Page "Theodor W. Adorno" Paragraph 12

Following Horkheimer's taking up the directorship of the Institute, a new journal, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, was produced to publish the research of Institute members both before and after its relocation to the United States.

Though Adorno was not himself an Institute member, the journal nevertheless published many of his essays, including " The Social Situation of Music " ( 1932 ), " On Jazz " ( 1936 ), " On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening " ( 1938 ) and " Fragments on Wagner " ( 1938 ).

In his new role as social theorist, Adorno's philosophical analysis of cultural phenomena heavily relied on the language of historical materialism, as concepts like reification, false consciousness and ideology came to play an ever more prominent role in his work.

At the same time, however, and owing to both the presence of another prominent sociologist at the Institute, Karl Mannheim, as well as the methodological problem posed by treating objects-like " musical material "-as ciphers of social contradictions, Adorno was compelled to abandon any notion of " value-free " sociology in favor of a form of ideology critique which held on to an idea of truth.

Before his emigration in autumn 1934, Adorno began work on a Singspiel based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer entitled The Treasure of Indian Joe, which he would, however, never complete ; by the time he fled Hitler's Germany Adorno had already written over a hundred opera or concert reviews and an additional fifty critiques of music composition.

As the Nazi party became the largest party in the Reichstag Horkheimer's 1932 observation proved chillingly prophetic: " Only one thing is certain ," he wrote, " the irrationality of society has reached a point where only the gloomiest predications have any plausibility.

" In September Adorno's right to teach was revoked ; in March, as the swastika was run up the flag pole of town hall, the Institute's offices were searched by the Frankfurt criminal police.

Adorno's house on Seeheimer Strasse was similarly searched in July and his application for membership in the Reich Chamber of Literature was denied on the grounds that membership was limited to " persons who belong to the German nation by profound ties of character and blood.

As a non-Aryan ," he was informed, " you are unable to feel and appreciate such an obligation.

" Soon afterwards Adorno was forced into fifteen years of exile.