Theodor W. Adorno

Detlev Claussen is a journalist and Professor Emeritus of Social Theory, Culture, and Sociology at Leibniz Universität Hannover. Rodney Livingstone is Professor Emeritus in German Studies at the University of Southampton. He is well known as a translator of books by Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and Max Weber, among others.

By examining Adorno's life through a circle of modernist companions who ended up dispersed all over the world, Detlev Claussen raises the question of whether biography can be written at all under the broken conditions of modernity. In his descriptions of German-Jewish lives, Claussen shows the complexities of living in the shadow of Auschwitz, and undermines the crude myths and interpretations that have sometimes plagued scholarship of Adorno and his milieu.

• List of Illustrations How to Read This Book 1. Instead of an Overture: No Heirs 2. The House in Schoene Aussicht: A Frankfurt Childhood around 1910 3. From Teddie Wiesengrund to Dr. Wiesengrund-Adorno 4. Adorno as "Non-identical" Man 5. Transitions Bertolt Brecht: "To Those Who Come after Us" Theodor W. Adorno: "Out of the Firing Line" Hanns Eisler, the Non-identical Brother Fritz Lang, the American Friend 6. Frankfurt Transfer 7. Adorno as "Identical" Man 8. The Palimpsest of Life Appendix: Letters Theodor W. Adorno to Ernst Bloch, 26 July 1962 Max Horkheimer to Theodor W. Adorno, 27 September 1958 Theodor W. Adorno to Max Horkheimer, 14 February 1965 Theodor W. Adorno to Claus Behncke, 21 February 1964 Max Horkheimer to Otto O. Herz, 1 September 1969 Notes Sources Acknowledgments Index