass annihilation of the European Jews and post war reconstruction in the Federal Republic. Frequently, he has been assigned an organizational rather than a theoretical role in his capacity as the “dictatorial” director of the Institute. And many interpreters have implied that, compared to Adorno, he was always the lesser theorist, overshadowed in the collaboration with his brilliant junior colleague. (Benhabib et  al. 1993, p. 10)

Not Just Director, Methodologist, or Partner: A Brief History of the Reception…

135

In the introduction to Between Philosophy and Social Science, G. Frederick Hunter (1993) presents an interpretation of the reception of Horkheimer’s work similar to that which I present here. He wrote: Until recently Max Horkheimer’s image was twofold: on the one hand, imperious director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research after 1931; on the other, theoretical junior partner to his colleague Theodor Adorno. In the last decade, however, there has been a notable shift in image, in Germany especially, as attention has focused on the remarkable early work collected in this volume. (p. vii)

Hunter describes Horkheimer’s image as that of the “imperious director” and the “theoretical junior partner.” I suggest that the literature until that point understood Horkheimer’s roles to be both director and methodologist, rather than “imperious director.” This is because the interpretations in the 1970s did not deny Horkheimer’s theoretical work: Jay and Wiggershaus, for instance, have a deep understanding of Horkheimer’s writings and context and were careful enough to register it in their books and articles. I argue that because their focus was the IfS and not Horkheimer directly, they tended to emphasize the methodological writings of Horkheimer, such as his inaugural speech and “Critical and Traditional Theory” (Horkheimer 1975b), although they did not totally neglect his other writings. In fact, these methodological writings are essential to the development of Critical Theory and the collective work of the IfS, but the focus on it and the emphasis on Adorno and Marcuse’s work tends to mean that Horkheimer’s theoretical contributions – such as Horkheimer’s diagnosis of bourgeois philosophy and society – are overlooked. In fact, Hunter, and McCole, Benhabib and Bonß, the editors of On Max Horkheimer (Benhabib et  al. 1993), witnessed the beginning of the shift in Horkheimer’s reception. The archival work by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr and Alfred Schmidt, which commenced publication in 1985, played a crucial role in this change: an organized set of volumes of Horkheimer’s works in the Gesammelte Schriften – letters, essays, journals, and drafts – was now available to scholars who wanted to understand the development of his work. Habermas’s influence also drew attention to Horkheimer’s early work, especially his writings published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, but the shift was not yet obvious. For example, in part one of On Max Horkheimer, of the six essays dedicated to his writings from the 1930s, at least three discuss the methodological issues of Horkheimer’s work. A much clearer movement can be seen with John Abromeit’s Max Horkheimer and the Foundation of the Frankfurt School (2013). For Abromeit, the reception of Horkheimer’s work is still too bound to the Dialektik der Aufklärung paradigm. That is why one of his purposes is “to recover and reconstruct the model of ‘early Critical Theory’ that largely coincides but is not identical with Horkheimer’s own thought from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s” (p. 2) and why he limited his book to the period up to 1941, before the Dialektik der Aufklärung and the Critique of Instrumental Reason paradigm. But that does not mean Abromeit considers Horkheimer solely as the methodologist who organized the intellectual environment and the interdisciplinary collaboration, nor as the imperious director, but also as a philosopher who examined the main contemporary concerns of his own time.

136

P. Yamawake

When Abromeit studied Horkheimer’s writings of the 1930s, he analytically distinguished four concepts that guided his interpretation: • Materialism, the main methodological foundation of the IfS • The anthropology of the bourgeois epoch, the diagnosis of capitalism, and the psychosocial character of the Western capitalistic societies • The dialectical logic, the development of his materialist analysis of the bourgeois philosophy • State capitalism, which shows his philosophical interpretation of the political and economic conditions in the late 1930s and which seals the end of the paradigm of interdisciplinary materialism What is innovative here is that he considers Horkheimer’s methodological writings not as the sole or the main contribution to his works in the 1930s, but as one important concept among others. This manifold interpretation is only possible due to research carried out in the Max Horkheimer Archive. Maintaining Horkheimer’s premise that the truth has a temporal core, Abromeit understood that the 1930s writings related to those of the 1920s: Although Horkheimer continued to test, refine, and develop his Critical Theory through his collaborative work at the Institute, its basic contours were already in place when he became the director in 1931. (Abromeit 2013, p. 85)

By researching Horkheimer’s texts, essays, aphorisms, and university courses from the 1920s, Abromeit expressed the strong thesis that Horkheimer had already developed a critique of consciousness philosophy, even in the terms set by Habermas. For our focus here, Abromeit’s research on the archives perceived that the main interests and theoretical development of Horkheimer’s philosophy already existed before he developed them in the 1930s, instead of reading the 1930s writings as a means to understanding Critical Theory as a whole or as a prequel to the Dialektik der Aufklärung. Special attention should be given to the Anthropology of the Bourgeois Epoch, the main concept of Horkheimer’s diagnosis in the 1930s, developed in the essay “Egoism and Freedom Movements” (Horkheimer 1993b, pp.  50–110). For Abromeit, it is especially important to highlight this concept among the other three, “in order to counter this widespread neglect of what must be seen as the core of Horkheimer’s Critical Theory in the 1930s” (Abromeit 2013). This is not only the core of Horkheimer’s philosophy, but also a “concrete carrying out” which informs the substance of his theory during the 1930s. Abromeit writes: With his concept of the anthropology of the bourgeois epoch, Horkheimer moves beyond and carries out concretely – at least in a preliminary way – his more general methodological and philosophical reflections. This concept captures Horkheimer’s understanding of the dominant character structure in modern capitalist societies and thus forms an essential part of the substance of his Critical Theory in the 1930s. (p. 249)

When one investigates Horkheimer’s writings of the mid- to late 1920s and early 1930s, as Abromeit carefully did, one can understand why this concept is so important. In the essay “Egoism and Freedom Movements” (Horkheimer 1993b,

Not Just Director, Methodologist, or Partner: A Brief History of the Reception…

137

pp. 50–110), where Horkheimer developed the concept, he investigated four leaders of mass movements at the dawn of the bourgeoisie: Savonarola, Cola di Rienzo, the Reformers (Luther and Calvin), and Robespierre. For Abromeit, this is the result of his former reflections on the history of bourgeois philosophy (Abromeit 2013, chapter 4 “The Beginnings of a Critical Theory of Contemporary Society”), the Marxist tradition (chapter 4), and the Freudian mass psychology together with Erich Fromm (chapter 5  “Horkheimer’s Integration of Psychoanalysis into His Theory of Contemporary Society”). These themes appeared systematically in Horkheimer’s essays, courses, and aphorisms even before he became the director of the IfS. Furthermore, the concept is not only a historical investigation, but also shows that neither mass movements nor the character traits of fascism are new: they have roots in the beginnings of bourgeois society. This investigation is not only a historical one, but also a diagnosis of his own time – it is both synchronic and diachronic, as Abromeit writes (Abromeit 2013, p. 16; p. 85). The same substantial core was the foundation of the main contribution of the IfS: Studies on Authority and Family (Horkheimer 2005). Then, Horkheimer’s participation in the book was not only administrative – i.e., establishing the methodological underpinnings or managing the authors  – but also philosophical: the investigation of the social character of European capitalistic societies, their origins, and the role of the patriarchal family in their formation. The tendency to focus on the substantial core of Horkheimer’s philosophy is also followed by Katia Genel in her Autorité et émancipation: Horkheimer et la Théorie critique (Genel 2013). Genel draws attention to the concept of authority as the main concern in Horkheimer’s writings from the late 1920s to the 1940s. Her thesis is that the investigation into authority pervades all Horkheimer’s theory, from his more methodological essays and the organization of interdisciplinary materialism until the empirical research and historical analysis of bourgeois society. Then, the critique of authority became a critique of the knowledge produced and of Western rationality as Horkheimer developed his Critique of Instrumental Reason and the Dialektik der Aufklärung in the 1940s. Genel worked together with Julia Christ to produce a work that has a very important role in undermining the idea that Horkheimer was Adorno’s “theoretical junior partner” (Hunter 1993, p. vii). They published Le laboratoire de la Dialectique de la raison (Horkheimer and Adorno 2013), a translation into French of a selection from Volume 12 of Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften. The book helps to understand the contributions of both Horkheimer and Adorno in the Dialektik der Aufklärung. Genel and Christ’s work on the volume, published in 1985, is not merely a translation: they draw attention to the drafts and conversations that gave birth to the book and expanded its audience. They also coined a great expression to describe the intellectual conversations of Horkheimer and Adorno: a laboratory of the Dialektik der Aufklärung. *** This more recent chapter in the reception of Horkheimer’s work, led by Abromeit and Genel, shows that Horkheimer is not the “imperious director,” the “theoretical junior partner” (Hunter 1993, p. vii), or the methodologist of the Frankfurt School.

138

P. Yamawake

Although these roles can be true to some extent, the main argument here is that they obscure the substantial core of Horkheimer’s work and his own philosophy. Abromeit and Genel do not agree on every point, but they have something in common: they understand Horkheimer as an independent and original philosopher in his own right, and not just as a means to understanding the history of the IfS, the theoretical foundations of Critical Theory as whole, or the writing partnership with Adorno. This change in how Horkheimer’s work was received was only made possible by the organization of the Max Horkheimer Archive, the publication of the Gesammelte Schriften, and the research environment within the tradition of Critical Theory. The idea is not to rebuild Horkheimer’s projects. Probably, as Horkheimer himself wrote, he would not “stand by everything [he] said in the book in its original form” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1969). It is true that by researching his work and bringing forth its core, one could gain great insights through which to reflect on the contemporary situation of the sciences, society, and the crisis of democracy, but we must remember why Horkheimer was so careful about the republication of his works: Critical Theory “attributes a temporal core to truth instead of contrasting truth as something invariable to the movement of history” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1969, p. xi).

References Abromeit, John. 2013. Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anderson, Perry. 1979. Considerations on Western Marxism. London: Verso. Benhabib, Seyla, Wolfgang Bonß, and John McCole. 1993. On Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Buck-Morss, Susan. 1977. The Origin of Negative Dialectics. New York: Free Press. Genel, Katia. 2013. Autorité et émancipation. Horkheimer et la Théorie critique. Paris: Payot. Horkheimer, Max. 1947. The Eclipse of Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1968. Kritische Theorie: Eine Dokumentation. Vol. 1–2. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. ———. 1975a. Critical Theory: Selected Essays, ed. Stanley Aronowitz, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell. New York: Continuum Publishing Corporation. ———. 1975b. Critical and Traditional Theory. In Critical Theory: Selected Essays, 188–245. New York: Continuum. ———. 1985-1996. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 1–19, eds. Alfred Schmidt, and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. ———. 1993a. Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings. Trans. G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer, and John Torpey. Cambridge; London: The MIT Press. ———. 1993b. Egoism and Freedom Movements: On the Anthropology of the Bourgeois Era. In Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings, 50–110. Cambridge: The MIT Press. ———, ed. 2005. Studien über Autorität und Familie: Forschungsberichte aus dem Institut für Sozialforschung. Springe: zu Klampen Verlag. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W.  Adorno. 1969. Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.

Not Just Director, Methodologist, or Partner: A Brief History of the Reception…

139

Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. 2013. Le Laboratoire de La Dialectique de La Raison: Discussions, Notes, et Fragments Inédits. Trans. Katia Genel and Julia Christ. Paris: Éditions de la maison des sciences de l’homme. Hunter, G.  Frederick. 1993. Introduction. In Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings, vii–x. Cambridge; London: The MIT Press. Jay, Martin. 1976. Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923–1950. London: Heinemann. ———. 1984. Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press. Korthals, Michiel. 1985. Die Kritische Gesellschaftstheorie Des Frühen Horkheimer: Mißverständnisse Über Das Verhältnis von Horkheimer, Lukács Und Dem Positivismus. Zeitschrift Für Soziologie. 14 (4) (August 1985): 315–329. Küsters, Gerd-Walter. 1980. Der Kritikbegriff der kritischen Theorie Max Horkheimers: historisch-­ systematische Untersuchung zur Theoriegeschichte. Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag. Schmid Noerr, Gunzelin. 2015. Arbeit am kulturellen Gedächtnis. Der Nachlass Max Horkheimers in der Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt Am Main. In Zeitschrift für Kritische Theorie. Vol. 40/41 (2015): pp 186–95. Springe: zu Klampen Verlag. Translated in this volume as “Working on Cultural Memory. The Estate of Max Horkheimer in the Frankfurt University Library”. Schmidt, Alfred. 1977. Drei Studien Über Materialismus. In Schopenhauer. Horkheimer. Glücksproblem. Munich: Hanser. Wiggershaus, Rolf. 1995. The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance. Trans. Michael Robertson. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press. ———. 2013. Max Horkheimer: Unternehmer in Sachen “Kritische Theorie”. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Paulo Yamawake received a doctorate degree in Philosophy from the University of Campinas (Brazil) and conducted a research internship at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main.  

Part VI

Theodor W. Adorno Archive

Adorno and the Archiving of the Ephemeral: Remarks on His Literary Estate Michael Schwarz

Adorno’s death came as a surprise. He had hardly thought about his estate. Ensuring the continuity of his papers was not on the agenda in the turbulent times around 1968. Although absorbed by student and university matters, Theodor W.  Adorno was not deterred from pursuing far-reaching publication plans even in his last years. Ästhetische Theory (Aesthetic Theory) (Adorno 1997b [1970], 7) remained unfinished, and there were other matters that he still wanted to wrap up. Adorno regarded the papers he preserved primarily as working material, not as a historical record, nor as a future legacy. His attitude was not archival. He was not concerned with documenting his writing processes for posterity. The estate1 is kept in the Theodor W. Adorno Archive (TWAA), Frankfurt am Main.2 Essentially, it exists today as it was left. Its order served the practical

 See also the overview of the estate given by Rolf Tiedemann (1992, pp. 126–136).  The Theodor W. Adorno Archive is an institute of the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture. It was founded in 1985 by the foundation, which is the owner of the estate. For the first 20 years, the archive was housed in a municipal building, under the same roof as the Frankfurt Drug Support Centre. Since 2005, Adorno’s estate has been housed at the Institute for Social Research, his former place of work and the ancestral home of Critical Theory. The Adorno Archive has come into the public eye primarily through edited collections. 19  volumes of the Nachgelassene Schriften (Posthumous Writings), initiated by Rolf Tiedemann in 1985 and later supervised by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, have now been published, as well as 12 volumes of Adorno’s Briefe und Briefwechsel (Letters and Correspondence) (1997a). 1 2

This chapter is a translation of Schwarz, Michael. 2021. ‘Adorno und die Archivierung des Ephemeren. Bemerkungen zu seinem Nachlass’. In Michael Töteberg, Alexandra Vasa (eds.). Ins Archiv, fürs Archiv, aus dem Archiv, pp. 28–36. München: edition text + kritik. M. Schwarz (*) Theodor W. Adorno Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_10

143

144

M. Schwarz

purposes of an office, was organized so as to facilitate locating letters and manuscripts and was not intended to be the order of the estate. The office organization was primarily in the hands of the secretary, Elfriede Olbrich. From the first half of the 1950s onwards, this included fairly complete documentation, including the collection of reviews and notes on oral discussions.3 The archivist is required to preserve the organizational structure in which it was left and, if necessary, to improve it slightly. Groups of archival documents were preserved. Alphanumeric signatures (e.g. Ts 432) were assigned, the first component of which designates the respective group of documents (e.g. Ts for typescripts). Since his death, the archiving and safeguarding of by far the largest part of Adorno’s estate has been completed. Initially, photocopies were made of the manuscripts of works (Ts signatures) and the written material pertaining to the lectures (Vo). Letters (Br), photographs (Fo) and sound recordings (TA) were later digitally reproduced and filed. The reproductions allow the archival materials to be used without endangering the originals. The majority of Adorno’s correspondence can be viewed in the form of digital reproductions at the electronic reading stations of the Walter Benjamin Archive at the Akademie der Künste (Berlin).4 There, you can also listen to 388 sound recordings featuring Adorno. Most of these recordings were collected after his death. The estate is primarily a written one: printed, typed and handwritten. The archive contains the books, essays and newspaper articles Adorno published, as well as galley proofs and page proofs, some of which are corrected in his own handwriting. His library5 is located in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, which houses the Theodor W. Adorno Archive today. Any markings have been photocopied. These markings, marginalia and annotations – numerous in editions of the works of Søren Kierkegaard and Edmund Husserl – transform the books into original documents that provide interesting insights into Adorno’s readings. The extensive collection of reviews of Adorno’s books and essays is also relevant in terms of the historical reception of his work. These reviews, published primarily in newspapers and magazines, evince the great response to his work in the 1950s and 1960s. The press documentation also shows that the public reception of his work was important to him. A much-used component of Adorno’s estate is his correspondence with more than 2000 interlocutors. These include Alfred Andersch, Ingeborg Bachmann, Samuel Beckett, Ernst Bloch, Elias Canetti, Paul Celan, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Max Frisch, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Arnold Gehlen, Jürgen Habermas, Hermann  Gretel Adorno seems to have been in charge of organizing the appointments. For the planning of a lecture at the Volkshochschule Hildesheim, Olbrich inquired through a note to Gretel Adorno: ‘Frau Dr. Adorno: TWA thinks that he could combine this with the Kiel lecture – he asks for your vote. E. O. / No! (sgd.) G. A.’ (TWAA), shelfmark Ei 215 / 5) 4  The search facility for the estate is the archive database of the Akademie der Künste: www. archiv.adk.de. 5  A listing is online at https://www.adk.de/de/archiv/bibliothek/pdf/Nachlassbibliothek-Theodor-­ W.-Adorno.pdf (06/29/2023). 3

Adorno and the Archiving of the Ephemeral: Remarks on His Literary Estate

145

Hesse, Paul Hindemith, Joachim Kaiser, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Alexander Kluge, Fritz Lang, Leo Löwenthal, Alma Mahler-Werfel, Herbert Marcuse, Arnold and Gertrud Schönberg, Hans Wollschläger and Stefan Zweig. The extent of this network of correspondence is astonishing. In total, the letters probably amount to about 40,000 pages. Only a small selection has been published so far. The correspondence with Walter Benjamin, Alban Berg, Max Horkheimer, Siegfried Kracauer, Ernst Krenek, Thomas Mann and Gershom Scholem appeared in the series Briefe und Briefwechsel (Letters and Correspondence) (Adorno 1997a). Adorno used to dictate his letters; he signed them after they were typed by a secretary. Fortunately, several typewritten carbon copies were made and preserved in the process. As a result, the estate’s collection of Adorno’s letters from the 1950s and 1960s is entirely preserved. One of these typescript carbon copies was filed in each of the ring-binder folders containing ‘daily copies’. With these, Adorno’s correspondence can be followed day by day. Adorno kept 45 notebooks in which he recorded his thoughts, ideas and daily reflections – sometimes even addresses. They can be arranged chronologically (even though he sometimes kept several in parallel). Taken as a whole, they form Adorno’s intellectual journal over the years. His works incorporated, in large part, reworkings of his notes; indeed, their germination can often be found in the notebooks. An example of this can be found in notebook K, dated September 1961 (TWAA, Ms 41): ‘Perhaps starting from the memory of my youth, that Kracauer was excluded from a conversation of Patmos people (one became a Nazi) because he was not authentic enough’. In fact, Adorno’s book Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (The Jargon of Authenticity) (Adorno 1997b [1964], 6) took this as its starting point. While the book version speaks vaguely of a ‘number of people’ and of ‘a friend’ who was not invited to their meeting (p.  415), the notebook entry names names: the ‘Patmos circle’ and Siegfried Kracauer, Adorno’s friend in his youth. In connection with the manuscripts, Adorno’s compositions should also be mentioned. His handwritten scores have survived in the archives (clean copyist’s copies for performance purposes have also survived). During Adorno’s lifetime, only Sechs kurze Orchesterstücke op. 4 (1968) made it into print, which he considered a slight. Since his death, edition text + kritik has published a comprehensive three-volume edition of Adorno’s compositions. Most of the versions of Adorno’s essays and books are available in typescript form. There are 54,043 typewritten pages, a considerable number of which have been corrected and supplemented by hand. The mixed typeface/manuscript format is characteristic of Adorno’s method of production. A first version, which he dictated to his secretary according to his own notes, was  – according to the typical procedure – subjected to further editing: Adorno made deletions, additions, substitutions and rearrangements on the typescript by hand. He had the resulting version copied by his secretary, who incorporated the handwritten changes into a new typescript. This process – editing by hand and then having it typed up – could be repeated several times. Adorno’s texts are work products, created with patient effort. Their development can be easily traced in the archive. Work processes resulted in final versions. These

146

M. Schwarz

versions, which were binding and final for him, were far removed from the first, rough versions dictated to the secretary. Adorno once wrote: ‘the second versions are always, for me, the decisive working process, the first ones represent only raw material, or (...): they are an organized self-deception through which I maneuver myself into the position of critic of my own things, which for me always proves to be the most productive’ (Adorno 1997b, 7: pp.  539–40.) It should be added that there were often third or fourth (sometimes even fifth and sixth) versions in which Adorno still made crucial changes. In this way the texts repeatedly passed through the bottleneck of a critical sense for language. This rewriting raised the tone of the texts. It made them tighter and denser. It seldom brought more text volume, but often a gain in intellectual focus and intensity. The following applies to Adorno’s writing: he not only tried to express ideas better, but also to improve those ideas through linguistic expression. The corrective work processes likewise aimed to refine his thoughts. When a work was completed, its earlier stages for Adorno were usually cast off. Nevertheless, it remains possible to reconstruct them. He kept the versions of his essays and books. He may have regarded them as preliminary stages, but for archival research they attract lively interest, especially because of what has been deleted. It arouses curiosity: Why did Adorno discard it? And doesn’t consideration of what Adorno deleted allow his texts to be understood differently, and better? Is it not more than the dross that has fallen away? Early versions of books that Adorno only published years later, after reworking them, are particularly revealing. This is the case with important writings on Søren Kierkegaard, Konstruktion des Ästhetischen in Kierkegaards Philosophie (1929–1930); Edmund Husserl, Husserlbuch (1934–1937); and Richard Wagner (1937–1938). The printed texts of the books Kierkegaard. Konstruktion des Ästhetischen: (Construction of the Aesthetic) (Adorno [1933] 1997b, 2), Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie (Against Epistemology: A Metacritique) (Adorno [1956] 1997b, 5: pp.7–245-) and Versuch über Wagner (In Search of Wagner) (Adorno [1952] 1997b, 13: pp.7–147) would later vary considerably. In any case, when reading them, one’s understanding and insight will be enhanced by returning to the trove of original manuscripts in the archive. Even a literary estate rarely consists only of papers. The Adorno archivist records that the written material (at least from the 1950s onwards) was bequeathed largely complete, but audio documents only in limited numbers. The audio tapes that Adorno left behind were mixed with those from other sources soon after his death. Some of this audio material, mainly from radio stations, was collected posthumously by Gretel Adorno (with the help of Alexander Kluge). Other parts of the collection came into the Adorno Archive in the 1980s and later. Through research at broadcasting archives, it was possible to close the many gaps left by the core collection bequeathed by Adorno. Transcripts of Adorno’s lectures from 1958 onwards are available. (Of the older lectures, often only the key words on which he based his speech have been preserved, or transcripts that had been stenographed by listeners and then typed.) Secretaries made transcripts from tapes. After transcription, the recordings were

Adorno and the Archiving of the Ephemeral: Remarks on His Literary Estate

147

erased by reusing the tapes, which, especially if of good quality, were not cheap at the time. So it happens that the Einleitung in die Soziologie (Introduction to Sociology) (Adorno 2003) is the only lecture that has been preserved completely – or rather, almost completely – as an audio recording. The material pertaining to the lectures is almost entirely written (12,064 pages of typescripts and manuscripts). As far as writings from the later years in particular are concerned, it is not uncommon for them to include formulations and thoughts from lectures or talks. Adorno had his lectures tape-recorded and then transcribed so that he could use them for later works. The transcriptions were for himself to follow up on. They were a reservoir. On the typescript sheets there are sometimes diagonal strikethroughs of passages or paragraphs. This does not mean that the thoughts in question were discarded; rather it indicates their inclusion in manuscripts of works. Some of the lectures on aesthetics given in 1961/62, for example, have been incorporated into Ästhetische Theory. Even improvised lectures, conversations or interviews could contain something that Adorno still wanted to elaborate. In a letter to Laurenz Wiedner of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation on 30 October 1958, he wrote: ‘(...) by chance I hear that the little interview about Mahler that I gave in April of this year was broadcast last Wednesday. I would be very interested to know if it had any resonance and what kind it was. Also: whether you recorded the interview stenographically and had it hectographed, as is the general practice in Germany for such radio events. Should this be the case, I would be very grateful for a copy, all the more so as the matter contains a number of motifs on which I intend to elaborate in a larger work on Mahler. Under certain circumstances I would also be helped by the tape, which I could have rewound and transcribed here’ (TWAA, Ru 121/9). Some of the lectures and talks would not have survived if it had not been for the transcriptions sent to Adorno by the organizers (at or without his instigation). Some of the editors of these transcripts are known; some are anonymous. Unfortunately, the transcriptions are often inadequate. In places there are omissions – gaps where things were not understood. The incomplete and faulty transcriptions make it difficult in places to reconstruct what Adorno actually said. This, however, was the aim of the edition of the Vorträge 1949–1968 (Adorno 2019a). Adorno gave most of his lectures not just once, but in various places and in slightly varied versions. ‘Kultur und Culture’ may be considered the lecture that Adorno presented most often – a total of 18 times (Adorno 2019a, pp.156-176; pp. 638–641). The subject matter was ideal for the Amerika Häuser (America Houses): post-war institutions built in Germany to allow German citizens to learn more about American culture and politics. There, the lecture was usually announced under the title ‘Some Aspects of a Comparison between German and American Culture’. Prompted by a newspaper report on one of these performances, Joachim Günther, editor of the Neue Deutsche Hefte, wrote to Adorno expressing interest in publishing the lecture in his journal. Adorno replied to him on 22 May 1957: Unfortunately, I cannot give you the lecture on the possibility of a comparison between American and German culture. And this is not at all because it has already been disposed of, but because this lecture does not exist in literary form. I have given it quite freely in vari-

148

M. Schwarz

ous America Houses, merely on the basis of notes. To make a text out of these notes that could be printed would be an infinitely tedious and responsible task, which I simply cannot do. This is quite apart from the fact that it is really conceived as a lecture, in the sense of having an immediate impact on listeners, and not as a text, and that I would be damaging this basic character if I tried to ‘elaborate’ it. The word ‘culture’ alone  – I can at best, though not without shame, put the word in my mouth, but not in my pen. You understand me. (TWAA, Ve 226/6)

The letter to Günther points to the fundamental difference between a lecture and an elaborated text. Adorno emphasized it again and again: a speech is not writing; an improvised lecture is not intended for a book or a journal. To commit it to paper and publish it contradicted Adorno’s convictions. Printed matter required a completely different linguistic form, namely, a ‘literary’ one, as it says in the letter to Günther: a mature, responsible text, characterized by density, stringency and coherence of expression. Adorno also gave the lecture entitled ‘Kultur und Culture’ (on 9 July 1958) as part of the Hessische Hochschulwochen für staatswissenschaftliche Fortbildung (Hessian university weeks for continuing education in the field of political science). The Hessische Hochschulwochen, set up for the benefit of civil servants, comprised a series of events that soon went beyond the field of political science to cover cultural or general educational topics. Adorno participated eight times as a speaker (1954–1962). As was the convention, the contributions were included in a series of publications, the dissemination of which he initially believed to be limited to the event participants.6 On this occasion he gave his consent to the printed publication of his talk, but attached to it a preliminary note ad lectores (see the typewritten draft in Fig.  1), in which he placed the publication of the extemporaneous talk under general reservation. His provisos were intended to prevent ‘at least some of the misinterpretations’ to which he believed himself exposed. Adorno used this type of prefatory remark repeatedly in publications of his improvisations. Nothing spoken could satisfy his theoretical and literary aspirations, could ‘do justice to what he must demand of a text’. He hesitated to agree to publication. It may seem astonishing that Adorno – who was said to speak as if he were in print – claims that in his case ‘the spoken and the written word diverge even further than they otherwise do today’. The assertion seems less astonishing when one sees in the archive how thoroughly he worked on his texts in order to achieve the ‘binding force of objective representation’, which for him was part of the morality of writing. Whereas written works should be cogently oriented toward the represented object, with lectures Adorno emphasized the question of effect. This is also the case in the quoted letter to Joachim Günther. Adorno could not have foreseen that one of his lectures; ‘Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus’ (‘Aspects of the New RightWing Extremism’) (Adorno [1967] 2019a, pp.  440–467) would have its greatest impact only after more than 50 years, ironically in written form.

 Later, Adorno discovered that these publications had been distributed to people outside the group of university weeks participants. He registered with horror that his lectures were even quoted in sociological literature. 6

Adorno and the Archiving of the Ephemeral: Remarks on His Literary Estate

149

Fig. 1  Adorno’s preliminary note for the printing of his lecture ‘Kultur und Culture’, 9 July 1958

When Vorträge 1949–1968 was being prepared for publication, the manuscript was sent to Suhrkamp Verlag. There, Eva Gilmer, head of the academic department, suggested publishing the lecture on right-wing extremism separately. It was published in July 2019 in a handy brochure (Adorno 2019b), with an afterword by the

150

M. Schwarz

historian and journalist Volker Weiß. The tremendous response this publication received was astonishing. The booklet was on the Der Spiegel bestseller list for six months, and by April 2020 approximately 70,000 copies had been sold.7 The afterword and a multitude of reviews made it clear that this was not just a historically preserved document of the times. It was not merely an addendum to Adorno’s writings, dutifully documented. The general and acutely contemporary relevance of this lecture has been emphasized again and again. Much can be related to today’s political situation, which demands explanations for the rise of national-authoritarian movements and anti-liberal parties, for the development of a ‘new right’, which turns out not to be new at all. This small volume has strikingly demonstrated the degree of topical insight that a publication from the archive can contain.

References Adorno, Theodor W. 1968. Sechs kurze Orchesterstücke op. 4. Milan: Ricordi. ———. 1997a. Briefe und Briefwechsel. Vols 1–9. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1997b. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols 1–20, ed. Rolf Tiedemann with the collaboration of Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss and Klaus Schultz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 2003 [1968]. Einleitung in die Soziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 2019a. Vorträge 1949–1968. Nachgelassene Schriften. Abteilung V: Vorträge und Gespräche, ed. Michael Schwarz. Berlin: Suhrkamp. ———. 2019b. Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Tiedemann, Rolf. 1992. Theodor W.  Adorno Archiv 1985–1991. Ein Bericht. In: Frankfurter Adorno Blätter I, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, 126–136. München: edition text + kritik. Theodor W. Adorno Archiv (TWAA)., Frankfurt am Main. Michael Schwarz  studied general and comparative literature, philosophy and German studies. From 1996 to 2004, he worked at the Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Frankfurt am Main, directed by Rolf Tiedemann. Since 2004, he is a staff member of the Walter Benjamin Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and since 2022 he is the director of the Theodor W. Adorno Archive. He coauthored the book Walter Benjamin’s Archive: Images, Texts, Signs (2015; also available in German and French). He is the coeditor of the Kranichsteiner Vorlesungen by Theodor W. Adorno (Suhrkamp, 2014), and the editor of the Vorträge 1949–1968 by Theodor W. Adorno (Suhrkamp, 2019).

 The booksellers’ success of Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus (Adorno 2019b) is as particularly surprising because Adorno’s lecture had already been available to listen to on the Österreichische Mediathek website since 2010 and had attracted virtually no attention. Only the print publication, almost 10 years later, triggered a wave of reviews in print media, on the radio and on the Internet. 7

Adorno and the Post-war Artistic Debates: A Perspective Through the Archives Raquel Patriota and Ricardo Lira da Silva

1 Introduction In the “Draft Introduction” to his Ästhetische Theorie (Aesthetic Theory), Theodor Adorno (1997, p. 441) claims, not without a trace of humor, that Kant and Hegel were the last philosophers who could write on aesthetics without having a close understanding of art. Beyond the playful tone, the statement emphasizes that one of the fundamental consequences of modern art’s break with the rules and norms of tradition is that aesthetics, too, can no longer be satisfied with any fixed reference point. This means recognizing that works of art, the practices they encompass, and the critiques that emerge from them are not external to a philosophical reflection on art but are immanent to it. Such a claim for the connection between theory and artistic practices reflects, however, a dimension of Adorno’s work that reaches beyond his published writings. In this sense, the ongoing publication of his estate has significantly expanded the field of studies on his work. Beyond the disclosure of unfinished writings and previous versions of canonical texts, these publications have revealed an essential dimension of the philosopher’s oeuvre: the relevance of his public interventions, whether through participation in radio debates, lectures, or courses. In his archives, the magnitude of these materials  – both transcripts and recordings  – indicates Adorno’s engaged intervention in the public sphere and his connection with artistic practices and expresses an argumentative form that is essentially distinct from his writings, a form that could contribute to the elucidation of his work (see also Schwarz 2011). R. Patriota (*) Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), Natal, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] R. L. da Silva Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_11

151

152

R. Patriota and R. L. da Silva

This is the case, as we will discuss, for some of his debates and courses on art and aesthetics in the post-war context, which bring to light relevant elements for the understanding of his later work. To illuminate the complexity of these interventions, this chapter will be divided into two main sections. In the first one, we will discuss how Adorno came into contact with the new experiences of the post-war musical avant-garde, in particular with the young musicians who gathered around the Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music.1 As the archival material shows, this contact and the debates it triggered are central to the understanding of Adorno’s later program of what he called musique informelle (informal music) (Adorno 1998, pp. 269–322). In the second section, we will present an overview of the post-war discussions about modern art, which occupied an important part of Adorno’s concerns in his later work. More specifically, we investigate how the philosopher engaged in various debates about the directions of modernism, understanding not only the new trends in avant-garde art, but also diagnosing a larger process of disintegration of traditional artistic concepts. From this point on, we not only grasp the intentions articulated in his Ästhetische Theorie, but also connect its themes to concrete changes in artistic practices after the war. By addressing these topics, we will turn once again to the vitality and historical pertinence of Adorno’s aesthetic writings. Far from considering them as rigid theses on “authentic art,” their relationship to actual artistic manifestations of his time should be understood. Certainly, in this sense, the materials available in the Adorno archives shed light on this actuality by revealing several dimensions of the philosopher’s activities and the diversity of his interests regarding art, which will be covered here in a panoramic and non-exhaustive manner.

2 The Darmstadt Music Debates and the Origins of Adorno’s Conception of a Musique Informelle Archival materials are of great relevance to the investigation of Adorno’s musical writings. As is well known, of the 20 volumes that constitute his Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings) (Adorno 1997–2003), eight correspond to works devoted exclusively to music; most of these works are devoted to avant-garde music, a topic mediated by Adorno’s profound knowledge of the most advanced compositional techniques of his time. However, what is less well known is that behind this impressive body of work, there is an equally impressive network of  Founded in 1946 in the context of Germany’s reconstruction and denazification, the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt (Darmstädter Internationale Ferienkurse für neue Musik) became one of the most important forums for avant-garde music composition in the post-­ war period, bringing together names such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, and others. As we will briefly see in the next section, Adorno participated actively in the festival in the 1950s and 1960s. 1

Adorno and the Post-war Artistic Debates: A Perspective Through the Archives

153

debates around the key problems of New Music, whether in the form of conferences and public interventions, or in private correspondence with composers, performers, and musicologists of different generations. Beyond historical and biographical relevance, the reconstruction of such debates is decisive for the understanding of the very concepts in Adorno’s critical models. Paddison (1993) has shown, for example, that Adorno’s diagnosis in a work as central as Philosophie der neuen Musik (Philosophy of New Music) (1949) cannot be understood in all its complexity if the debates surrounding the category of musical material are not taken into account. Adorno’s defense here of the Schoenberg School against Stravinsky’s musical neoclassicism is, above all, based on the theoretical constellation formed by categories such as progress and restoration, musical coherence and authenticity. And a decisive step to the emergence of this theoretical constellation, as Paddison (1993, p. 81) argues, are the debates between Adorno and the composer Ernst Krenek that took place around 1930. They were recorded both in articles published in the musical journal Anbruch and in correspondence between the two. In interpretations like Paddison’s, therefore, the actual musical disputes can be said to be constitutive and not collateral to Adorno’s theory of music. While it is true that this approach is more consolidated in the literature regarding Philosophie der neuen Musik, the investigation of the role of post-war musical debates in Adorno’s late work has gained relevance more recently. And such relevance seems even more justified if we remember that, in comparison with the mentioned debate with Krenek, for example, the archival material concerning the musical debates of the post-1950 period is significantly more abundant than that of the 1920s and 1930s. In the last few decades, commentators have shown a growing interest in Adorno’s interaction with the generation of young composers of the Darmstadt School and the impact of this interaction on his writings on music after the 1950s. In works such as those by Borio (1993, 2006), Zagorski (2020), and Linke (2018), for example, there is a change of focus from the music of Schoenberg’s generation to Adorno’s relationship with prominent post-war composers such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and György Ligeti, among others. To be sure, this shift in focus in no way means that Adorno disavowed his attachment to the Second Viennese School, or that he accepted uncritically the new developments in post-war musical composition. However, a thorough historical reconstruction of the debates of this period is a task that remains to be done2 and, with it, an assessment of the impact of these debates on the interpretation of Adorno’s late writings on music. To what extent does his reception of the new post-­ war musical practices shape his critical theory of music? And what role did the dialogue with the new generation of musicians play in this process? A look at the estate material relating to the Darmstadt debates can shed light on what lies behind Adorno’s later writings, especially for the formulation of his program of a musique informelle in the 1960s.

 In our view, Borio (1993, 2006) is the author that made the most decisive steps in this direction.

2

154

R. Patriota and R. L. da Silva

According to Reichert and Schwarz’s historical reconstruction, Adorno was first invited to attend the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music a few months after his permanent return to Germany from exile (Adorno 2014, p. 640). This began a long involvement: he participated nine times between 1950 and 1966. At this time, Adorno’s prestige as the author of Philosophie der neuen Musik was so well recognized that in 1951 he was invited to replace Schoenberg himself in conducting the Working Group for Free Composition at Darmstadt. His contact with the new generation of serialist music at this seminar, however, was marked by a polemic involving Stockhausen who, at the age of 23, was attending the festival for the first time. For Stockhausen, Adorno’s criticism of one of the pieces presented in this seminar was a sign that he misunderstood the new directions in post-war compositional technique. This was indicated by his questioning of the piece’s lack of coherence, especially the absence of musical construction through the thematic-motivic variation typical of Schoenberg’s language. For Stockhausen, Adorno’s mistake was precisely to look for something in the piece that was incompatible with the new serialist aspirations. Stockhausen’s famous riposte was that Adorno’s censorship of the piece was equivalent to “looking for a chicken in an abstract painting” (Grant 2001, p. 67). Beyond its anecdotal character, this episode deeply affected Adorno’s negative reception of the music produced by the young Darmstadt composers in the early 1950s. Such a “fundamental experience” (Grunderfahrung) (Metzger 1980, p. 96), as he later named it, would give rise years later to the controversial lecture “Das Altern der Neuen Musik” (The Aging of the New Music) (Adorno 2002), first broadcast in 1954 on SDR Radio Stuttgart. In it, Adorno argues that Darmstadt’s integral serialism would be executing a kind of downgrading of the compositional techniques discovered by Schoenberg’s generation. This would become apparent in two main ways: first, in the unreflected expansion of the numerical ordering principle of the twelve-tone series to all dimensions of the material – not only pitch, but also rhythm, dynamics, and timbre. Adorno considers that this mechanical expansion of the numerical ordering principle would lead to a kind of musical automatism, transforming technique into a prescriptive method for compositional work. Adorno’s second concern was the rejection by the young composers of any expressive-­subjective trace still present in the musical language of Schoenberg’s generation. For him, the composers of integral serialism – Boulez being its most prominent exponent – sought to achieve a kind of musical tabula rasa, resulting in the elimination of subjective freedom and the complete fetishism of the fully rationalized compositional technique (Adorno 2002, p.  187). What Adorno called “aging” referred, therefore, to a diagnosis that post-war New Music had lost the critical impulse that once birthed the musical avant-garde of the previous generation.3  In this sense, integral serialism is one of the most striking examples of the limits of the rationalization of the material. By recognizing the limits of such rationalization, Adorno will turn to the phenomenon of the entanglement (Verfransung) of artistic genres in the 1960s, as we will see in the next section. 3

Adorno and the Post-war Artistic Debates: A Perspective Through the Archives

155

As one might have expected, Adorno’s lecture had a largely negative reception in the musical circles of the young composers associated with the Darmstadt School. According to the correspondence of this period, as early as May 1954, Adorno received a letter from the 23-year-old music critic Heinz-Klaus Metzger,  who declared the intention to publish a critique against his lecture.4 Indeed, Metzger’s purpose was to demonstrate that Adorno’s position vis-à-vis Darmstadt music was contradictory to his own theory, developed years earlier in Philosophie der neuen Musik. In short, Metzger intended to perform an immanent critique of Adorno’s conference in order to defend the progressive character of the generation of Boulez, Cage, and Stockhausen. This intention took some time to materialize. It first appeared as a radio conference in 1957 with the controversial title “Das Altern der Philosophie der neuen Musik” (The Aging of Philosophy of New Music), later published in the fourth issue of the journal Die Reihe. In this critique, Metzger’s main argument was based on one of the fundamental categories of Adornian theory: the musical material. For Metzger (1980, pp. 67–68), Adorno was betraying his own theory by not recognizing in the practice of the Darmstadt composers the attempt to overcome the contradictions present in the musical material of Schoenberg’s generation. Furthermore, Metzger points out the lack of reference to the most significant works of Darmstadt music, such as Boulez’s Le Marteau sans Maître (1955) and Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge (1956). Adorno’s omission indicated that his critique was based on his unfamiliarity with more recent musical material, which leads to a rather severe conclusion: by fixating on a particular historical stage, that of Schoenberg’s generation, the accusation of “aging” in Darmstadt music would rather reveal the aging of Adorno’s own position (Metzger 1980, p. 88). Metzger’s critique initiated a prolific debate with Adorno, which unfolded not only publicly but also in the correspondence between the authors between the late 1950s and early 1960s.5 If we look at this material, we see that already in early 1957 – i.e., even before the publication of Metzger’s polemical text – there is an important discussion about his arguments against Adorno’s lecture. To support his position, Adorno argues that his criticism of Darmstadt’s integral serialism was not at all abstract, as charged by Metzger, but was based on concrete experiences, such as the aforementioned episode involving Stockhausen. Furthermore, Adorno maintains his criticism that a blind rationalization of artistic procedures leads to the threat of technical fetishism, something that shows itself in certain musical trends of that period (Metzger 1980, p. 96). However, Adorno recognizes his lack of familiarity with the technical details and with the scores of the serialist works at the time he prepared his lecture. According to him, he only later encountered the most relevant works mentioned by  The correspondence between Adorno and Metzger can be found in Theodor W. Adorno Archive, under the signature TWAA Br 1005. 5  Among them is the radio debate between the authors with the title “Jüngste Musik – Fortschritt oder Rückbildung” (Youngest Music – Progress or Regression), which was broadcast on WDR in 1958 (Metzger 1980, p. 90). 4

156

R. Patriota and R. L. da Silva

Metzger  – something that allowed him to recognize many merits in Boulez and Stockhausen’s oeuvres (Metzger 1980, p.  95). Moreover, in the correspondence Adorno shows himself receptive to the more recent works of the Darmstadt School and even asks Metzger to recommend pieces and theoretical works that the young music critic considered most relevant at that time (TWAA Br 1005). This material would provide the resources for the preparation of the conference he would deliver that same year in Darmstadt, “Kriterien der neuen Musik” (Criteria of New Music), which includes many topics brought up in the debate between Adorno and Metzger (Adorno 1997–2003, vol. 16: pp. 170–228). One consequence of Adorno’s engagement in these debates is his greater openness to the music of the Darmstadt School in his later writings. In some cases, this openness appears in subtle ways. For example, in the preface to the new edition of Dissonanzen (Dissonances) (Adorno 1997–2003, vol. 14), a collection of essays that includes “Das Altern der Neuen Musik,” Adorno adds a brief positive remark regarding some works by Stockhausen and Boulez. For him, pieces such as Zeitmaße (1956) by the former and Le Marteau sans Maître by the latter show that at least part of the more recent production of the Darmstadt School cannot simply fall under the diagnosis of Das Altern der Neuen Musik (Adorno 1997–2003, vol. 14: p. 12). This openness to post-war musical developments becomes more evident in Adorno’s late program of a musique informelle. In the lecture-manifesto Vers une musique informelle, delivered at the 1961 Darmstadt Summer Courses, Adorno (1998, pp. 269–322) is explicit in recognizing a new trend that points beyond the rigidity of integral serialism. For Adorno (p. 276), some of the criticisms raised by the Darmstadt composers on the musical practices of the previous generation, such as Stockhausen’s investigations on the dimension of rhythm, for example, are contributions that should not be ignored when it comes to understanding the new musical material. In another essay from the same period, Adorno (p. 182) suggests that even the experiments on chance and indeterminacy in musical composition brought to the debate by John Cage, for example, become significant symptoms of the exhaustion of serialism in its most systematic form. However, one must not forget that such openness does not mean that Adorno adhered uncritically to the new developments in post-war avant-garde music. Even acknowledging Stockhausen’s own contribution and the counter-gesture of aleatoric music against serialism, Adorno does not refrain from elaborating sharp criticisms of both. Furthermore, part of the repertoire of Schoenberg’s generation, especially from the period of free atonal music, remains an unavoidable reference in Adorno’s late musical writings. This shows that the program of musique informelle should not be understood as a revisionist attempt of any sort. It is an effort to find a new theoretical framework fit to face the problems and challenges posed by post-war music. Such an effort is evident in the many subsequent debates in which Adorno participated throughout the 1960s: in the discussion with György Ligeti and others in 1966 on the topics of musical form and musical time after serialism,6 as well as in the  Later published as internal discussion (Internes Arbeitsgespräch) between Theodor W. Adorno, György Ligeti, Rudolf Stephan, Herbert Brün, and Wolf Rosenberg (Adorno et al. 1999). 6

Adorno and the Post-war Artistic Debates: A Perspective Through the Archives

157

debate with Boulez in 1969 on the category of métier,7 which would later appear in a work as important as Ästhetische Theorie (Adorno 1997, pp. 292–293). Examples like these show that discussion and debate are intrinsic to the understanding of Adorno’s late musical writings.

3 Modern Art and Its Developments: The Verfransung of the Arts When considering the range of topics with which Adorno became involved during the 1950s and 1960s, one can observe that the discussions on the post-war musical avant-garde addressed in the previous section were part of a larger set of interventions about the place of modern art after the war. Following his return to Germany, Adorno began to intervene in a vast number of public debates, approaching aspects of German cultural life and analyzing trends in the artistic movements of the time. This involvement, which is well documented in the archives, not only discloses Adorno’s position as a public intellectual, but also indicates the context of discussions that shaped his late writings. In this section, we shall address this aspect of Adorno’s work with a panoramic analysis of his engagement in relevant disputes about the challenges and possibilities facing modern art.8 More precisely, we will discuss how Adorno theorized about a certain “crisis” of modern art in the post-war context, an issue that would pave the way for a transformation in his theoretical position, leading him to postulate the phenomenon of the “entanglement” (Verfransung) of the arts. An initial crisis of modern art is expressed, in Adorno’s statements, as a profound change in the technical conditions of artistic production. Adorno addressed this topic in 1950, when he took part in an important discussion on the continuity of modern art: the Darmstädter Gespräch, which had as its main theme “Das Menschenbild in unserer Zeit” (“The Image of Man in our Time”) (Evers 1951). During sections of this debate, Adorno pointed out modern art’s position, mentioning the once called “crisis of the artwork” (Krise des Werks) (p. 194). In that context, recognizing such a crisis did not constitute a pessimistic judgment about the end of art, but was mainly related to “structural transformations in the preconditions of artistic production” at the time (p. 194). In turn, it could be said that this structural change would concern the transformation of the very idea of “modern” that configured modern art, reflecting the historical rupture that affected the artistic movements, their irresolute character, and the lack of parameters defining the ongoing trends.

 In the archives, there is a recording of this discussion (TWAA Ta 329) with the title “Avantgarde und Metier.” 8  The discussions addressed in this section were also explored in the doctoral thesis, Patriota (2021). 7

158

R. Patriota and R. L. da Silva

These ruptures and the need to rethink modern art were also expressed in a series of radio debates in which Adorno participated in the 1950s, prompting a further development in the topic of this crisis. Such is the case, for example, in “Nachzügler oder Vorbereiter? Vom Wert der Epigonen” (Latecomers or Precursors? On the Value of Epigones) (TWAA TA 036) and in “Gespräch über abstrakte Kunst” (Discussion on Abstract Art) (TWAA TA 081).9 The former, which was conducted with Carl Linfert, dealt with the situation of the avant-garde in the post-war period, considering the potential risk that modern art would lose its transformative and critical core when compared to the collective energies that shaped the modernist practices before the war, in its “heroic” times.10 As discussed earlier, at the time Adorno was concerned with the new trends in modern music, in particular integral serialism and the threat that avant-garde techniques would turn into automatized and rationalized practices. The second discussion – “Gespräch über abstrakte Kunst” (TWAA TA 081) – was a radio debate at the Hessischer Rundfunk with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. This debate reflected on the continuity of modern art in the post-war years, considering the particular case of abstract painting and its possible connections with ongoing musical developments. Similarly, the consequences of the new musical avant-garde (integral serialism) indirectly appear to indicate that the new art should reconsider its critical relation with the past and with tradition.11 That theme would be deepened and further developed, later shaping the essay “Über einige Relationen zwischen Musik und Malerei” (On some relationships between music and painting) (Adorno 1995) published in 1965 and addressed to Kahnweiler. When looking at this set of discussions, it is possible to observe the recurrence and development of the topic of “aging” in the background, be it the aging of New Music or, as Adorno will further postulate, the aging of modern art12 as the possible loosening of the critical forces of modernism after the war – in a nutshell, the very sense of a “crisis.” But far from being a mere pessimistic assessment, what will be developed from this recurrence is a reconsideration of the paths open to modern art, taking into account the transformations it has undergone. In brief, the topics “crisis” and “aging” indicate precisely that “modernity” and the advanced character of the new art could no longer be understood solely through judgment of the progressive  For a broader look at Adorno’s radio discussions, see also Schwarz (2019).  The indication of a “heroic” period of modernism is addressed in a vast number of Adorno’s texts and mainly in the context of the expressionist movement. For a detailed discussion on this topic, see Patriota (2021). 11  In the essay “Jene zwanziger Jahre” (“Those twenties”) (Adorno 2005) also dedicated to Kahnweiler, Adorno once more refers to interrupted continuity of modern art, when comparing the post-war artistic scenario to that of the twenties: “The uncertain relationship between the present day and the twenties is conditioned by a historical discontinuity. And whatever now is artistically engaged with that epoch not only eclectically reaches back to a creative productivity that has died in the meantime, but at the same time also obeys an obligation not to forget those things that remain unfinished” (p. 45). 12  The idea of a “fatal aging of the modern” (Adorno 1997, p.  452) appears in the Ästhetische Theorie, indicating such possible loosening of critical forces in the development of modernism. 9

10

Adorno and the Post-war Artistic Debates: A Perspective Through the Archives

159

development of the artistic material and its rationalization (as in the case of music). Thus, it could be said that the turning point in Adorno’s aesthetics occurs with the breakdown of a rigid and unitary conception of modern art. Such debates raise the fact that the boundaries between the different artistic genres could no longer define their theorization. Rather, their correlations should be investigated on the basis of an expanded concept of art that included emerging forms of aesthetic experience and could express the transformation in the compositional and experiential structure of modern art. Hence, in such interventions can be seen not only a growing concern about the relationship between artistic genres  – the multiple interconnections between music, painting, literature, and other media – but also a relevant turn to forms of art that were not central to his investigations, such as cinema. An interesting piece of evidence of this increasing inclination for cinema is the draft left by Adorno on the occasion of an interview with Fritz Lang in 1958, entitled “Über die Situation des Films vor 25 Jahren und heute” (On the Situation of Cinema 25 Years Ago and Today) (TWAA Ge 101). In this conversation – which was not broadcast and remains registered through some of Adorno’s drafts (see also Schwarz (2019)) – Adorno shows an interest in discussing the development of cinema in America and Germany, as well as with the character of the medium as a whole. This interest in cinema and its transformation deepened over time and, in 1962, it took on very precise contours during Adorno’s participation in the Podiumsgespräch “Forderungen an den Film” (“Demands to the Film”), held with young German filmmakers linked to the New German Cinema movement. In this debate, Adorno not only analyzed the specific context of German post-war film production, but also recognized the need to rethink cinema’s aesthetic dimension. Such a debate on German cinema is registered as the possible “revolution of the cinema as a whole institution” (Adorno et  al. 2012, p.  40, our translation), in a moment when Adorno reconsiders the importance of the medium and recognizes its critical potential. The discussion on the new possibilities of avant-garde cinema continues to flourish in Adorno’s late work and consolidates itself in the essay “Filmtransparente” (“Transparencies on Film”) (Adorno 1982), which should be seen as the expression of such openness to new forms of artistic experience. In this text, Adorno not only turns his attention to cinema  – a medium he previously regarded with suspicion – but also considers that “film may become art” (p. 201), a possibility that will expand the boundaries of Adorno’s late work on aesthetics.13 By bringing these discussions together and understanding their interrelationships, it is possible to uncover Adorno’s late receptiveness to a broader concept of art, one that is neither limited to fixed genres nor to their traditional divisions. It could be said, then, that the crisis of modern art also reveals itself as a pathway to rethinking the very concept of art, assuming the variety of its hybrid, experimental, and “informal” practices. This is what Adorno begins to enunciate in the 1960s when he refers to the entanglement (Verfransung) of the arts. This concept was then  This theme is also addressed in Patriota (2022), where there is a more detailed discussion on Adorno’s reconsideration of cinema, as well as on how his late work starts to approach new forms of art. 13

160

R. Patriota and R. L. da Silva

mobilized in the lecture “Die Kunst und die Künste” (“Art and the Arts”) (Adorno 2003), first delivered as a presentation at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and then published in 1967. Broadly speaking, the notion of entanglement of the arts concerns the process in which the different genres begin to approach each other in their productive processes: musical pieces, for example, begin to adopt procedures from the visual arts, as would be the case in Bussotti; literary works, such as those by Hans Helms, would adopt such musical procedures as serialism14. Adorno indicated that the development of the different arts was no longer connected to the dictates of the genre to which they belong. Rather, artistic processes were open to adopt materials and practices from different art forms, making room for a more complex artistic construction and for different kinds of experiments. This hybridization, or entanglement, of the arts would not only lead to a questioning of the genres’ traditional limits, but would also require an alternative theoretical approach. It is also interesting to notice that cinema reappears in “Die Kunst und die Künste” – this time presenting the possibility that film, as an art form that mixes different practices, could “even enlarg[e] art” (Adorno 2003, p. 386). Adorno also observes such an expansion in the works of Samuel Beckett, for example, who would be the main figure of reference for the philosopher in his late writings. Apart from the essay “Versuch, das Endspiel zu verstehen” (“Trying to understand Endgame”) and the drafts that he left for an essay on Beckett’s L’Innommable, in 1968, Adorno also took part in a television debate on the work of the Irish writer. By addressing his output, Adorno once more evokes the phenomenon of entanglement, indicating how contemporary art was tending to some “centrifugal” movement: “Beckett is strongly embedded in one tradition or in one movement that I have named the Verfransung of artistic genres (...),” representing the “tendency to disintegrate, to destroy, the traditional illusionary unity of the concept of the work of art” (Adorno 1994, p. 95). By evoking Beckett’s work and its experimental vein, Adorno indicates that the phenomenon of entanglement represents a broader tendency to question the traditional and unitary concept of the work of art, challenging the boundaries between the artistic and the nonartistic.15 Contrary to the established idea that Adorno’s aesthetics simply “focuses on the concept of the great work of art as the guarantee of the artist’s transcendence” (Bürger 1990, p. 60), here we clearly see Adorno opening himself up to experiments that question the very unity of the artwork as a concept. With the erosion of its formal limits, art would then start to expand its constructive procedures, not only by turning to experimental techniques, but also by employing a variety of materials.

14  Adorno dedicates an entire essay to Hans Helms in his Noten zur Literatur (Notes to Literature) – entitled “Voraussetzungen: Aus Anlaß einer Lesung von Hans G. Helms” (“Presuppositions: On the Occasion of a Reading by Hans G. Helms”). There, Adorno examines the connections between Helms’ literature and the developments of serialism in music (see Adorno 1992). 15  As also discussed in Patriota (2021, 2022), the work of Samuel Beckett represents the turn to contingency in Adorno’s late work, for it would amount to some kind of informal and experimental practices which refuse to control the artistic material.

Adorno and the Post-war Artistic Debates: A Perspective Through the Archives

161

Thus, it could be said that the expansion of artistic practices, as diagnosed by Adorno in his late writings and debates, also accompanied a transformation of his theory. In brief, the notion of entanglement emerges in Adorno’s work not as a secondary theme, but as the theoretical result of a long debate around the transformations undergone by modern art, its reconfigurations, and the response to its possible crisis. What can be observed in Adorno’s turn to the topic of entanglement is the blatant need for a theory that no longer establishes fixed concepts for understanding art, but can open itself to the very indeterminability of the new artistic phenomena and their intertwined relationships, be it openness to the “informal” in music or to new experiments in cinema. Furthermore, to address the confluence of the different artistic genres and the erosion of their boundaries, as Adorno does, is also to consider that an aesthetic theory must not simply take its theoretical basis and limits for granted. Such rethinking of the boundaries of the theory clearly appears in the work Ohne Leitbild: Parva Aesthetica (Without Model: Parva Aesthetica) (1967/1968), a kind of preamble to what would become his Aesthetic Theory. Here, Adorno indicates the impossibility of fixing eternal values or permanent aesthetic norms to guide art’s comprehension, refusing any rigid theory of art, and opening the way to the questioning of art’s meaning (Adorno 1997–2003, vol.10 (1): p. 291). If we bring together some of the debates from the 1950s and 1960s, we can form a clearer picture of Adorno’s late aesthetic writings and trace his main theoretical interests. They indicate Adorno’s direct contact with art movements and critics and reveal the framework of an aesthetic position that, far from providing theses on the “authentic” artwork, was much more aimed at understanding new forms of experimental art and the new configurations of modernism. Thus, to grasp the relevance of Adorno’s work does not mean resorting to the Ästhetische Theorie in order to measure the quality of artistic objects, nor to seek in its propositions a complete judgment on the fate of art. It is much more about understanding how his Ästhetische Theorie was constructed in a context of changing artistic practices and how it investigates the very disintegration of the limits previously imposed on artistic genres. This implies, for Adorno, a repositioning of aesthetics in its disciplinary dimension. In this sense, the loss of evidence diagnosed by the opening sentence of the Ästhetische Theorie should not be considered as a definitive diagnosis on the impossibility of the theory, but as the claim for its transformation (see Patriota 2021). Hence, it would amount to a new way of approaching the arts: the theory needs to keep up with the expansion of artistic practices, even if this means assuming that there is no safe haven or ultimate home for the aesthetic concepts.

4 Conclusion As we have maintained throughout this chapter, the progressive publication of archival material in recent years provides new insights into Adorno’s aesthetics. Regarding the 1950s and 1960s in particular, one can note that Adorno’s writings

162

R. Patriota and R. L. da Silva

reflect his active participation in the various debates surrounding the artistic practices and movements that emerged in the post-war period. We have focused here specifically on the discussions around music and the developments of modern art. In the case of music, we sought to emphasize that Adorno’s participation in the Darmstadt Summer Courses during this period is a crucial element for understanding his late musical writings. The debates triggered by his critical essay “Das Altern der Neuen Musik” led to a further openness toward the music of the post-war generation. It is true that this openness did not result in Adorno’s uncritical adherence to the new practices. Rather, it showed the need to look for another theoretical configuration capable of doing justice to the problems they posed. The program of musique informelle in the 1960s sought to respond to this need. As far as discussions on modern art are concerned, we observed that Adorno’s late writings reflect his important engagement with the new artistic experiences of the post-war period, encompassing the critique of a univocal concept of art. In his public interventions Adorno addressed not only the transformations that modern art went through, but also the need to rethink a new model of theory, capable of dealing with the emerging cultural framework. His discussions with artists, critics, and art historians allow us to shed light on the task of a theory that approaches the actuality of art movements and is shaped by the diagnosis of their new configurations. Moreover, the way Adorno considers those new post-war art experiences also allows us to understand the tensions present in the development of modernism itself – a theme that has been increasingly addressed and that finds interesting developments in the works of authors such as Larson Powell (2013), Juliane Rebentisch (2003), and Christine Eichel (1998).16 These reflections indicate that, just like the artworks he dealt with, Adorno’s aesthetics assumes a necessarily processual character. In this sense, the archival materials briefly mentioned here are important because they can disclose to us, in the present day, how his work responded to the actual needs and concerns of his time. Therefore, Adorno’s archives not only provide historical documents that fulfill an ancillary or additional function, but allow us to understand and access the very vitality of his theory.

References Adorno, Theodor W. 1982. Transparencies on Film. Trans. Thomas Levin. New German Critique, No. 24/25 (Autumn 1981–Winter 1982): pp. 199–220.

 Powell (2013), for example, addresses what would be the differentiation of modernism in the post-war connection between arts and media. His work also deals with Adorno’s radio theory and its changes throughout the years. Rebentisch (2003) dedicates part of her work to discuss Adorno’s idea of Verfransung as an opening to intermediality in the arts. Eichel (1998) considers the specificity of Adorno’s late work, as it would indicate the transgression of the arts in relation to fixed traditional genres. 16

Adorno and the Post-war Artistic Debates: A Perspective Through the Archives

163

———. 1992. Notes to Literature, vol. 2. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1994. Frankfurter Adorno Blätter. Vol.3. Ed. Theodor Adorno Archiv. München: edition text+kritik. ———. 1995. On Some Relationships between Music and Painting. Trans. Susan Gillespie. The Musical Quarterly 79 (1): 66–79. ———. 1997. Aesthetic Theory. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (Eds.). Trans. Robert Hullot-­ Kentor. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ———. 1998. Quasi una Fantasia. Essays on Modern Music. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. London: Verso. ———. 2002. The Aging of the New Music. Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor and Frederic Will. In Essays on Music. Ed. Richard Leppert, pp. 181–202. Los Angeles: University of California Press. ———. 2003. Art and the Arts. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. In Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader. Ed. R. Tiedemann, pp. 386–87. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 1997–2003. Gesammelte Schriften in 20 Bänden. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp; 1986. Berlin: Directmedia (Digitale Bibliothek Band 97 – CD-ROM) ———. 2005. Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Trans. Henry W.  Pickford. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2014. Kranichsteiner Vorlesungen. Klaus Reichert and Michael Schwarz, Eds. Theodor W. Adorno. Nachgelassene Schriften IV, vol. 17. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Adorno, Theodor W., György Ligeti, Rudolf Stephan, Herbert Brün, Wolf Rosenberg. 1999. Internes Arbeitsgespräch (1966). In Musik-Konzepte. Sonderband Darmstadt-Dokumente I. Eds. Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Reiner Riehn. München: edition text + kritik. Adorno, Theodor W., Joseph Rovan, Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, Haro Senft, Hans Rolf Strobel, and Richard Erny. 2012. Podiumsgespräch mit der ‘Gruppe junger deutscher Film’ zum Thema ‘Forderungen an den Film’ während der Internationalen Filmwoche Mannheim 1962 (angreift nach Tonband-Aufnahme). In Provokation der Wirklichkeit: Das Oberhausener Manifest und die Folgen, ed. R. Eue and L.H. Gass, 27–47. Munich: edition text+kritik; Richard Boorberg; GmbH & Co. Borio, Gianmario. 1993. Musikalische Avantgarde um 1960. Entwurf einer Theorie der informellen Musik. Laaber: Laaber. ———. 2006. Dire cela sans savoir quoi. The question of meaning in Adorno and in the musical Avantgarde. In Apparitions: New perspectives on Adorno and Twentieth-Century Music, ed. Berthold Hoeckner. New York: Routledge. Bürger, Peter. 1990. Adorno’s Anti-Avant-Gardism. Telos 86 (Winter 1990–1991): 49–60. Eichel, Christine. 1998. Zwischen Avantgarde und Agonie. Die Aktualität der späten Ästhetik Theodor W. Adornos. In Mit den Ohren Denken: Adornos Philosophie der Musik, ed. R. Klein and C. Mahnkopf. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Evers, Hans Gerhard. 1951. Das Menschenbild in unserer Zeit - Darmstädter Gespräch. Darmstadt: Neue Darmstädter Verlagsanstalt. Grant, M.J. 2001. Serial music, Serial Aesthetics. Compositional Theory in Post-war Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Linke, Cosima. 2018. Konstellationen  – Formen in neuer Musik und ästhetische Erfahrung im Ausgang von Adorno. Mainz: Schott. Metzger, Heinz-Klaus. 1980. Musik Wozu. Ed. Reiner Riehn. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Paddison, Max. 1993. Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music. New York: Cambridge University Press. Patriota, Raquel. 2021. Theodor Adorno e a construção do modernismo artístico. Thesis (PhD) – University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences, SP. ———. 2022. Cinema and the Arts: Reassessing Theodor Adorno’s Late Work. Novos Estudos Cebrap 41 (2): 353–369. Powell, Larson. 2013. The Differentiation of Modernism: Postwar German Media Arts. New York: Camden House. Rebentisch, Juliane. 2003. Ästhetik der Installation. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

164

R. Patriota and R. L. da Silva

Schwarz, Michael. 2011. Er redet leicht, schreibt schwer. Theodor W.  Adorno am Mikrophon. Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, Online-Ausgabe, 8, H. 2, URL: https://zeithistorische-­forschungen.de/2-­2011/4700. Accessed 10 Sept 2022. ———. 2019. Öffentliche Gespräche. Mit einer Chronologie. In Adorno-Handbuch, ed. R. Klein, J. Kreuzer, and S. Müller-Doohm, 321–331. Berlin: J.B. Metzler. Theodor W. Adorno Archiv (TWAA)., Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt. Zagorski, Marcus. 2020. Adorno and the Aesthetics of Postwar Serial Music. Hofheim: Wolke. Raquel Patriota  is a professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil). Her main fields of interest are Aesthetics, Critical Theory and Modernism. Ricardo Lira da Silva  holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Campinas (Brazil). He is interested in the relationship between music and society, especially from the perspective of Critical Theory. His research is focused particularly on twentieth century music and on the work of Theodor W. Adorno.

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World” (1955–1969): Unpublished Radio Conversations from the Theodor W. Adorno Archive Aurélia Peyrical

The separation between the intellect and reality can be corrected not through the suppression of the intellect but by interventions in reality, interventions that need the intellect, i.e., theory. – Theodor W. Adorno

1 Introduction: Adorno’s Writings on Pedagogy1 It is well known that the Critical Theory  of the Frankfurt School is no strictly abstract and theoretical study of philosophy, but that the German-speaking writers orbiting the Institute for Social Research intend, with the help of philosophy, humanities, social sciences and even occasionally of natural sciences,2 to reflect upon and to transform our common social world to make it true to humanity’s aspirations and needs. Yet, one tends to forget that this Critical Theory’s objective gave birth to long-term – patent or latent – reflection on the goals, meaning, and  “Die Abspaltung des Intellekts von der Realität ist korrigierbar nicht durch Abschaffung des Intellects, sondern durch Eingriffe in die Realität, die des Intellekts, das heißt der Theorie, bedürfen.” (TWAA_Ge_195/3) All translations of  unpublished archive documents from  German to English are my own. My grateful thanks go to Michael Schwarz and the Theodor W. Adorno Archive for permitting me to publish quotes from the archive, to all participants of the Adorno Kolloquium at the Marc Bloch Zentrum in Berlin for reading and discussing a first draft of this text, and especially to Gabriel Toupin. 2  Though one cannot but regret that the first generation was not more informed about natural sciences of their time, its program does not theoretically exclude consideration of and reflection on both the progress and limits of natural sciences. A great interlocutor for them could have been Gretel Karplus-Adorno herself, who held a PhD in Chemistry. 1

A. Peyrical (*) Université Paris-Nanterre, Paris, France © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_12

165

166

A. Peyrical

practices of education, which became an even more important part of their work after the Second World War.3 In his introduction to The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al. 1950, pp. ix–xii), Max Horkheimer clearly formulates the decisive character of this pedagogical preoccupation, including how it helps to motivate the theoretical research and also to explain its psychological and sociological orientation. A few pages later, he adds that the “volume symbolizes that link between democratic education and fundamental research” (p. xii). Under the influence of Horkheimer, but also motivated by his own interest, Adorno developed his pedagogical reflections in keeping with the results of the empirical studies on prejudice he took part in while in America; he had by then started to develop his own critique of culture and education. With Adorno, philosophical work and political conviction cannot be arbitrarily disconnected, but they certainly cannot be identified either. The political (empirical politics included) motivates the theoretical, but theoretical truth must stand on its own merit.4 Some of Adorno’s pedagogical texts from Critical Models (Adorno 1998) have become classic reads since the 1970s, at least in Germany, starting with the oft-cited chapter “Erziehung nach Auschwitz”5 (“Education after Auschwitz”), written in 1966 (Adorno 1998, pp. 191–204). These texts, however, exist on the surface of a much deeper collection of writings: Adorno devoted a lot of other talks and texts to pedagogical subjects throughout his career. As historians have noted, this has much to do with the practical fact that, upon his return to Germany, Adorno assumed a considerable amount of responsibility at the newly reestablished Institute for Social Research (IfS), but also at several public bodies in Hesse. As Michael Schwarz’s recent editorial work shows, Adorno was quite often invited to give talks or take part in discussions in the context of the western (re)construction of the German public space (Schwarz 2011, 2021; Adorno 2019). But would Adorno have been so keen to step in had he not already been theoretically convinced that  Critical Theory6 had  Horkheimer’s pedagogical reflections after his return to Germany are analyzed, for example, by Mühleisen (1978). A more recent volume takes on this task in relation to other members of the Frankfurt School (Greis 2017). 4  Adorno’s work after his return to Germany in 1949 is not without internal tensions – a sign, in my view, of his applying to himself the self-criticism and anti-dogmatism that he always defended. He did so, at least partly, even during his well-publicized opposition to radical students in 1968. The return to Germany after Hitler’s dictatorship had been defeated pushed critical theorists to ask anew the question of the relationship between theory and practice, to which they had differing answers. On the one hand, Adorno’s diagnosis of his time as not revolutionary and his old criticism of Marxism for its anti-intellectualism and collectivistic tendencies tend to make him reject practice, but at the same time he thought of theorizing as a form of practice and of education as a place for revolutionary thinking. 5  Nach here means both “after” and “according to.” 6  Meaning here the first generation of the Frankfurt School. Habermas did not, to my knowledge, devote any substantial theoretical work to education or school after the 1968 debates on University reform. Recently, Axel Honneth devoted a short text to politics and education (Honneth 2012). Strangely, he does not refer to Horkheimer and Adorno. However, in a short note about Ludwig von Friedeburg’s work on schooling in Germany (Friedeburg 1992), he characterizes Friedeburg’s work as having maybe “the biggest political actuality” (Honneth 2006, p. 140). 3

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

167

s­ omething to say about education? Outside of his university duties he mostly gave presentations to a nonacademic public or had radio discussions with a handful of contemporary intellectuals; some were published, others not, according to how Adorno felt about them and whether he had time to give them a second look – to complexify them, or to (re)write them, if need be. In the last 15 years, educators and philosophers in and outside Germany have increasingly appreciated the pedagogical dimensions of Adorno’s work (Cambi 1988; Mantegazza 2014; Orofino 2015; Domenicali 2020; French and Thomas 1999; Giroux 2004; Cho 2009; Heins 2012; Stojanov 2012; Mariotti 2014; Snir 2017; Olivier 2018a, b; Peyrical 2023). All commentators agree that his published discussions with Hellmut Becker, one of the most important interlocutors for his pedagogical reflections, are a key part of Adorno’s work on education (Adorno and Becker 1971). In my view,  the Adorno-Becker talks are neither interviews nor debates, but dialogues between two leading West German intellectuals of the 1950s and 1960s. The topics of the dialogues seem to originate from both interlocutors and tackle issues about which each of them felt they had something to say for the enrichment of public debate. Some topics that are of utmost importance for Adorno, but probably less so for Becker, are not addressed at length, for example, musical education (musicalische Erziehung und Bildung) (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 14), or questions about the relationship between teachers and students or between students and the university.7 When what Germans now classically call “political education” (politische Bildung) is brought up, it is as a yet unstructured field – an issue open to discussion, particularly in the first discussion. Aiming to provide exhaustive or even comprehensive coverage of all those talks, in the spirit of F.  H. Paffrath’s work (Paffrath 1992; see also Schäfer 2017; Heyl and Ahlheim 2019), would be beyond the scope of this article. But it is worth remembering that Adorno did not see his dialogues with Becker as an extraordinary activity, but rather as part and parcel of his philosophical and political involvement in reframing Germany’s public sphere after 12 long years of National Socialism. Adorno himself never systematized his reflections on education, and the topics themselves, though his own, are also dependent on German historical and social phenomena in Germany and the world after the war. This is in accordance with a core idea of Critical Theory: that truth contains a noncontingent historical moment and that philosophy is a social activity. One can only imagine that the book on morals Adorno wished to write after Ästhetische Theorie (Aesthetic Theory) (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 7) would have taken educational questions into account more than was the case in the Minima Moralia. The overall impression one gets when reading all Adorno-Becker discussions together is that of a coherent yet open “forcefield” (Kraftsfeld), a decisive concept for Adorno in my view, a forcefield held together by several dialectical threads (authority and resistance, adaptation and revolution, content and critique...) and by Adorno’s conviction that critical

 See, for example, the dialogue with Peter Szondi in 1967 (Adorno 2000).

7

168

A. Peyrical

theorists must do all they could for the establishment of a radical, critical, substantial, and philosophical democracy, in Germany and further afield. Of the Adorno-Becker dialogues, the 1968 “Erziehung zur Mündigkeit” (Adorno and Becker 1971, pp. 133–147) is the most well-known. First translated into English in 1983 as “Education for Autonomy” (Adorno and Becker 1983) and later in 1999 as “Education for maturity and responsibility” (Adorno and Becker 1999), has also been translated and studied in several languages.8 This and the three other published texts, however, are not the only traces that exist of the Adorno-Becker encounters. For my PhD on the concept of personality and the dialectics of the individual and society  in Adorno, I had the opportunity to examine the four  other radio talks between Adorno and Becker, which can be consulted at the Adorno Archive in Berlin: • “Kann Aufklärung helfen? Erwachsenenbildung und Gesellschaft” (“Can Enlightenment help? The Education of Adults and Society”), broadcast on December 13, 1956 (TWAA_Ge_086). • “Die Gesellschaft zwischen Bildung und Halbbildung” (Society between Culture and Half-Culture), broadcast on April 2, 1961 (TWAA_ Ge_132). • “Zur Ideologie der Unbildung” (On the Ideology of Unculture), broadcast on October 26, 1966, audiotape in two parts (Ta_096 & Ta_087); preparatory notes (TWAA_Ge_195). • “Erziehung zur Leistung” (Education for Productivity), typescript dated January 28, 1968, preparatory notes (TWAA_Ge_215). Taking the eight dialogues together, it becomes clear that common questions and interests grew into a long-lasting exchange of views, beneficial on both sides. Although sometimes far from agreeing completely, it seems that Becker and Adorno were sufficiently close to one another that their disputes were fruitful for both. Becker enriched and complexified his reflections on his pedagogical practice with the critical view of Adorno’s dialectical analysis, while Adorno could give Critical Theory a larger public platform and apply to his reflections on the good, the true, and the beautiful the issues at stake in the public debates about education at the time. Discovering how long-lasting and manifold Adorno’s dialogue with Becker was, and thus enriching my understanding of Adorno’s expectations for philosophy’s role in the public affairs of post-war Germany, substantially contributed to the framing of the latest version of the third part of my dissertation, wherein I focus on how Adorno theorized the dialectics between the individual and the collective from a political perspective, and the role of critical education for individual and collective social change.

 Including Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Alain Patrick Olivier translated it as “L’éducation à la majorité” in 2018 (Adorno 2019). He and I, together with Maïwenn Roudaut, translated the remaining texts of the same volume into French, and we are preparing them for publication. 8

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

169

Much debated issues, such as the relationship between the Frankfurt School and the students of the ApO (Außerparlamentarische Opposition), as well as new perspectives, such as Adorno’s theory of the political and its relevance for the twenty-­ first century, benefit from the light shed upon his dialectically and critically conceptualized educational talks. Two that are particularly original are the 1956 discussion on the education of adults, a topic which, to my knowledge, had not previously been identified as of interest to Adorno, and the 1966 one on Unbildung, which prolongs the Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (Jargon of Authenticity) (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 6: pp.  413–531) but also clearly displays its link with Negative Dialectics (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 6: pp. 1–412). There, Adorno works on opening critical  passageways between the reified antagonism of “reactionary” versus “progressive” pedagogical and social practices/theories. While the discussion on Unbildung helps understand Adorno’s “Theorie der Halbbildung” (Theory of Half-­ education) (Adorno 1959) a major and much discussed but difficult and often misinterpreted piece, Adorno’s notes on Leistung (achievement) gives us a hint of his devotion to theoretically shaping concrete, everyday teaching practices, while dialectically challenging simplistic view of the opposition between tradition and revolution, adaptation and resistance.

1.1 Education as Social Critique in Adorno In Adorno’s texts, educational questions, whether moral, social, or political, are never separated from social criticism. One of his central theses is that education is not only an object of study in and of itself, nor should it be seen as a mere technique to be administered, even if it raises specific as well as technical issues. His reflections on pedagogy are always as much singled out as they are  embedded within broader philosophical, political, and social analysis. Throughout his life, he coupled his theoretical work as well as his practice as a teacher with works on the theme of education and culture/human development (Bildung). As always deeply rooted in the real, in determinate materiality as a historically manifesting and yet to be created social reality, Erziehung and Bildung are, Adorno believed, worthy of the name only if they participate to some extent in social reflection and critique. Conversely, social critique remains incomplete if it does not deal with the question of education. In 1965, Adorno phrased his convictions in an unequivocal and non-reductionist way to Heydorn and Becker: I am of the opinion, radically of the opinion, that all the problems I have discussed about school are in fact problems of society and that, in a certain sense – a sense, however, not to be understood crudely – school can be regarded as a kind of microcosm of society out of which everything can be read. (Adorno et al. 2001 [1965], p. 34; my translation)9

 “Und ich bin allerdings der Ansicht, radikal der Ansicht, dass alle die Probleme, die ich an der Schule erörtert habe, in Wirklichkeit Probleme der Gesellschaft sind und dass in einem gewissen Sinn, in einem allerdings nicht grob zu verstehenden Sinn, die Schule als eine Art von Mikrokosmos der Gesellschaft betrachtet werden kann, an dem man alles ablesen kann.” 9

170

A. Peyrical

Thus, it would be a mistake, and disrespectful of Adorno’s intentions, to try to organize his reflections into a systematized and abstract theory of Bildung and/or Erziehung. Furthermore, in my view, Adorno’s contributions to pedagogy and the philosophy of education should be apprehended on the same basis as his social criticism: they are negative and critical, of dialectical character, yet sparkling with utopian moments and suggestions on how to teach “less wrongly,” to paraphrase Freyenhagen’s interpretation of Adorno’s negative moral philosophy (2013). Adorno never believed that strictly informative broadcasting of cultural and educational content would be enough to guarantee right or correct consciousness (richtiges Bewußtseins), which for him was the goal of education, yet he wished to participate in the development of a truer democratic education in which cultural products are available for everyone to experience and of a social world that supports a complex relationship to them. He thought – as did Kant in his time, although from a more radical social standpoint  – that only a society of adults, displaying Mündigkeit (maturity, autonomy), could elaborate and live up to democratic rather than demagogic practices. An important linguistic point must be stressed from the outset. When dealing with Adorno’s pedagogical reflections, one is faced with a terminological issue – that he uses two different words for “education” in German: Erziehung (education) and Bildung (education and culture/human development). Roughly speaking, by Adorno’s time the word Erziehung was used to refer to the education of children – subjects that are not yet mature. By contrast, Bildung applies to adolescents and adults. However, this distinction between Bildung and Erziehung, although relevant to a certain extent, should not be reified.10 This division of (also philosophical) labor and vocabulary can be seen as a mark of the “administered world,” which sharply separates childhood and adulthood, the semi-private and the public and the social and political realms. In a theory so concerned with dialectics, on the one hand, and with calling into question the social division of labor, on the other hand, education’s dual nature must be reflexively addressed. The discussions presented here, however, mirror this distinction more than they elaborate it: two deal with Bildung and two with Erziehung. Their content nonetheless calls into question the fact that they are too often approached separately.

 The meanings of each term vary across time. For example, in Lessing’s famous Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1780), on which text Adorno gave a seminar before the war in Frankfurt when he was working as Tillich’s teaching assistant, Erziehung concerns children and adults, individuals and (religious) communities alike. 10

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

171

2 How It All Started: Educating Adults – A Challenge in “Administered” Post-War Germany Following his return to Germany after the war, Max Horkheimer contacted lawyer Hellmut Becker to help with the legal aspects of the reestablishment of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt.11 Becker was initially more interested in Horkheimer’s work than in Adorno’s and more concerned with practical pedagogical matters than with philosophical questions, yet he began corresponding with Adorno about invitations and radio encounters.12 In an article he published in Merkur, “Die verwaltete Schule” (The Administered School) in 1954, Becker had attributed to Adorno the critical use of the adjective “administered.” The adjective was, in fact, used by Adorno, Horkheimer, and Eugen Kogon in a 1950 radio discussion to describe the kind of social totality that faces and shapes individuals today (Adorno et al. 1989, p. 122). The first radio discussion between Adorno and Becker took place in 1956. Seven more followed between then and 1969, the year Adorno died. Becker was one of the éminences grises of the German post-war educational sector. The son of orientalist and Prussian Minister for Culture (1925–1930) Carl Heinrich Becker, he first trained as a lawyer and jurist. He was married to a less well-known but no less well-educated French-German writer and translator, Antoinette Mathis-Becker. They met, it should be noted, when they both worked for Nazi jurist Ernst Rudolf Huber in Strasbourg. In the 1950s and 1960s, Becker was occasionally described as an “invisible” Minister of Education, or as the German “Pope of Education.” He took a leading role in shaping the policies of modernization and reeducation supported by the United States and generally accepted by the federal government (Bohm and Bohm 2011). In 1956, he became president of the Deutscher Volkshochschulverband (German Federation of Adult Education Centers) and, in 1962, director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung (Max Planck Institute for Human Development) in Berlin (Becker 1962). Both positions allowed him to greatly influence the German education system. “Kann Aufklärung helfen? Erwachsenenbildung und Gesellschaft” (Can Enlightenment Help? The Education of Adults and Society) (TWAA_Ge_086) marks the first time Adorno and Becker met for a talk at the Hessische Rundfunk and the beginning of their long-­ lasting radio collaboration. Two months before their discussion, Becker and Adorno had met at the German Adult Education Day event in Frankfurt, where each had delivered a talk. In his “Aktualität der Erwachsenenbildung” (Actuality of the Education of Adults) (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 20.2: pp. 327–331), Adorno gave a preliminary sketch of his expectations regarding adult education. The meeting provided an opportunity for him to restate his optimism for a newly rebuilt institution, but also to express his fears that this institution would not be sufficiently critical. For  A more detailed account from Becker’s perspective can be found in Becker 1990 and Becker and Hager 1992. 12  Their correspondence from April 1955 through August 1965 is conserved in the form of a 130-­ page document at the Adorno Archive (TWAA_Br_0073). 11

172

A. Peyrical

Becker, it was the perfect occasion to promote the Adult Education Centers (Volkshochschulen or VHS). The VHS were partially funded by the state and by those who attended the courses. Their independence and their countrywide network give them a wide latitude. Hence, they were particularly suited, according to Adorno, to the critical role he explicitly assigned to them – not merely to transfer knowledge, but to develop critical thinking in the face of the apparent incomprehensibility of a society in which adults, although grown up, feel powerless and tend to act as if they were but objects and not subjects of history: “I would see it as the task of adult education to break through that block,13 that is, to encourage people to no longer absolutize existing circumstances” (TWAA_Ge_086/7).14 Both Becker and Adorno believed that the purpose of adult education is to achieve the philosophical and political goals of the enlightenment, and they discussed what it would take for the VHS courses to meet the target of fostering real, critical enlightenment. Although they largely agreed, they had different opinions about what ‘enlightening’ people means and looks like. In the course of the discussion, Adorno shows himself to be more radical and less willing to make concessions to the “administered world” than Becker, who, in turn, seems less inclined to criticize the structure of capitalist societies than his interlocutor. A little more than 10 years after the end of the war, Adorno insists mostly on the negative aspect of critical reflection: I may perhaps take up a keyword: Resistance. (…) It is certainly one of the most essential tasks of adult education to strengthen people’s powers of resistance to the social processes that form and deform their consciousness. (TWAA_Ge_086/10)

Adorno did not phrase this need for resistance to (rather than wholesale rejection of) the “administered world” as a refusal of any influence from an “outside” on a “pure self.” Rather, he expressed it in the sense of the realization of our helplessness as individuals in an all-powerful social order. This is for him the primary goal of adult education: to better understand our vulnerability to (de)formation, as a first step towards changing ourselves and society. Such a goal can be read both as the sign of

 Here, by “block” – to my knowledge one of the very first occurrences of the term in Adorno’s work – Adorno means both an object (society as an incomprehensible object seen by an individual who feels completely powerless) and the process of accepting, practically and theoretically, the status quo. Education, in his view, must make people aware of the historically produced and becoming nature of reality, so they may go beyond their feeling of powerlessness without repressing or discarding it too quickly – in 1968, he will sharply reproach some students for doing the latter. Later in his work, Adorno makes a concept of the term, specifically in his lectures on Kant. How Adorno’s interpretation of the history of philosophy and his concepts of social philosophy intertwine are matters for case studies to clarify. He always saw the opposition of life and thought as problematic; it is thus not surprising that a keyword of the Cold War that cut the world into two superpowers, or “blocs,” found a conceptual nest in Adorno’s thought, from linguistic everyday experience and this radio talk to the course on Kant (where it acquires a technical meaning) and Negative Dialectics. 14  “Ich würde es als die Aufgabe der Erwachsenenbildung ansehen, diesen Block zu durchstoßen, also die Menschen dazu zu bringen, nicht länger das, was ist, zu verabsolutieren.” 13

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

173

a utopian or as a resigned stance, and, paradoxically, is probably both – a call to be aware of both the fragility and the power of ideals and realities alike. Here it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to conclude that because Adorno talked of ‘deforming’ consciousness, he was implicitly referring, by contrast, to a perfectly undeformed consciousness that would or could already exist in our social world. Certainly, Adorno’s use of ‘negative’15 terms can be misleading and lead us to think that he has an idea, however vague, of what a rightly formed consciousness would be. Yet, as I understand it, the very specificity of his normative discourse lies in its negative strategy. According to it, even if we cannot say positively what an “undeformed” or “well-formed” consciousness looks like, what matters is that there is enough experienced suffering and irrationality in the world for us to be simultaneously emotionally and rationally convinced that our social world has not yet reached a satisfactory form and that we are all somehow deformed by it. Moreover, Adorno is consistant with his dialectics since he follows this strategy without ever endorsing a strict body/mind or individual/society distinction ontologically or normatively. Adorno, guided by this utopian conviction and strengthened by his personal and theoretical analysis of the negative historical experience of Auschwitz (the symbolic name for the undeniable failure of culture), was looking for a way to oppose both anti-intellectual, anti-democratic practices, and purely formal and legal democracy. He sought a negative third way between long-lasting, imperialist (re)education (Russian, American or otherwise) on the one hand, and violent, short-lived insurrections on the other, as well as a path between reactionary traditionalism and liberal bourgeois education and culture. His was an arduous quest for a kind of educational and political Bildung that would form people’s minds and bodies so that they are capable of resisting wrong “forms of life” and creating and living in a society more attuned with the best of humanity. In this quest, Adorno was as skeptical as he could be when it came to compromising with the “administered world” (Adorno et al. 1989, pp. 138–139); it is not that administration and organization are bad in themselves, but their history taints them with the stigma of having been primarily used as weapons of domination (Adorno et al. 1989, p. 127). Adorno stresses that any adult education worthy of the name cannot be a seemingly harmonious mix of Weiterbildung (specialized training in a particular field of expertise, to serve the market) and of a broader diffusion of what is usually seen as “classical culture.” In other words, adult education, as conceived by Adorno and Becker, should neither be taken as simply an opportunity for working adults to increase their productivity by learning new skills, nor as a place where one acquires an ideological cultural varnish so as to fit better into “respectable” society. This second aspect is an element of a bourgeois educational paternalism that, for Adorno, was no longer relevant. Even if we consider, as I believe Adorno undeniably did, that some products (artworks, books, films, etc.) are more worthy of study than others, that they display a higher quality of

 For example, the subtitle of Minima Moralia is “Reflections on/from the mutilated (beschädigt) life.” 15

174

A. Peyrical

form and content, this does not justify the condescension implied by the transmission of a reified high culture to uncultured masses. It calls, however, for rigorous work to raise ourselves to their level, without relaxing social criticism, including with regards to traditional cultural biases which Adorno himself was not free from (e.g., Adorno hardly read any of the great European female novelists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries). In the mid-twentieth century, Adorno recalls, the promise of adult education would be betrayed if it devolved into throwing the crumbs of an ersatz culture to people who never could or wished to attend university. Yet it would equally be betrayed if the best products of past centuries were deemed guilty of the evils of their times and, for that reason, cancelled  or forgotten. Around the middle of this first conversation, disagreements emerge. In contrast to Adorno, who emphasizes them, Becker tends to minimize the structural social inequalities that hinder education. Becker is not only less Marxian than Adorno, less unyielding to the “administered world”, but also less “negativist.” Adorno stresses the difference between himself and Becker when he first formulates his negativeist position: (…) the possibility of giving people some kind of positive orientation in this world through which they can be, to a certain degree, reconciled with themselves and with the world, I consider problematic because I am convinced that this world is in disarray, and I think that no human being who is serious can now give people recipes or slogans in the field of education. (TWAA_Ge_086/13)16

Ten years later, in “Erziehung – wozu?” (1966) Adorno would stress his loyalty to this negativistic approach to education by criticizing the idea of “guiding images” (Leitbilder) because they do not correspond to the challenges of a historical and dynamic social and political world. One senses that, in 1956, both Becker and Adorno are simultaneously optimistic and pessimistic, but on different issues. Adorno is pessimistic with regards to society being systematically wrongly organized because of its capitalist structure, but at the same time he believes that using adult education to promote the critical analysis of cultural works might make it a springboard for the development of critical consciousness. Becker is more realistic about the fact that, until the sense of human distress is more broadly resolved, any critical consciousness  – as embedded, per Adorno’s example, in the critique of kitsch in the latest movie productions  – will not have a decisive impact on people’s lives. Adorno reacts by clarifying his position to avoid being accused of idealism for defending critical consciousness. A purely cognitive enlightenment as to what is

 “(…) die Möglichkeit, daß man den Menschen eine Art von positiver Orientierung in dieser Welt gibt, durch die sie gewissermaßen mit sich und der Welt ausgesöhnt werden, diese Möglichkeit halte ich deshalb für problematisch, weil ich überzeugt bin, daß diese Welt in Unordnung ist und daß kein Mensch, der es ernst meint, nun im Bereich der Bildung dem Menschen Rezepte oder Parolen geben kann.” 16

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

175

“simply there” (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 20.2: p. 329)17 does not solve social ­problems. Without thinking, however, and the parallel yet distinct work of empirical and theoretical social transformation, political and social action will inevitably fall behind what is expected of it – namely, according to Adorno, to end suffering and need: I don’t believe that Enlightenment helps in the sense that if you know where you stand, that is, if you become aware of reality, then the suffering and need, from which we start out, would be overcome, because suffering and need do not only exist in the false consciousness of reality, but because they really exist (…). (TWAA_Ge_086/14)18

It is interesting here to see how Adorno holds onto the most classic enlightenment goal of demystifying beliefs and establishing a right consciousness, while at the same time expressing a materialist Marxian standpoint. His purpose was not to abandon enlightenment because it was too idealistic, but to save it dialectically – that is, to perpetuate it in critical form. This meant defending the horizon of emancipation embedded in the enlightenment of the eighteenth century, while embracing the process of its changing meaning and content over time. Put simply: following Adorno’s insights implies breaking with the idea that we must either wholly accept or reject enlightenment. Adult education deals with a dialectic of rescue and criticism of enlightenment’s promise, which has not yet been actualized. The final important point emphasized by Adorno in “Kann Aufklärung helfen?” sets out this logic, which shows how his educational thinking cannot be separated from his critical philosophy of culture (Kulturkritik). He conceptualizes a distinction between geistigen Güter (spiritual goods) and Konsumgüter (consumer goods). The latter exists strictly for the satisfaction of a current need, at least it pretends to satisfy a need, whereas encountering the former always provides an incentive to question and even transform oneself  and society. For Adorno, one of enlightenment’s aims is to overcome a certain individual and collective narcissism – a tendency, reinforced by capitalist social structures, to fight relentlessly  for what one conceives of as a group or individual self-interest – while at the same time acquiring a critical consciousness that allows self-protection from demagoguery.

3 1961: Halbbildung – What Is That Exactly? In 1959, Adorno gave his famous talk entitled “Theorie der Halbbildung” (Adorno 1959) at the meeting of the German Society of Sociology, where Becker also gave a presentation on “Sozialforschung und Bildungspolitik” (Social Research and  “[Die Funktion der Erwachsenenbildung] ist die von Aufklärung. Der neue Aberglaube, mit dem sie es zu tun hat, ist der an die Unbedingtheit und Unabänderlichkeit dessen, was der Fall ist. Dem beugen sich die Menschen, als wären die übermächtigen Verhältnisse nicht selber Menschenwerk.” 18  “Ich glaube nicht, daß Aufklärung in dem Sinne hilft, daß, wenn man weiß, wo man steht, also wenn man sich der Realität bewußt wird, daß also damit das Leiden und die Not, von dem wir ausgegangen sind, in Ordnung kommen, weil Leiden und Not nicht nur in dem falschen Bewußtsein von der Realität bestehen, sondern weil das ja auch reale Momente hat (…).” 17

176

A. Peyrical

Education Politics) (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung 2014). The 1961 meeting with Becker on Radio Hessen was conceived as an opportunity to discuss Adorno’s presentation. As he often did, Adorno begins by warning his audience not to expect a summary of his 1959 presentation to make it easier to understand, because summarizing ideas that are thoughtfully put into words is all but impossible. He does, however, reformulate the main thesis to be discussed: What was (…) called “culture” has today become “socialized half-culture”, i.e., a mere consumption of so-called “cultural goods”, which are swallowed like other goods. One takes note of them informatively, at most one actually learns them, or one believes to take a kind of pleasure in them, but one actually no longer comes to the most essential thing: to experience. (...) Fresh and cheerful dissemination of culture under the prevailing conditions today is directly one with its destruction. So much for provocation. (TWAA_Ge_132/2)

A great deal could be, and has been, said about this provocative thesis. Here I would only like to stress the importance of the concept of Erfahrung (experience) to Adorno’s conception of Bildung. Though very skeptical of definitions, Adorno characterizes experience as “a continuous filling with spiritual things extending over longer periods of time” (TWAA_Ge_132/2).19 Halbbildung is, in some ways, the opposite of experience: it amounts to a “half-understood” and “half-experienced” relationship to culture. These expressions seem to suggest that experience implies a totality, something whole, not a half-something. However, Adorno does not strictly defend the conservative idea of a once substantial, but now lost, Bildung. His analysis is more ambiguous and fruitful. His conception of history (of ideas) is of a Kraftsfeld, and his diagnosis of Halbbildung is based on a criticism of ready-made alternatives, such as the dichotomy between progress and reaction. Adorno is neither progressive nor reactionary, but a determined critic and advocate of the new and the traditional, as they concretely appear in history. This dialectical position is evident in educational topics as much as on the concurrent and related question of the dialectical relationship between the individual and society. On certain occasions Adorno seems to agree, as did Horkheimer, with the historical diagnosis that at an early stage of liberal times (in early nineteenth-century Germany) a small number of (male) individuals had the opportunity to fully realize themselves as individuals by realizing Bildung’s ideals (TWAA_Ge_132/2).20 The transfer of this historical experience to larger parts of society did not succeed (as historical events have proven, according to Adorno) and the opportunity to realize it fully, in the sense that all humankind would be included in this individualization process, was missed. On other occasions, however, Adorno’s debunking of his own conceptions’ nostalgic moment leaves room for a more utopian concept of Bildung, closer to the paradoxical concept of tradition, as “Nostalgia for something that has never been” (Adorno 1997, p. 306). In this alternative sense, experience, as a different and idiosyncratic  “(...) einer über längere Zeiträume sich erstreckenden kontinuierlichen Füllung mit geistigen Dingen.” 20  For example, in the 1950 radio talk between Horkheimer, Adorno, and Eugen Kogon entitled “Die verwaltete Welt oder die Krisis des individuum,” see Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s replies (Adorno et al., p. 125, 127). 19

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

177

relation to cultural goods, would not be “full” in the sense of totality, but would be a process that has no ready-made form, no assigned course or end. It would have no pre-definite temporal limit and content. Objects of Bildung could only be experienced if we had enough time, including time to spare – one of many possible signs that we would live in a fulfilled and fulfilling  society. Experience  – and Bildung with it  – is a lifelong process and will continue as long as society exists. It is a kind of attitude that cultural products, in the “emphatic sense” of “spiritual goods” I mentioned  earlier (i.e., products  which would not be reduced to their exchange value in the form of goods) – that those products we experience expect from us, the realization of a critical/productive relationship that leaves neither subject nor object unaltered. Adorno provides two counter-­models to experience: “information” on the one hand, wherein the subject does not let the object enter, question, or modify them, and, conversely, a sort of “pleasure,” wherein the subject almost physically consumes the object, integrates, and destroys it. As a rational-emotional complex subject-object relationship, experience in the full sense of the term, is, first, for Adorno, the opposite of relating to information understood in a positivistic way. Positivistic information illegitimately atomizes the object and duplicates this atom on a linguistic level. The subject thus faces an object that has been reduced to pure identity with itself. Second, real experience is opposed to a predatory attitude toward the object, which only relates to it in a controlling manner (Herrschaft). In both cases, the subject only relates to itself or to a substitute of the object. In this second respect, Adorno suggests, the old bourgeois elite itself never really experienced an (emphatic) relationship to cultural and educational productions.21 The fetishistic, dominating relationship to culture that prevails in the upper class is no model of the perfect spiritual experience. Adorno advocates a negative delineation of an emphatic concept of Bildung. Something must be criticized, something “saved” from both sides: from the commodification/diffusion of cultural products in the form of information, because of its democratic goals, and from the destructivity/worship of the ahistorical “dominant” standpoint on art, because it understands works of arts as spiritual, sacred totalities. In his reply, Becker grants Adorno his definition of Halbbildung, but wonders whether Adorno’s condemnation of what he calls the culture industry goes too far. He asks whether everything in our present cultural situation indicates a threat to Bildung. Are there not positive aspects to this Halbbildung, such as the fact that it allows for the democratization of culture? Becker shows himself to be more optimistic than Adorno about what is usually meant by “democratization,” namely, the intensification and industrialization of the production of cultural goods. For Adorno, however, democratization in that sense is insufficient, because it does not reflect on the social conditions in which it takes place.

 “The constantly expanding difference between social power and powerlessness denies to the powerless – and tendentially already to the powerful – the real preconditions of autonomy which the concept of culture ideologically preserves” (Adorno 1993, p. 22). 21

178

A. Peyrical

The question of democratization opens the door for Adorno to clarify his position in response to the criticism that he defends an elitist view of Bildung.22 To answer the question of whether Bildung should target a happy few or should rather be made available to everyone, Adorno presents what I would call a “dialectic of democratization”: on the one hand, he says, one must keep in mind that massifying culture, i.e., reproducing such cultural goods as books or films on an extremely large scale, to make them available to everyone, does not leave them intact; on the other hand, however, Adorno is opposed to either limiting access to cultural products, or to historicism, a backward-looking stance that insists on the “authenticity” of past cultural goods and reifies spiritual-intellectual works by locking them up in their own “good old” times (TWAA_Ge_128). Must Shakespeare’s plays be presented exactly as they were in the sixteenth century? Should it be forbidden to play Beethoven’s sonatas on the radio on the grounds that they were never written for that purpose? one might ask Adorno – and his answer is hard to imagine. What is clear, however, is that Becker grasps the difficulties of such questions when he recalls that in 1920s Berlin, the “newly cultured” public complained against the Volksbühne when its staging of a classical bourgeois play did not look as seventeenth century as they expected... Another fascinating aspect of the discussion lies in Adorno’s explanation of how and why his conception of Bildung cannot be confused with a reactionary one, despite his criticism toward the massification/mutilation of culture. He does so by strongly criticizing the concept of popular/folk culture (volkstümlichen Bildung). For Adorno, it is this concept of popular culture, rather than his critical theory of cultural production in late capitalism, that embodies a reactionary and paternalistic view of culture. The concept of popular/folk culture indeed reifies people into a social group, “the people” (das Volk), that would by its very nature be unfit to participate in elite culture. This criticism of the concept of popular culture shows that Adorno’s theory of culture is very demanding, but not reactionary. His conception of Bildung may require, de facto, great effort from teachers and students alike (this distinction is, after all, not a strict one) but there is no de jure elitism here. Adorno concludes that the circulation of a second-class concept of Bildung – a Bildung that only amounts to the increasing availability of cultural goods – cannot change society; however, together with society’s self-reflection, this can help foster social change. In a society without classes, the idea of popular culture loses its very raison d’être. Adorno’s negative and dialectical approach concentrates on what he calls “truth content” (Wahrheitsgehalt) by rejecting the relevance of Manichean alternatives that are presented to us as inevitable (e.g., that adaptation and resistance are mutually exclusive, an authoritarian either/or). Rather than demanding that one takes a side, he asks us to understand the dialectical intertwining of those sides and their mutual insufficiency. It is strange, then, that Adorno states:

 Adorno can indeed be seen as a “progressist elitist” (Caruso n.d.).

22

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

179

Yes, I would leave the concept of adaptation out of consideration in this context, because people are forced to adapt anyway. Education today does not have to promote adaptation, but more essentially resistance. (TWAA_Ge_132/18)23

Why does he insist here only on the dimension of resistance and criticism proper to Bildung, and not also on its positively formative aspect? This emphasis on “resistance” within the dialectic of Bildung justifies itself, in Adorno’s view at least, on the basis of a diagnosis of his times, which, according to him, already adapts students almost too much to the existing culture and economy. This suggests that the negative dialectician must be aware of historical and contemporary trends – a suggestion which poses, among other problems, the question of how to grasp a historical moment, which Adorno does not address here but discusses elsewhere (Adorno and von Haselberg 1983 [1965]). Later in the 1960s, notably in his next dialogue with Becker in 1966, Adorno qualifies this judgment and stresses that the adaptative, integrative moment essential to Bildung is not to be discarded if one hopes it can revolutionize society from the inside, while  at the same time actualizing its already existing  potentials. He will then raise the following question: to what extent must the self let go of itself (which is not at all the same as “expressing”) in its relationship to other selves and to society? His answer lies in an original way of conceptualizing Entäusserung (externalization/alienation), a point which is too complex to discuss here. On this topic, at least, it is clear that the discussions with Becker made Adorno more aware of the balance needed between adaptation and resistance.

4 1966 – “Ideologie der Unbildung”: Adorno’s Anti-­conservative Theory of Bildung How should we translate the rare Adorno’s neologism “Unbildung”? If we consider that the main meaning of Bildung in this context is “culture,” it should be translated as “unculture.”24 However, the dialogue more focused on pedagogical than civilizational issues. If we understand Bildung as “formation,” another translation could be something like “deformation,” but this translation can be misleading. It has the disadvantage of insisting on the ‘positive’ negative dimension of such a pedagogy (as if Adorno knew what a undeformed culture looks like), and not on the strictly negative, mutilating aspect of it (beschädigend). A third, equally unsatisfactory possibility would be to translate Unbildung as “uneducation” or “noneducation.” This has the advantage of underlining the absence of Bildung, but it robs it of its impact outside the closed field of pedagogy.

 “Ja, ich würde den Begriff der Anpassung in diesem Zusammenhang außer Betracht lassen können, weil die Menschen zur Anpassung sowieso gezwungen werden. Bildung hat heute nicht die Anpassung zu befördern, sondern wesentlich den Widerstand.” 24  Cook (1993) translates it as “lack of culture.” 23

180

A. Peyrical

In 1964, 2 years before his radio encounter with Becker,25 Adorno published Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (Adorno 1970–2020, vol.6: pp.  413–531), his book against Heidegger, which was initially conceived as part of Negative Dialektik (Adorno 1970–2020, vol.6:pp. 1–412). The dialogue with Becker extends the critique of the Jargon to pedagogy and education, dimensions that were hardly mentioned in the book but already implicit in Adorno’s hardly known criticism of music pedagogy, that I can’t discuss here (see Kertz-Welzel 2005; Jost 2015). In addition to the record of the radio talk, Adorno’s preparatory notes and five pages of excerpts from pedagogical texts are preserved in the archives. These notes and quotations make it possible to identify the authors criticized anonymously by Adorno in the course of the discussion: Otto Friedrich Bollnow, Fritz Blättner, and Heinrich Weinstock, all of whom were in some way interested in or fascinated by National Socialism and who occupied important positions in German post-war secondary and higher education. To this list he adds Klaus Schaller, a younger, influential, anti-­ idealist pedagogue. Adorno exposes here the authoritarianism and conformism of a pedagogical language that mystifies the existing pedagogical world and reinforces the powers that be. It is a conception of education diametrically opposed to Mündigkeit – one of Adorno’s central imperatives of enlightenment-inspired education. The originality of Adorno’s dialectical approach, as displayed in these dialogues, is twofold. First, it takes form in a negative anti-foundationalism, which Adorno endorses, but which is also, interestingly, sharpened by Becker. He, taking Adorno at his word, calls into question any attempt by his interlocutor to formulate a positive definition of the mündig (mature) and gebildete (educated) person.26 Second, it lies in the fact that Adorno always attempts, with the help of his diagnosis of the present, to distinguish between moments of truth (Wahrheitsmomente) and untruth (das Unwahre) within his opponent’s own theories. He sketches this distinction here; within three tendencies he evokes: the idealist-Humboldtian neo-­ humanism of the nineteenth century, the contemporary anti-humanism of his time, and the “Heideggerian-Jargon” pedagogy. The negativity of his dialectic consists in opposition to all reductive and one-sided thinking and, most importantly, the binary thinking that presents itself in the form of apparently obvious and unsurpassable alternatives: here, specifically, the alternatives of so-called “progressive” and  In June 2022, only a recording of the discussion entitled “Ideologie der Unbildung” was at hand at the Adorno Archive. At the end of August 2022, Michael Schwarz and I discovered the existence of a transcript of the discussion in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Akte: VI. HA, Nl Hellmut Becker, Nr. 821. 26  In the dialogue before this one, entitled “Erziehung  – wozu?,” Becker suggested that Adorno might want to be careful not to absolutize the definition of Mündigkeit as resistance. At the beginning of the Unbildung dialogue, Adorno starts by recalling this suggestion, saying that Mündigkeit as resistance represents a moment in the set of social categories and of the categories of sociology of education, not the whole of it. Mündigkeit should thus not be defended abstractly as a value that is true in itself, but as embodying the moment of autonomy within a truly human theory of education. This example shows that not only do the dialogues form a certain unity despite their various subject matter, but also that they represent a dialogical, dynamic, and possibly thought-provoking event for Adorno. 25

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

181

“­ conservative” pedagogy. He suggests that those alternatives usually obscure more than they enlighten social phenomena. But, contrary to idealist philosophers, Adorno does not understand his work as a philosopher and sociologist as the replacement of doxa through purely philosophical definitions. To give a hint of Adorno’s way of reflecting, I concentrate here mostly on his critique of the “Jargon” pedagogy. The conservative “Jargon” pedagogy he targets here is characterized by one main intention: a priori narrowing (Verrengung) (TWAA_Ge_195/3) the field of living social experience, in the name of a secure, forever valid, and mythical social destiny into which the pedagogues incite the younger generations to insert themselves, as into a Procrustean bed. To show this concretely, Adorno quotes and comments  a “well known pedagogue who comes from Heidegger,” F.  Bollnow, without naming him: Whereas in classical educational thinking – that is to say this kind of pedagogical thinking that this pedagogue refuses – it is a matter of man’s developing his spiritual powers in the most diverse educational contents possible, “encounter” – and this is what our pedagogue wants – means something much harsher, namely that a reality fatefully breaks into his life, which mercilessly tears him out of his previous habits, which forces him to confront and thus shakes him to his core. (Paffrath 1992, p. 136; my translation)27

Adorno debunks what he calls a Metaphysizierung (metaphysization) of the constraining social conditions of existence. In the pedagogical framework of the Jargon, this mystification takes the form of praise for hardness, submission to destiny, and violent dispossession of the self. Instead of encouraging young people to become aware of themselves, to question themselves and their cultural environment while trying to simultaneously insert themselves in already existing social relations, Jargon pedagogues orchestrate what appears to Adorno to be a sabotage of Bildung and of critical thinking. It is important to note that any negative dialectics worthy of the name cannot fetishize the moment of critique – the living spirit guiding (social) philosophy, rather than a dogmatic truth – without falling into a patent contradiction with critical thinking. Hypostasizing the critical attitude or critical person, who says an abstract “no” to everything, would itself take the form of a Leitbild, which Adorno was strongly against. Without minimizing the radical nature of this critique, it is interesting to note how much intellectual probity Adorno shows  – at least, this is the possible

 “Während es im klassischen Bildungsdenken – also jenem Bildungsdenken, das dieser Pädagoge ablehnt  – darum geht, daß der Mensch seine geistigen Kräfte an möglichst mannigfaltigen Bildungsgehalten entfaltet, bedeutet Begegnung  – und das ist das, was unser Pädagoge will  – etwas sehr viel Härteres, nämlich, daß eine Wirklichkeit schicksalhaft in sein Leben einbricht, die ihn erbarmungslos aus seinen bisherigen Gewohnheiten herausreißt, die ihn zur Auseinandersetzung zwingt und so in seinen Tiefer erschüttert.” 27

182

A. Peyrical

interpretation I find the most convincing.28 He takes care to do justice to the elements of truth contained in those educational discourses, while simultaneously making them partly responsible for nothing less than direct complicity with Nazism and the horrors of Auschwitz. The first moment of truth in Jargon pedagogy consists in the fact that, compared to Humboldtian pedagogy, the pedagogues of Jargon, out of, perhaps excessive, realism, have “de-idealized” and “de-fetishized” education. They do not present education as an end in itself, contrary to a certain number of (neo-)humanist discourses, but instead understand educational praxis as part of social activity. But unlike Adorno’s (and Horkheimer’s) dialectical critical theory, the pedagogues of Jargon also sacrifice the best ideals of education, namely, individual and collective autonomy: [They have criticized] a neutralized concept of education, which makes education an end in itself, which absolutizes education without having any practical consequences, especially any consequences for social-political practice. I would say that the moment of this ideology of non-education which should be honored and saved is that it rebels against the fetishization of the concept of education, which is not, as it was actually the case with Humboldt or to a certain extent even with Goethe, the supreme and highest, but which itself only has its place in the question of a proper institution of society. But the fact that this educational ideal is simply liquidated by the absolutized principle of reality prevents precisely the social practice, the social change, on which it would depend. (Paffrath 1992, p.  139; my translation)29

This quotation indicates a fine distinction that Adorno makes between two similar, but nevertheless distinct theoretical gestures. The first is fetishization of Bildung, which consists in illegitimately abstracting an element – here education – from the rest of society; the other, which Adorno here calls “absolutization”, elsewhere “neutralization” or “mythologization” of the current organization of society, shows how pedagogues operate by means of a metaphysical language. A second, surprising element of truth that Adorno sees in these pedagogies is that they somehow advocate the democratization of educational discourse. But they do so in the problematical nationalist and demagogical form of Volksbildung. They do this in opposition to Humboldt’s particularly elitist concept of the  For those who like to compare and put Heidegger and Adorno closer together than I think is reasonable (even if we do not take Adorno’s own condemnation of German existentialism too seriously), or who like to see Adorno entirely as an old bourgeois professor (which he also was), this would, to the contrary, strengthen their view that his theory is not so revolutionary as it seems. I would suggest seeing a fruitful and thought-provoking tension here in Adorno’s discourse, that must be taken, as already stated, as a Kraftsfeld. 29  “[Sie haben] einem neutralisierten Bildungsbegriff [kritisiert], der die Bildung zum Selbstzweck macht, die Bildung verabsolutiert, ohne daß sie irgendwelche praktische Konsequenz hätte, vor allem irgendwelche Konsequenzen für gesellschaftlich-politische Praxis. Ich würde sagen, das Moment an dieser Ideologie der Unbildung, das auch zu ehren und zu retten wäre, ist, daß sie gegen die Fetischisierung des Bildungsbegriffs aufbegehrt, der ja nicht, wie es bei Humboldt also tatsächlich der Fall war oder bis zu einem gewissen Grad sogar bei Goethe der Fall war, das Oberste und Höchste ist, sondern der selbst nur seinen Stellenwert hat in der Frage nach einer richtigen Einrichtung der Gesellschaft. Aber, daß nun dieses Bildungsideal einfach liquidiert wird durch das verabsolutierte Realitätsprinzip, das verhindert gerade die gesellschaftliche Praxis, die gesellschaftliche Veränderung, auf die es ankäme.” 28

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

183

educated personality. However, the pedagogues’ critique of personality is not only questionable in terms of its motivations but is also contradictory because it leads to an antidemocratic cult of strong leading figures. Adorno sees here the consequences of a collectivist anti-individualism that goes hand in hand with the authoritarian ideals of adaptation, of “sich fügen” (to fit in) and “mitmachen” (participation, conformity) which have no justification other than the simple acceptance of what is given. All this leads Adorno to defend the unloved and misinterpreted Wilhelm von Humboldt against those who blame him for all the ills of education in Germany. The overly individualistic and subjectivist moment in Humboldt’s pedagogy is certainly among its problematic aspects. However, if one understands Humboldt correctly, so Adorno, one finds in his works – just as in Hegel’s – a strong emphasis upon the dialectic between the subject (the individual, Einzelne) and the object (the world, Wirklichkeit), a dialectic embodied in a concept we already mentioned, namely Entäusserung (externalization/alienation). Adorno and Becker agree against simplifying criticisms that reduce Humboldt to an idealist individualism because the whole point of Entäusserung is that the individual subject develops their unique self in a dynamic relationship with objectivity and society. For Adorno even more than for Humboldt, however, this means that while developing themselves, the subject also questions the justifications of the status quo, thus calling for social transformation of reality. Indeed, contrary to Humboldt, Adorno gives to reality, on which the development of the individual depends, the sense of a historical social totality, rather than an ahistorical world of ideas or culture detached from the material, economic, and political production and reproduction of society. There are traces of this critical reappraisal of Critical Theory’s relationship to Humboldt as early as in Adorno’s sketches for Horkheimer’s opening lecture given  to their students in Frankfurt  in 1952 (Horkheimer 1985 [1952]), wherein Adorno writes  about the duty of the singular individual to find a relationship to society that allows them to both develop as a unique being and work “for the whole” of society, instead of dispensing with it by fleeing into preserved domains (Paffrath 1992, pp. 144–145). Society and the individual have a dialectical relationship, even if in the end, for Adorno, society (whose only suffering constituents are individuals) should be there for the individual more than the reverse. As we see in 1966, his defense and salvage of Humboldtian pedagogical ideals and ideas is fully fleshed out and empowered by its situation within the broader scope of the philosophical and political war against the Jargon der Eigentlichkeit.

5 1968 – Education and “Evaluation”: A Missing Piece in Adorno’s Theory of Bildung Adorno’s last unpublished interview with Becker dates from 1968 and deals with Leistung. Before Adorno’s unexpected death, they would talk two more times, once in the same year,  about “Erziehung zur Entbarbarisierung” (Adorno and Becker 1971, pp.  120–132), and once in the summer of 1969, about  “Erziehung zur

184

A. Peyrical

Mündigkeit” (Adorno and Becker, 1971, pp. 133–147). Leistung is a polysemous term. It can be translated in the context of pedagogy as “evaluation” or “grading,” but can also mean more broadly “performance,” “productivity,” and even sometimes “merit.” The verb leisten means both to succeed, to get a good grade, and to produce a certain expected effect. Despite our joint efforts with Michael Schwarz, it has not yet been possible to find either a recording or a transcript of this last dialogue. I am therefore sketching here what I think can be said on the basis of Adorno’s preparatory notes, which have come down to us. Three important elements that Adorno intended to develop in the discussion warrant mention. First is a direct critique of Leistung, addressed to the standardization practices of evaluations in schools. Then there is a less developed, but equally essential critique of a possible archaizing critique of these evaluations. Finally, it is worth noting that Adorno outlines concrete proposals to guide the practice of teaching toward overcoming, in the form of a negative dialectic, the antinomy between the romantic and the scientistic relationships to knowledge. Adorno formulates a sharp criticism of Leistung. His provocative thesis is that the principle of school evaluation itself is barbaric. This thesis goes against the view that school grading is a way of making the immeasurable commensurable, thus helping students to know what they successfully learned and what they did not. This does not mean that for the critical theorist students do not have to learn content; on the contrary, they need to have not only superficially learned it, but must also be able to reflect on it. To help them do so and to see if that has been the case, they must be asked in a way that awakens their dialectical skills. Adorno takes the opposite view of a low-cost meritocratic idea and suggests that the principle of such superficial grading (the idea of which he does not completely oppose) is not so much a pragmatic solution used to evaluate academic skills as an avatar of social constraint to adapt younger generations to existing society. He sees education through grading as a preamble to the social requirement to perform one function, and one function only. Ultimately, it is a byproduct of the capitalist logic of exchange of equivalents: “Behind the evaluation principle is that people are worth only as much as what they are worth to others, their intrinsic nature is liquidated” (TWAA_Ge_215/1).30 Is Adorno exaggerating in formulating this shortcut? Even if he is, this exaggeration shows something of the truth. Today, the importance of grades and the comparison of students on the basis of academic performance remain prevalent. It is also difficult to deny that the principle of a universal exchange of equivalents structures society, perhaps even more viciously than in the 1960s, because it is coupled with a paradoxical and unilateral injunction toward individuals to be always more “original,” to develop one’s so-called singularity (Reckwitz 2021). Here, as elsewhere, Adorno deploys a dialectic of school and society: it would be illusory to believe that transforming school (for example, reflecting with the students on how school is organized, avoiding certain types of exams, etc.) would be sufficient to transform

 “Hinter dem Leistungsprinzip steckt, daß die Menschen nur so viel wert sind wie das, was sie für anderes wert sind, ihr An sich wird liquidiert” TWAA_Ge_215/1. 30

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

185

society; nevertheless, social transformation also requires reflection on schooling and transformations in educational practices. As stated previously, Adorno’s critique is dialectical and negative according to the anti-absolutist “neither/nor” dichotomy. Hence, we find under Adorno’s pen, although it perhaps occupies a lesser place in his preparatory notes than the critique of grading, the outline of another, parallel critique that could be characterized as “anti-anti-positivist.” This critique points out the limits of a potential archaizing and anti-modern reaction to the omnipresence of standardized evaluation: Question of the Darmstadt Talk:31 Is man measurable? Wrongly asked, should be: What is measurable about him?; otherwise reactionary, an archaic image of the whole man against the fragmented one. But at the same time reflect the consequence of the evaluation principle. (TWAA_Ge_215/1)32

Adorno intends to criticize both the positivist drift of enlightenment and a one-sided reaction to it: a non-dialectical attitude of anti-enlightenment. For Adorno, it is therefore not a question of attacking reason because it is driven to measure, but of calling into question its inflated idea of itself and hence the idea that standardized measuring tools are the only ones valid for evaluating students’ abilities. In my view, such a passage  undeniably prohibits both tendentiously romantic and postmodern readings of Adorno. This double critique leads to Adorno’s almost pragmatic advice regarding the modes of school testing. First, he proposes a distinction between subjects of knowledge. In his opinion, it is right to evaluate certain subjects, such as mathematics, by means of standard exercises and questionnaires. On the other hand, for subjects that involve to some extend linguistic expression, what Adorno calls the continuity of thought can only be taught and a fortiori assessed by tests that allow the individual to make an experience (Erfahrung) and engage in an autonomous relationship both to the teachers and to the subject: Absolutely abolish the inhumanity of judging people’s future according to the abstract principle of evaluation. Academic model for it: Examinations never as queries. The so-called positive knowledge, which is always needed, shows itself in a conversation that is meant for objective reflection. (TWAA_Ge_215/4; Adorno 1998, pp. 26–27)33

 The Darmstädter Gespräche took place on March 23–24, 1958. Adorno did not present a paper on this occasion (he took part in 1950, 1953, and 1955. He is referring here to the main question/ theme of the 1958 edition. 32  “Frage des Darmstädter Gesprächs: Ist der Mensch meßbar? Falsche gestellt, müßte sein: Was ist an ihm meßbar?; sonst reaktionär, ein archaisches Bild des ganzen Menschen gegen den zerstückten. Wohl aber die Konsequenz des Leistungsprinzip zu reflektieren” (TWAA_Ge_215/1). 33  “Unbedingt die Inhumanität abschaffen, über die Zukunft von Menschen nach dem abstrakten Leistungsprinzip zu urteilen. Akademisches Vorbild dafür: Prüfungen nie als Abfragen. Die sogenannten positiven Kenntnisse, deren es immer bedarf, zeigen sich von selbst in einem Gespräch, das der sachlichen Reflexion gilt.” 31

186

A. Peyrical

The deconstruction of the principle of performance is transposed in the framework of education into a negative yet pragmatic imperative: never evaluate the knowledge and skills of students in the form of a yes-or-no interrogation. The implicit, and maybe more ‘positive’ imperative here seems to be: teach them how to mobilize “positive” knowledge, i.e., the contents of a subject (in history, the dates; in philosophy, the elements of doctrine; in Latin, the declensions; in German, the vocabulary; etc.) by constructing an argumentative reflection on a question or a theme.

6 Conclusion This short presentation of the unpublished radio talks between Adorno and Becker has allowed us to highlight not only a set of Adornian themes and theses about education, but also to defend the negatively dialectical and critical method he deploys to present and explore them. Adorno is inspired by and yet amending Kantism, Hegelianism, and Marxism alike: he is, I would argue, doing exactly  what he preaches elsewhere, namely composing their confrontations. I would like to suggest that one could speak of Adorno’s method of philosophical social criticism (or philosophy as a critical social practice) as a non-standard logic of the negatively dialectical corrective. Adorno’s negative dialectics of education aims to identify shortcuts in all educational doctrines and practices, but also to stress and defend their truth content in all of them. While doing so, the philosopher produces speculative constellations whose regulative idea is a truly human society – without hypostasizing any definition of what “human” means. Adorno develops his thoughts  with and within the real complex empirical social context of education, rather than by arbitrarily isolating single terms and by asking, for example, what is a student qua student or what is learning per se. Theory understood as critical theory is conceived of as theoretically yet critically interpreting, for the sake of practice, social and individual discomforts and dissatisfactions towards education and culture. This critical approach leads, however, neither to despair nor to relativism. Adorno never gives up on the idea of an objectively right society and education within/for it. Not only does he develop a determined criticism of past and contemporary Bildung alike, he also, from this criticism, formulates the negatively regulative idea of Mündigkeit (in relation to, but also in opposition with, Kant’s own concept). This is where, however, his negativistic logic (centered on evils, in the plural, i.e., neither on the singular good, which is but an abstraction, nor on goods that are, in his opinion, not objective enough) shows itself to surprisingly mobilize not only immanent critique but also a transcendent horizon. An occasionally overlooked tension within Adorno’s work is the fact that his negativity is suffused with quasi-­theological hope – hope that humans possesses a potential to go beyond actual circumstances. Regarding education, as with all other social aspects of human life, philosophers have one task: to suggest that “a point of view of redemption” (vom Standpunkt der Erlösung) (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 4: p.  281) deserves to be not believed, but thought. The ideas that pain must pass, that the capacity for critical reflection is

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

187

realized in effective discernment, that individuals and societies have certain potentials, etc., are part of Adorno’s negative dialectics but are not strictly negative in content. This, in my opinion, does not delegitimize Adornian negativism, but makes it consequential as an anti-foundationalist and anti-absolutist negativism  – even negativity should not be hypostasized. To show how these two dimensions, negative and positive, are articulated against the background of a refusal of the absolute, a refusal which is itself not absolutized, would go far beyond the scope of this article. Leaving these questions open, I would simply like to make the Adornian practice of philosophy and the open and ambiguous dilemmas of education outlined here resonate with the words of an existentialist philosopher Adorno would have liked probably better than Sartre – but whom he apparently never read – namely Simone de Beauvoir, when she criticizes Hegel’s dialectics in The Ethics of Ambiguity: In order for the return to the positive to be genuine it must involve negativity, it must not conceal the antinomies between means and end, present and future; they must be lived in a permanent tension. (De Beauvoir 1962, p. 133)

References Adorno, Theodor W. 1959. Theorie der Halbbildung. In Soziologie und moderne Gesellschaft: Verhandlungen des 14. Deutschen Soziologentages vom 20. bis 24. Mai 1959  in Berlin, ed. A. Busch, 169–191. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke. Adorno, Theodor W. 1970–2020. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols 1–20, ed. R. Tiedemann. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Adorno, Theodor W. 1993, March 20. Theory of Pseudo-Culture (1959). Trans. D. Cook. Telos 95: 15–38. ———. 1997. On Tradition. Telos 1992(94): 75–82. ———. 1998. Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Trans. Henry W.  Pickford. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2019. Vorträge 1949-1968. Ed. Michael Schwarz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 2000. Theodor W. Adorno and Peter Szondi: Von der Unruhe der Studenten [1967]. In Frankfurter Adorno Blätter VI, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, 152–154. Munich: edition text+kritik. Adorno, Theodor W., and Hellmut Becker. 1971. In Erziehung zur Mündigkeit: Vorträge und Gespräche mit Hellmut Becker 1959-1969, ed. Gerd Kadelbach. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1983. Education for Autonomy. Trans. David J. Parent. Telos 1983(56): 103–110. ———. 1999. Education for Maturity and Responsibility. Trans. Robert French, Jem Thomas and Dorothee Weymann. History of the Human Sciences 12 (3): 21–34. Adorno, Theodor W., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper & Brothers. Adorno, Theodor W., H-J Heydorn, and H Becker. [1965] 2001. Diskussion über Adornos “Tabus über dem Lehrerberuf”. Moderation: Gerd Kadelbach. Pädagogische Korrespondenz, Winter 2001/2002: 32–44. Adorno, Theodor W., Max Horkheimer, and Eugen Kogon. 1989. Die verwaltete Welt oder: Die Krisis des Individuums [1950]. In Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Max Horkheimer, vol. 13, 122–142. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Adorno, Theodor W., and P. von Haselberg. 1983 [1965]. On the Historical Adequacy of Consciousness. Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 1983(56): 97–103. Becker, Hellmut. 1954. Die verwaltete Schule. Merkur 82 (December): 1155–1177.

188

A. Peyrical

———. 1962. Gegenwartsprobleme der Erwachsenenbildung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. International Review of Education/Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft/ Revue Internationale de l’Education 8 (2): 158–165. ———. 1990. Durch pädagogische Aufklärung den Menschen helfen  – Hellmut Becker über Kritische Theorie und Pädagogik. Pädagogische Korrespondenz: Zeitschrift für kritische Zeitdiagnostik in Pädagogik und Gesellschaft 8 (Winter 1990–1991): 68–82. Becker, Hellmut, and Frithjof Hager. 1992. Aufklärung als Beruf: Gespräche über Bildung und Politik. Munich: Piper. Böhm, Christian, and Birgit Böhm. 2011. “Das ‘System Hellmut Becker”. Wie die Gesamtschule in die deutschen Länder kam. Accessed 5 Feb 2023. http://www.schulformdebatte.de/PDF-­ Schulformdebatte/104.%20Zur%20Diskussion/126.%20Das%20System%20Hellmut%20 Becker.pdf Cambi, Franco. 1988. Critica e utopia. Appunti per una lettura pedagogica della Scuola di Francoforte. Rassegna di pedagogia 4: 221–270. Caruso, Marcelo. n.d. Elitismo progresista. Theodor W. Adorno y las hipotecas de la teoría clásica del a educación (Bildung). Accessed 5 Feb 2023. https://www.academia.edu/216180/Elitismo_ progresista._Theodor_W._Adorno_y_las_hipotecas_de_la_teor%C3%ADa_clásica_del_a_ educación_Bildung_ Cho, Daniel K. 2009. Adorno on Education or, Can Critical Self-reflection Prevent the Next Auschwitz? Historical Materialism 17: 74–97. De Beauvoir, Simone. [1947] 1962. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Trans. B.  Frechtman. New  York: Citadel Press. Domenicali, Filippo. 2020. Adorno pedagogico. Theorie der Halbbildung e prassi didattica. Annali online della Didattica e della Formazione Docente 12: 187–205. French, Robert, and Jem Thomas. 1999. Maturity and Education, Citizenship and Enlightenment: An Introduction to Theodor Adorno and Hellmut Becker ‘Education for Maturity and Responsibility’. History of the Human Sciences 12 (3): 1–19. https://doi.org/10.117 7/095269519901200301ä. Freyenhagen, Fabian. 2013. Adorno’s Practical Philosophy. Living Less Wrongly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Giroux, Henri A. 2004. What Might Education Mean After Abu Ghraib: Revisiting Adorno’s Politics of Education. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 4 (1): 5–24. Greis Christian. 2017. Die Pädagogik der Frankfurter Schule. Kritisch pädagogische Perspektiven im Denken von Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Fromm, Habermas und Negt. Tectum Verlag. Heins, Volker. 2012. Saying Things That Hurt: Adorno as Educator. Thesis Eleven 110 (1): 68–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513612450498. Honneth, Axel. 2012. Erziehung und demokratische Öffentlichkeit. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswiss 15: 429–442. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-­012-­0285-­9. Honneth, Axel, and Institut für Sozialforschung, eds. 2006. Schlüsseltexte der Kritischen Theorie. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Horkheimer, M. 1985 [1952]. Begriff der Bildung. In Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 8, 409–419. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Jost, Christofer. 2015. Beyond Adorno: Post-Critical Teaching of Popular Music in the German Educational System and Its Theoretical and Practical Challenges. Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music 5 (1). Kertz-Welzel, Alexandra. 2005. The Pied Piper of Hamelin: Adorno on Music Education. Research Studies in Music Education 25. Mantegazza, Raffaele. 2014. Color di lontananza. Educazione e utopia in Theodor W.  Adorno. Milano: FrancoAngeli. Mariotti, Shanon. 2014. Adorno on the Radio: Democratic Leadership as Democratic Pedagogy. Political Theory 42 (4): 415–442.

T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World…

189

Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung. 2014. 100 Jahre Hellmut Becker. https://www.mpib-­ berlin.mpg.de/611610/100jahre-­hellmut-­becker.pdf. https://doi.org/10.14280/08241.29 Mühleisen, H.-O. 1978. Individuum und Befreiung. Freiburg (Habilitationschrift): Politische Pädagogik im Spätwert Max Horkheimer. Olivier, Alain Patrick. 2018a. L’éducation à la majorité selon Theodor W. Adorno. Éducation et socialisation 48. https://doi.org/10.4000/edso.2991. ———. 2018b. Les conditions de la non-éducation. Illusio 18: 39–49. Orofino, Stefano. 2015. Postfazione a T.W.Adorno, Educazione, società e cultura. Staggi sociologici e pedagogici. Roma: Aracne. Paffrath, Fritz Hartmut. 1992. Die Wendung aufs Subjekt. Pädagogische Perspektiven im Werk Theodor W. Adornos. Weinheim: Deutsche Studien Verlag. Peyrical, Aurélia. 2023. Éducation et barbarie chez T.W.  Adorno en dialogue avec H.  Becker. Theodor W. Adorno: actualités d'une dialectique. Rennes: PUR. (forthcoming) Reckwitz, Andreas. 2021. La société des singularités. Paris: Edition Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. Schäfer, Alfred. 2017. Theodor W. Adorno. Ein pädagogisches Porträt (2. Auflage). Weinheim: Beltz Juventa. Schwarz, Michael. 2011. Er redet leicht, schreibt schwer. Theodor W. Adorno am Mikrophon. In Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, Vol. 2, 286–294. Michael Schwarz. 2021. “Je vous laisse y réfléchir” – Les conférences d’Adorno. In Allemagne d’aujourd’hui, 2021/3 (237), 218–224. Snir, Itay. 2017. Minima Pedagogica: Education, Thinking and Experience in Adorno. Journal of Philosophy of Education 51 (2): 415–429. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-­9752.12238. Stojanov, Krassimir. 2012. Education as Social Critique: On Theodor Adorno’s Philosophy of Education. In Theories of Bildung and Growth: Connections and Controversies Between Continental Educational Thinking and American Pragmatism, ed. P. Siljander, A. Kivel, and A. Sutinen, 125–134. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Heyl, Mathias, and Klaus Ahlheim. 2019. Adorno revisited. Erziehung nach Auschwitz und Erziehung zur Mündigkeit heute. Hannover: Offizin. Theodor W. Adorno Archiv (TWAA), Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt TWAA_Ge_086. Kann Aufklärung helfen? Erwachsenenbildung und Gesellschaft. 13.12.1956. TWAA_Ge_128. “Der Historismus in der Musik”, Gespräch zwischen Adorno und Dr. Rudolf Stephan, 30.09.1960. TWAA_ Ge_132. Society between Culture and Half-Culture, 2.4.1961. TWAA_Ge_195. Zur Ideologie der Unbildung. 26.10.1966. TWAA_Ge_215. Erziehung zur Leistung. 28.1.1968. von Friedeburg, Ludwig. 1992. Bildungsreform in Deutschland: Geschichte und gesellschaftlicher Widerspruch. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Aurelia Peyrical  studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris) and at Sorbonne University where she passed the “agrégation de philosophie” in 2015. She is currently writing her PhD at Paris-Nanterre University with Pr. Emmanuel Renault on “Critique and Utopia of “Personality”: the Negative Dialectics of Individual and Society in T. W. Adorno’s social philosophy”. She is also studying in Clinical Integrative Psychology and Psychotherapy at the University of Paris 8 (IED).

Part VII

Friedrich Pollock Archive

Symbiosis and Dispersion: The Friedrich Pollock Papers Philipp Lenhard

Friedrich Pollock had an unusual friendship with Max Horkheimer (Lenhard 2019a). From the moment the two first signed a friendship agreement as teenagers, they were inseparable. They remained so until Pollock’s death in 1970. The two associated friendship as a social form with utopian ideas of a better life and even believed that they could anticipate the true life in the false, to some extent (Wiggershaus 2009, pp. 228–239; Emery 2015). Within the friendship, however, the two adopted different roles. While Pollock was concerned with securing the material foundations of a life in friendship, Horkheimer was more committed to working out its philosophical principles. When Pollock occasionally referred to himself as the “foreign minister,” he meant the safeguarding of friendship against the outside world. The “minister of the interior” then, in this sense, was Horkheimer, insofar as he thought through and reflected on the values that were to be essential to friendship: truth, loyalty, and courage. With regard to the Institute for Social Research (IfS), this basic scheme was adopted, although Horkheimer was undoubtedly the public representative of the institute. Pollock took on the role of an organizer and administrator, while Horkheimer was responsible for the basic orientation of the institute’s philosophical program. Fundamentally, however, the utopian model of symbiotic friendship was based on this principle: the interior (friendship) always precedes the exterior (institute; outside world).

P. Lenhard (*) University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_13

193

194

P. Lenhard

1 The Pollock Papers in Frankfurt This structure of a common political and philosophical life is also reflected in the archival legacy of the friends. Over decades, Pollock very carefully collected and arranged letters and manuscripts, travel documents and notes, photographs, and official documents. Although many documents were lost in the turmoil of war and emigration – we do not know exactly how many – overall the estate is rich and very large. When the University Library received all documents in 1974, it contained over 250,000 pages of archival documents, approximately 1000 newspaper clippings, about 800 photographs and 120 audiovisual media. In addition to this, Horkheimer’s personal library contains almost 16,000 volumes (Leusch 2014). The biggest gap with regard to sources covers the years of his childhood and youth, but even for this period, several valuable letters and photos are preserved. The greatest peculiarity of the Pollock estate is therefore that it was originally part of the Horkheimer estate. The editors of Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften (Complete Writings) note: After Max Horkheimer’s death, the scientific estate passed by testamentary disposition to the City and University Library of Frankfurt am Main. The estate includes Horkheimer’s private and research library, the surviving correspondence, manuscripts, and other materials, as well as the library, correspondence, manuscripts, and materials of his longtime friend and collaborator, Friedrich Pollock. (Schmid Noerr and Schmidt 1996, p. 228; my emphasis and translation)

In 1966, Horkheimer had already donated his estate to the city of Frankfurt.1 When Horkheimer died in 1973, his last assistant, Alfred Schmidt, became the literary executor of the estate. This is legally problematic in that it actually only applies to Horkheimer’s papers, not to Pollock’s, which must be considered an orphan work (see below) in the legal sense. In any case, the legal representative of the Horkheimer Foundation gave the estate to the Frankfurt City and University Library, where it was organized and processed first by the retired librarian Heinz Friesenhahn and then by Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr and their staff with funding from the German Research Foundation. In doing so, they were able to fall back on the order that Pollock had already created. Since their storage at Horkheimer’s various places of work and residence (New York, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Montagnola), the archival records “had been mainly filed in folders, and in some cases also in binders. During the indexing process, the folders created by Horkheimer himself or his secretaries were preserved as far as possible” (Schmid Noerr and Schmidt 1996, p. 229). Many documents show traces of handwritten categorizations and classifications made by Pollock. Thus, it can be assumed that he was responsible for the basic arrangement of the materials. In this respect, it is only logical that Pollock’s estate was given the library signature MHA XXIV: Max Horkheimer Archive, Section XXIV.  In the finding aid of the MHA, this signature is assigned the heading

 See the article by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr in this volume.

1

Symbiosis and Dispersion: The Friedrich Pollock Papers

195

“Manuscripts and Materials of Friedrich Pollock.” It consists of four subcategories (Schmid Noerr and Schmidt 1996, p. 234): A. Publications, notes, excerpts, materials B. Personalia C. Offprints and periodicals D. Audio tapes However, it would be wrong to assume that the signature MHA XXIV contains the entire Pollock Papers. Horkheimer’s and Pollock’s lives and work were so intertwined that documents from Pollock’s papers can also be found in other sections, particularly but not exclusively in the preserved institute correspondence. Consistently, the 19-volume Collected Writings of Horkheimer, which Schmidt and Schmid Noerr edited in the 1980s and 1990s on the basis of the MHA order, also contain numerous letters by Pollock (Horkheimer 1995, 1996a). In addition, there are minutes of discussions (Horkheimer 1996b) and, most importantly, the so-called Späne  – aphorisms that Pollock recorded on the basis of conversations with Horkheimer (Horkheimer 1988, pp. 172–541). They must be attributed to Pollock as coauthor. A couple of years ago, the system was converted under the head of the Archive Center, Mathias Jehn, and his colleague Oliver Kleppel. The old MHA signatures are still used by many researchers but have been replaced officially by the signature “Na,” an abbreviation for Nachlass (estate). Horkheimer was given the signature Na 1 and Pollock Na 2 (Marcuse Na 3, Löwenthal Na 4, etc.). In 2014, large parts of the Horkheimer Papers (including those of Pollock) were fully digitized. Parts of it were made available to the public and can be easily accessed online, externally. Unfortunately, this does not include those of the Pollock Papers (MHA XXIV). Other parts of the corpus are only accessible from computers in the library’s reading room. Digitization has the advantage that search tools can also be used, as Mathias Jehn explains: You have the option of doing so-called cloud searches, i.e., accessing keywords that are used very frequently, and then compiling certain terms – such as entering “American Jewish [Committee]”, for example – and then you are presented with the selection of pieces that are included in this title. What’s also a very nice tool is that we have attached to each index term – the classic index, namely person index, place index and subject index – that you also have a redirect there to other search portals like Wikipedia for example, where you can then get the essential information from others in addition to these search portals, that’s a very networked software. (Leusch 2014)

However, the search function should be used with caution, as it is only partially reliable in practice. Of excellent help, on the other hand, is the detailed information assigned to the digital copies. For example, the record Na 1, 1, 1-205 (old library signature: MHA I, 1, 1-205) contains correspondence from the years 1935–1955. Numerous headwords and keywords are then assigned. Even more relevant is the detailed table of contents (see Fig. 1). There is also a link to the Arcinsys database, where the complete digital finding aids are accessible. Overall, then, Pollock’s estate is very accessible. In addition to the digital option, the original documents can also be ordered to the reading room of the Archive Center. It is forbidden to take pictures, but copies can be made upon request for a small fee.

196

P. Lenhard

Fig. 1  The digitized Horkheimer papers on the website of the University Library, Frankfurt am Main

2 The Fondo Pollock in Florence For a long time, most scholars were unaware that there is a second Pollock estate, which mainly preserves documents from the post-war period, as well as some older archival material.2 The Fondo Friedrich Pollock in the library of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Florence contains the material which the estate trustee of Pollock’s second wife, Carlota, passed on to the philosopher Furio Cerutti in 1983. The collection consists of three parts: (1) Pollock’s library, (2) Friedrich Pollock’s private archive, and (3) the writings of Carlota Pollock.3 In addition to many first editions of writings by members of the Institute for Social Research, often personally dedicated to Pollock, the collection also includes a copy of the mimeographed volume In Memoriam Walter Benjamin, published by the institute in 1942. Unfortunately, the library contains only a part of the original collection because the trustee of the estate has auctioned off most of the valuable volumes. The private archive consists of different sections created by Cerutti and his collaborator, Carlo Campani, on the basis of Pollock’s own categorization: 2.1. Writings and letters of Friedrich Pollock, as well as newspaper clippings and other material concerning his life and work  The first to work with these materials was Cerutti’s research assistant at the time, Carlo Campani (Campani 1992). Unfortunately, the book is only available in Italian and has therefore been largely ignored in German- and English-language research. The Fondo Pollock was used again by (Emery 2015) and (Lenhard 2019a). 3  See the finding aid of the Fondo Friedrich Pollock, University of Florence, p. III. 2

Symbiosis and Dispersion: The Friedrich Pollock Papers

197

2.2. Documents and writings concerning the Institute for Social Research and its staff 2.3. Administrative material of GEFUSO (Gesellschaft für Sozialforschung e.V), HEWEFO (Hermann Weil Memorial Foundation), SAFICO (Sociedad Anónima Financiera y Comercial) and the IfS 2.4. Photographs and postcards Certainly, among the most exciting documents of the second section is an exchange of letters with Theodor Adorno, including Adorno’s last known (at the time of writing) postcard (see Fig. 2) before his death (Lenhard 2019b, pp. 567–570). In addition, the materials include Pollock’s private notes on his impressions of his first trip to Europe after 1945, which included an extended stay in Frankfurt. Also among the materials is an original manuscript of the Späne. The third section contains photo albums and some of Carlota’s writings, including a diary. The Pollock Papers are readily available by appointment and can be viewed in the reading room.

Fig. 2  Theodor W. Adorno’s last postcard to Friedrich Pollock. “Su concessione dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze, Biblioteca Umanistica.” With permission from the Theodor W.  Adorno Archive, Berlin

198

P. Lenhard

3 Other Archives It can certainly be said that the holdings in Frankfurt and Florence form the core of the Pollock estate. However, the life of an emigrant who lived between continents also corresponds to a dispersion of his legacy. In various archives in the places where he lived or worked (Freiburg; Stuttgart; Frankfurt; Rotterdam; Amsterdam; Moscow; Geneva; Paris; London; New  York; Washington, DC; Los Angeles; Buenos Aires; and Montagnola, to name just a few), there are countless other letters and documents, the extent of which is still inestimable. In addition to his kinship ties, this is especially true of his activities as the institute’s administrative head, in which capacity he was in contact with dozens, if not hundreds of intellectuals, politicians, artists, and administrators. Again and again, researchers come across Pollock’s name in the most unusual places. In this respect, it can be said that the Pollock estate is far from being fully uncovered.

4 Material Conditions Many of Pollock’s documents are typewritten and legible. Pollock’s handwriting is also easily decipherable and recognizable. This is not so for a considerable part of his excerpts and notes, some of which are written entirely in Gabelsberger shorthand. There are many drafts of texts by other members of the institute (especially Horkheimer, Neumann, and Massing) that Pollock collaborated on, or revised and commented on. Often, different layers of revision can be identified. Pollock’s involvement is usually easy to determine by his very characteristic handwriting. Many manuscripts are page-numbered or even keyworded.

5 Legal Issues of the Estate As noted, the question of who has the rights to Pollock’s estate is not clear-cut. Pollock had no children and his first wife, Andrée, died in 1939, followed by the death of his second wife Carlota in 1983, so there are no direct descendants. His brother Hans (Juan) Pollock, who fled to Buenos Aires via Amsterdam in 1941, had adopted his wife’s daughter from her first marriage. Pollock’s niece, Liselotte Sommer (née Stern, born in 1913), had a son, Peter Sommer, Friedrich Pollock’s great-nephew, who studied in Switzerland in the 1960s. The author of this article has made intensive efforts to locate family members in Argentina and Switzerland. Unfortunately, these attempts have been unsuccessful. In this respect, Pollock’s estate must be considered “orphaned” for the time being.

Symbiosis and Dispersion: The Friedrich Pollock Papers

199

6 Further Research With Pollock’s biography and the first volumes of his Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings) (Pollock 2019–2023), a beginning has been made to further research. In particular, the examination of Pollock’s contribution to Critical Theory is far from complete. Much of the research ties back to Pollock’s studies on automation (Lüthje 2003, pp. 131–151; Heerich 2007, pp. 107–120). In addition to this, many discussions revolve around the concept of state capitalism and how it relates to the ideas of Franz Neumann, V. I. Lenin, or Rudolf Hilferding.4 Pollock’s work on a renewal of Marxism has not yet been sufficiently appreciated. This includes his reflections on central Marxian concepts such as “concrete labor” and “accumulation of value,” but also more specific problems such as the so-called faux frais. Finally, Pollock’s biography also makes it possible to revisit the question of the significance of Jewishness for the Frankfurt School. Pollock stood for an assimilated, bourgeois Judaism that had moved very far away from religious practice. Like many others, he was made a Jew primarily through persecution. Therefore, his relationship to Judaism differs considerably from that of other institute members including Fromm, Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, or Grossmann. This demonstrates the importance of embracing the diversity of Jewish experience.

6.1 Transcription of the Postcard 5 Lieber Fred, tausend Dank für die Sendung, deren heilige Frühe uns ganz besonders erfreute. Wir sind gut installiert, leiden nur noch ein wenig unter der fast unerträglichen Hitze und einer crowd, die damit nur allzugut sich reimt. Aber wir schalten alles ab, sogut es geht, und beginnen uns treu zu erholen. Hoffentlich habt Ihr’s recht schön und Wald-Dunkel. Euch allen das Herzlichste von Eurem getreuen Teddie [Alles Liebe Gretel]

References Braunstein, Dirk. 2011. Adornos Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Bielefeld: Transcript. Campani, Carlo. 1992. Pianificazione e teoria critica: l’opera di Friedrich Pollock dal 1923 al 1943. Naples: Liguori. Emery, Nicola. 2015. Per il non conformismo. Max Horkheimer e Friedrich Pollock:’ l’altra Scuola di Francoforte. Rome: Castelvecchi.

 The most important publications on this subject are (Campani 1992), (Gangl 1987), (Braunstein 2011), and (ten Brink 2015, pp. 333–340). 5  I want to  thank Michael Schwarz of  the  Theodor W.  Adorno Archive for  his assistance with the transcription. 4

200

P. Lenhard

Gangl, Manfred. 1987. Politische Ökonomie und Kritische Theorie. Ein Beitrag zur theoretischen Entwicklung der Frankfurter Schule. Campus, Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Heerich, Thomas. 2007. Autologische Spiegelung der Verwalteten Welt: Friedrich Pollock (1894–1970). In Das Feld der Frankfurter Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften vor 1945, ed. R. Faber and E.-M. Ziege, 107–120. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Horkheimer, Max. 1988. Späne. Notizen über Gespräche mit Max Horkheimer, in unverbindlicher Formulierung aufgeschrieben von Friedrich Pollock. In Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 14: Nachgelassene Schriften 1949–1972, ed. Max Horkheimer, 172–541. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. ———. 1995. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 15–16. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. ———. 1996a. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 16–17. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. ———. 1996b. Diskussion aus einem Seminar über die Theorie der Bedürfnisse. Zu einem Referat Friedrich Pollocks über die Möglichkeit, im kapitalistischen Staat allen Kindern ein ‘pint milk’ zu geben. In Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 19: Nachträge, Verzeichnisse und Register, ed. Max Horkheimer, 21–27. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Lenhard, Philipp. 2019a. Friedrich Pollock – Die graue Eminenz der Frankfurter Schule. Berlin: Suhrkamp. ———. 2019b. Adornos letzte Postkarte. Sinn und Form 4: 567–570. Leusch, Peter. 2014. Horkheimer-Nachlass jetzt auch online. Interview mit Mathias Jehn. Deutschlandfunk. https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/philosophie-­horkheimer-­nachlass-­jetzt-­ auch-­online-­100.html. Accessed 24 Jan 2023. Lüthje, Boy. 2003. Fred Pollock in Silicon Valley. Automatisierung und Industriearbeit in der vernetzten Massenproduktion. In Modelle kritischer Gesellschaftstheorie. Traditionen und Perspektiven der Kritischen Theorie, ed. A. Demirović, 131–151. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler. Pollock, Friedrich. 2019–2023. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols 1–3, Eds P. Lenhard and J. Gleixner. Freiburg/Vienna: ça ira. Schmid Noerr, G., and A.  Schmidt. 1996. Übersicht über das Max-Horkheimer-Archiv. In Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 19: Nachträge, Verzeichnisse und Register, ed. Max Horkheimer, 228–235. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Ten Brink, Tobias. 2015. Economic Analysis in Critical Theory: The Impact of Friedrich Pollock’s State Capitalism Concept. Constellations. An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory 22 (3): 333–340. Wiggershaus, Rolf. 2009. Die Kompagnons Max Horkheimer und Friedrich Pollock, das Institut für Sozialforschung und das Netzwerk der Frankfurter Schule. In Die Frankfurter Schule und Frankfurt. Eine Rückkehr nach Deutschland, ed. M. Boll and R. Gross, 228–239. Göttingen: Wallstein. Philipp Lenhard  is DAAD Associate Professor of History and German at the University of California, Berkeley (US). He is the editor of Pollock’s Collected Writings and author of the biography Friedrich Pollock  – The Eminence Grise of the Frankfurt School (2019; English edition forthcoming). Currently, Lenhard is working on a book about the history of the Institute for Social Research, 1923–1973 (under contract with C. H. Beck, forthcoming in 2024).

Part VIII

Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal Archive

Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse: Analysis of the Enemy and Volumes from the Marcuse Archive Peter-Erwin Jansen and Inka Engel

Herbert Marcuse, born in 1898, and Leo Löwenthal, who was 2 years younger, met for the first time in Frankfurt in 1932. Horkheimer had commissioned Löwenthal to make contact with Herbert Marcuse through Kurt Riezler, the then rector of the University of Frankfurt. Marcuse, who had wanted to habilitate under Martin Heidegger in Freiburg in 1932, but was unable to do so, was looking for a new field of academic activity. Heidegger had allowed himself to be appointed rector of Freiburg University under the swastika of the Nazi system. This, and an exchange of letters between Martin Heidegger and Herbert Marcuse from 1947 to 1948 led to a final rift between the former “teacher” Heidegger and the Hegel-Marxist Marcuse. Leo Löwenthal ensured that Marcuse, despite Adorno’s reservations, officially joined the institute in January 1933. From Freiburg via Geneva, Marcuse then went into exile in New York in 1934. The friendship of over 45 years between the beast Löwenthal and the monster Marcuse is evident in their first letters, a selection of which is now published in the volume Über Herbert den Greisen und Leo den Weisen (On Herbert the Aged and Leo the Wise) (Jansen 2021). Figure 1 depicts both together in mid-1970.

P.-E. Jansen (*) Hochschule Koblenz, Koblenz, Germany I. Engel Universität Koblenz, Koblenz, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_14

203

204

P.-E. Jansen and I. Engel

Fig. 1  Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal, mid-1970. (Photo: private, P.-E. J)

1 Marcuse’s Thematic Emphases in the Volumes of His Estate In Das Schicksal der bürgerlichen Demokratie (The Fate of Bourgeois Democracy) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 1), Oskar Negt explains “Marcuse’s dialectical understanding of democracy” (Negt 1999, p. 12) against the background of a collapsing US-American democracy. The deeper Marcuse scratches at the capitalist democratic surface, the clearer the veiling mechanisms of systems of domination become. His analyses of the problem of subjectivity opened up the perspective of the solution he addresses in Eros and Civilization (Marcuse 2015 [1955]). The approach of breaking up the psychophysical correspondence between rulers and ruled, such as ideological appropriation and mental exploitation (both predisposed in Freudian drive theory), becomes the central theme of the theoretical-practical studies that begun in 1941, which aim at an autonomy of the subject(s) in the context of a society of free people free of domination. Marcuse’s thinking was a penetration into microstructures that reveal the essential only after the veil of political, social, and societal structures has been lifted. The method was generated from an idiosyncratic combination of Heidegger’s ontology of existence, a left-wing Hegelian Marxism, Freudian drive theory, and the social psychological analyses developed in Critical Theory (see also Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 3), which always excluded the oppositional side (Negt 1999). In Kunst und Befreiung (Art and Liberation) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 2), all essays (except “Art and Politics in the Totalitarian Age” [pp. 47–70]) are published for the first time in German. They show the other Marcuse, a theorist who uses idealistic, aesthetic, and classical values of beauty, to locate sensual liberation in

Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse: Analysis of the Enemy and Volumes…

205

recipients and artists alike. His idealistic understanding of art appears as a transcendence of Schopenhauer’s aesthetic pleasure, which contains negation within itself: “The artist lets us look at the world through his eyes” (Schopenhauer 1986, pp. 231–232). Marcuse’s artistic gaze divorced beauty and negation from cultural capitalism and the promise of happiness, as will be seen in his critique of Warhol’s Pop Art sellout. He did not redefine art but positioned it within a social framework devoid of domination: “Art refuses all stillness, it does not bow to the constraints of politics” (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 2: p.  8). Philosophie und Psychoanalyse (Philosophy and Psychoanalysis) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 3) comprises writings and lectures on his interpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis and on his psychological view of society, available for the first time in German. A detailed introductory study on “Herbert Marcuses politische Dechiffrierung der Psychoanalyse” (“Marcuse’s Political Deciphering of Psychoanalysis”) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 3: pp. 15–94) by Alfred Schmidt, connoisseur of Critical Theory, enables Marcuse to be placed in philosophical-historical frameworks and provides insight into his philosophy of history, which both emerges from Freud’s drive theory and is inspired by Marx. Schmidt points to Marcuse’s concern with happiness and freedom in a materialist – rather than transcendental – sense. It is, after all, a central aspect that the latter, in contrast to Freud, envisages the ideal of a non-repressive culture (see Schmidt. 2002. p. 55). The papers collected in this volume discuss social conflicts from a philosophical and sociopsychological perspective. For example, in “Freiheit: zu oder von” (“Freedom: To or From”) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 3: pp. 131–146), a transcript of a radio broadcast from 1964, Marcuse criticizes the highly developed industrial society. It has the means to grant economic, political, and intellectual freedom, he argues, but is incapable of realizing it. Its forms of rule organize a system in which opposition and contradiction are included, but technical progress and growing productivity are fatefully conditioned. In it, pluralism and democracy automatically change from critical to consenting institutions. The tangible liberation of the world from repression is described by Marcuse elsewhere as the end of utopia. The central passages of the work “Jenseits des Realitätsprinzips” (“Beyond the Reality Principle”) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 3: pp. 147–170) and the “Politisches Vorwort” (“Political Preface”) (pp. 181–188) to the paperback edition of Eros and Civilization (Marcuse 2015) also remain committed to this idea. Die Studentenbewegung und ihre Folgen (The Student Movement and its Aftermath) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 4) seeks to demystify the myth of the 1968 movement, to adjust the supposedly absolute position of Critical Theory like Marcuse’s apotheosis to the given, objective circumstances and to transparently evaluate its impact on the student revolts. For Marcuse at this time, the “liberation of consciousness and knowledge” (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 4: p.  16) was paramount. He denounced the United States’s machinery of extermination in Vietnam, which did not recognize any historical guilt for the mass destruction of the civilian population, which destroyed food and nature, and which itself had no ethics or morality. Solidarity with the

206

P.-E. Jansen and I. Engel

Vietnamese people was directed at the occupation of defenseless people who were supposed to survive as human beings and live their simple human existence.1 Marcuse’s advocacy for the hopeful is objectified in his legendary lecture, “das Ende der Utopie” (“The End of Utopia”) (Marcuse 1980: pp.  3–20) at the Freie Universität in Berlin. Marcuse’s utopian subversiveness made visible the trauma of coming to terms with the past in post-war Germany, which seemed to be trapped in a historical continuum. What put an abrupt end to Marcuse’s intentions and hopes for a new utopian society in Europe and the United States were the violent excesses of the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion). Although he distanced himself from their counterrevolution at an early stage, the militant agitations influenced the further course of the 1968 movements. At the same time as the attacks, Angela Davis was accused in the United States of cooperation with as well as militant support of the Black Power movement. Marcuse demanded her immediate release; he was the keynote speaker at the 1972 Frankfurt Solidarity Congress, organized for Angela Davis. In 1979, in his last speech, “Die Revolte der Lebenstriebe” (“The Revolt of the Life Instincts”) as he called it (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 6: p. 162),2 he summarized the central moments of his thinking: the bearers of the new philosophy of life are not destructive capitalist interplays of productivity and repressiveness, nor leftist organizations or trade unions that cling to the reproduction of destructive progress, but the fledgling forces of the women’s, student, and ecology movements that are making the qualitative leap toward liberation. Marcuse’s hope for a qualitative change in society is sustained by emancipatory social movements and the character of self-­ organization – a revolutionary overthrow rejected out of a class consciousness. Volume 5 is a new and expanded edition of Feindanalysen (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5), which was first published on Marcuse’s 100th birthday in 1998. These texts were commissioned by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) between 1941 and 1947. The new German edition has been expanded to include “Staat und Individuum im Nationalsozialismus” (“State and Individual under National Socialism”) (pp.  140–164). This text analyzes the differences between National Socialist and bourgeois society and the entanglements of the four main centers of power in the Nazi system: industry, the army, the bureaucracy, and the National Socialist Party (p.  7). Marcuse elaborated the study in an intellectual exchange with Franz Neumann, who at the time referred him to the OSS. Ökologie und Gesellschaftskritik (Ecology and Social Criticism) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 6) is devoted to Marcuse’s works of the years 1932–1934 and 1965–1979. Marcuse’s theses on “Technology and Society” (“Kinder des

 There are some problematic passages in the critiques of the American politics and brutal interventions in Vietnam. In the “Political Preface” to his 1966 work Eros and Civilization, for example, Marcuse related the Holocaust and the murder processes in the Vietnam War, the Auschwitz death camp, and the massacre in My Lai. Marcuse mentions these war crimes in the same breath as the Nazi crimes. See the shortly published article about Marcuse and the Holocaust: Jansen 2022, pp. 62–75. 2  The speech was published under the title “Ökologie und Gesellschaftskritik” (“Ecology and Social Criticism”) in Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 6: pp. 165–176. 1

Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse: Analysis of the Enemy and Volumes…

207

Prometheus. Thesen zu Technik und Gesellschaft” [pp. 157–164]), presented at the Frankfurt Römerberggespräche, follow on seamlessly from the work on the Third Reich published in Volume 5. Marcuse’s dialectical investigations of technological progress, against the background of the Third Reich as technocracy, were oriented around the question, “to what extent has technical rationalization encompassed all spheres of life, even moral consciousness been transformed into technology (sic.)?” (p. 11). This last volume also shows effects of Heidegger’s Being and Time as well as Marcuse’s attempt to work out a synthesis of phenomenological existentialism with Hegelian Marxist dialectics and historical materialism. The intention was to build a concrete philosophy that could explain social conflicts like the social existence of man (p. 8). Some of the texts explicitly illustrate the fruitfulness of this concern, which in the European language area as “Existentialist Interpretation of Marx” (p. 8) influenced Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as the Yugoslavian Praxis philosophers. Marcuse recognized and identified the potential of new revolutions in the humanistic detachment of revolting students and radical emancipation and civil rights movements, all of which remained hopeful of a New Utopia.

2 You Must Know Your Enemy: Lying Prophets and Enemy Analysis The social psychological study, The Authoritarian Character. Studies on Prejudice (Adorno et  al. 1950), conducted by the Institute for Social Research, is oriented toward the manifestation of fascism that spread across Europe in the 1930s. Adorno saw this as a petty-bourgeois mass movement and, based on this, hypothesized “that the susceptibility to fascist propaganda is less to do with political, economic, and social ideas, but that such opinions are to be understood as reactions to psychological needs” (Adorno et al. 1950, pp. 10–11). As a result, the researchers involved in the study were interested not only in uncovering authoritarian personality structures, but also in analyzing potentially fascist attitudes, which also survive under nontotalitarian – i.e., democratic – societal conditions and can expose similar attitudes again under certain changes in these societies. What Adorno is addressing is a dynamic concept of personality structure that changes under specific social conditions. For it is only in the constant interrelation of social influences, biographical breaks, and group-specific orientations that individual attitudes, opinions, attitudes, and values become established. The earlier one’s own personality development is sealed, with images and prejudices firmly established, the more likely one is to be steered down authoritarian paths. Adorno writes: “The objective situation of the individual hardly comes into question as the origin of such irrationality” (Adorno 1969, p. 12). Although a large part of the study is occupied with the exploration of anti-Semitic stereotypes, underpinned by the initial findings of the Berkeley group’s anti-Semitism project, led by

208

P.-E. Jansen and I. Engel

Levinson and Nevitt Sanford, it is not limited to these investigations. It examined anti-minority prejudices that “condense into ideological and characterological configurations” (Adorno 1969, p. 209).

3 Die Lügenpropheten: Prophets of Deceit Now what is needed are those political propagandists or demagogues who address precisely these dispositions. How does this happen? What tricks do they use? What elements of their followers’ dispositions do they encounter in real terms? Prophets of Deceit (Löwenthal and Guterman 1949), the fifth volume in the Studies in Prejudice series, addressed these questions (Fig. 2). The lying prophet, according to the authors, personifies political and social grievances or social upheavals, reducing Fig. 2  Front cover of prophets of deceit by Herbert Marcuse and Norbert Guterman

Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse: Analysis of the Enemy and Volumes…

209

them to ethnic groups. The political propagandist is not concerned with “rationally defining the nature of said discontent. Rather, he seeks to reinforce any disorientation that exists among his audience by blurring all rational demarcations and proposing spontaneous actions instead” (Löwenthal 2021, p. 26). The clearer the image of the enemy, the more promising are these spontaneous actions. The agitator, mantra-­like, emphasizes a necessary elimination of people, but not a change in the political structure. “The only way to deal with him [the enemy] is to exterminate him” (Löwenthal 2021, p. 147). Personifying one’s discomfort with the prevailing conditions thus detaches it from political criticism and rational argument, and any thought about political and economic causes recedes completely into the background. “The charges [of the agitator] do refer to a social reality, but not in the form of rational terms” (p.  26). The agitator knows how to use these emotional backgrounds for his own purposes, especially in social crisis situations. He activates and exploits individual feelings of fear, which have long been part of life in modern capitalist societies. Löwenthal calls this human condition in contemporary existence, “the social malaise.” Anxieties caused by an insecure situation can become hatred of the apparent perpetrators, who are supposedly to blame for this misery. The agitator does not create the unease, but he reinforces and solidifies it, because he blocks the way to overcoming its causes (Löwenthal 2021, p. 39). The authors interpret that, in this context, contradictory social conditions are so consistently reduced to individually experienced humiliation that only an authoritarian strike for liberation can secure victory in the struggle for survival. This is what the agitator promises, and he also knows who to target, hence why the description of the enemy takes such a central place in political agitation.

4 Enemy Analysis As Jews and critical intellectuals, Marcuse, Löwenthal, Adorno, Horkheimer, Franz Neumann, and other staff members of the Institute for Social Research (founded in Frankfurt in 1924 with the financial support of Felix Weil) were forced into exile by the Nazis in 1933. Columbia University in New  York was their first stop in the United States. Their funds dwindling, the staff of the Institute for Social Research in New  York looked for new employment opportunities in the American professional context of the late 1930s. Horkheimer and Adorno left New York in 1940 for Los Angeles. There they begin their collaborative work, Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectic of Enlightenment) or, more precisely, work on “Elements of Anti-Semitism.” Disappointed that he could not stay close to Horkheimer and Adorno in California, Marcuse went to Washington in the late 1930s, where Franz Neumann was already working at the OSS. There Marcuse, mediated by Löwenthal, initially took a position in the Office of War Information (OWI); he then joined the OSS a year later, in 1941. Together with Neumann, a constitutional lawyer, Marcuse wrote “Staat und

210

P.-E. Jansen and I. Engel

Individuum im Nationalsozialismus” (“State and Individual in National Socialism”) (Fig. 3), which was printed in Marcuse’s volume Feindanalysen. Über die Deutschen (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5: pp.  140–164). The authors summarized, “National Socialism had two things to offer: on the one hand, a new economic security and, on the other, a new freedom of movement. [...] For the majority of the German population, the individual freedom of the pre-fascist era was synonymous with constant social insecurity. Since 1923 there had been no attempts to establish a truly democratic society. [...] National Socialism transformed the free into the economically secure subject, and the dangerous ideal of freedom was replaced by the protective

Fig. 3  “State and Individual in National Socialism” by Herbert Marcuse

Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse: Analysis of the Enemy and Volumes…

211

reality of secure existence” (p. 158). Feindanalysen brings together the texts written by Marcuse between 1941 and 1950 in the context of his role at the OSS. The OSS was a research community of exiled scholars, mostly from Europe, who studied National Socialist Germany; its ideology  – based on anti-Semitism, racism, and Aryanism – its propaganda; the interconnectedness of politics, economics, the military, and law (Neumann 1942); its rhetoric and military campaigns; and the preparation and then execution of the systematic mass murder of Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and members of the opposition. In the center is the text: “Die neue deutsche Mentalität. Memorandum zu einer Untersuchung über die psychologischen Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus und die Möglichkeiten ihrer Zerstörung” (“The New German Mentality – Memorandum on an Investigation into the Psychological Foundations of National Socialism”), dated 1942. The subtitle goes on to say somewhat too optimistically “and the possibilities of its destruction” (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5, pp.  29–76). The initial optimism for these possibilities of destruction turns realistically pessimistic very early on in Marcuse’s work. On August 16, 1944, he wrote to Max Horkheimer: “If we knew that with the collapse of Germany the ‘evil powers’ would be eliminated, then it would indeed be a bright horizon that loomed before us. [...] What we can do here (in the OSS) to get a reasonably sensible policy going, we are doing, and at least some things seem to be penetrating the thinking and actions of the ‘some in charge’” (Jansen 2021, p. 43). In his dossiers, Marcuse first describes the mentality of the Germans as characterized by unrestricted politicization. The National Socialists had torn down all boundaries between private and public-political spheres in society. Any demarcation between these spheres had been abolished. Education, privacy, sexuality, birth, and family found their only meaning in the German Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community). Along with this interweaving of the private and the political, normative justification had also disappeared, both in politics and in the actions of individuals; a psychological neutrality had settled over every humanistic mode of behavior3 – so neutral that the suffering of those who did not fit into the healthy body of the people was no longer perceived with empathy. The Germans are at present proving themselves by entirely different values and standards, and they speak a language which is fundamentally different from the expressions of Western civilization as well as from those of the former German culture. In order to launch an effective psychological and ideological offensive against National Socialism, we must study the new mentality and the new language in depth. (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5: p. 42)4

 The Frankfurt philosopher and theorist of transcendental pragmatics Karl-Otto Apel, referring to the Nazi era, called this the “destruction of moral self-consciousness.” Apel 1988, p. 91. 4  This is precisely what Marcuse, Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer in the OSS, and Leo Löwenthal in the OWI were doing. Inspired by the publication of the Feindanalysen, the more extensive and detailed publications by Tim B. Müller (2010) and Raffaele Laudani (Marcuse et al. 2013) examine further memoranda and texts of the Frankfurters in the OSS. These new documents are in the OSS Records of the National Archives in the United States. 3

212

P.-E. Jansen and I. Engel

Furthermore, Marcuse attests to the Germans’ unrestricted disillusionment. The propagandist barrage, as analyzed by Löwenthal and Guterman in 1950, would have led them to distrust any normative justification of politics, hence, for Marcuse, their cynical objectivity. The omnipresent terror of the Nazi regime, he argues, fostered in people an attitude in which technical-rational standards such as speed, skill, energy, organization, power, and efficiency exclusively were valid. Marcuse identifies as an irrational rationality the actions of the National Socialist system, which were necessary for technical success and logical in themselves and which were intended to be efficient and effective, but which led to the genocidal anti-Semitism of the Final Solution. “A rationality that measures everything by criteria of efficiency, success, and usefulness” (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5: p.  32) follows only one pragmatic path: to use all means successfully. Ultimately, Marcuse capitulated to the refusal of American policy to adopt the denazification recommendations. He left the OSS, which was then replaced by the CIA on September 18, 1947, with the passing of the Central Intelligence Act.

5 Individual and Terror Marcuse’s friend Leo Löwenthal interviewed survivors of the concentration camps as an American observer at this time. In 1946, fresh from this experience, he wrote his article “Individual and Terror,”5 which can be understood in large parts against the background of the anti-Semitism studies and Marcuse’s analyses from the second half of the 1940s. As the gruesome details of the Nazi killing machine became apparent, the world saw that Nazi terror had indeed objectified human beings  – people had become commodities, consumer goods. From the accounts of the survivors Löwenthal interviewed on behalf of the OWI, he learned that unique individuals had been degraded to anonymous numbers that then disappeared into the machinery of extermination as “useful” and “useless” commodities. In his harrowing text, Löwenthal writes, “those who were not given a number were rejects and were destroyed” (Löwenthal 1982a, p. 168). In 1949, Löwenthal, in his new position at the Voice of America, traveled to a ruined Europe for the first time after World War II, where he visited the Dachau concentration camp (Dubiel and Löwenthal 1980, pp.  134–141). With other State Department employees, he viewed the memorial built near the camp’s former crematorium by Polish survivors, on the occasion of the first Dachau trials in November 1945. While Löwenthal walked “completely distraught” along the groups of ashes that had been turned into graves next to the so-called new crematorium, one of his colleagues wanted to capture the scene on camera. For Löwenthal, this crossed a line: “The thought that I, a Jew who had

 Löwenthal 1946: pp. 1–8; see also Löwenthal 1982a: pp. 161–174.

5

Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse: Analysis of the Enemy and Volumes…

213

survived without any merit, was standing in front of the tomb in Dachau and had my picture taken for fun, so to speak, was more than I could bear.”6 Nazi propaganda planted the idea of a global Jewish conspiracy, of internal enemies growing within the healthy German body of the people, and discredited principles such as social justice, equality of opportunity, the right to vote, equality before the law, guarantees of a fair legal process, freedom of the press, and thus ideas of a democratically constituted society, such as had been found, to some extent, in the Weimar Constitution. The propagandized threat of internal and external enemies was the weld between what the Nazis offered the masses, both materially and psychologically, and the democratic deficits of the Weimar Constitution. In Hitler’s words: “Today we very often talk about democratic ideals; that is, not in Germany, but in the other world. When the rest of the world praises this ideal again today, we can only reply that the German people had the opportunity to get to know this ideal in its purest form for at least 15 years, and we ourselves have only inherited this democracy” (Hitler 1940). In democratic societies, many circumstances favor the emergence of a new terror system: the social and economic void that tears apart masses of workers who no longer see meaning in the standardized process of production and creation, the blind faith in political ideologies that provide a binary and intellectually comfortable view of the world, and the breakdown of the moral and individualistic principles of liberal society in the face of mass crimes that cause helpless citizens to feel a heavy sense of powerlessness and frustration. Some central aspects of Individual and Terror, which can also in part be found in the analyses of Prophets of Deceit, make it clear how terror systems succeed in amassing an aggressive following behind them and establish a willingness to use violence against those who dissent or, from the propaganda applied as described by Löwenthal and Guterman, who can never be included in the society these followers envision. The Jew was emblematic of the stranger who disturbs the apparently “normal” and seemingly “natural” rhythm of life. The follower subordinates his individuality to the agitator’s mass project to create a “pure” society. Personality and morality are destroyed, both in the victims and in the perpetrators. The latter no longer feel guilt or remorse after having automatically carried out barbaric acts. The constant struggle for survival is enforced by a repressive system that reduces human beings to a collection of primary instincts. The exit of humanity from world history, which, in Hitler’s words, becomes once again a “pure and noble natural material” to be exploited and discarded by a “violent, domineering, fearless, cruel youth” that knows “neither weakness nor tenderness.” For Marcuse, the achievement of the National Socialists consisted precisely in interlocking ideology and social reality in such a way that a kind of sober opportunism solidified as an attitude in people’s behavior, borne by an apparently individual, material self-interest and an irrational rationality that shaped society, but was veiled and solidified in people’s minds as a mythology that brought salvation.

 Dubiel and Löwenthal 1980, p. 139; p. 168. See also: Krüger 2022, pp. 52–62.

6

214

P.-E. Jansen and I. Engel The extreme objectivity with which the Germans exchanged democratic freedoms for economic security was not opposed by National Socialist mythology, but encouraged. Paradoxically, it is the education in cynical objectivity that constitutes the spirit of the mythology. In its leading concepts it replaces social relations with “natural” ones, apparently more concrete and vivid. People and race are declared to be “facts”, for birth ­determined by origin and place is a fact to which class and humanity are apparently only abstract ideas. (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5: p. 42)

Herbert Marcuse, even in the midst of the catastrophe of 1940, never abandoned his dreamy optimism. Written during those very dark times in “Is a Free Society Currently Possible?” (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol 5: pp.  165–169), the article concludes with the following, slightly optimistic quote, which can be seen as his political imperative: to think emancipation. Are these [...] not merely subjective value judgments? They are based on an assumption that will never be proved, namely that people should be free. This “should”, though measured by positivist criteria, is not a scientific assertion, but it is the presupposition of all thought and the condition of science itself. (p. 169)

References Adorno, Theodor W., E.  Frenkel-Brunswick, D.  Levinson, and R.  Nevitt Sanford. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality (Studies in Prejudice). New York: Harper & Brothers. Adorno, Theodor W. 1969. Der autoritäre Charakter. Studien über Autorität und Vorurteil. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: De Munter. Apel, Karl Otto, 1988. Zurück zur Neutralität? Oder können wir aus der nationalen Katastrophe etwas Besonderes gelernt haben? Das Problem des (welt-) geschichtlichen Übergangs zur postkonventionellen Moral in spezifisch deutscher Sicht. In Forum für Philosopphie (Ed.), 1988. Zerstörung des moralischen Selbstbewußtseins: Chance oder Gefährdung, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hitler, Adolf. 1940. Speech at the Sportpalaste (1940, January 30th). Berlin. https://en.wikisource. org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_Speech_at_the_Berlin_Sportpalast_(30_January_1940) Jansen, Peter-Erwin. 2021. Über Herbert den Greisen und Leo den Weisen, Aufsätze. Springe: zu Klampen. ———. 2022. Weises Schweigen? Stummes Schweigen? Herbert Marcuse und der Holocaust. In Münchner Beiträge zur Jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur. 2022/2, 62–75. Krüger, Maja. 2022. “...vor dem Grabmal in Dachau” Leo Löwenthals erster Besuch in der Bundesrepublik. In Münchner Beiträge zur Jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur. 2022/2, 52–62. Dubiel, Helmut, and Leo Löwenthal. 1980. Mitmachen wollte ich nie: ein autobiographisches Gespräch mit Helmut Dubiel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Löwenthal, Leo. 1946. Terror’s Atomization of Man. Commentary, A Jewish Review 1 (1945/46), Heft 2, 1–8. ———. 1982a. Individuum und Terror. In Zur politischen Psychologie des Autoritarismus, Schriften 3, 161–174. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1982b. Individuum und Terror, Merkur, n° 403, pp. 25-35. ———. 2021. Falsche Propheten: Studien zur faschistischen Agitation. Trans. Susanne Hoppmann-­ Löwenthal. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Löwenthal, Leo, and Norbert Guterman. 1949. Prophets of Deceit. Studies in Prejudice. Vol. 5. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse: Analysis of the Enemy and Volumes…

215

Marcuse, Herbert. 2015 [1955]. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. London/New York: Routledge ———. 1980. Das Ende der Utopie. Vorträge und Diskussionen in Berlin 1967. Frankfurt am Main: Neue Kritik. ———. 1999–2009. Nachgelassene Schriften. Vols. 1–6. Ed. P.-E. Jansen. Lüneburg: zu Klampen. Marcuse, Herbert, Franz Neumann, and Otto Kirchheimer. 2013. Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort. Ed. Raffaele Laudani. Foreword by Raymond Geuss. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Müller, Tim B. 2010. Krieger und Gelehrte: Herbert Marcuse und die Denksysteme im Kalten Krieg. 1. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition. Negt, Oskar. 1999. Einleitung. Marcuses dialektisches Verständnis von Demokratie. In H. Marcuse. Das Schicksal der bürgerlichen Demokratie. Machgelassene Schriften, Vol. 1., Ed. P.-E. Jansen, 12–26. Springe: zu Klampen. Neumann, Franz. 1942. Behemoth. Struktur und Praxis des Nationalsozialismus 1933-1944. New York: Oxford University Press. Schmidt, Alfred. 2002. Einleitende Studie. In Herbert Marcuse, Philosophie und Psychologie. Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol. 3, 15–94. Springer/zu Klampen. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1986. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Peter-Erwin Jansen  is the editor of the unpublished archive materials (6 volumes) of Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal collected papers in Archivzentrum Frankfurt am Main. From the Löwenthal Archive, he co-edited In steter Freundschaft. Briefwechsel 1921–1966 (zu Klampen, 2003). He is the editor of a new edition of Der eindimensionale Mensch with a new afterword (zu Klampen, 2014) and Über Herbert den Greisen und Leo den Weisen. Aufsätze (2021). He is also a coeditor of Transvaluation of Values and Radical Change: Five Lectures, 1966–1976 (zu Klampen 2017) and Ecology and the Critique of Society Today: Five Selected Papers for the Current Context written by Herbert Marcuse (2019). He also studied at the Touro University Berlin / New York in the MA program Holocaust Communication and Tolerance. Jansen is currently visiting professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Koblenz. Inka Engel  holds a PhD.  She works as a science manager at the University of Koblenz. Publications: Die Geschichte der Lehrerausbildung in Neuwied: Eine chronologische Analyse der Transformation des Bildungsgedankens der Lehrerausbildung (Südwestdeutscher Verlag 2016); (with Voigt, Miriam) Auf der Suche nach neuen Kompetenzen: Quer- und SeiteneinsteigerInnen an beruflichen Schulen. In: Bildung und Beruf. Bd. H. 5. 2021 pp. 179–184; Megatrend Konnektivität. Eine Herausforderung, Journal für lehrerInnenbildung jlb 01. Digitalisierung (2020). She is also coeditor of the forthcoming book about Leo Löwenthal’s unpublished papers on literature. She finished her Master Thesis at the Touro Universtity Berlin / New York in the program “Holocaust Communication and Tolerance”.

Archive Beyond Files: A Brief Note on a Personal Experience in the Marcuse Archive Inara Luisa Marin

In this text, I will tell you about my experience with the Marcuse Archive. It may be different from the experiences of the other authors in this volume because it is marked by the short time I had to dwell on the archive texts: I spent only the month of July, 2015, in the archive. First, I want to tell you a bit about what I went looking for in Marcuse’s Archive and why I did not find any references that answered my question. Second, I want to summarize the work already done in the Marcuse Archive. Based on the same material, two different collections of Marcuse’s posthumous writings, one edited in English by Douglas Kellner and the other in German by Peter-Erwin Jansen, were published a few years ago. Finally, in an annex, I will share the information I received from Peter-Erwin Jansen in an interview. Initially, I will share what happened to me, because I looked for answers in the archive with a hypothesis in mind but found neither answers nor clues. As I am a psychoanalyst, critical theorist, and researcher in philosophy by training, I went looking for a relationship between Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization and the essays “A History of the Doctrine of Social Change” (Marcuse and Neumann 1998a) and “Theories of Social Change” (Marcuse and Neumann 1998b), jointly written with Franz L. Neumann. I consider these two essays to be as important as Eros and Civilization in establishing Marcuse’s diagnosis of the times. If letters and other documents could prove a link between the book and the two essays, I hoped that this would help me understand the almost inexplicable origins of Neumann’s Anxiety and Politics. If my hypothesis proved true, there would be a relationship between Marcuse and Neumann’s separate texts and their common theory of social change, which would further clear the blockage of praxis, as described in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. I. L. Marin (*) University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_15

217

218

I. L. Marin

The idea was to find material that would properly explain the reasons for the more open diagnosis present in Eros and Civilization and point to emancipatory potentials. In addition, this would correct the recurring impression in academic circles that Eros and Civilization contains no diagnosis of the present time, because Marcuse’s time would prevent the recognition of such potentials present in Freudian fantasy, especially in the relationship between the myths of Narcissus and Orpheus. The materials I sought, and with which I hoped to demonstrate this hypothesis, were not to be found in the available archives. But I did receive an answer that went “beyond files.” Going to Frankfurt also allowed me to get in touch with Michael Neumann, Franz Neumann’s son. When I told him about my hypothetical interpretation of these texts, he told me something that gave me the answer I was looking for, albeit in a distinctly different way than I had expected: “Those who eat breakfast together every day don’t write letters.” It was only then that I discovered that, at that time, Marcuse and Neumann lived in the same house. Second, I would like to talk a little about the differences between the English and German published texts on Herbert Marcuse’s posthumously published letters, archives, and speeches. The English Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse (1998–2014) was edited by Douglas Kellner, while Marcuse’s Nachgelassene Schriften (1999–2009), edited by Peter-Erwin Jansen, was published in German. The differences between these two series can demonstrate how the organization of archival material is an interesting tool for guiding further research. To understand such distinctions, I would like to support the hypothesis that this is a result of the intellectual profile of the editors. Kellner is a critical theorist with Marxist roots and is more orthodox in this respect, so we could say that the relationships he seeks among the Marcuse texts he has chosen and organized reflect the relationship between theory and practice. What he tries to demonstrate, in the choice of the author’s texts and in the long introductions he coauthored, is a movement in Marcuse’s work that highlights a tension that runs through the relationship between theory and practice. The editor never proposes such a clear separation between theory and practice; on the contrary, he tries to demonstrate the impossibility of any such thing in Marcusean thought. Jansen, on the other hand, who can be considered a critical theorist and Marxist but with other concerns, shows in his edition a clearer separation between theory and practice and between philosophical texts and texts of direct political intervention; this results in a different stance in the German edition. I believe that this kind of difference expresses a very important aspect of archival research: how the editor, or whoever is working with archival materials, has responsibility for the intellectual legacy of the author and his image. Although the number of volumes is the same, namely, six books of posthumous writings in each language, this is only a structural similarity. The content of each book is very different. The first volume of Peter-Erwin Jansen’s collection was published in 1999 and the last in 2009. It contains six volumes of Marcuse’s posthumous writings organized by extensive archival work, distributed as follows:

Archive Beyond Files: A Brief Note on a Personal Experience in the Marcuse Archive

219

• Volume 1 focuses on the question of democracy, social movements, technology, and values in Marcuse’s thought. • Volume 2 is devoted to considerations of art and liberation, a topic that carries much potential for further research in philosophy and aesthetics, especially in the field of Critical Theory. • In Volume 3, Prof. Jansen organizes Marcuse’s letters, texts, and interviews that deal with the question of psychoanalysis, with emphasis on correspondence between the author and Erich Fromm, which had not been previously explored. • Volume 4 presents discourses and intervention texts by Marcuse on specific time diagnoses and on protests that fizzled in the 1960s and 1970s. Interestingly, in these texts, Marcuse opines on the geopolitical position of Cuba, the Vietnam War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and student protest movements. This also shows the close relationship between Marcuse and Angela Davis, evidenced by letters exchanged in the early 1970s. • Volume 5 presents a resumption of analysis and reflection on issues of significance to the German people, notably the period of regression into National Socialism culminating in the tragedies of World War II. In this volume, texts are presented in which Marcuse delves into this theme, the individual and the state, war, and the regression of German fascism. • Finally, Volume 6 presents a philosophical review, in which Marcuse discusses nineteenth- and twentieth-century German philosophy, socialist humanism, and the relationship between science and philosophy and the thought of Karl Jaspers, who later proved to be a fundamental author of contemporary philosophy. Due emphasis is given to the question of negative metaphysics and the actuality of the dialectic between Hegel and Marx, which are undoubtedly fundamental themes for Critical Theory, especially for the first generation. The collection in English is the result of archival research in the Marcuse Archive conducted by Douglas Kellner from 1989, and it was published between 1998 and 2014, in six volumes: • Volume 1 deals with issues that had great relevance for the reception and diffusion of Marcusean thought, namely, technology, war, and fascism, and presents a link between the advance of technology and war, particularly in World War II, which was marked by fascist movements. • Volume 2 focuses on the consolidation of Marcuse’s role as a critical theorist, demonstrating aspects of the theory of social change, texts that on this aspect go beyond One-Dimensional Man, including the political preface of Eros and Civilization, as well as a sequence of letters between Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Raya Dunayevskaya. • Volume 3 presents a view of Marcuse’s politics and radicalism, highlighting the critical dimensions of the author’s time diagnoses and the social movements of the well-known New Left. In this framework, we see the interlocution between Marcuse and Angela Davis and the issues of critique of capitalism via ecology and feminism, which have come to guide much of the discussion in Critical Theory and political theory to this day.

220

I. L. Marin

• Volume 4 deals with aesthetic issues in Marcuse’s work, from the 1937 essay “The Affirmative Character of Culture” (Marcuse 2007) to The Aesthetic Dimension (1978). In this volume, Kellner’s organization demonstrates how Marcuse’s theory of art is rooted in social theory, in this case related to politics and fundamental aspects of psychoanalysis, such as the reality principle and its inability to express ought-being. • Volume 5 addresses philosophical themes underlying the critique of science and positivism. It also contains psychoanalytic discussions of Erich Fromm’s theory and important texts on Marcuse’s utopia-based emancipatory model. In this volume, Kellner’s mode of organization links Marcuse’s own philosophical critique of a certain scientific realism of late capitalist society with his utopian proposal, which could be summarized by Marcuse’s reference to the phrase used by the Parisian students at the Sorbonne: “Be realistic; demand the impossible!” • Volume 6, which closes the collection, organizes Marcuse’s texts pertaining to his reading and criticism of Karl Marx, especially his analysis of how the Soviet Union appropriated Marxist concepts. It pays particular attention to dialectics and the idea of the “development of productive forces.” In addition, this volume also contains intervention texts, such as the one on Cuba, letters exchanged with Horkheimer, and interviews and texts published in newspapers and magazines. Its main purpose is to demonstrate a link between Marx’s idea of revolution and Marcuse’s attention to the repressions of contemporary society and his emphasis on utopia as a historical concept.

1 Interview with Peter-Erwin Jansen Finally, I would like to share the information that Peter-Erwin Jansen kindly provided to me along with the Marcuse file. This part is intended to complement the chapter by Peter-Erwin Jansen and Inka Engel in this volume. Inara Luisa Marin: Where are the files located? Peter-Erwin Jansen: The files of the Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal Archive are located at the Archivzentrum, Library of the Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main. ILM: Approximately how many documents does the archive hold? P-EJ: The Herbert Marcuse Archive is around 50,000 pages, the Leo Löwenthal Archive around 40,000 pages. ILM: How are documents stored? P-EJ: Originals are stored in a special room in boxes in the library. ILM: How are documents cataloged? P-EJ: Partly digitized, to find in printed finding aids. ILM: Who can access the catalog of documents in the archive, and how?

Archive Beyond Files: A Brief Note on a Personal Experience in the Marcuse Archive

221

P-EJ: For both archives: decisions are made by Oliver Kleppel and Mathias Jehn. Herbert Marcuse Archive: Copyrights and special academic research for publication by Peter-Erwin Jansen and Prof. Dr. Harold Marcuse. ILM: Is the physical space considered adequate for the files? (Would more or better-structured space be needed for maintenance?) P-EJ: Partly, but it is not ideal. The library will hopefully get a new building at the Westend Campus of the University, maybe in 10 years. ILM: Are there plans to improve the file structure? P-EJ: Yes. ILM: Are there plans to expand the files? P-EJ: Yes. We are collecting more papers for both archives, but only originals. ILM: Do papers and letters from the period when Marcuse worked at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) also appear in the archives? P-EJ: He did analysis for the OSS between 1941 and 1947, 90 percent of which are published in German by me, in English by Douglas Kellner, in Italian by Raffaele Laudani. ILM: What does this contribute to a better understanding of the type of work Marcuse did in the US government? P-EJ: The drafts and analyses of this period were not known in detail until my first publication, Feindanalysen: Über die Deutschen (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5). These works finally provided information that Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal (who worked for the Office of War Information from 1941 to 1942 and after the war at the Voice of America from 1949 to 1956) were analyzing national socialist ideology and politics. Based on the first German publication, other publications and archival research in the US followed. ILM: As we see Critical Theory, a diagnosis of the present time and the search for an emancipatory power in the present moment, is always necessary. If we compare two important texts by Marcuse, it is curious that he finds these potentials in 1955, with the help of Eros, at a time when Horkheimer and Adorno saw the tendency toward the complete domination of instrumental reason. On the other hand, almost ironically, when Marcuse writes about human one-dimensionality, the essential movements of May 1968 immediately break out. Does it seem to you that they are apparently dissonant, or does it show something that other interpreters of Critical Theory could not see? P-EJ: Marcuse published One-Dimensional Man in 1964. The volume analyzes the trends of capitalist society in the US and the integrated nature of traditional oppositional movements, most of which manifested themselves in the labor movement. So-called cooperative capitalism had made this opposition disappear. The proletariat as an exploited class (according to Marx) had lost its resistant sting and was, according to Marcuse, integrated into the existing system. Social spheres like science, language, art, and sexuality were taken over by the system. According to Marcuse, the forces that could resist capitalist exploitation tended to disappear. The means of this one-dimensionality is consumption, which creates new and artificial needs, and makes people believe in an ideal world. Ultimately, according to Marcuse, the marginal groups in society are the only catalyst of possible upheaval. He quotes

222

I. L. Marin

Walter Benjamin at the end of the book “It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope given to us” (Marcuse 2002 [1964]: p. 261). As a result, new social movements were constituted beyond the workers’ movement. ILM: If it is possible to choose, is there any discovery that you find most interesting in working with the Marcuse Archive? P-EJ: Yes, Marcuse’s draft and analysis from his time with the OSS, Feindanalysen. Über die Deutschen. When I published the first edition in 1998 it was, in Germany, top of the list of the most interesting books. More than 100 newspapers, radio, and TV reviews were published. The expanded second edition, published in 2007, again received great public attention. The correspondence between Marcuse and Rudi Dutschke, “Herbert Marcuse und die Folgen der Studentenbewegung,” published for the first time in my book, was another surprise. Second, the letters between Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal gave a new perspective on their very close friendship.

References Marcuse, Herbert. 1998 [1955]. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. London: Routledge. ———. 2002 [1964]. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. London/New York: Routledge. ———. 1978. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Boston: Beacon Press. ———. 1998–2014. Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse. Ed. Douglas Kellner. London/New York: Routledge. Marcuse, Herbert and Franz L. Neumann. 1998a. A History of the Doctrine of Social Change. In Herbert Marcuse, Technology, War and Fascism: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, vol. 1. Ed. Douglas Kellner, 12–33. London/New York: Routledge. Marcuse, Herbert and Franz L. Neumann. 1998b. Theories of Social Change. In Herbert Marcuse, Technology, War and Fascism: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, vol. 1. Ed. Douglas Kellner, 34–51. London/New York: Routledge. Marcuse, Herbert. 1999–2009. Nachgelassene Schriften. Vols. 1–6. Ed. P.-E. Jansen. Lüneburg: zu Klampen. ———. 2007. The Affirmative Character of Culture. In Herbert Marcuse, Art and Liberation: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, vol. 4. Ed. Douglas Kellner, 82–112. London/New York: Routledge. Inara Luisa Marin  is a psychoanalyst and a collaborating professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Campinas (Brazil). She is also a researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), where she coordinates a research group on psychoanalysis in contemporary Critical Theory. In 2022, she published the book Narcisism and Recognition: The Paths of Psychoanalysis in Critical Theory.

Part IX

Between Archives

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working in the Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer Archives John Abromeit

1 Introduction The discipline of intellectual history sits somewhat uneasily between philosophy and history. Too historical for most philosophers and too philosophical for most historians, we ply our trade quietly where we are still tolerated at all in the rapidly downsizing neoliberal university system, often forging alliances with colleagues in other departments who are still committed to critical, interdisciplinary, liberal arts education. As historians, we teach our students how to do primary source research. Although intellectual historians often work with published texts, archival research is more integral to our disciplinary identity than that of philosophers. One of my aims in this essay is to demonstrate how and why such archival research is important, especially for a materialist approach to intellectual history – such as that pioneered by Max Horkheimer and his colleagues at the Institute for Social Research (IfS) – which views the formation and impact of “ideas” within the context of historically specific social relations. For Marx, history – not philosophy, as it still was for Kant – was the “Königin der Wissenschaften”1 (“queen of the sciences”), and it proceeded through “Forschung” and “Darstellung,” that is, through empirical social and historical research and the self-reflexive conceptual presentation of these findings.2  In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels wrote, “Wir kennen nur eine einzige Wissenschaft, die Wissenschaft der Geschichte” (“We know only one single science, the science of history”) (Marx 1962–1974, vol.3: p. 18). For Kant’s defense of the primacy of philosophy over other disciplines, see (Kant 1992). 2  For Marx’s discussion of “Forschung” and “Darstellung” as the methodological foundation of his mature work, see his “Nachwort zur zweiten Auflage” of volume one of Das Kapital (Marx 1

J. Abromeit (*) State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_16

225

226

J. Abromeit

No attempt will be made here to present the fruits of my own archival research in relation to a comprehensive critical theory of society, but hopefully my findings will provide some clues about how Marcuse and Horkheimer developed such a theory of modern capitalist society. In fact, my remarks here will be mainly subjective in nature, reflecting as they do my own personal experiences working in the Marcuse and Horkheimer Archives off and on for a decade (1992–2002). Rather than attempting to give a comprehensive overview of the materials in either of these archives, I will highlight the most important discoveries I made in them and explain how these materials shaped my own understanding of Marcuse and Horkheimer’s contributions to the development of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.

2 The Marcuse Archive 2.1 Searching for Traces of Marcuse’s Early Encounter with Heidegger My work in the archives of Critical Theory can be traced back to a conversation I had in 1991 with my undergraduate adviser at Stanford University, Barry M. Kātz, who had written one of the first – and still one of the best – intellectual biographies of Herbert Marcuse (Kātz 1982). I had approached him to express my interest in writing an honors thesis on Marcuse, and he told me that there might be some interesting materials in the Marcuse Archive in Frankfurt, Germany, pertaining to the young Marcuse’s studies with Martin Heidegger in the years before the Nazis ascended to power. Having spent the previous year in work- and study-abroad programs in Germany, my language skills were adequate, and I was eager to visit the mythical birthplace of the “Frankfurt School” in order to pursue my lively interest in Marcuse and Critical Theory. With the help of a Stanford undergraduate research grant, I was able to spend two months in Frankfurt in the summer of 1992. I lived in a student dormitory in Frankfurt Westend, a neighborhood that many key figures involved in the history of Critical Theory had called home for varying periods of time. My room was just down the street from Café Laumer, which had been a favorite meeting place for intellectuals in the 1920s and again in the 1950s and 1960s when it became known as “Café Marx.” After stopping in for a coffee there, I walked a few blocks down the Bockenheimer Landstrasse to the Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek (City and University Library) on the campus of Goethe University Frankfurt, where the Marcuse Archive is located. At that time, the Marcuse Archive was still in the process of being cataloged. There was a register with a list of many, although certainly not all the manuscripts, letters, and other materials, which were gathered in boxes and organized more or less chronologically. The person in charge of cataloging the Marcuse Archive at that time was a lecturer in the sociology department, Dr. Barbara 1967–1974, vol. 23: pp. 27–28). For the English translation, see (Tucker 1978, pp. 301–2).

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

227

Brick. She helped me to get my bearings in the archive and showed me how to use the register and where to look for items that had not yet been cataloged. Soon after I began my research, I also had the good fortune to meet a young German scholar, Stephan Bundschuh, who had been working in the archives for some time already.3 He also kindly took me under his wing and showed me how to navigate the charted and uncharted territory of Marcuse’s papers. I quickly learned that not much had been preserved from the period when Marcuse had studied with Heidegger at the University of Freiburg (1928–1932). There were, in fact, only a few short letters and postcards that Heidegger had written to Marcuse. Nonetheless, one of these postcards seemed like it might be able to resolve a question that had stymied scholars who had already examined the young Marcuse’s relationship to Heidegger: did Heidegger ever read the Habilitationschrift4 on Hegel that Marcuse had written under his direction? As any serious Heidegger scholar will tell you, Heidegger’s handwriting is notoriously difficult to decipher. Fortunately, during the spring of the previous year I had done an internship at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, where I took a course on reading German scripts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even so, I had to struggle mightily with Heidegger’s sloppy handling of the Sütterlin script. Stephan and I went back and forth for hours on whether the crucial sentence in Heidegger’s postcard to Marcuse stated: I have “leider niemals” (unfortunately never) or “bereits einmal” (already once) read your manuscript. Ultimately, we decided it was undecipherable. Apart from these few short letters, the only other unpublished document that I found in the archive that shed light on the young Marcuse’s relationship to Heidegger was an essay approximately 25 pages long on the main developments in German Philosophy in the period 1871–1933 (Marcuse 2005b), which Marcuse had written in French while living in Geneva, Switzerland, prior to his departure for the United States in June 1934. This unpublished text represented Marcuse’s first settling of accounts with Heidegger’s philosophy after his enthusiastic embrace of National Socialism.5 Anticipating similar arguments that would appear in his first essay in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Marcuse 1934, 1968a, b), Marcuse describes here how, “Heidegger’s existential analytic is transformed into a politics of heroic, racist realism” (Marcuse 2005b, p.  161). As the full story of Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazis and his deep-seated anti-Semitism has become more widely known, Marcuse’s critical assessment of the reactionary and authoritarian tendencies in Heidegger’s person and his philosophy has been confirmed.6  Stephan’s research would culminate in one of the best studies in German of Marcuse (Bundschuh 1998). See also my review of Stephan’s book, “Reconsidering Marcuse” (Abromeit 2001). 4  A second dissertation required in order to gain the right to teach and become a professor at a German university. 5  Marcuse decided to go to Freiburg to study with Heidegger after the publication in 1927 of Being and Time. He believed initially that Heidegger’s “existential analytic of Dasein” could provide a stronger subjective foundation for Marxist theory. But with the publication of Marx’s Paris Manuscripts in 1932, Marcuse found in the early Marx what he had been searching for in Heidegger’s philosophy (Abromeit 2004). 6  Victor Farias and  – more compellingly  – Hugo Ott were among the first to closely study Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism in 1933 and 1934, when he served as the rector 3

228

J. Abromeit

Although the materials in the archive relating to that project did not live up to my expectations, the Frankfurt University library contained a number of other important published texts that Marcuse had written between 1927 and 1933, which made it possible to answer some of my key research questions. Why was a young, Jewish Marxist like Marcuse so interested in studying with a philosopher who would opportunistically embrace the Nazi movement in 1933? What did Marcuse take from Heidegger and how did he reassess Heidegger’s thought and its influence on his own thought after 1933? The research I did in Frankfurt that summer enabled me to write an undergraduate honors thesis that would serve later as the basis for a conference paper, a published article (Abromeit 2004), and the inspiration for a volume I coedited with Richard Wolin (Marcuse 2005a). This volume made available in English translation the most important of Marcuse’s writings during his studies with Heidegger and also the unpublished text from 1934 on Germany philosophy from 1871 to 1933.

2.2 Archival Discoveries from Marcuse’s Later Life During this time, I also realized that there was a wealth of material in the archive relating to Marcuse’s later life. For example, there were two substantial essays from the early 1940s, in which Marcuse astutely analyzed the social psychology of Nazi Germany as a form of resigned “psychological neutrality” that reflected the complete subordination of the German citizenry to the technological rationality of the productive apparatus and the ideological dictates of the fascist regime (Marcuse 1998–2014, vol.1: pp. 67–88; pp. 139–90).7 I found an essay on the French surrealist author, Louis Aragon, that Marcuse had written shortly after the end of World War II (pp.  199–214). The essay analyzes Aragon’s 1944 novel, Aurélien, as an example of emancipatory politics fleeing to the seemingly apolitical refuge of artistic form – in this case, the nineteenth-century social novel. Marcuse interprets the decision of the militant leftist Aragon to avoid any direct discussion of politics in the novel and to focus instead on the love story between the bourgeois protagonist and of the University of Freiburg and played a key role in implementing new Nazi racial legislation, such as the “Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service,” which eliminated all Jewish professors from the university. The publication in 2014 of Heidegger’s “Black Notebooks” provided additional evidence that Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and conservative revolutionary political views were deeply rooted in his thought and were not merely adopted opportunistically in 1933/1934 (Farias 1991; Ott 1993). Heidegger’s “Black Notebooks” between 1931 and 1941 have been published in English translation (Heidegger 2016–2017). For a recent and comprehensive overview of the scholarship on Heidegger’s conservative revolutionary politics and his anti-Semitism, see (Wolin 2023). 7  A number of other unpublished studies of National Socialist Germany that Marcuse wrote or co-­ wrote while he was doing intelligence work for the US government (in the Office of Strategic Studies) in the 1940s can be found in the volume (Laudani, 2013). These are not texts from the Marcuse Archive, but instead from the Civil Archives Division of the Legislative and Diplomatic branch of the US National Archives.

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

229

his provincial love interest, as evidence that art must remain autonomous from political imperatives in order to preserve its emancipatory potential.8 This text represents the beginning of a shift away from Marcuse’s early focus on the “affirmative character of culture” toward his later critique of traditional Marxist aesthetics (Marcuse 1937, 1968a, 1968b, 1978). In the archive there were also a number of substantial and fascinating unpublished texts from the 1970s, including a polished 85-page manuscript on the topic of “Cultural Revolution” (Marcuse 1998–2014, vol.2: pp. 121–162), which was written after the heady Essay on Liberation (Marcuse 1969) but before the more pessimistic Counter-Revolution and Revolt (Marcuse 1972). “Cultural Revolution” provides important insights into the dominant themes of Marcuse’s thought during this time, including his efforts to rehabilitate the sensuous elements in the Marxist tradition, including the French Enlightenment materialists, Fourier, Feuerbach, and the early Marx himself. Marcuse was one of the first to engage seriously with Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 after it was excavated from the archives of the German Social Democratic Party and finally published in 1932 (Marcuse 2005c).9 Some 40 years later, in “Cultural Revolution,” Marcuse calls for a reexamination of this crucial early text by Marx and offers a new interpretation of it, informed by his own critical engagement with psychoanalysis in the intervening years. Another important text I discovered in the archive was an acerbic essay Marcuse penned shortly after the reelection of Richard Nixon in 1972, in which he raises concerns about the “self-transformation of bourgeois democracy into neo-­ fascism” (Marcuse 1998–2014, vol.1: p. 170). Although bourgeois-liberal political forms still exist, Marcuse argues that they “no longer present an effective barrier to fascism” (p.  176). In response, he argues, the left must defend the progressive aspects of bourgeois democracy, while at the same time retaining the long-term goal of a “socialist democracy” (p. 178). He also describes the reactionary reassertion of a repressed and repressive bourgeois character structure – as a backlash against the protest movements of the 1960s – particularly among the white lower and lower-­ middle classes. His analysis here was remarkably prescient, insofar as this same personality type would become a decisive force in the rise of right-wing populist movements and parties during the following decades. Drawing on the analysis of the sadomasochistic character structure by his former institute colleague, Erich Fromm, Marcuse argues that “the people’s identification with the system finds its most striking expression among the (blue collar) working class,” which possesses “a mental structure which responds to, and reflects the requirements of the system. In this mental structure are the deep individual, instinctual roots of the identification of the conformist majority with the institutionalized brutality and aggression” (p. 170). The fact that many white working-class voters in urban and industrial areas supported Nixon because of his opposition to school busing, Marcuse sees as an  Incidentally, Marcuse sides here with André Breton – against “socialist realism” and Aragon’s own position in the late 1920s and early 1930s – in his argument that art must be autonomous in order to fully realize its emancipatory potential (Breton 1969). 9  On the history of the publication of Marx’s Manuscripts, see (Maidan 1990). 8

230

J. Abromeit

example of racist cultural attitudes triumphing over social solidarity (p. 180).10 He also describes the trend toward “the replacement of hypocrisy with open lies and deception” (p.  171). In the wake of Donald Trump’s successful mobilization of blue- and white-collar workers to win the presidential election in 2016 and his efforts to overturn the election results in the 2020 elections with “open lies and deception,” Marcuse’s analysis seems prescient indeed.11 All the texts from the Marcuse Archive that I have mentioned so far have since been published in the six-volume Collected Papers edition of Herbert Marcuse’s work (Marcuse 1998–2014), which has been patiently and skillfully edited by Douglas Kellner, a veteran scholar of Marcuse’s work.12 One will find in this edition other fascinating unpublished texts by Marcuse, including some from other archives, such as the “33 Theses” from 1947 (Marcuse 1998–2014, vol.1: pp.  215–228), which is located in the Max Horkheimer Archive. In these “Theses,” written during the early stages of the Cold War, Marcuse demonstrates his ongoing commitment to Marx’s theory and his “ruthless critique” of all existing forms of political and social domination. At this time, Marcuse was already concerned about the liquidation of the remnants of the progressive aspects of liberal-democratic political traditions in the Western capitalist countries and their transformation in a neofascist direction. He was also critical of the “subordination of revolutionary strategy to Sovietism” (p. 219).13 Anticipating later arguments in One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse argues here that an analysis of what he calls “bourgeoisification” (Verbürgerlichung), that is, “the economic and political integration of a large part of the working class into the system of capital, as a change in the structure of exploitation” (p. 220) is perhaps the most urgent task of contemporary Critical Theory. In addition to the Collected Papers edition of Marcuse’s writings, various texts from the Marcuse Archive have also been published in German, in a six-volume edition of his writings edited by Peter-Erwin Jansen (Marcuse 1999–2009). I would like to mention one final example of the skillful use of materials from the Marcuse Archive: the documentary film, Herbert’s Hippopotamus (1997), which focuses mainly on Marcuse’s  For an examination of the historical development and social-psychological function of anti-­ Black racism among the “white” working class in the United States, which draws not only upon the work of Marcuse and his colleagues at the IfS, but also the American historian and critical race theorist, David Roediger, see (Abromeit 2013). 11  To be sure, Trump supporters came from all socio-economic and even all different ethnic and racial backgrounds, but studies revealed that the demographic group whose support for Trump was the highest were white males with lower-than-average levels of educational attainment. Also, Trump’s victory in 2016 resulted from his electoral college victories in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – all states with sizeable white working-class populations that had, in the past few decades, usually been won by democratic presidential candidates. 12  Kellner’s Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of the Marxism (1984) was – along with Barry Kātz’s intellectual biography of Marcuse (1982) and Morton Schoolman’s The Imaginary Witness: The Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse (1980) – one of the first comprehensive studies of Marcuse’s work, and it remains one of the best. Since then, Kellner has published extensively on Marcuse, including his lengthy introductions to the different volumes of the Collected Papers edition. 13  About a decade later, Marcuse would write a full-length study of the Soviet Union, in which he would elaborate upon these criticisms (Marcuse 1958). 10

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

231

enthusiastic  – but not infrequently critical  – engagement with the protest movements of the 1960s in the United States, Germany, and France. As a result of his public support of radical students, workers, and Black political activists such as his student, Angela Davis, Marcuse was labeled the “guru of the student movement” by the mass media, which made him a target of virulent criticism from many different quarters, from rigid defenders of Stalinist orthodoxy to the Vatican, and everything in between. Perhaps the most disturbing of these criticisms, however, were the one that emerged from the authoritarian underbelly of US society, which Marcuse’s colleagues at the institute had astutely analyzed already in the 1940s in Studies in Prejudice (Löwenthal and Guterman 1949; Adorno et al. 1950).14 I came across a large box in the Marcuse Archive that was almost completely full of letters and postcards that had been sent to him in the late 1960s and early 1970s from hatefilled individuals who threatened Marcuse in the most violent and vulgar possible ways: “There’s no room in the USA for Communist-Jewish scum like you,” “It’s too bad that Hitler didn’t finish the job,” and so on. At that time, this box had a label on it, handwritten in German – “Pöbeleien” – which could be freely translated as “ravings of the mob.” The producer of Herbert’s Hippopotamus, Paul Alexander Juutilainen, weaves together these archival documents with video and television footage to demonstrate how Marcuse became a lightning rod for the most reactionary tendencies in American society during this time. Such tendencies were particularly strong in San Diego, where Marcuse had accepted a position in the Philosophy Department at the University of California in 1965, because of the multiple military bases there and the strong presence of military and defense contractors in Southern California more generally. Fortunately for Marcuse, San Diego also had one of the best zoos in the country and, as Juutilainen makes clear, there was a special place in Marcuse’s heart for the resident hippos there.

3 The Horkheimer Archive 3.1 Back and Forth Between Frankfurt and Berkeley in the 1990s Working through the material in the Marcuse Archive gave me ideas for additional research projects and help set the course for my future life and work. While completing my undergraduate thesis on Marcuse and Heidegger, I had decided that I wanted to return to Frankfurt University to continue my research in the archives and to study Critical Theory  with the eminent representatives of that tradition in the philosophy department: Alfred Schmidt and Jürgen Habermas. I  For an attempt to analyze the recent resurgence of authoritarianism and right-wing populism in the United States that draws upon these studies, see (Abromeit 2018, 2022). 14

232

J. Abromeit

was introduced to Schmidt’s work through my friend Stephan Bundschuh, who was his doctoral student at that time. Schmidt’s insightful essays on Marcuse’s early engagement with Heidegger (Marcuse and Schmidt 1973, pp.  7–39; pp. 111–42) were already an important point of reference for my undergraduate thesis. I had also already learned that one of Habermas’s first encounters with Critical Theory had been his reading of Marcuse’s early essays, which had helped him overcome his own early fascination with Heidegger’s philosophy.15 I applied for – and received – a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service to return to Frankfurt in the fall of 1993 to continue my studies. Upon arriving, I was excited to learn that Alfred Schmidt was offering courses on a variety of topics relating directly and indirectly to  Critical Theory, such as lectures on the French, German, and English/Scottish Enlightenment, as well as seminars on German Idealism, Marx, and Adorno. I was less excited to learn that Habermas’s seminars were on topics from analytical philosophy, such as Saul Kripke’s Theory of Reference. I had fled from Stanford’s conservative philosophy department precisely because it was dominated by analytic philosophy  – the professor in my first required course in the philosophy major had insisted that Frege was the most important German philosopher of the nineteenth century – so I had no desire to study what Marcuse had aptly called “one-dimensional philosophy” here. Fortunately, Habermas’s lectures on the topic of “Concepts of Rationality” were more interesting and proceeded historically, examining different conceptualizations of Vernunft (reason) and Verstand (understanding) in ancient, medieval, modern, and even contemporary philosophy. But, during my next 2 years in Frankfurt, I learned much more about the history of philosophy and  Critical Theory in the lectures and seminars of Alfred Schmidt. During this time, I would occasionally visit the Marcuse Archives and I became aware of the Max Horkheimer Archive, which was also located in the Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek. But, because I was not yet working on another substantial writing project, I had no need to conduct systematic archival research. In the fall of 1995, I returned from Frankfurt to enroll in the MA/PhD program in history at the University of California, Berkeley, where I planned to study with Martin Jay, whose remarkable study of the history of the IfS (Jay 1973) initiated a serious academic reception of the Frankfurt School in the English-speaking world that continues to the present day. After finishing my course work, passing my qualifying examinations, and, in 1998, organizing an international conference on “The Legacies of Herbert Marcuse,”16 I returned to Frankfurt in the fall of 1999 to  On Habermas’s discovery in 1956 of Marcuse’s early writings, see (Matuštík 2001, pp. 19–23).  I organized the conference together with Martin Jay and my friend and fellow Marcuse scholar, Mark Cobb. I met Mark through the mediation of Angela Davis, who was teaching a course at UC, Berkeley, at this time. When I approached her to see if she would be willing to give the keynote 15 16

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

233

conduct dissertation research in the Max Horkheimer Archive. My research on Marcuse, and my admiration of Marcuse’s writings from the period 1934–1941, when he was working together with Horkheimer at the institute, led me back to Horkheimer’s early writings, in which the foundations for Frankfurt School of Critical Theory had been laid. Martin Jay and I agreed that it was an auspicious moment for a reconsideration of Horkheimer’s intellectual development, since a wealth of new sources had become available in the 1990s to which earlier researchers had not had access. This included, above all, the materials in the Max Horkheimer Archive, which had been fully cataloged and made publicly available in the 1990s. Also, the impressive 19-volume Gesammelte Schriften edition of Horkheimer’s writings, coedited by Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, was completed in 1996 (Horkheimer 1985–1996). Thanks to the conscientious editorial work of Schmid Noerr in particular, many of the most important unpublished texts, lectures, discussion protocols, letters, and other materials from the Horkheimer Archive were now readily available in this new edition of Horkheimer’s works. At the same time, the materials in the Horkheimer Archive are vast and, even in a 19-volume edition of his works, only a fraction could be included. For example, the four volumes of Horkheimer’s letters published in the Gesammelte Schriften – comprising 1189 letters and around 3600 pages of printed text  – represented only a small percentage of the total of Horkheimer’s correspondence preserved in the archive.17 For my dissertation project I set myself the ambitious task of systematically working through the materials in both the Gesammelte Schriften and the archive in order to write a new intellectual biography of Horkheimer. Not surprisingly, I realized quickly that this task was too ambitious and also that I was most interested in the development of what I would call the “early model of Critical Theory,” which guided the institute’s work circa 1940. So, I revised my plans, deciding to write a book that would draw upon the new materials that had become available in the 1990s; it would be both an intellectual biography of the young Horkheimer and an attempt to reconstruct this “early model of Critical Theory,” including the contributions to its development by other members of the Institute, such as Marcuse, Friedrich Pollock, and Erich Fromm (Abromeit 2011).

address at our conference – which she generously did – she told me about Cobb, who was working on a dissertation on Marcuse at UC, Santa Cruz, under her supervision. For Davis’s, Cobb’s, and the other contributions to the conference, see (Abromeit and Cobb 2004). 17  As Gunzelin Schmid Noerr – the editor of these four volumes of Horkheimer’s correspondence – points out, more than 50,000 letters from Horkheimer alone have been preserved in the Horkheimer Archive. Including letters to Horkheimer, as well as other to and from third persons, the archive contains nearly 100,000 letters (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol. 18: p. 824).

234

J. Abromeit

4 Discoveries in the Horkheimer Archive 4.1 Horkheimer Before, During, and After World War I In what follows, I would like to discuss how the materials from the Horkheimer Archive have made possible a richer and more nuanced understanding of his life and thought and of the development of Critical Theory. But, because of space limitations and since the archival materials from that period of his life were most important for my own research, I will limit myself here to his early life, circa 1930. My approach here will mirror the methodology of my book, which focuses more on biography in the early chapters and more on Horkheimer’s thought and the development of Critical Theory  in the later chapters.18 Some of the archival materials I used had recently been published in the Gesammelte Schriften, but others were still available only in the Horkheimer Archive. I will discuss both together, while making clear which is which. When I first began working seriously in the Horkheimer Archive in the fall of 1999, I learned that two different persons – Ernst von Schenk and Matthias Becker – had, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, intended to write comprehensive biographies of Horkheimer. Toward this end, both had conducted a series of extensive interviews with him, covering a wide range of topics from all different periods of his life.19 The protocols of these interviews, which are preserved in the archive, provided me with a rich source of information about Horkheimer’s early life.20 In these interviews, Horkheimer discussed in more detail than anywhere else his own recollections of his childhood, youth, and education, his experiences during World War I, his decision to move to Frankfurt after the war to study at the newly founded university there, and many other topics. Of course, one must be cautious with the recollections of an elderly man but, together with other primary sources from the period, they made it possible to flesh out key experiences in his early life that shaped Horkheimer’s personality and his view of the world. The most important of these other sources include a selection of the short stories, plays, and diary entries from the period 1914–1918 that were first published in Germany in 1974 (Horkheimer 1974)21 and 35 letters written by or sent to  It was more important to focus on biographical details in the early chapters to understand Horkheimer’s family background, his early friendships, education, etc. But, since the primary aim of my book was to reconstruct Horkheimer’s thought, in later chapters I followed the general principle of including biographical background only when it was necessary or helpful to explain the developments of his thought. 19  Ernst von Schenk’s biographical interviews with Max Horkheimer (MHA X 132 b) and Matthias Becker’s biographical interviews with Max Horkheimer (MHA X 183a). 20  In the case of Ernst von Schenk, he began writing but never finished his biography of Horkheimer. This unfinished manuscript was also occasionally a valuable source for me (MHA XIII 112a). 21  These early documents were republished in the first volume of the Gesammelte Schriften in 1988. But a few of his earliest writings were not included in either of these collections – probably because they were too personal or embarrassing for Horkheimer. These documents from the Horkheimer Archive were published later (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.11: pp. 289–342). 18

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

235

Horkheimer  – mostly from or to Friedrich Pollock and his future wife, Rosa Riekher – during the period 1913–1922 (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.15: pp. 9–88). These primary sources, together with some additional ones I found in the Horkheimer Archive and in other archives in Germany, made it possible for me not only to build upon, but also in certain places to go beyond and correct the existing published accounts of Horkheimer’s early life.22 For example, the origins and development of Horkheimer’s very close and lifelong friendship with Friedrich Pollock came into focus, as did his and Pollock’s travels together to Belgium and England before World War I and their ménage à trois with a young woman from Paris.23 The common perception of Horkheimer as the stodgy and rather authoritarian boss of the institute faded in my mind as I became better acquainted with this young radical, who vehemently rejected World War I, understood himself as an artist, presented his literary works in prominent bohemian milieus in Munich, actively supported the Munich Council Republic, and became passionately devoted to socialism. Horkheimer’s equally passionate devotion to his future wife, Rosa Riekher, also came into focus in the many, lengthy love letters he sent. Horkheimer’s affair with Riekher at this point in his life also expressed his open rebellion against his father, Moritz Horkheimer, who owned a textile factory near Stuttgart where Horkheimer worked during the war. Riekher was not only a Gentile and 6 years older than Horkheimer, but she was also working as Moritz Horkheimer’s secretary at the time. As I learned from one of Horkheimer’s interviews with Ernst Schenk, his passionate devotion to “Maidon,” as he called her, wavered only once, when he forgot to pick her up at the train station in Munich in the spring of 1919, because he was so embroiled in artistic and political activities: “I was so bohemian and so preoccupied that I forgot her” (MHA, X 132b, p. 36), as he put it. Although Riekher and Pollock were undoubtedly Horkheimer’s most trusted and intimate companions at this time,24 during the fascinating short chapter of his life in Munich during the November Revolution and Munich Council Republic, he also became good friends with the avant-garde photographer, Germaine Krull. In her atelier in the bohemian Schwabing neighborhood of Munich, she hosted regular meetings of leading artists and radical intellectuals, in which Horkheimer actively participated. In an unpublished autobiographical manuscript –located in the Germaine Krull papers in the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany  – Krull

 The pioneering histories of the institute by Martin Jay (1973) and Rolf Wiggershaus (1988), but also other works on the early development of Critical Theory  by Ulrike Migdal (1981) and Wolfgang Schivelbusch (1998), provided a solid foundation for my own work. 23  One of the autobiographical short stories Horkheimer wrote at this time, which he refused to include in the later, published edition of these documents, was called “L’isle heureuse” (“The Island of Happiness”) (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.11: pp.  292–328.) This story, which is a directly autobiographical description of his and Pollock’s erotic encounter with Suze Neumeier in Paris, was one of the documents that was published later. See also pp. 25–27. 24  They would continue to play this important emotional role for Horkheimer until their deaths in 1969 and 1970, respectively. Horkheimer himself passed away shortly thereafter, in 1973. 22

236

J. Abromeit

remembers that “Max was in his element” at these meetings (Abromeit 2011, p. 41).25 Through her, Horkheimer came into contact with prominent writers, such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan Zweig, and Ernst Toller. The latter was also actively involved in radical politics. After the assassination of Kurt Eisner –the leader of Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in Bavaria and family friend of Germaine Krull26  – Toller succeeded Eisner as leader of the USPD, and he also participated in the first phase of the Munich Council Republic. After the Republic was liquidated by the Freikorps27 and the Reichswehr,28 Toller was forced to go underground. During this time, Horkheimer and Pollock were helping some other participants in the Council Republic who were being sought by the local police. As Horkheimer recalled in one of his later interviews with Matthias Becker, he was arrested not once, but twice during this time in Munich by members of one of the local right-wing militia groups, who believed that he was Toller.29 It was at this time that he decided to leave Munich and his bohemian-artistic lifestyle behind and to pursue university studies in Frankfurt instead. Materials from the archive also make it possible to reconstruct Horkheimer’s earliest intellectual development. For example, from the biographical interviews he conducted near the end of his life, we know how important Pollock’s friendship was in stimulating Horkheimer’s early interest in literature and philosophy. When they met at the age of 16, Pollock was the better read of the two and he introduced Horkheimer to many works of classical literature he had studied at the classical humanistic Gymnasium. Horkheimer had not been exposed to these writings at the more practically oriented high school  – the Realgymnasium  – he had attended. During a trip to Brussels in May 1913, Pollock recommended Schopenhauer’s Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit to Horkheimer – his first encounter with a philosopher who would play a crucial role in the formation of his thought (Abromeit 2011, p. 24).30 Horkheimer’s intellectual development during and after World War I can also be fleshed out with the biographical interviews, as well as letters and diary entries from this time. In a remarkable letter to Riekher in June 1918, Horkheimer reveals to her his favorite novels, including Don Quixote, Candide, and Madame Bovary, all of which Horkheimer admires for their merciless parody of naïve optimism. Horkheimer’s praise of Voltaire not only resonates with his admiration of Schopenhauer’s critical pessimism, it also anticipates his later criticisms of reductionist interpretations of the Enlightenment as naïvely optimistic. In that same letter,  On Krull’s autobiographical writings in the archives of the Museum Folkwang, see also (Sichel 1999, p. 301). 26  Krull also established a name for herself as a photographer with her portraits of Eisner (Sichel 1999, pp. 21–23). 27  Right-wing militia units that formed in Germany in the aftermath of World War I. 28  The German army. 29  Interview with Matthias Becker, pp. 49–50. 30  An older, yet frequently still reprinted English translation of Schopenhauer’s Aphorismen does exist (Schopenhauer 1890a, b). 25

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

237

Horkheimer reveals his lively interest in literary expressionism at this time when he praises Alfred Döblin’s 1916 novel, The Three Leaps of Wang Lun, as “by far the best contemporary German novel” (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.15: p. 35). Archival documents also reveal that, from 1914 onwards, Horkheimer was an avid reader of Die Aktion, the leading journal of literary expressionism in Germany at the time. Like Horkheimer himself, the publisher of the journal, Franz Pfemfert, condemned the insanity of World War I from the very beginning. Near the end of the war and during the revolutionary events that followed, Pfemfert took Die Aktion in an increasingly explicit political direction; for example, he published a special issue in May 1918, commemorating Marx’s 100th birthday. The February 1919 issue of the journal was entirely dedicated to the memory of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who had been murdered by right-wing militias in Berlin the month before. In a letter to Riekher on February 27, 1919, Horkheimer encourages her to read this issue of Die Aktion “from beginning to end, without leaving out a single line, because it gives an outline of our political position” (p. 54). In later interviews, Horkheimer claimed that he did not start reading Marx systematically until after his move from Munich to Frankfurt (Abromeit 2011, p. 59), but he was clearly exposed to Marx’s ideas earlier, in Die Aktion. In her autobiographical manuscript, Germaine Krull also confirms that Horkheimer defended Rosa Luxemburg’s position during the animated political debates that took place in her atelier in the period before, during, and after the November Revolution (p. 41). Horkheimer’s admiration of Pfemfert was also on display in the period after the Munich Council Republic, when he and Krull traveled first to Berlin and then to a small village in the Harz Mountains to meet with Pfemfert in hopes that he could draw attention to the plight of Tobias Axelrod, a Russian-Jewish revolutionary who had played a leading role in the Council Republic and was a friend of Germaine Krull. Fleeing the counterrevolutionary terror in Bavaria, Axelrod had been arrested after crossing the border into Austria with Krull and then sentenced to 15 years in prison. But Pfemfert had himself also been arrested recently – this was the reason he had fled from Berlin – so he was unwilling or unable to support Horkheimer’s efforts to help Axelrod (Abromeit 2011, p. 45). At this point Horkheimer and Krull’s paths also began to diverge. While visiting Pfemfert, Krull met another revolutionary, Samuel Levit, who was staying with Pfemfert at the time.31 They fell in love and eventually decided to move to the Soviet Union to pursue their passionate political convictions there. According to Krull’s later recollections, by the summer of 1919, Horkheimer had come to the conclusion that “the revolution in the streets was over […] all of the great leaders are dead – Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Kurt Eisner, etc. The reaction is strong now, associated with a socialist government. The reaction is always well-organized, because it has money and weapons” (Abromeit 2011, p. 50). So, for Horkheimer, another path had to be found. The path he chose led to the newly founded Goethe  Levit’s parents were Russian Jews who owned a pharmacy in Berlin. He was active – also under the name Karl Adler  – in the German Communist Party. On Krull’s relationship to Levit, see (Sichel 1999, pp. 25–26). 31

238

J. Abromeit

University Frankfurt, where he hoped to gain a rigorous theoretical understanding of modern capitalist societies.

4.2 Horkheimer’s Studies in Frankfurt, 1919–1925 Documents from the Horkheimer Archive also cast new light on the next chapter in Horkheimer’s life and the development of his thought, namely, the period of his academic studies in Frankfurt from 1919 to 1925. The two most important new relationships that Horkheimer formed during this time were with Felix Weil and Hans Cornelius. In his later biographical interviews, Horkheimer tells the story of his first fortuitous encounter with Weil in November or December 1919 (Abromeit 2011, p. 55). Weil was walking down a street in Frankfurt Westend late one evening with Konstantin Zetkin  – the son of the famous German socialist leader, Clara Zetkin – when he and Pollock spotted them from the window of their apartment. Horkheimer already knew Zetkin, so they waved and were soon introduced to Weil. Documents from the Horkheimer Archive, and in the particular case of Weil, from the archives of the Frankfurt Institut für Stadtgeschichte (Institute for the History of the City of Frankfurt),32 helped me to reconstruct the subsequent development of this key friendship that led to the creation of the IfS in 1922/1923. Horkheimer recalled that Weil was drawn to him and Pollock “because we had the reputation of knowing a lot about Marx and because we defended Marxist theory in our seminars” (MHA X 132b, p. 57). The three of them quickly became close friends. In his unpublished autobiographical reflections, Weil refers to Horkheimer and Pollock as his “two closest friends” during this time (Weil n.d., p. 85). Weil liked them so much, in fact, that he soon provided them with the money to build a spacious house in Kronberg im Taunus, a wealthy suburb of Frankfurt, where the three of them would hammer out in discussions their plans for a new research institute dedicated to the study of Marxist theory and the history of the European labor movement (MHA X 183a, p. 134). These discussions took place in late 1921 and 1922, after Horkheimer had returned from two semesters of study with Edmund Husserl at the University of Freiburg, and Weil had returned from a 1-year stay in Argentina, where he failed miserably – and probably purposefully – at running the massive grain import business of his wealthy father, Hermann Weil (Weil n.d., pp. 87–88). In letters and, later, interviews, Horkheimer’s complex and evolving relationship to Hans Cornelius in the 1920s comes into focus. Cornelius was not only Horkheimer’s first and only academic mentor; he was also a valuable friend to Horkheimer at this time. Initially, however, Horkheimer’s attitude toward Cornelius was no different from his attitude toward the university as a whole: a lively interest

 I am referring here to Felix Weil’s unfinished and unpublished autobiographical manuscript (Weil n.d.). 32

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

239

in science and philosophy, coupled with a deep skepticism of the institutions and persons currently entrusted to practicing them.33 Ironically, Horkheimer’s irreverent attitude helped him win the respect of Cornelius. During one of Cornelius’s ­lectures, Horkheimer cited Schopenhauer to challenge Cornelius’s interpretation of Kant’s transcendental aesthetic. Cornelius responded by telling Horkheimer, “Yes, I think we will need to discuss this in more detail. Please come to my office afterwards.” As Horkheimer recalled later, “I did, and that point marked the beginning of my academic path, for I had won his lasting affection” (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.7: pp. 448–49). For his part, Horkheimer was slower to reciprocate Cornelius’s recognition. In letters to Riekher in October 1921, the audacious young Horkheimer left no doubt about his criticisms of both Cornelius’s politics – “In principle he is as far as possible from our own political and moral views” (Vol. 15: p. 68) – and his philosophy – “My own work is better. His thoughts are for the most part extremely vulnerable” (p. 73). Horkheimer’s attitude changed, however, after he completed a dissertation under Cornelius’ supervision in January 1923. Horkheimer’s analysis of Kant’s concept of teleological judgment earned him summa cum laude34 and an offer from Cornelius to become his assistant, which he accepted. From that point on they called each by the familiar “du.” In the following years, Horkheimer would not only write a second dissertation (that is, a Habilitationschrift) on Kant’s “third critique”;35 under Cornelius’ supervision, they would become increasingly close friends. Horkheimer particularly appreciated Cornelius’ acceptance of Riekher at a time when his parents still refused to welcome her into their family. As a result of these tensions, Horkheimer turned on several occasions to Cornelius, rather than his father, for financial support (MHA X 132b, p. 26). In addition, Cornelius took Horkheimer and Riekher on several trips to Italy to instruct them in the history of art and architecture. Over time, Horkheimer also developed a greater appreciation for Cornelius’ politics. After he retired in 1929, the pro-European and anti-nationalist Cornelius moved to Sweden to prevent his children from being infected by National Socialism in the schools. Horkheimer recalled later, “Already at that time he, like myself, saw National Socialism coming” (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol. 7: p.  451). Even though Horkheimer would make a clean theoretical break with Cornelius after 1925, their friendship is an excellent example of the crucial role that personal relationships can play in what used to be called the “history of ideas.” Cornelius’ unfortunate lack of recognition of the philosophical gifts of both Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin would

 Horkheimer’s skeptical attitude toward the university system was certainly also influenced by Schopenhauer, who was largely ignored by the academic establishment of his day and got revenge by writing a series of polemics and invectives against university professors. See, for example, (Schopenhauer 1891). 34  Horkheimer was the first at the still young University of Frankfurt to be awarded this distinction in philosophy. 35  That is, his Critique of Judgment. 33

240

J. Abromeit

prove a serious barrier to their efforts to gain a foothold in the conservative university system of 1920s Germany.36 Archival documents also shed light on the development of Horkheimer’s thought in the period 1919–1925. For example, the first concrete evidence of a systematic study of Marx’s work comes from several notebooks from the spring of 1921, which have been preserved in the Horkheimer Archive (MHA, VII.2). They contain Horkheimer’s extensive reading notes from a number of primary and secondary works on Marxist theory, including Friedrich Engels’s Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie, Karl Kautsky’s Ethik und materialistische Geschichtsauffassung, and Marx’s own 1859 work, Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Engels 1903; Kautsky 1913; Marx 1904).37 The notes make it clear that Horkheimer had read all these works in their entirety. Horkheimer and Pollock were in Freiburg at this time, as Cornelius had encouraged Horkheimer to spend two semesters there to attend lectures by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Horkheimer would recall later that, “I did go to Heidegger’s lectures for a year, but I was more impressed by Husserl” (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol. 7: p. 429).38 In another, later interview he told the amusing story of how, after the third week of a lecture course on “Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion,” Heidegger was still talking about the concept of “introduction,” so he and Pollock left a derogatory note on the lectern after class to express their dissatisfaction (MHA X 183a, p. 51). Unlike so many other promising young scholars and intellectuals in the 1920s  – including many Jews, such as his future friend and colleague at the institute, Herbert Marcuse39 – Horkheimer was immune to Heidegger’s legendary charisma and the anti-rationalist pathos of his “existential-ontological” philosophy. Here, one also finds an example of archival documents helping to correct interpretations that miss the mark in the secondary literature on Horkheimer. In the introduction to a 1993 collection of essays on Horkheimer, the editors argue that his encounter with Heidegger provided the impetus for his break with Cornelius (Benhabib et al. 1993, p. 4). But, as we have just seen, Horkheimer was notably unimpressed with Heidegger, and his estimation of Cornelius was waxing, not waning at this time. It would not be until a few years later, after he completed his Habilitationschrift in 1925, that Horkheimer would break with Cornelius – and with contemporary German academic philosophy as a whole.

 On Adorno and Benjamin’s relationship to Cornelius, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 350–51).  The other works were Landauer’s Aufruf zum Sozialismus (1919), A.W. Cohn’s Kann das Geld abgeschafft warden? (1920), Karl Vorländer’s Marx, Engels und Lasalle als Philosophen (1926), and L.B. Boudin’s Das theoretische System von Karl Marx. English translations of Landauer and Boudin’s works are available (Landauer 1978; Boudin 1907). As far as I know, the works by Cohn and Vorländer have never been translated into English. 38  In fact, Horkheimer was not particularly impressed by Husserl either. For Horkheimer’s assessment of Husserl’s philosophy during the 1920s, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 57–58). 39  For a comparative examination of Horkheimer’s more critical and Marcuse’s more enthusiastic reception of vitalism and phenomenology in the 1920s and early 1930s, see (Abromeit 2019). On Heidegger’s Jewish students in the 1920s and early 1930s, see (Wolin 2001). 36 37

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

241

4.3 Horkheimer as Lecturer in Frankfurt, 1925–1931 Finally, I would like to say a few words about how archival documents illuminate Horkheimer’s intellectual development during the next crucial phase in his life, between 1925, when he began working as a Privatdozent40 in the philosophy department at the Goethe University Frankfurt, and 1931, when he became the director of the IfS. It was during this period that he laid the foundations for an interdisciplinary critical theory of modern capitalist societies, which he would then put into action and continue to develop at the institute in the 1930s. Unfortunately, many of the documents from this period of Horkheimer’s life were lost when the National Socialists seized control of the IfS on March 13, 1933. Among the documents confiscated and destroyed by the Nazis were almost all the letters that Horkheimer wrote and received during this time.41 That said, a number of important documents from this period have been preserved and the later biographical interviews also provide key insights into this period. For example, Horkheimer maintained a philosophical diary during the years 1925–1928. It was not very extensive, but some of the entries shed light on key moments in the formation of Horkheimer’s critical theory, such as the long entry from September 16, 1925, which documents clearly his break with Cornelius’ philosophy and with German academic consciousness philosophy as a whole. Here, again, an archival document can play a key role in correcting inaccurate interpretations of Horkheimer’s critical theory; in this case, the interpretation is from none other than Jürgen Habermas. One of his central objections to early Critical Theory was that it remained trapped in the exhausted paradigm of “consciousness philosophy.” But this document – along with Horkheimer’s subsequent intellectual development – leaves no doubt that his early critical theory took shape precisely as a critique and an attempt to move beyond “consciousness philosophy.” Horkheimer notes in his diary that: An analysis of consciousness, or any type of phenomenology will always remain within the limits of the discipline of psychology. It will, at best, teach us something about the composition of a minuscule portion of the world, namely of a part of our psyche, and cannot, in particular, determine anything about the existence, the meaning or the content of reality. (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.11: p. 242)

In short, Horkheimer simply pursued a different – and, some would argue, more theoretically compelling – path beyond consciousness philosophy than Habermas. Instead of taking a linguistic turn and shifting from the “subject-object” to the “subject-­subject” paradigm à la Habermas, Horkheimer followed in the footsteps of

 A university lecturer or assistant professor.  The four volumes of Horkheimer’s correspondence in the Gesammelte Schriften edition of his writings do not contain a single letter between the years 1923 and 1930. 40 41

242

J. Abromeit

Hegel and Marx in locating subjective consciousness within the dynamic and contradictory development of bourgeois society in the modern historical epoch.42 The path Horkheimer followed beyond consciousness philosophy into history and society can be retraced in a number of other archival documents, including perhaps most importantly a series of lectures he gave on the history of modern philosophy, from the Renaissance all the way through to contemporary schools of thought.43 True to his break with consciousness philosophy, Horkheimer takes a materialist approach to the history of modern European philosophy by interpreting the different authors and ideas he discusses in relation to the uneven development of modern bourgeois society. Remarkably, Horkheimer succeeds in providing nuanced explanations of the ideas of the many different thinkers he treats, while at the same time demonstrating how their ideas were a mediated expression of deeper social transformations. Horkheimer explained his methodology to his students in the following way: The scholarly [wissenschaftlichen] task we have before us here is not to discuss different doctrines on the basis of esoteric, lofty, philosophical concepts, and thus in a certain sense to engage in a genuinely idealist history of philosophy. Instead, we must demonstrate on the basis of a rigorous investigation of the history of the social life process [des gesellschaftlichen Lebensprozesses] […] how the dominant philosophical views […] emerged from this process. […] A desire to understand this relationship [between history and ideas] in particular cases is what would motivate you to conduct your own research and, first of all, to study the history of human society. (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.9: p. 18)

Horkheimer clearly expresses his conviction here – again, following in the footsteps of Hegel and Marx – that modern philosophy cannot be understood in isolation from history and society, by which he does not mean that ideas are mere reflections of the “economic base.” Philosophy and Critical Theory  are “relatively autonomous” (Vol.11: pp. 263–285); they play an active role in the reproduction of human society and thus also have the potential to change society for the better, as was the case, for example, in France in the eighteenth century. Horkheimer’s treatment of ideas in his lectures is by no means reductionist. In terms of the rigor and clarity with which Horkheimer presents philosophical concepts and arguments, his lectures surpass most traditional treatments of the subject. At the same time, he succeeds remarkably well in demonstrating how they express, but also actively advance or hinder, specific social tendencies.44

 For a more detailed overview of Horkheimer’s break with consciousness philosophy around 1925 and the development of a new model of Critical Theory in his thought in the following years, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 85–90). 43  These lectures were published in 1987 and 1990, respectively, as volume 9 (“Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der neueren Philosophie”) and volume 10 (“Vorlesung über die deutschen idealistischen Philosophie” and “Einführung in die Philosophie der Gegenwart”) of the Gesammelte Schriften edition of his writings. Both volumes were edited by Alfred Schmidt. 44  It is truly unfortunate that the lectures by Horkheimer on the history of modern philosophy – published in volumes 9 and 10 of the Gesammelte Schriften – have not yet been translated into English. One can hope that someone undertakes this worthwhile project soon. 42

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

243

Whereas these lectures provide the best insight into the historical foundations of Horkheimer’s nascent critical theory, other archival documents shed light on how his critical theory of contemporary society took shape during the period 1925–1931. Most important in this regard was, first, Horkheimer’s ongoing engagement with Marxist theory and his efforts to update and apply it to contemporary German and European societies and, second, the integration of psychoanalysis into his critical theory. The most important published source on Horkheimer’s analysis of contemporary society during this time is Dämmerung: Notizen in Deutschland, which he wrote between the years 1926 and 1931 (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol. 2: pp. 312–452), but did not publish until 1934 and then only under the pseudonym Heinrich Regius.45 The Horkheimer Archive contains about 20 aphorisms that were originally written as part of Dämmerung (Vol.11: pp.  263–85). Even though Horkheimer chose not to publish these notes,46 they flesh out his passionate, trenchant, and nearly completely forgotten47 critique of both the brutal and the more subtle and quotidian manifestations of social domination under the monopoly capitalism of his day. In addition to Pollock’s notes from the first seminar on Marx that Horkheimer offered at the university in Frankfurt in 1928 (MHA VIII, 10), another important archival document that illuminates the young Horkheimer’s interpretation of historical materialism is a critique he penned in 1928 or 1929 (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol. 11: pp.  171–88), of Lenin’s principal philosophical work, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Horkheimer takes particular issue with Lenin’s claim that “objective reality is copied, photographed and reflected by our sense impressions,” and he characterizes it as “the reflection theory of knowledge in its most naïve form” (p. 183). In so doing, Horkheimer demonstrated not only his distance from the interpretation of historical materialism that was being canonized in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, but also his determination to develop a materialist theory of epistemology, which would not fall behind the high level of reflection attained already by Marx. Such reflections on materialist epistemology would remain central to Horkheimer’s concerns in some of his most important essays from the 1930s, such as “On the Problem of Truth” (Horkheimer 1993, pp. 177–216) and “Traditional and Critical Theory” (Horkheimer 1992, pp. 188–243). Although other socialist intellectuals in the 1920s were interested in what historical materialism could learn from psychoanalysis,48 one of Horkheimer’s lasting

 An incomplete and rather poorly translated English edition does exist (Horkheimer 1978).  See Gunzelin Schmid Noerr’s editorial comments on them (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.11: p. 262). 47  Compared, for example, to Adorno’s later collection of aphorisms, Minima Moralia, which was modeled upon and dedicated to Horkheimer and which is still widely read and discussed, one rarely finds references to Dämmerung, even among scholars of Critical Theory. A new English translation of Dämmerung, which should include all of the aphorisms published in the original, as well as the unpublished aphorisms in volume 11 of the Gesammelte Schriften – is long overdue. 48  Most importantly, at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, whose members included Fromm and other theorists working on a synthesis of Marx and Freud, such as Wilhelm Reich. On the Berlin 45 46

244

J. Abromeit

contributions to twentieth-century Critical Theory was certainly the unique synthesis of the thought of Marx and Freud that he developed – with the help of Erich Fromm – in the 1930s. Archival documents shed light on how the foundations for this theoretical synthesis were laid between 1925 and 1931. Horkheimer had been interested in psychology from the beginning of his university studies in Frankfurt. In fact, he had initially chosen psychology as his major and had begun a dissertation on a technical topic in the field of Gestalt psychology, which was well represented at the Goethe University Frankfurt at that time. But, even at this new and innovative university, psychoanalysis was not yet taken seriously. Horkheimer recognized right away that psychoanalysis went far beyond Gestalt and other forms of “scientific” psychology and also that it had far-reaching political implications (MHA132a, p. 5). So, Horkheimer had no choice but to pursue his burgeoning interest in psychoanalysis outside the university. His first serious encounter with it came through the analyst, Karl Landauer, who had been trained by Freud himself in Vienna. In 1927, Horkheimer approached Landauer, who had opened a psychoanalytic practice in Frankfurt in 1923, to undergo analysis. Landauer told him that he must have a symptom that needed to be cured before they could begin, so Horkheimer said that he was unable to lecture without reading directly from prepared notes. Landauer now agreed, and he met with Horkheimer for an hour every day, six days a week, for the next year. According to Horkheimer’s later recollections, both men viewed the analysis primarily as a learning process. Horkheimer stated, “My analysis never really became psychoanalysis in the strict sense. […] Afterwards he knew a lot about philosophy, but in reality it never developed into a proper analysis” (MHA132a, p. 5). There is no way of knowing if Horkheimer’s later recollections were completely correct or honest. In any case, Horkheimer was cured of his symptom; he overcame his fear of lecturing without detailed notes, which also explains why far fewer detailed lecture notes – such as the ones from his lectures on the history of modern philosophy – are to be found in the archives after 1928. After the analysis, Landauer and Kracauer also worked closely together and developed a warm friendship that lasted until Landauer was captured by the Gestapo in Amsterdam and deported to Bergen-Belsen, where he died in January 1945.49 The other key figure in Horkheimer’s integration of psychoanalysis into Critical Theory in the late 1920s was Erich Fromm. As a result of Fromm’s acrimonious departure from the institute approximately a decade later and subsequent polemics between Fromm and other members of the institute, Fromm’s key role in the formation of Critical Theory  has often been overlooked. But in later interviews, Horkheimer conveys clearly just how excited he was at that time to work with Fromm and to welcome him as a new  – indeed, a lifetime  – member of the

Institute, see (Sokolowsky 2022) and (Fuechtner 2011). 49  See Horkheimer’s extensive correspondence with Landauer in the Gesammelte Schriften, volumes 15 and 16.

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

245

institute.50 Horkheimer recalled, “Fromm became a part of our group when I said that it is also very important for us now to tend to psychoanalysis, which is neglected in an irresponsible way in German universities. […] At that time I got along very well with Fromm, because he also had an understanding of social theory” (MHA 132a, p131). Horkheimer alludes here to the fact that Fromm was not only a fully trained psychoanalyst but had also earned a PhD in sociology at the University of Heidelberg in 1922,51 which put him in an excellent position to work with Horkheimer on a synthesis of Marx and Freud’s ideas. Fromm was raised in the Frankfurt Westend neighborhood, but in his youth was more drawn to religion than socialist theory or practice. While he met other future Institute colleagues from Frankfurt, such as Felix Weil, Leo Löwenthal, and Theodor W. Adorno, in the early 1920s, he did not meet Fromm until later – most likely through Landauer. But by 1928 at the latest, when he gave a lecture at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute on “Psychoanalysis of the Petty Bourgeois,” Fromm had also developed an interest in socialist theory and politics that would remain with him for the rest of his life. He and Horkheimer would work together with Landauer to found the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute, which opened its doors on February 16, 1929. It was the first time, as Freud himself noted in an appreciative letter to Horkheimer,52 that psychoanalysis was officially associated with a German university. Horkheimer also worked closely with Fromm to develop the first large-scale, psychoanalytically informed empirical research project – on the political attitudes of blue- and white-­ collar workers in Weimar Germany  – that the institute would carry out under Horkheimer’s new leadership.53 Finally, Horkheimer also appreciated Fromm’s awareness of the rising threat of fascism in Germany during this time. As Horkheimer recalled later, Fromm really shared with me, and this is crucial, my views on the developments in Germany […] we were among the few who actually knew what was happening. […] Fromm sensed, just as I did, that we would not be able to stay in Europe. Contrary to the views of others, Fromm went to America upon my request and looked around a bit […] When he returned he spoke very positively about America and that [was what made me decide] to leave with my wife for America. (MHA132a, pp. 131–2)

On May 3, 1934, Horkheimer and Riekher arrived in New York City aboard the SS George Washington (Wiggershaus 1988, p. 165).

 Horkheimer’s enthusiasm about Fromm at this time was expressed by his offering to make Fromm a lifetime member of the institute, but this membership became a source of an intense legal dispute between Fromm and the institute in later years, when Fromm’s move away from Horkheimer and Adorno’s interpretation of psychoanalysis led to his departure from the institute (Abromeit, pp. 336–48). 51  His dissertation – completed under the supervision of Max Weber’s brother, Alfred Weber – was on “The Jewish Law: A Contribution to the Sociology of the Jewish Diaspora.” 52  Like so many of the letters to and from Horkheimer during this time, the correspondence between Horkheimer and Freud – of which Horkheimer was particularly proud – are not to be found in the Horkheimer Archive. On the fate of this correspondence, see (Schmid Noerr 1996). 53  For a discussion of this project and Fromm’s role in it, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 211–26). 50

246

J. Abromeit

5 Conclusion After the first few chapters of my book, as I shifted away from extensive biographical research on Horkheimer’s life to a detailed reconstruction of the development of his critical theory, archival documents became less important for me. I did continue to rely upon Horkheimer’s correspondence in the 1930s, especially his letters to and from Adorno, which are extremely rich theoretically and shed much light on their most important works from this time.54 A lengthy theoretical text that Erich Fromm had written in the fall and winter of 1936/1937 (Fromm 1999, pp. 129–175), but which was not published until 1992, provided me with crucial insights into his critique of Freudian drive theory, which led to his theoretical break with Horkheimer and his departure from the institute.55 Overall, however, my reconstruction of Horkheimer’s critical theory in the 1930s relied primarily on published texts. I hope, nonetheless, to have made clear here how much my knowledge of Critical Theory has been enriched by the extensive research I conducted in the Marcuse and Horkheimer archives. As mentioned, many (although by no means all) of the archival documents I have discussed here have been published: in the Gesammelte Schriften edition of Horkheimer’s writings, the Collected Papers and the Nachgelassene Schriften editions of Marcuse writings, and elsewhere. Furthermore, many of the materials in the Horkheimer Archive have, in the meantime, been digitized and made available online to researchers everywhere.56 One can hope that something similar will happen with the materials in the Marcuse Archive that have not yet been published. I have described here how my own research in both the Marcuse and Horkheimer Archives has shaped my own interpretation of the lives and work of both men, especially during their early phases, including Marcuse’s critical engagement with Heidegger and Horkheimer’s path to Critical Theory in the 1910s and 1920s. The discovery of new archival sources has played an important role in the development of Critical Theory in the past; one thinks, for example, of the impact of Marx’s Paris Manuscripts on Herbert Marcuse in the early 1930s (Marcuse, 2005c;  Maidan 1990). There is no doubt that new sources will be discovered in the future, as has recently happened with the discovery of extensive notes from some of Hegel’s lectures (Tor 2022). The discovery and scholarly assessment of archival sources is one of the main ways in which our knowledge is augmented. Thus, we can and should look forward to the assessment of primary sources that will shed further light on the development of individual members of the “Frankfurt School” and Critical Theory as a whole. At the same, we should not forget Horkheimer’s fundamental conviction

 The Suhrkamp edition of the correspondence between Horkheimer and Adorno during this time is the best, insofar as it contains some letters and other materials that were left out of Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften (Adorno and Horkheimer 2003–2004). 55  For my own discussion of this text, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 336–48). 56  For information on the materials from the Horkheimer Archive that have been digitalized and made available online, see the following website: https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/archive/horkheimer.html. 54

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

247

that knowledge is not an end in itself; its aim is not to establish “timeless truths,” but instead to improve the finite lives of human beings.

References Abromeit, John. 2001. Reconsidering Marcuse. Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory 8 (1): 148–155. ———. 2004. Herbert Marcuse’s Critical Encounter with Martin Heidegger, 1927-33. In Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader, ed. John Abromeit and W.  Mark Cobb, 131–151. New  York/ London: Routledge. ———. 2011. Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School. New  York/ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2013. Whiteness as a Form of Bourgeois Anthropology? Historical Materialism and Psychoanalysis in the Work of David Roediger, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. Radical Philosophy Review 16 (1): 325–343. ———. 2018. Frankfurt School Critical Theory and the Persistence of Authoritarian Populism in the United States. In Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism, ed. Jeremiah Morelock, 3–27. London: University of Westminster Press. ———. 2019. The Vicissitudes of the Politics of ‘Life’: Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse’s Reception of Phenomenology and Vitalism in Weimar Germany. Enrahonar: An International Journal of Theoretical and Practical Reason 62: 39–58. ———. 2022. The Concept of Pseudo-Conservatism as a Link Between The Authoritarian Personality and Early Critical Theory. Polity: The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association 54 (1): 29–58. Abromeit, John, and Mark Cobb, eds. 2004. Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader. New  York/ London: Routledge. Adorno, Theodor W., and Horkheimer, Max. 2003–2004. Briefwechsel. Vol. 4.1: 1927-1937 and vol. 4.2, 1938-1944, eds. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Adorno, Theodor, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper & Brothers. Benhabib, Seyla, Wolfgang Bonss, and John McCole, eds. 1993. Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Boudin, Louis B. 1907. The Theoretical System of Karl Marx in the Light of Recent Criticism. Chicago: C.H. Kerr. Breton, André. 1969. Political Position of Today’s Art. In Manifestoes of Surrealism. Trans. R. Seaver and H. R. Lane, 212–33. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bundschuh, Stephan. 1998. “Und Weil der Mensch ein Mensch it…” Anthropologische Aspekte der Sozialphilosophie Herbert Marcuses. Lüneburg: zu Klampen. Cohn, A.W. 1920. Kann das Geld abgeschafft werden? Jena: Fischer. Engels, Friedrich. 1903. Feuerbach, The Roots of the Socialist Philosophy. Trans. Austin Lewis. Chicago: C.H. Kerr. Farias, Victor. 1991. Heidegger and Nazism. Trans. Paul Burrell and Gabriel Ricci. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Fromm, Erich. 1999. Die Determiniertheit der psychischen Struktur durch die Gesellschaft. Zur Methode und Aufgabe einer Analytischen Sozialpsychologie. In Gesamtausgabe, ed. Rainer Funk, vol. 11. Munich: Deutsche Verlags Anstalt. Fuechtner, Veronika. 2011. Berlin Psychoanalytic: Psychoanalysis and Culture in Weimar Republic Germany and Beyond. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

248

J. Abromeit

Heidegger, Martin. 2016–2017. Ponderings II-VI: Black Notebooks, 1931-1938; Ponderings VII-XI, Black Notebooks 1938-1939; Ponderings XII-XV, Black Notebooks 1939-1941. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Herbert’s Hippopotamus: A Story about Revolution in Paradise. USA 1997. Dir: Paul Alexander Juutilainen. De Facto Fiction Films. Horkheimer, Max. 1974. Aus der Pubertät, ed. Alfred Schmidt. Munich: Kösel. ———. 1978. Dawn and Decline: Notes 1926-1931 & 1950-1969. Trans. Michael Shaw. New York: The Seabury Press. ———. 1985–1996. Gesammelte Schriften, eds. Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. ———. 1992. Critical Theory: Selected Essays. Trans. M.J. O’Connell. New York: Continuum. ———. 1993. Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings, ed. and trans. G.F. Hunter, M. S. Kramer and J. Torpey. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jay, Martin. 1973. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950. Boston: Little, Brown. Kant, Immanuel. 1992. The Conflict of the Faculties. Trans. Mary J. Gregor. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Kātz, Barry. 1982. Herbert Marcuse and the Art of Liberation. London: Verso. Kautsky, Karl. 1913. Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History. Trans. J. Askew. Chicago: C.H. Kerr. Kellner, Douglas. 1984. Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of the Marxism. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. Landauer, Gustav. 1919. Aufruf zum Sozialismus. Berlin: Paul Cassirer. ———. 1978. For Socialism. Trans. D. J. Parent. St. Louis: Telos Press. Laudani, Raffaele, ed. 2013. Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Löwenthal, Leo, and Norbert Guterman. 1949. Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator. New York: Harper & Brothers. Maidan, Michael. 1990. The Rezeptionsgeschichte of the Paris Manuscripts. History of European Ideas 12 (6): 767–770. Marcuse Archive. Archivzentrum, Universitätsbibliothek J.C.  Senckenberg, Goethe University Frankfurt. Marcuse, Herbert. 1934. Der Kampf gegen den Liberalismus in der totalitären Staatsauffassung. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 3: 161–194. ———. 1937. Über den affirmativen Charakter der Kultur. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 6 (1): 54–92. ———. 1958. Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1968a. The Struggle Against Liberalism in the Totalitarian View of the State. In Negations, ed. and trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro, 3–42. Boston: Beacon. ———. 1968b. The Affirmative Character of Culture. In Negations, ed. and trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro, pp. 8–133. Boston: Beacon. ———. 1969. Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon. ———. 1972. Counter-Revolution and Revolt. Boston: Beacon. ———. 1978. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Boston: Beacon. ———. 1998–2014. Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse. Vols. 1–6, ed. Douglas Kellner. London/New York: Routledge. ———. 1999–2009. Nachgelassene Schriften. Vols. 1–6, ed. Peter-Erwin Jansen. Lüneburg: zu Klampen. ———. 2005a. Herbert Marcuse, Heideggerian Marxism, eds. Richard Wolin and John Abromeit. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ———. 2005b. German Philosophy, 1871–1933. In Herbert Marcuse, Heideggerian Marxism, ed. Richard Wolin and John Abromeit, 151–164. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working…

249

———. 2005c. New Sources on the Foundation of Historical Materialism. In Herbert Marcuse, Heideggerian Marxism, ed. Richard Wolin and John Abromeit, 86–121. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Marcuse, Herbert, and Alfred Schmidt. 1973. Existentialistische Marx-Interpretation. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt. Marx, Karl. 1904. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Trans. I.N. Stone. Chicago: C.H. Kerr. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1962–1974. Marx-Engels Werke. Berlin: Dietz. Matuštík, Martin Beck. 2001. Jürgen Habermas: A Philosophical-Political Profile. New  York: Rowman & Littlefield. Max Horkheimer Archive (Nachlass Max Horkheimer) (MHA). Archivzentrum, Universitätsbibliothek J.C. Senckenberg, Goethe University Frankfurt. MHA, VII.2: Horkheimer’s reading notes from Spring, 1921. MHA XIII 112a.: Ernst von Schenk unpublished biographical manuscript on Max Horkheimer. MHA X 132b.: Ernst von Schenk’s biographical interviews with Max Horkheimer. MHA X 183a.: Matthias Becker’s biographical interviews with Max Horkheimer. Migdal, Ulrike. 1981. Die Frühgeschichte des Frankfurter Instituts für Sozialforschung. Frankfurt: Campus. Ott, Hugo. 1993. Martin Heidegger: A Political Life. Trans. Allen Blunden. New York: Basic Books. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. 1998. Intellektuellendämmerung: Zur Lage der Frankfurter Intelligenz in den zwanziger Jahren. Frankfurt am Main: Insel. Schmid Noerr, Gunzelin. 1996. Editorische Anhang. In Gesammelte Schriften. Max Horkheimer, eds. Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, vol. 18: pp.  831–2. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Schoolman, Morton. 1980. The Imaginary Witness: The Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse. New York: The Free Press. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1890a. The Wisdom of Life, being the first part of Arthur Schopenhauer’s Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit. Trans. T. Bailey Saunders. London: S. Sonnenschein. ———. 1890b. Counsels and Maxims, being the second part of Arthur Schopenhauer’s Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit. Trans. T. Bailey Saunders. London: S. Sonnenschein. ———. 1891. Über die Universitäts-Philosophie. In Werke in zehn Bänden. Vol. 7. Parerga und Paralipomena: Kleine philosophsiche Schriften, ed. Julius Frauenstädt, 7th ed., 151–214. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus. Sichel, Kim. 1999. Avantgarde als Abenteuer: Leben und Werk der Photographin Germaine Krull. Munich: Shirmer/Mosel. Sokolowsky, Laura. 2022. Psychoanalysis Under Nazi Occupation: The Origins, Impact and Influence of the Berlin Institute. New York: Routledge. Tor, Sara. 2022. Manuscript Treasure Trove May Offer Fresh Understanding of Hegel. The Guardian, 29 Nov 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/29/manuscript-­ treasure-­trove-­may-­offer-­fresh-­understanding-­of-­hegel. Accessed 20 Jan 2023. Tucker, R.C., ed. 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. New York: Norton. Vorländer, Karl. 1926. Marx, Engels und Lasalle als Philosophen. Berlin: Dietz. Weil, Felix. n.d. Lebenserrinerungen. Institut für Stadtgeschichte Archiv, Frankfurt am Main; Section :Chroniken, Cat. no.: S5/421. Wiggershaus, Rolf. 1988. Die Frankfurter Schule: Geschichte, Theoretische Entwicklung, Politische Bedeutung. Munich: DTV. Wolin, Richard. 2001. Heidegger’s Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2023. Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology. New Haven: Yale University Press.

250

J. Abromeit

John Abromeit  is a professor in the Department of History and Social Studies Education at the State University of New York, Buffalo State, where he teaches courses on modern European history, intellectual history and critical social theory. He is the author of Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School (Cambridge UP, 2011). He is the coeditor of Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader (Routledge, 2004),  Herbert Marcuse: Heideggerian Marxism  (University of Nebraska Press, 2005),  Transformations of Populism in Europe and the Americas: History and Recent Tendencies  (Bloomsbury, 2016) and Siegfried Kracauer: Selected Writings on Media, Propaganda, and Political Communication (Columbia University Press, 2022).

Part X

Jürgen Habermas Archive

The Habermas Papers: An Interview with Roman Yos Pedro Zan and Rafael Palazi

Roman Yos is research associate at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Potsdam, where he is primarily working on a research project on the problem of language in post-war German philosophy. In 2019, he published the book Der junge Habermas (Yos 2019), in which, with the help of documents found in the Habermas’s papers at the Archive Center of the Goethe University Frankfurt, he analyzes the origins of Habermas’s thought between the 1950s and the publishing of Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere) in 1962 (Habermas 1992). Interviewers: Let’s get started with a more general question. While writing your book, Der junge Habermas, you had access to the papers in Frankfurt. What can you say about the documents and their organization in the archive? How can one visit the Archive Center in Frankfurt and view the materials available? Roman Yos: Before I answer your questions in detail, I would like to take the opportunity to give some information in advance, which seems important to me for the classification of and research into the Jürgen Habermas Papers. I must confess that, at first, I had a somewhat queasy feeling about providing information about a collection with which I had relatively little to do, at least as far as the duration of my

P. Zan ∙ R. Palazi (*) University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_17

253

254

P. Zan and R. Palazi

actual work with it is concerned. Also, I do not want to raise exaggerated expectations concerning the “organization and research in Jürgen Habermas’s archive.”1 For my book, which you mentioned at the beginning, I discovered many places outside of Frankfurt where Habermasiana can be found, for example, in the estate of Erich Rothacker in Bonn, as well as in the university archive there, and in the editorial archive of the journal Merkur in Marbach, to name a few. Some of it can now also be viewed in Frankfurt. It is important to mention that the early correspondence, up to 1962, is not completely preserved in Frankfurt. As far as I know, Habermas was able to use the services of a typist (office assistant) only from his time in Heidelberg onward, so one can assume that some of his letters from the time before are still (or only) in other archives or estates of his early interlocutors. Carbon copies of the letters written by him in the period 1963–1994 should at least be available in the holdings of the Archive Center. In the introduction to my book, I pointed out that I consulted Habermas’s preliminary estate (Vorlass) in Frankfurt. This applies both to the correspondence and to other materials, with a view to contextualizing the published written material from the early creative period. From the beginning, I had not planned to base my account heavily on the Vorlass because I had already been working on the book for some time when I began to pay attention to it. Since 2014, when Habermas first allowed me a glimpse, I have spent little more than a month (spread over several stays) at the Archive Center, where I have also partially researched the estates of other people who are important when dealing with Habermas. In this context, Max Horkheimer and Karl-Otto Apel should be mentioned, as well as Friedrich Pollock, Herbert Marcuse, and Leo Löwenthal. In addition, the Archive Center also houses the preliminary estates of Habermas’s former assistants Albrecht Wellmer, Ulrich Oevermann, and Oskar Negt. If I am informed correctly, these estates have only recently become part of the holdings there. If one is interested, for example, in the connections and tensions that have become known in part as the “dispute over the legacy of Critical Theory” (according to Helmut Dubiel (1994)), the estates of Alfred Schmidt, Karl-Heinz Haag, and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, who were primarily Adorno students, should certainly also be considered, as they are now kept in the same building complex. One can already guess from the inventory overview how interesting the entire ensemble in the Archive Center is from the point of view of Critical Theory.2 For the historical-intellectual processing of the tradition of thought, there are still some tasks waiting, which can probably only be resolved when the documents from the second half of the twentieth century can be seen without restriction – not all the estates or preliminary estates located there yet have the degree of order and indexing

 Between 2013 and 2021, there have been approximately 80 inquiries from users who have used the papers or directed questions about them to the Archive Center. I owe this information to Oliver Kleppel and Dr. Mathias Jehn, who are responsible for the archive holdings on site. 2  For an overview: https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/archive/bestaende.html 1

The Habermas Papers: An Interview with Roman Yos

255

required for more detailed research projects.3 Unfortunately, one cannot yet find estates of women involved in the field of Critical Theory in the search for holdings, although some of them could be considered.4 There is also a lack of on-site ­scholarly support for the collection, which, if one disregards the estates of Adorno and Benjamin that are accessible at the Berlin Academy of Arts and the Institute for Social Research’s own archive, houses probably the most important representatives of Frankfurt’s Critical Theory. If you are therefore considering a visit to the Archive Center, which is located – somewhat hidden – in the main building of the university library on the Bockenheim campus, you need to know in advance exactly what you are looking for. Appropriate preparation in the use of the navigation system Arcinsys,5 as well as a general overview of the known secondary literature on the Frankfurt School, is essential. I: Regarding the current research developments on other Critical Theory archives, as in the cases of Walter Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Adorno, are there any specificities for this kind of work in Habermas’s case, considering that we are talking about research using the archives of a living author? RY: Habermas’s papers contain materials from 1950 to 1994 (further materials from more recent times are undoubtedly still in the Starnberg house). What can so far be viewed with permission mainly consists of correspondence, drafts, and manuscripts from this period. Specifically, we are dealing with documents from Habermas’s Bonn study period (1950–1954/55); his assistance at the Institute for Social Research (1956–1959); his Habilitation in Marburg and the Heidelberg professorship at the beginning of the 1960s, the second Frankfurt period (1963–1969); his time at the Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung der Lebensbedingungen der wissenschaftlich-­ technischen Welt in Starnberg (1970–1981); and the third Frankfurt period, which, with Habermas’s retirement in 1994, concludes a period of his life, at least in biographical terms. Of course, there is also a considerable quantity of unpublished text and lecture manuscripts, sketches, excerpts, etc., which, like the correspondence, requires permission to view. It is mandatory to prepare a brief description of the research project in advance, for approval. A special feature of “Na 60” (i.e., the estate no. 60) is the correspondence, which is arranged according to when it originated, and is spread over numerous boxes. This chronological order may be useful for a biographical perspective or for the investigation of events that can be well defined in time (Stefan Müller-Doohm certainly benefited from it in the context of his biography of Habermas (2016)). For the coherent research of certain correspondence, however, this also has the disadvantage that one must browse and search thoroughly in the special collections reading room (Spezialsammlungen) where the materials can be viewed. Sometimes,  In addition, specific terms of use must be observed. See therefore https://landesarchiv.hessen.de/ hessisches-archivgesetz. 4  Regina Becker-Schmidt, who herself could be seen as a good example, has written about some women at the IfS (Becker-Schmidt 2009). 5  For Habermas at Arcinsys, see https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/detailAction?detailid=b7099. 3

256

P. Zan and R. Palazi

however, one comes across letters that one would not have discovered if one had presented separate correspondence.6 However, there are also a few boxes or folders sorted according to processes, such as certain correspondence with Suhrkamp Verlag, or letters for birthdays and anniversaries. Another obvious peculiarity of “Na 60” is, as you rightly pointed out, the fact that the person who created the inventory is still with us and is also still productive. It is clear that, especially with the research from the later phase of his life (i.e., the period beginning in 1994), not much has become known beyond what has been published. In any case, to date one must still rely on what Habermas himself has published or otherwise revealed (for example, in public speeches and interviews). I: In Der junge Habermas, you claim that there is no proper diagnosis of the genesis of Habermas’s thought. You aim to fill this gap in the secondary literature with a historical-theoretical contribution of Habermas’s work and person, always relating the correspondences available in the archive to the problems posed by the author in his later work. Could you comment on these gaps and archival research into the origins of Habermasian thought contributes to the enriching the understanding of his work? RY: In the book, I have tried to untangle the thread presented by the context of the early texts. And you are absolutely right; one of my results was: “there is no proper genesis of Habermas’s thought.” An important aspect of this was the questioning of so-called continuity and discontinuity representations, which in the view of Critical Theory have always become the pivot of the discussion. If one follows the continuity representations, this means, conversely, that one must make sense of discontinuities or competing influences. When I had the opportunity to ask Habermas personally about certain first encounters – say, with people like Adorno, Gadamer, or Plessner, who appreciated Habermas’s work very much – he always drew my attention to the easily underestimated degree of contingency. This is something that we later-born researchers sometimes do not sufficiently clarify to ourselves, because we have already read much (and repeatedly) about individual incidents in a life story. Every historicization must balance contingency and determination. There is a limit to each side, even if it concerns the explanation of the origin of individual texts. That is why it is difficult to come up with any “proper diagnosis.” I: In the book, you also show the many changes in Habermas’s thought. There is a focus on his relationship with philosophy, from which he departs due to his increasing interest in social research, but that always seems to be present in his intellectual journey. This relationship is indicated by the publication of his text on the idealism of Jewish philosophers only 1 year before The Structural Transformation of the  For example: One single letter that stands out from other correspondence is from the former secretary for foreign affairs Hans-Dietrich Genscher. It was recently published in the 2021 issue XV/3 (p: 39) of Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte that was dedicated to Habermas. 6

The Habermas Papers: An Interview with Roman Yos

257

Public Sphere (Habermas 1992). How do the materials available in the archive, especially the ones related to the formative phase of Habermasian thought, present this ambiguous relationship between Habermas and philosophy and help us to understand these “comings and goings” in his work? RY: My impression is that Habermas’s departure for Heidelberg at the end of 1961 marks the beginning of a phase that has not yet been sufficiently studied in terms of the history of his work. With regard to the texts, this concerns the collected essays of Theorie und Praxis (Theory and Practice) (Habermas 1974) published in 1963 and extends at least to 1968s Erkenntnis und Interesse (Knowledge and Human Interests) (Habermas 2002), possibly even as far as the new approach to a language-­ based sociology represented by the 1971 Gauss Seminars. From this point on, there were several retrospective efforts and explanations, such as the introduction to the 1971 edition of Theory and Practice and the epilogue to the 1973 paperback edition of Knowledge and Human Interests, which shed some light on theory development. But the discussion of Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode (Truth and Method) (Gadamer 1960) is a weighty matter which should be classified as philosophy, even though Habermas’s 1967 literature review Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (On the Logic of the Social Sciences) (Habermas 1988) has a breadth of reading, including nonphilosophical texts, which was not expected from someone who is considered a philosopher at the time. The way in which Popper and Gadamer, Weber and Parsons, Husserl and Schütz, Wittgenstein and Chomsky, etc. are treated here in terms of social philosophy must have been quite a novelty. I only mention this because the “comings and goings” throughout this phase of his work seem to me to be particularly rich. This can be seen, for example, in the correspondence with Apel, which, however, has been incompletely preserved in the archive. As I have done some more intensive research in this regard since the publication of my book, I can say that one can easily see how enormous the reading amount of the young professors (Apel was in Kiel at the time) must have been: hermeneutics, phenomenology, analytic philosophy of science, pragmatism, etc. I: Your book ends on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas 1992), Habermas’s Habilitationschrift, and his first big publication. Some commentators consider this work one of his first attempts to criticize Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s work, pointing to a democratic deficit in their thought. That can foreshadow a more substantial break between Habermas and the so-called first generation of Critical Theory that would come years later. Is it possible to identify the genesis of these critiques from Habermas of Adorno and Horkheimer in the documents that are available in the archive? Is it already possible to identify those disagreements exploited by the author in his later work? RY: I would not say that there is any evidence of such criticism of the “first generation of Critical Theory” in the archive correspondence. Nor have I been able to find anything meaningful to that effect so far, and I believe that the later published statements from The Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas 1984, 1987), The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Habermas 2004), etc. are a result of a more

258

P. Zan and R. Palazi

long-term engagement and speak for themselves. Even Habermas’s remark about a “democratic deficit” in Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s thinking does not have to be interpreted in the sense of such a “break,” as some critiques suggest. This presupposes a common starting point. But what this should have constituted between 1956 and 1961 is not easy to say, even if one admits that Habermas shared Adorno’s cultural critique and his justified criticism of the well-known tendencies to repress the Germans’ National Socialist past. One must also keep in mind here that the critical passages repeatedly alluded to with regard to Habermas were written after ­Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s deaths. I cannot identify anything of the kind in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas 1992). Meanwhile, some of Adorno’s published lectures clearly mention this book in an appreciative way. Habermas, in my opinion, has tried from the beginning to follow his own theoretical intentions instead of fixing himself into Critical Theory in the mold of Adorno and Horkheimer at a particular level of their work. Admittedly, there are some methodological convictions – a certain way of dealing with Kant, Marx, and Hegel in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – which are quite close to the radically democratically minded pre-1844 Marx. Perhaps, accepting some roughness, this can be called Hegelian Marxism or even Western Marxism. Beyond that, however, I think that it would be better to pay less attention to these kinds of questions, which usually start at the generational sequence of Critical Theory. Otherwise, one must always deal with two kinds of lamenters: on the one hand, those who complain that the “pure doctrine” or some orthodoxy has been watered down by Habermas; on the other hand, those who run under the banner of Critical Theory but in fact already cast their nets far from the fundamental intentions of the elder Frankfurts. In the long run, it will be impossible to please either faction with the scheme of generational succession. That is why I also plead for treating Habermas as an independent thinker. This does not necessarily mean that links between Adorno and Habermas are nonexistent. From a philosophical-systematic point of view, Habermas has the greatest intersections with Albrecht Wellmer or Karl-Otto Apel, and the latter – although he also taught in Frankfurt – is not considered to be part of Critical Theory. You can see from this that the question of generational succession inevitably leads to arguments about individual personalities. I think this is a wasted effort. I: Also regarding the topic of the public sphere, Habermas had shown interest in this theme before publishing The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas 1992). In Habermas’s book, the press has a central role in forming the phenomenon of the public sphere in bourgeois society. As discovered through some research on the early academic development of Habermas, including your work, he authored some relevant texts as a young journalist. Could you comment on how these works appear in your research and how this work could influence his more mature thought?

The Habermas Papers: An Interview with Roman Yos

259

RY: The public sphere is indeed one topic that occupies Habermas to this day.7 And if one had to assess (somewhat prematurely) his life’s work, one would have to note, among other things, that critical journalism, as Habermas understood it in the context of the political-cultural development of the Federal Republic and a reunified Germany central to the European Union, has remained a kind of modus vivendi for him. In this respect, a certain understanding of critical journalism also influences “his more mature thought.” For Habermas as a critical intellectual, this is a kind of link to his work, which sees in the critical public sphere normative resources that must be fed repeatedly into circulation in liberal world society. It is this kind of critical intellectuality that drives the “freedom of reason” in Habermas’s eyes, and it has been a continuous thread from his early work. I: We know that from the 1970s onward, Habermas came closer to pragmatics, notoriously to the “transcendental pragmatics” of Karl-Otto Apel (Apel 1982). In this regard, even though he always paid attention to communication, it is at this moment that there is a great emphasis on the break from Habermas with the “philosophy of consciousness,” considering the setting of his action theory and the grounding of his pragmatics. From archival research, is it possible to extract new elements about this crucial change in Habermas’s position during this period, in which he was close to Apel? RY: The exchange between Habermas and Apel can only be traced through the archive materials to a limited extent. Between 1962 and 1968, this exchange is relatively active (also due to the work on the theory series at Suhrkamp Verlag, for which Apel edited two volumes on Peirce), and then it tapers off again at the beginning of the 1970s when Apel goes to Frankfurt and Habermas to Starnberg. As already mentioned, not everything has been preserved and, in any case, as we are only talking about the period up to 1994, it may well be that some things will turn up that have not yet been found or released. As I answered to one of your previous questions, one can see clearly from the available letters in the Habermas estate how closely Habermas’s and Apel’s research interests and ways of thinking were connected over long distances. However, as you are asking so directly about Habermas’s relationship to transcendental pragmatics, I would prefer to draw on the numerous publications by Apel and his followers, which Habermas, to my knowledge, also addressed. I say this not only because there is little evidence for it in the existing materials, but mainly because in the case of correspondence, one is usually dealing with geneses of thought and not with finished results. In my experience (which also draws from other correspondence), the natural asymmetry between published and nascent thoughts is also recognized by most people. The awareness that one is also writing letters for posterity is rarely found in one’s younger years, when fame does not yet assume further proportions. On the other hand, Heidegger, as we now know, took writing for posterity to the extreme,

 See, for example, his new publication on digital transformation (Habermas 2022).

7

260

P. Zan and R. Palazi

more so than anyone else. He obviously knew very well how to guarantee remaining in the conversation, even posthumously. I: Last year, the Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte published an issue on Habermas (Hacke and Schlak 2021), partially dedicated to papers available both in Frankfurt and in other collections. You contributed with a piece (Hacke and Schlak 2021: pp. 13–15) on a document available in Bonn, namely, Rothacker’s opinion about Habermas’s doctorate work, “Das Absolute und die Geschichte” (Habermas 1954). In it, you mention a somehow “conflictual” relationship between Habermas and his professors from the early 1950s, especially after his critique of Heidegger in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Habermas 1953). How does the relationship between Habermas and his predecessors during his academic formation appear in the correspondence available in the archive, and how would it be relevant for his later works? RY: First of all, I would speak more cautiously of “predecessors” only in generational terms. Assuming a precession (but also succession) with regard to a school of thought does not make sense in Rothacker’s case, because the movement of detachment is too strong. The basic philosophical intention is, all in all, too different. Indeed, Rothacker and Heidegger are two thinkers who made a certain impression on the young Habermas, and in Rothacker’s case the intervening closeness via Habermas’s study time is even institutionally given. However, Habermas soon gained clarity about the entanglements of these two national socialist co-thinkers. The result of this movement of demarcation can be seen, for example, in Habermas’s published articles from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,8 whereby the context surrounding the published (and often edited) text is always interesting. What additional information one can get here can, in my opinion, be seen clearly in the recently published letter from Karl Korn to Habermas, which is printed in the issue of Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte you have mentioned (Hacke and Schlak 2021: p. 12). However, with such “finds” one must always bear in mind that many things were, of course, arranged only face to face or by telephone. With this I only want to say that the striking exhibition of single archival documents can lend disproportionate importance to certain influences, such as events. This quickly leads to imbalances in the assessment of the actors and events. During my research, as mentioned earlier, I had the good fortune to ask Jürgen Habermas about some of his early contacts with his academic teachers, patrons, and intellectual opponents. This additional benefit to researching archival documents is, of course, a special feature that you do not have with the estates of the deceased. In this respect, working with an estate of living person is something from which a connection to oral history may eventually arise, if the opportunity presents itself.

 Jürgen Habermas has been regularly writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung since 1952.

8

The Habermas Papers: An Interview with Roman Yos

261

References Apel, K.O. 1982. Sprachpragmatik und Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Becker-Schmidt, Regina. 2009. Nicht zu vergessen  – Frauen am Frankfurter Institut für Sozialforschung. Gretel Adorno, Monika Plessner und Helge Pross. In Die Frankfurter Schule und Frankfurt. Eine Rückkehr nach Deutschland, ed. Monika Boll and Raphael Gross, 65–69. Göttingen/Frankfurt: Wallstein/Jüdisches Museum. Dubiel, Helmut. 1994. Der Streit um die Erbschaft der Kritischen Theorie. In Ungewißheit und Politik, ed. Helmut Dubiel, 230–247. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Gadamer, H.-G., ed. 1960. Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Tübingen: JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Habermas, Jürgen. 1953. Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken: zur Veröffentlichung von Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 1935. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 170, July 25, 1953. ———. 1954. Das Absolute und die Geschichte. Von der Zwiespältigkeit in Schellings Denken. Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Bonn. doi https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.41402#0007. ———. 1974. Theory and Practice. Trans. J. Viertel. Boston: Beacon Press. ———. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action: Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Trans. T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. ———. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action: Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Trans. T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. ———. 1988. On the Logic of the Social Sciences. Trans. S. W. Nicholson and J Stark. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 1992. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. T. Burger. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2002. Knowledge and Human Interests. Trans. J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press. ———. 2004. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Trans. F. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 2022. Ein neuer Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit und die deliberative Politik. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Hacke, Jens, and Stephan Schlak, eds. 2021. H wie Habermas. Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte, vol.15 (3) (Autumn 2021). München: C.H. Beck. Müller-Doohm, Stefan. 2016. Habermas: A Biography. Cambridge/Malden, MA: Polity. Yos, Roman. 2019. Der Junge Habermas: Eine Ideengeschichtliche Untersuchung Seines Frühen Denkens, 1952-1962. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Pedro Zan  graduated in Philosophy at the University of Campinas (Brazil) and is currently a Master’s student at the same university, with a research entitled “Two Conceptions of the Public Sphere in Jürgen Habermas’s Work”. Rafael Palazi  is a Philosophy PhD candidate at the University of Campinas (Brazil) and a researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap). He is interested in Critical Theory and, specifically, in Jürgen Habermas’s works. His main research focuses on the theory of communicative action and its applications.

Two Letters Between Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, Dated 1965: Comments on the Exchange Roman Yos

1 Introduction Jürgen Habermas’s letter to Karl-Otto Apel, dated March 25, 1965, invited him to participate in a new “series of philosophical texts” introducing Charles Sanders Peirce as a “methodologist [...] between Young Hegelianism and the newer pragmatism in the sense of Morris” (see Fig. 1). In his (undated) reply, sent from Kiel, Apel laconically admits that he had already become used to the fact that “the decisive impulses” of his “public existence” came from Habermas (see Fig. 2). Roman Yos wrote the comments on this exchange.

2 Comment on the Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Karl-­Otto Apel (March 25, 1965) Jürgen Habermas’s letter to Karl-Otto Apel, dated March 25, 1965, invited him to participate in a new “series of philosophical texts” introducing Charles Sanders Peirce as a “methodologist [...] between Young Hegelianism and the newer pragmatism in the sense of Morris.” The series, which a short time later was published by Suhrkamp Verlag under the simple title Theorie, appeared between 1966 and 1986, with Hans Blumenberg, Jürgen Habermas, Dieter Henrich, Niklas Luhmann, and Jacob Taubes as editors. As a result of the letters between Apel and Habermas reproduced here, two volumes of selected texts by Peirce were produced (Schriften I. Zur Entstehung des Pragmatismus, 1967, and Schriften II.  Pragmatismus zum Pragmatizismus, 1970, translated by Gert Wartenberg). Apel provided R. Yos (*) Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_18

263

264

Fig. 1  Letter 1: Jürgen Habermas’s letter to Karl-Otto Apel, March 25, 1965

R. Yos

Two Letters Between Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, Dated 1965: Comments…

Fig. 2  Letter 2: Karl-Otto Apel’s reply to Habermas (undated)

265

266

R. Yos

comprehensive introductions for each volume, which were transferred in 1975 to the famous “stw” (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft) series as a separate study from Apel, entitled Der Denkweg von Charles Sanders Peirce (published in English as Charles S. Peirce. From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism in 1981). Thus, one of the first books on Peirce published in German can be seen as an outcome of the researchrelated community of interests that linked the two corresponders since their early years in Bonn. The correspondence contained in Na 60 (Habermas papers) and Na 67 (Apel papers) is only incompletely preserved. The first letter from Apel is dated December 18, 1962, and suggests a renewed contact. The late part of the correspondence, which began after 1994, has not yet been indexed.

3 Comment on Karl-Otto Apel’s Response to Jürgen Habermas In his (undated) reply, sent from Kiel, Apel laconically admits that he had already become used to the fact that “the decisive impulses” of his “public existence” came from Habermas. The subject of an “introduction of Peirce, as the actual founder of an original American philosophy, into the German discussion” was one he had himself “posed for a long time.” As Apel wrote to his Frankfurt colleague, he saw the presentation of Peirce in the context of a “response to Hegel.” The Theorie series, which later included a 20-volume edition of Hegel’s works, was in line with a growing interest in social science and humanities texts in paperback format. See therefore Felsch (2021) and Paul (2022).

References Apel, Karl-Otto. 1975. Der Denkweg von Charles Sanders. Eine Einführung in den amerikanischen Pragmatismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1981. Charles S.  Peirce. From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism. Amherst: University of Massachussetts Press. Felsch, Philipp. 2021. The Summer of Theory. History of a Rebellion, 1960-1990. Trans. T. Crawford. Cambridge/Medford, MA: Wiley. Paul, Morten. 2022. Suhrkamp ‘Theorie’. Eine Buchreihe im philosophischen Nachkrieg. Leipzig: Spector Books. Peirce, Charles. 1967. Schriften I.  Zur Entstehung des Pragmatismus. Trans. Gert Wartenberg. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 1970. Schriften II. Pragmatismus zum Pragmatizismus. Trans. Gert Wartenberg. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Roman Yos  is an associate researcher of Philosophy at the University of Potsdam. He is the author of Der junge Habermas. Eine ideengeschichtliche Untersuchung seines frühen Denkens 1952–1962 (Suhrkamp, 2019).

Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse, July 10, 1978: Translation of the Letter and Comment Isabelle Aubert

1 Introduction Marcuse was considered a symbol of the New Left and the philosopher of the student revolt in France or Italy in 1968 (two countries where One-Dimensional Man [Marcuse 2002 (1964)] was a bestseller), but Habermas had perceived the full scope of his thought by the mid-1950s. For this reason, Habermas calls himself an Einzelfall (an individual case). In the following letter (see Fig. 1), Habermas congratulates Marcuse for his 80th birthday and expresses his gratitude toward the philosopher who so significantly influenced his own philosophical reflections. Isabelle Aubert translated and commented this letter, whose manuscript is reproduced here.

2 Translation of Jürgen Habermas’s Letter to Herbert Marcuse1 July 10 [1978]. Dear Herbert – I don’t know if you are aware of the role you played in my philosophical biography. Please let me take the occasion of your birthday to thank you for it.

 I thank warmly Laurent Dupont for his helpful advice.

1

I. Aubert (*) Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Institut universitaire de France, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_19

267

268

Fig. 1  Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse, July 10, 1978

I. Aubert

Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse, July 10, 1978: Translation of…

Fig. 1 (continued)

269

270

Fig. 1 (continued)

I. Aubert

Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse, July 10, 1978: Translation of…

Fig. 1 (continued)

271

272

I. Aubert

The first time I heard a talk by you was in 1956, during the Freud lectures – two presentations that contained the substance of Eros and Civilization. You cannot imagine what image of Freud’s “depth psychology” we came away with after studying at a traditional university like Bonn: The Freud lectures led me to the discovery of a new continent. I remember very well my deep astonishment in seeing that there were people who treated Freud systematically, that Freud could be taken seriously! A year later you were back in Frankfurt; this time I was lucky enough to talk to you, to get to know you. At that point I had not been in Frankfurt long, I was skeptical about Horkheimer and admired Adorno, but two bridges were missing for me to penetrate Adorno’s dialectical exercises not only with my head, but also with my heart: the bridge connecting contemporary philosophy (Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, etc.) to the work of the Frankfurters, and the bridge from these to the questions of political practice, to our demonstrations against atomic weaponry, the military, against the war in Algeria, etc. Then I read you, met you, and found both: the entire context of philosophy since Bergson (where Adorno sort of “stopped”, despite Husserl’s book) and, despite pessimism, a wonderfully grounded political engagement. I coined the expression “Heideggerian Marxist” for you at that time. Naturally, this implied some distancing from your own philosophical trajectory. But more than that, it expressed enthusiasm about both: That one of the “old” Frankfurters embodied continuity with what I had grown philosophically (Heidegger) as well as a break with a cowardly unpolitical mindset. You were a Marxist, and you proclaimed it. One only needs to recall the horizon of the Eisenhower-Dulles-Adenauer era to understand what liberation could come from a man like you at that time for a young German who, in the midst of total restoration, felt he was suffocating. Your real impact was felt 10 years later on another generation. In my generation, I feel more like an outlier when it comes to your influence – that is why I just wanted to tell you this. Enjoy the celebration with Ricky, Lettau and friends. You have received our little yellow book from Busch. – We are thinking of you. Warm congratulations from. Ute + Jürgen Habermas.

3 Comment on the Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse (July 10, 1978) In 1978, Herbert Marcuse celebrated his 80th birthday. In his letter of congratulations, Jürgen Habermas expressed how grateful he was to the philosopher who so significantly influenced his own philosophical reflections. It is remarkable to read that Marcuse was a true source of inspiration for Habermas and how Marcuse’s writings helped him to build a bridge between the theoretical aspect of Critical Theory and social practice. This influence is visible in some of the young Habermas’s

Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse, July 10, 1978: Translation of…

273

essays, for example, “Technology and Science as Ideology” (Habermas 1971), which he dedicated to Marcuse for his 70th birthday. While Horkheimer and Adorno cautiously displayed their adherence to Marxism, Marcuse always affirmed his Marxist position. “Heideggerian Marxist” is a felicitous expression coined by Habermas which synthesizes the very particular way in which Marcuse integrated certain elements of Heidegger, his thesis adviser, to a Marxist theoretical framework. Marcuse (along with Hannah Arendt) is one of the few German refugee philosophers who had occasional exchanges with Heidegger during their exile. For his part, after a classical university education in post-war Bonn, Habermas changed his mind about Heidegger’s philosophy. He rejected it strongly in an article entitled “Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken” (“To Think with Heidegger against Heidegger”) (Habermas 1953) when Heidegger republished his 1935 lectures (Heidegger 1953) unaltered. Marcuse was considered a symbol of the New Left and the philosopher of the student revolt in France or Italy in 1968 (two countries where One-Dimensional Man (Marcuse 2002 (1964)) was a bestseller), but Habermas had perceived the full scope of his thought by the mid-1950s. For this reason, Habermas calls himself an “Einzelfall” (an individual case or “outlier”). The end of the letter mentions a “little yellow book”: this is the volume Gespräche mit Herbert Marcuse (Habermas et al. 1978), which had recently been published by the editor Günther Busch (whose name is recalled by Habermas) at Suhrkamp Verlag. It consists of a series of interviews with Herbert Marcuse conducted in honor of his 80th birthday. The different interlocutors, which include Jürgen Habermas, but also Erica Sherover, Silvia Bovenschen, Karl Popper, Ralph Dahrendorf, and Rudi Dutschke, question him on his political philosophy, aesthetics, women’s emancipation and protest movements, the relationship between psychoanalysis and Critical Theory, and the evolution of the Left in Europe. Let us finish by identifying Ricky as Erica Sherover, the author of Emancipation and Consciousness (Sherover 1986) and Marcuse’s wife at the time of his death, and Lettau as Reinhard Lettau, the professor of literature and good friend of Marcuse.

References Habermas, Jürgen. 1953, July 25. Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken: zur Veröffentlichung von Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 1935. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 170. ———. 1971. Technology and science as ideology. In Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science and Politics, ed. Jürgen Habermas, 81–122. Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, Jürgen, Silvia Bovenschen, et al., eds. 1978. Gespräche mit Herbert Marcuse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Heidegger, Martin. 1953. Einführung in die Metaphysik. Tübingen: Niemayer. Marcuse, Herbert. 2002 [1964]. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. London/New York: Routledge. Sherover, Erica. 1986. Emancipation and Consciousness. Oxford: Blackwell.

274

I. Aubert

Isabelle Aubert  is an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-­ Sorbonne, and a member of the Institut universitaire de France. She is the author of Habermas. Une théorie critique de la société (CNRS, 2015). She is the coeditor of Dialogues avec Habermas (CNRS, 2018), Niklas Luhmann: Une théorie générale de la société (Editions de la Sorbonne, 2023) and Adorno: Dialectique et négativité (Vrin, 2023).

 ppendix: Practical Information A on the Archives

Marx-Engels Archives IISG – Amsterdam Site: https://iisg.amsterdam/en Telephone, fax, and e-mails: T: + 31 20 6685866 F: + 31 20 6654181 E: [email protected] (enquiries on collections) E: [email protected] (information on IISH) Address: Cruquiusweg 31 1019 AT Amsterdam The Netherlands Opening hours: The Reading Room is open Monday–Thursday: 9am–5pm Rules for visiting and consulting the archive: https://iisg.amsterdam/en/collections/using https://search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/ARCH00860 RGASPI http://www.rgaspi.su/ The material has not been digitalized/publicized until this day. Address: Moscow, St. Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 15, 5th floor Phone: +7 (495) 694-40-34 E-mail: [email protected] Opening hours: Monday: 12pm–8pm. Tuesday: 11am–5pm. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0

275

276

Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives

Wednesday: 10am–5pm. Thursday: 11am–5pm. Friday: 9.30am–4.30pm.

 alter Benjamin Archiv (WBA) and Theodor W. Adorno W Archiv (TWAA) Akademie der Künste – Berlin Address and contact: Luisenstraße 60 10117 Berlin Tel: +49(0)30-200 57-40 56 Fax: +49(0)30-200 57-40 48 Email: [email protected] Opening hours: Monday–Friday: 10am–5pm It is recommended to reserve a place in the Reading Room in advance by phone or email. Contact: Ursula Marx Research Associate (WBA) Tel: +49(0)30-200 57-40 56 Email: [email protected] Michael Schwarz Head of the Theodor W. Adorno Archiv (TWAA) Tel: +49(0)30-200 57-40 61 Email: [email protected] Prof. Dr. Erdmut Wizisla Head of department Tel: +49(0)30-200 57-40 60 Email: [email protected] For further information: Akademie der Künste, Berlin: https://www.adk.de/en/archives/archives-­ departments/walter-­benjamin-­archiv/index.htm Archiv Datenbank (AdK):https://archiv.adk.de/BildsucheFrames?easydb=89fjdb2c fo1l6i5msha15vdl36&ls=2&ts=1673200078 TWAA at the Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt am Main: https://www.ifs.uni-­ frankfurt.de/adorno-­archive.html

Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives

Archiv des Instituts für Sozialforschung Institut für Sozialforschung an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main Adress and contact: Senckenberganlage 26 60325 Frankfurt am Main Tel.: +49 (0)69 75 61 83 – 0 Email: [email protected]­frankfurt.de Opening hours: Tuesdays: 2pm–6pm Prescheduled visits only Contact: Dr. Dirk Braunstein Head of the IfS-Archive Tel.: +49 (0)69 75 61 83 80 Email: [email protected] Maischa Gelhard Research associate Tel.: +49 (0)69 75 61 83 21 Email: [email protected]­frankfurt.de For further information: https://www.ifs.uni-­frankfurt.de/archiv.html https://arcinsys.hessen.de

Max Horkheimer Archiv (MHA) Address and contact: Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt a.M. Bockenheimer Landstr. 134-138 60325 Frankfurt am Main Tel.: +49 (0)69 79839205 [email protected]­frankfurt.de Opening Hours: Reading Room Special Collections and Manuscripts Monday to Friday: 10am-8pm, with reservation Tel.: +49 (0)69 79839398 Email: ls-­[email protected]­frankfurt.de Email: ls-­[email protected]­frankfurt.de Contact: Dr. Mathias Jehn Tel.: +49 (0)69 79839007 Email: [email protected]­frankfurt.de

277

278

Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives

Oliver Kleppel Tel.: +49 (0)69 79839254 Email: [email protected]­frankfurt.de Further information: https://www.ub.uni-­frankfurt.de/archive/horkheimer.html https://www.ub.uni-­frankfurt.de/ https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/detailAction?detailid=b7040

Friedrich Pollock Papers Archivzentrum der Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main Address and contact: Universitätsbibliothek J. C. Senckenberg Frankfurt am Main Archivzentrum Bockenheimer Landstr. 134–138 60325 Frankfurt am Main Germany Opening hours: Monday–Friday: 10 am–8 pm It is recommended to reserve a place in the Reading Room « Special Collections » in advance by phone or email. Contact: Dr. Mathias Jehn Tel.: +49 (0)69-798-39007 Email: [email protected]­frankfurt.de Oliver Kleppel Tel.: +49 (0)69 79839254 Email: [email protected]­frankfurt.de Further information: https://www.ub.uni-­frankfurt.de/archive/so.html Fondo Friedrich Pollock – Università degli Studi Firenze, Biblioteca Umanistica Address and contact: Università degli Studi Firenze Archivi della Biblioteca Umanistica Piazza Brunelleschi, 4 50121 Firenze Italy Opening hours: Monday–Friday: 9 am-1:30 pm Tuesday and Thursday: 2 pm–5pm It is recommended to reserve a place in the Reading Room in advance by email. Contact: Laura Vannucci

Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives

279

[email protected] Further information: https://www.sba.unifi.it/p1338.html

 erbert Marcuse Archiv (HMA) / Leo Löwenthal H Archiv (LLA) Archivzentrum der Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main Address and contact: Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt a.M. Bockenheimer Landstr. 134-138 60325 Frankfurt am Main Tel.: +49 (0)69 79839205 Email: information[at]ub.uni-­frankfurt.de Opening hours: Reading Room Special Collections Monday–Friday: 10am–8pm It is recommended to reserve a place in the Reading Room in advance by phone or email. Contact: Dr. Mathias Jehn Head of the Archives Tel.: +49(0)69 79839007 Email: m.jehn[at]ub.uni-­frankfurt.de Oliver Kleppel (HMA/LLA) Research Associate (WBA) Tel.: +49(0)69 79839254 Email: o.kleppel[at]ub.uni-­frankfurt.de Stephen Roeper Information E-Mail: s.roeper[at]ub.uni-­frankfurt.de Tel.: +49(0)69 79822364 Peter-Erwin Jansen, M.A. Philosophie Permission for Copyrights and Support Herbert Marcuse/Leo Löwenthal E-Mail : [email protected] Tel.: +49(0) 1792034255 Further information: https://www.ub.uni-­frankfurt.de/archive/so.html https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/start.action https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/start.action?oldNodeid=

280

Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives

Habermas’s Bequest (Na 60) Special Collections Reading Room at the Archivzentrum in the Johann Christian Senckenberg Universitätsbibliothek – Goethe University – Campus Bockenheim Address: Bockenheimer Landstrasse 134-138, 60325, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Website: https://www.ub.uni-­frankfurt.de/archive/habermas.html. Phone number: +49 (0)69 798 39062. The Reading Rooms are open Monday–Friday: 10.30am–4.30pm. Website for booking a seat at the Reading Room: https://buchung.ub.uni-­frankfurt. de/zeit/zb3/. Or via the responsible for the state: Oliver Kleppel Email: [email protected]­frankfurt.de In order to book a seat, it is necessary to send Mr. Kleppel a selection of the correspondence to be investigated, so it can be forwarded to Jürgen Habermas himself. The list of available contents of the bequest can be found at the following website: https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/list.action?nodeid=g156869&page= 1&sorting=41&reload=true See also Karl-Otto Apel Archive (Na 67) in the same building.

Index

A Aesthetics, 49, 64, 143, 147, 151, 152, 159–162, 167, 204, 205, 219, 220, 229, 239, 273 Apel, K.-O., 211, 254, 257–259, 263, 266 Aragon, L., 228, 229 Arendt, H., 39, 40, 42, 273 Avant-garde music, 152, 156 B Baudelaire, C., 42–44, 48, 52, 63 Becker, H., 11, 88, 90, 165–187 Benjamin, D., 42, 52 Benjamin, W., 4–8, 10–13, 37–49, 51–65, 99, 114, 130, 132, 133, 144, 145, 199, 222, 239, 255 Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW), 23 Blumenberg, H., 263 Bovenschen, S., 273 Brecht, B., 41, 42 C Cultural memory, 97–103 D Dahrendorf, R., 273 Democracy, 75, 77, 83–93, 102, 138, 168, 173, 204, 205, 213, 219, 229 Derrida, J., 54–57, 61, 65 Dutschke, R., 222, 273

E Education, 11, 83–93, 98, 148, 165–187, 211, 214, 225, 234, 273 Engels, F., 5, 6, 8, 11, 17–30, 225, 240 F Favez, J., 10, 12, 105–124 “Frankfurt School”, 4, 5, 9, 12, 71, 116, 132, 135, 137, 165, 166, 169, 199, 226, 232, 233, 246, 255 Freud, S., 4, 205, 243–245, 272 Freund, G., 7, 38, 42 Fromm, E., 4, 8, 13, 70, 99, 107, 109, 111, 114, 115, 130, 137, 199, 219, 220, 229, 233, 243–246 G Gadamer, H.-G., 144, 256, 257 Gretel Karplus-Adorno, 60, 165 Group Experiment, 75–78, 85 H Habermas, J., 5, 6, 83, 88, 123, 124, 134–136, 144, 166, 231, 241, 253–260, 263–273, 280 Hegel, G.W.F., 4, 57, 87, 111, 151, 183, 219, 227, 242, 246, 258, 266 Heidegger, M., 9, 180–182, 203, 204, 207, 226, 227, 232, 240, 246, 259, 272, 273 Henrich, D., 263

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0

281

282 I Institute for Social Research (IfS), 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, 37, 39, 42, 43, 83–93, 99, 108, 129, 135, 143, 144, 165, 166, 171, 193, 196, 197, 207, 209, 225, 255 Instrumental Reason, 135, 137, 221 International Institute of Social History (IISG), 19–21, 23, 24, 275 International Marx-Engels Foundation (IMES), 23 K Kluge, A., 42, 145, 146 L Lettau, R., 272, 273 Löwenthal, L., 6, 8, 11, 12, 38, 42, 99, 107, 108, 112, 130, 145, 195, 203–214, 219–222, 231, 245, 254 Luhmann, N., 263 M Marcuse, H., 4–6, 8–12, 99, 108, 111, 112, 130–133, 135, 145, 203–214, 217–222, 225–247, 254, 267–273 Marx-Engels Collected Works (MECW), 17, 18 Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA-2), 17, 18, 22, 23, 25–30 Marx-Engels Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe (MEGA-1), 17, 25, 28 Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch, 25 Marx-Engels-Nachlass, 18–30 Marx-Engels-Werke (MEW), 17, 18, 23–25, 27 Marxism, 3, 4, 6, 17, 18, 24, 27, 29, 30, 111, 131, 132, 186, 199, 258, 273 Marx, K., 3–6, 8, 11, 17–30, 40, 111, 205, 207, 219, 220, 225–227, 229, 232, 237, 238, 240, 242–246, 258 Modernism, 152, 158, 161, 162 N National Socialism, 75, 79, 91, 106, 134, 167, 180, 206, 210, 211, 219, 227, 239 National Socialist Germany, 211, 228 Neumann, F., 8, 12, 13, 99, 198, 206, 209, 211, 217, 218, 228

Index P Peirce, C.S., 263 Philosophy, 3, 4, 22, 84, 105, 106, 108–112, 116, 130, 131, 133–138, 153, 155, 165, 167, 168, 170, 172, 175, 181, 186, 187, 196, 205–207, 217, 219, 225, 227, 228, 231, 232, 236, 239–242, 244, 253, 256, 257, 259, 266, 272, 273 Plessner, H., 256 Pollock, C., 196 Pollock, F., 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 69, 75, 77, 85, 98, 99, 106–108, 111, 112, 115, 124, 130, 131, 193–199, 233, 235, 236, 238, 240, 243, 254 Popper, K., 74, 257, 273 Post-War West Germany, 168, 171–175 Pragmatism, 257, 263, 266 Psychoanalysis, 4, 109, 205, 219, 220, 229, 243–245, 273 Psychology, 3, 111, 131, 137, 228, 241, 244, 272 Public sphere, 9, 56, 57, 59, 60, 85, 87, 151, 167, 258, 259 R Rang, F.C., 7, 38, 41 Russian State Archives of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), 19, 23, 24, 275 S Sartre, J.-P., 100, 207 Schmidt, A., 12, 97, 98, 112, 134, 135, 194, 195, 205, 232, 233, 242, 254 Scholem, G., 5, 7, 12, 37, 39, 42–44, 51, 53–56, 58–60, 62, 63, 145 Schopenhauer, A., 100, 134, 205, 236, 239 Second Viennese School, 153 Sherover, E., 273 Social Psychology, 111, 228 Stockhausen, K., 152–156 T Taubes, J., 263 W Weil, F., 3, 73, 131, 209, 238, 245