Correspondence, 1939 - 1969. Gershom Scholem

and political education in particular, his uncertainty was still significant enough to necessitate these journeys. Adorno’s long-term professional instability and insecurity in American exile was at odds with Scholem’s secure and influential position in his newly adopted homeland in Palestine. This might have held implications for the differences between their views on diasporic life and the question of a return to Germany. After emigrating in 1923, Scholem initially worked as a librarian, directing the departments of Hebrew and Judaica at the Jerusalem National Library. But, shortly after the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was formally established in 1925, he was appointed as a lecturer, and in 1933 he was promoted to a full professorship of Jewish mysticism. It is noteworthy that this is the very year in which the Nazis revoked Adorno’s license for academic teaching. Scholem’s profound ideological faith in the Zionist idea as a solution to all theological, social, and political problems of the Jews was also, even more substantially, at odds with Adorno’s skepticism about any such ideological, nationalist, and particularist solutions. The Holocaust and the Jewish catastrophe only strengthened Scholem’s views on the need for a national Jewish home, whereas they only intensified Adorno’s skepticism about such absolute solutions, deepening his worries about the threat of nationalism of any sort.

      Such differences in worldviews are tacitly present throughout Adorno and Scholem’s entire correspondence. Both aware of the fundamental discrepancies in their political thought, particularly regarding German-Jewish life, the two men remained cautious not to let these differences harm their friendship. But the differences were insurmountable: Scholem opted for a decisively particularist worldview, in which Jewish life and responsibility for fellow Jews were at the center of any ethical and political consideration, while Adorno, wary and vigilant of any such kind of political bias, held on to a universalist position – especially in reflections on the ethical meaning and political lessons to be learned from the experience of the Holocaust. He famously contended: “A new categorical imperative has been imposed by Hitler upon unfree mankind: to arrange their thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen.”⁵²

In his new role as a philosopher and public intellectual in post-war Germany, Adorno was increasingly dedicated to the task of educating the new generation of Germans to think critically, both philosophically and politically: not to accept unquestioned authorities, not to be tempted by any form of social prejudice or political chauvinism. He was committed to a “new categorical imperative” that would make a recurrence of the Holocaust impossible. Whereas Scholem’s scholarly and political efforts focused on strengthening the Jewish moral and political consciousness in the form of Jewish nationalism, Adorno emphasized the necessity of a prevention of the recurrence of Auschwitz – that is, of the Jewish catastrophe (one should keep in mind here that, in Auschwitz, not only Jews were murdered) – and of anything “similar”: “so that nothing similar will happen.” Adorno was never content with a purely particularistic position. The new ethical responsibility, engrained in him by the experiences of the Holocaust, was for him, unlike for Scholem, universal. Such discrepancies also suggest themselves at the level of their intended readership: Adorno’s writings, especially following his return to Germany, were aimed first and foremost at a German audience. From the late 1950s onward Adorno regularly, and enthusiastically, participated in radio conversations, progressively assuming the role of an engaged public intellectual. Scholem, who equally enjoyed the role of a public intellectual in the newly established State of Israel, was engaged in social and political matters of Israeli society. He published on matters of Jewish and Israeli politics, some of which were far removed from his immediate scholarly research on mysticism, such as the formation of Israeli political parties, dialogue with the Arab states, Israeli education, and the political-theological meaning of the Jewish diaspora. But over time Scholem’s intended audience changed, along with his change of attitude regarding the prospect of public appearances and publications in Germany. His texts were now addressed predominantly to a German readership (not exclusively Germans, but readers of the German language) – and this shift of focus implied a shift of content as well.

In their letters from the 1960s, Adorno and Scholem both express a remarkable change of heart, resulting, presumably, from changing social and political constellations. Adorno, eager to return to his German homeland after the war in order to reform and educate the German masses to critical thought and enlightenment, was increasingly alienated in what was simultaneously his native and newfound home. A new generation of students, profoundly influenced by his critical theory and by his call for anti-authoritarian progressive thinking, now charged him, their own educator, with conservatism, bigotry, and resignation.⁵³ Struggling, since his return, with the national conservative tendencies in post-war West-German society, in which regime change had done little to alter the actual balance of power since many public offices continued to be filled by the very same people who had held them during the Nazi era, Adorno found himself in a new and unexpected situation in the late 1960s. His own students, demanding a full de-Nazification and a thorough democratic reform of German public universities, as well as protesting against the Vietnam War and the colonial politics in developing countries, now demanded their teacher’s support and solidarity. Although Adorno supported many of these causes, he was reluctant to participate in what he considered barbaric and violent demonstrations of power, and he compared the students’ revolts to fascist brutality. In December 1968, he reported to Scholem: “[A]ll hell has literally broken loose here, with a Walpurgis Night of the students, in which the pseudo-revolution is spinning out of control in the most ludicrous actions … they are committing atrocities.”⁵⁴

      In what both Adorno and Scholem might have described as a dialectical paradox, toward the end of the 1960s their views and their experiences somewhat transformed and crossed paths: Scholem, who for decades had been reluctant to participate in any dialogue with German audiences, and who addressed his writings almost exclusively to Jewish, mostly Israeli, readers, now enthusiastically published his writings with Suhrkamp Verlag, held public lectures at the University of Frankfurt, and even recorded speeches and lectures to be broadcasted on German radio. Adorno, initially eager to return to the “new” Germany and to assume academic and political-pedagogic responsibilities there, now found himself disillusioned and isolated, a stranger in his own land, estranged by his own students. In addition to these developments at the university, Adorno experienced a form of overt and aggressive anti-Semitism during these years. As the correspondence reveals for the first time, Adorno even faced concrete and intimidating murder threats. Beginning in 1965, he received letters from a person of German origin and Ecuadorian citizenship, who initially expressed admiration for his work and sought his advice on intellectual matters, as well as his support in the professional quest for academic employment in both Germany and Israel. The letters then escalated to anti-Semitic clichés, complaining that all academic positions were occupied by Jews, whereas a man of German origins – “although,” as he emphasized, he “hadn’t personally murdered any Jews” – remained unemployed.⁵⁵ In 1967, the man threatened to murder Adorno should the latter not assist him in securing academic employment. He then announced his intention to travel to Jerusalem to commit murderous attacks. Adorno shared his knowledge of the matter and his concerns with Scholem. He also reported the information to the German authorities, who located and arrested the man. But Adorno, out of compassion, eventually dropped the charges against him, having realized that he suffered from mental illness. The case is significant not only biographically but also in a broader perspective, since the man’s threats and anti-Semitic letters allow for a better understanding of the scope of anti-Semitism in post-war Germany, giving expression to widespread views and opinions on Jews, notwithstanding the process of “de-Nazification.” It was precisely the man’s mental illness and instability that allowed him openly to express views that were widely shared but socially suppressed and therefore only reluctantly and rarely overtly articulated.

As the violent and hostile events at the university were escalating, Adorno died of a heart attack while on vacation in August 1969. His untimely and sudden death occurred during an intense and momentous time of significant developments, both in a social-political perspective and within the scope of his friendship with Scholem. The final letters in the correspondence document in detail Adorno’s hitherto largely unknown plans of a journey to Israel. In November 1968 he received a formal invitation from the Israeli National Council of