Ernst Bloch fabricated a poverty story to obtain Institute funding

Evidence

Bloch wrote to Adorno thanking the Institute for a grant of 100 it had made to him some time previously, but claiming he had been forced to take a job as a dishwasher, and had been sacked for being too slow. He was now working an eight-hour day packing and carrying parcels, and had had to break off work on his book in the middle of a page. None of this was true, but the Institute at once granted him the 50 per month for six months. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 3137

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the Institute’s informal patronage networks and how émigré scholars navigated them — connects to earlier material on Adorno and Bloch’s relationship and Institute funding practices.