Benjamin’s and Adorno’s essays functioned as direct critical replies to one another.

Evidence

Horkheimer reserved any fundamental statements regarding the political or theoretical position of the Institute for himself, so as to be able to give them what seemed to him to be a form worthy of the Institute. But what was it that Benjamin’s ally, Adorno, objected to in his work? What did he himself have to offer that could be set against it? An answer to this can be found in what Benjamin called Adorno’s long letters' on Benjamin's work following his essay on Kafka, and following the essays by Adorno which appeared in the ZfS in the second half of the 1930s. These formed a kind of dialogue with Benjamin's essays. Adorno's On Jazz’ and On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening' were the critical riposte to Benjamin's essay on the work of art. Adorno's On Wagner’ can be read as a counter-model to Benjamin’s first Baudelaire essay; and the second version of the Baudelaire essay, which was published in the journal, is then added to the series as a fresh response to Adorno’s essay. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 230

Categorization

• XREF: Links each canonical essay (On Jazz, Fetish Character, On Wagner, both Baudelaire versions) to its counterpart — useful as a dialogical map of Institute texts.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘The Institute’s essays were written as letters to each other’ — reconstructing the ZfS as an internal correspondence rather than a journal.