Adorno’s 1927 Habilitation failed because his supervisor deemed it unoriginal

Evidence

But Horkheimer, like the king in the fairy-tale who does not want to give away his daughter in marriage, imposed the condition that Habermas must first of all do a study of Richter. This would have taken him three years. Habermas gave in his noticeand Horkheimer had achieved what he wanted: to get rid of someone who in his opinion had incited the Institute’s staff into a kind of class struggle in a teacup, and about whom he had remarked, He probably has a good, or even brilliant, career as a writer in front of him, but he would only cause the Institute immense damage.' — <cite>Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2359</cite> (#exemplifies`, via linked claim)

But Adorno’s decision to tie himself down to Cornelius’s transcendental philosophy sprang not just from strategic considerations, but also from the fact that (as he had written to Kracauer, who had suggested that he should do a thesis with Max Scheler on the philosophy of music) he did not yet trust himself to use a genuine work as a Habilitation thesis'. — <cite>Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 327</cite> (#complicates`, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Adorno chose a safe Habilitation topic out of self-distrust; Adorno chose a safe Habilitation topic because he lacked confidence for original work — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 327; Horkheimer’s Habilitation rejected Kant’s teleological correspondence between reason and nature — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 181 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Benjamin’s failed Habilitation drove him into freelance criticism rather than academia #exemplifies (0.82)
• Horkheimer blocked Habermas’s Habilitation to drive him out of the Institute #exemplifies (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2359
• Adorno chose a safe Habilitation topic because he lacked confidence for original work #complicates (0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 327
• Heidegger blocked Marcuse’s Habilitation while Marcuse believed antisemitism was the bar #exemplifies (0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 424
• Horkheimer’s Habilitation rejected Kant’s teleological correspondence between reason and nature #exemplifies (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 181