Adorno felt Europe’s survival amid postwar ruin kindled hope in humane persistence

Evidence

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, 1730

Categorization

• XREF: Evokes the elegiac register of exile-and-return that runs through Frankfurt School memoirs and Benjamin’s ruins imagery. — connects to: Adorno paradoxically hoped more for post-Hitler Germany than for the USA — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1645; Adorno felt shame at surviving while others suffered and pursued an ethic of unobtrusiveness — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1693

Broader Connections

• Adorno felt shame at surviving while others suffered and pursued an ethic of unobtrusiveness #complicates (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1693