Adorno's Heirs

In October of 1949, Theodor W. Adorno returned from his exile in America to the city of his birth to resume his work teaching at a Germany university. The city of Frankfurt had been reduced to rubble, the Nazis had done little more than change their clothes, but the students came in droves. Soon enough, the philosopher was making weekly appearances on the radio, shaping opinions in West German society as a key “educator”. By the time Adorno passed away in 1969, the Institute for Social Research and its director were known right across the country. The public profile of the Frankfurt School, founded in 1924, was at its zenith.

This book focuses on this intellectual realm and its metamorphoses in the postwar era and up to German reunification, and its protagonists are 12 of Adorno’s colleagues. After the death of the “master”, they ended up scattered around West Germany. Jörg Später, the author of the highly successful biography of Siegfried Kracauer, follows their paths and describes how they inherited and altered Adorno’s legacy in academia, politics, and in the new social movements that were beginning to emerge.

Adorno’s Heirs rewrites the history of critical theory: as a sprawling, multi-voiced narrative set in West Germany – a country that existed for 20 years with Adorno, and 20 years without him.

Adorno’s heirs are: Regina Becker-Schmidt, Gerhard Brandt, Ludwig von Friedeburg, Karl Heinz Haag, Jürgen Habermas, Elisabeth Lenk, Oskar Negt, Helge Pross, Alfred Schmidt, Herbert Schnädelbach, Hermann Schweppenhäuser, and Rolf Tiedemann