Adorno’s 1949 return to Europe fused historical condemnation with hope for surviving humanity.

Evidence

When the winter semester began in Germany, Horkheimer, who did not feel up to travelling, sent Adorno to Frankfurt to deputize for him. The first contact with Europe made an even greater impression on Adorno than it had on Horkheimer. He wrote from Paris: Returning to Europe has taken hold of me with a force I cannot describe. And the beauty of Paris shines through the tatters of poverty more touchingly than ever before … What still exists here may be historically condemned, and it bears the traces of this clearly enough, but the fact that it still exists, the embodiment of temporal disparity, is part of the historical picture and allows a little hope that something humane is surviving in spite of everything. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 427

Categorization

• XREF: Adorno’s phrase ‘embodiment of temporal disparity’ resonates with the book’s later treatment of the ‘no longer possible’ and the non-identical. — connects to: Adorno located more hope for overcoming alienation in post-Hitler Germany than in America. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 409; Adorno felt Europe’s survival amid postwar ruin kindled hope in humane persistence — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1730; Adorno preferred returning to a hostile Germany over rebuilding exile elsewhere. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 481 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘temporal disparity’ formulation — condemned past persisting, and that persistence itself counting as hope — is a compact statement of Adorno’s late historical sensibility.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Adorno located more hope for overcoming alienation in post-Hitler Germany than in America. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 409; Adorno felt Europe’s survival amid postwar ruin kindled hope in humane persistence — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1730; Adorno preferred returning to a hostile Germany over rebuilding exile elsewhere. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 481 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno felt Europe’s survival amid postwar ruin kindled hope in humane persistence #expands (0.93) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1730