Habermas quietly emptied the occupied department before police arrived

Evidence

Then they started to use the Philosophy Department more and more. One day, the university rector, Walter Rüegg, called Habermas. The Medical Council, the owners of the building in which the Department was housed, had threatened to cancel its tenancy agreement, and Rüegg had arranged for the building to be cleared by the police in the early hours of the following morning. When Habermas asked whether this information was to be treated as an order that could not be contradicted, he answered, `Yes.’ At four or five o’clock the next morning, when the police were about to clear the building on the basis of a reported breaking and entering, they found it empty. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2666

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why did Habermas comply rather than resist? The empty-building detail suggests word leaked, but did Habermas tip off the occupiers himself?
• CANDY: The image of police arriving to clear an already-empty building is a quietly funny, self-contained anecdote worth passing on.