Theodor W. Adorno, Siegfried Kracauer, and the Erotics of Friendship

13 Pages·2014·0.13 MB·English

Criticism
Volume 51|Issue 4 Article 6
2009
Teddie and Friedel: Theodor W. Adorno, Siegfried
Kracauer, and the Erotics of Friendship
Johannes von Moltke
University of Michigan
Follow this and additional works at:http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism
Recommended Citation
von Moltke, Johannes (2009) "Teddie and Friedel: Theodor W. Adorno, Siegfried Kracauer, and the Erotics of Friendship,"Criticism:
Vol. 51: Iss. 4, Article 6.
Available at:http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/criticism/vol51/iss4/6
TeDDIe aND My dear Teddie, my dear
friend!
FrIeDel:
I arrived at noon today all
TheoDor W.
torn, wrapped up. Now I
aDorNo,
want to write straight away.
SIegFrIeD During these two days, I again
KracaUer, aND felt such an agonizing love for
you that it seems to me as if I
The eroTIcS oF
could not endure alone. Sev-
FrIeNDShIP
ered from you, my existence
Johannes von Moltke is stale, I don’t know how this
can go on.1
The letter is dated 5 april 1923
“Der Riß der Welt geht auch durch
and, under the letterhead of the
mich”: Briefwechsel 1923–1966 by
prestigious Frankfurter Zeitung (was
Theodor W. adorno and Siegfried
this written surreptitiously at the
Kracauer, volume 7 of Briefe und
office?!), its sender—Friedel—
Briefwechsel, by Theodor W. ador-
implores Teddie to “please read
no, edited by Wolfgang Schopf.
alone!” (B 9, emphasis in original).
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
So tortured, so steamy is this love
2008. Pp. 772. 52.50 euros, cloth;
letter that Friedel asks Teddie to
32.00 euros, paper.
destroy it: “[I]n any case, no word
of it, this is secret, who could be al-
lowed to see me thus in my true
gestalt?” (B 11).
Fortunately for us, Teddie nei-
ther destroyed this extraordinary
confession nor lost it in the tumul-
tuous decades that followed. Pre-
served in the Theodor W. adorno
archive in Frankfurt, the letter
now stands as the first in a corre-
spondence that spanned almost
half a century and fills some seven
hundred pages in the recently pub-
lished and meticulously annotated
Briefwechsel (correspondence) be-
tween Theodor W. adorno and
Siegfried Kracauer: Teddie and
Friedel. These two key figures in
the history of critical Theory had
Criticism, Fall 2009, Vol. 51, No. 4, pp. 683–694. ISSN: 0011-1589. 683
© 2010 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201-1309.
684 JohaNNeS VoN MolTKe
met through a mutual friend to- started out as a leading cultural
ward the end of World War I. In critic during the years of the Wei-
adorno’s understated recollection mar republic, when he worked for
from the early 1960s, “an intensive the influential Frankfurter Zeitung,
contact sprang up between” the editing its cultural section and
two men after that initial meeting.2 supplying regular film reviews
This contact would influence their alongside important essays (later
respective distinguished careers as collected in The Mass Ornament7).
two of the leading intellectuals of While he also managed to publish
the twentieth century. a book on sociology and an auto-
Both men have achieved a mea- biographical novel entitled Ginster
sure of fame in the fields of philos- during these years, his stature
ophy and cultural studies, though among intellectuals of his day was
during their lifetimes the younger cemented by the influence he
quickly came to outshine his men- wielded at the Frankfurter Zeitung:
tor. Theodor adorno (1903–69), it was journalistic first and schol-
the philosopher, was a member of arly second (though the lasting rel-
the original Institute for Social re- evance of Kracauer’s work resides,
search in Frankfurt and New York perhaps, in his ability to undo that
city. Together with Max hork- opposition itself).8 The Nazi sei-
heimer, he became the institute’s zure of power forced Kracauer
director after its return to ger- into exile, first in Paris—where he
many in 1949. adorno’s talent and completed but did not publish a
his enormous productivity are second novel entitled Georg (more
clearly in evidence throughout on this later), and published a “so-
these letters: with evident satisfac- cial biography” of Jacques offen-
tion he reports concluding multi- bach. The latter earned him severe
ple major works, simultaneously criticism from adorno for what he
embarking on new projects and considered its undialectical method
publishing at a frenzied pace— and lack of attention to the formal,
from his early monograph on aesthetic aspects of offenbach’s
Kierkegaard3 through the famous music. In 1941, Kracauer managed
Dialectic of Enlightenment4 to his to escape europe via lisbon and
reckoning with heidegger in The made his way to New York, where
Jargon of Authenticity5 and his long- he would cobble together a living
gestating philosophical summa, and a career by publishing journal
Negative Dialectics,6 not to mention articles and securing grants to sup-
the numerous anthologies of his port his work at the Museum of
own essays that began to be pub- Modern art (MoMa) film library.
lished regularly after his return to The latter would eventually lead to
germany. Siegfried Kracauer (1889– the publication of the first of his
1966), on the other hand, had two best-known works, From Ca-
oN aDorNo aND KracaUer’S BRiEFWEChsEl 685
ligari to hitler: A Psychological his- also affected their writing, and the
tory of the German Film,9 which times during which this horizon is
would be followed, about a decade lost from view in the exchange of
later, by Theory of Film: The Re- petty formalities, or obscured by
demption of Physical Reality;10 the bitterness of mutual recrimina-
though both of these books have tions merely prove its enduring
also received their share of criti- relevance ex negativo. Indeed, Frie-
cism, they were innovative and del’s “first” letter not only inti-
pathbreaking in their time, and re- mates the bonds that connect the
main central to film studies curri- two men until their deaths in 1966
cula to this day. Kracauer’s final and 1969, respectively; it also spells
book on historiography, which re- out the terms, indeed the erotics, of
mained incomplete when he died the uneven, or “troubled” friend-
unexpectedly of pneumonia in ship that will emerge:13
1966, was published posthumously
as history: The last Things Before My condition is ghastly. I fear
the last.11 so terribly the evanescence
of that which is most dear to
* * * me, what appears to me as
the meaning or fulfillment of
Voluminous though it is, this cor- my existence. Do you believe
respondence remains incomplete, in the eternal duration of our
since for unknown reasons many friendship? It would always
of Kracauer’s letters in particular need to be presence, living
have been lost. In other words, presence, and how could that
Kracauer’s missive of 5 april 1923, be? I tremble out of fear for
composed upon his return from a its endurance, you are 19,
two-day sojourn with adorno in I am 34. You are taking a
the aptly named southwestern turn, you need to traverse the
town of amorbach, could hardly world, at 19 one cannot vouch
have been the first letter exchanged for oneself, not even you. In
between the two friends.12 Nor other words, it will break into
can it be considered characteristic, pieces, and there I shall lie.
pars pro toto, of the correspondence are you not much more con-
whose tone would shift drastically sistent [geschlossen] than I? I
and repeatedly over the following am an abyss and like a young
decades. and yet, this letter sets up boy I lack a foothold. Never
a utopian horizon of love— will I become a mature man,
whether romantic, platonic, sexual, I know not what to do. (B 9)
and/or intellectual—that inevita-
bly affects the reading of all subse- love reverses the positions: Kra-
quent exchanges; undoubtedly, it cauer, the older man and adorno’s
686 JohaNNeS VoN MolTKe
erstwhile mentor, becomes a flail- ing—and without knowing
ing young boy and imputes to his anything about me—that I
adolescent friend the maturity was homosexual and absent
(consistency [Geschlossenheit]) of with a distant friend; and
adulthood that he (Kracauer) will this at a moment when I
never attain. The resulting insecu- was thinking of you very in-
rity on Kracauer’s part, which sets tensely. In other words, I be-
the tone for the letter, would per- lieve I am fanatically faithful
sist in various forms—whether as to you, much more faithful
the gnawing uncertainty about the than I would have thought
relationship with adorno (which to be, since I was, after all,
the latter names in subsequent let- beholden to your sugges-
ters as based on a lack of trust); or, tion that it was now all over.
in later years, as the apparent need (B 54)
to control his own image, to rectify
and limit the ways in which When adorno does report a bud-
adorno (and others, by extension) ding affair to Kracauer from Vi-
could read his works. enna the following month,
The homosocial dimension of misogynist aspersions regarding
this friendship, too, is sounded in the “literati girl” (literatenmäd-
the first letter: the way in which chen) in question are coupled with
the relationship between adorno the assurance that “she knows of us
and Kracauer is triangulated, in- [i.e., Teddie and Friedel] and our
tersected by women who simulta- bonds [Gebundenheit] what she, as
neously sustain and threaten its a woman, can know—the fact that
dynamic: “I must also tell you that she obstinately subsumes me under
your report about your relation- §175 for this cannot be avoided”
ship with gretel did pain me (B 88). The two men’s relation-
greatly. Not the fact that you had ships with their future wives, lili
this relationship, but only that you ehrenreich (Kracauer) and gretel
walked by my side for so long Karplus (adorno), grow and be-
without me knowing about it” come objects of the correspondence
(B 9). little surprise, then, that the only under mutual recrimina-
two explicit references to homo- tions—that is, jealousy; even after
sexuality in the correspondence relations have normalized and
ventriloquize female voices: on 19 greetings from and to the wives at
May 1925, adorno writes from Vi- the close of the letters have become
enna that routinized, the homosocial taceat
mulier of the earlier letters per-
a very intelligent young lady dures.
explained to me with deter-
mination at our second meet- * * *
oN aDorNo aND KracaUer’S BRiEFWEChsEl 687
The friendship between adorno for all his openness, Kracauer
and Kracauer has been a matter of “lacked freedom in his relation to
public record at least since Febru- the object?” (cr 161, 166). If we
ary 1964, when adorno delivered a reverse adorno’s sublimation of
radio address in honor of Kracau- the erotic dimension so obvious in
er’s 75th birthday and noted at the the letters (whereas in the radio ad-
outset that he considered himself dress the “relation to the object” is
qualified to sketch for a postwar explicitly couched “in hegelian
german audience the “objective terms”), and if we reinstate the love
idea of Kracauer’s spiritual charac- object as the one toward which
ter” for the simple reason that “he Kracauer ostensibly lacks freedom,
and I have been friends since I was then the subject that emerges from
a young man.”14 rereading ador- adorno’s portrait is none other
no’s well-known essay now along- than the helpless, suffering lover of
side the correspondence, one the early letters.
cannot help but think that, in lest this appear too fanciful or
drafting the talk, adorno himself romantic a psychologization of
also poured over those letters that adorno’s “objective idea of Kra-
survived in his possession. Seen in cauer’s spiritual character,” we
this light, some of adorno’s assess- need only turn to the end of the
ments of Kracauer’s “spiritual article, where adorno himself ex-
character” take on personal over- plicitly marshals Freud to psycho-
tones that help to explain the pro- analyze his friend’s “fixation on
foundly ambivalent effect of the childhood” (cr 177). While this is
generally well-intentioned lauda- doubtless a productive notion
tion. For all its praise, genuine through which to consider Kra-
spirit of friendship, and manifest cauer’s intellectual method, with
desire to make the exile and erst- its insistence on the material phe-
while mentor known in his home nomena overlooked by routinized,
country, “The curious realist: on adult perception, one would be
Siegfried Kracauer” is laced not hard-pressed to locate the fixation
only with substantive criticism of on childhood as a persistent motif
Kracauer’s work but also with in Kracauer’s published writings,
barbs that appear as barely veiled as adorno suggests. It does occur,
ad hominem attacks when one however, in the early letters, where
holds them up to the intimacy of Kracauer bares himself—skinless,
the early letters. how else to inter- shamefully—to adorno, who
pret adorno’s claim that Kracauer, would lift his friend’s despair at
“a man with no skin,” had an “al- “never becoming a mature man”
most boundless capacity for suffer- from its confessional, intimate con-
ing”? That Kracauer was helplessly text and put it to public and point-
“reactive” in many respects? That, edly ambivalent use by claiming,
688 JohaNNeS VoN MolTKe
with Freud, that “it is precisely the his years in French exile, the epon-
adult who is infantile” (cr 177). ymous and autobiographically in-
Designed to theorize Kracauer’s flected protagonist falls in love
quizzical but ultimately affirma- with the much younger Fred,
tive gaze at the material world, his whom in particularly sentimental
capacity for thinking “with an eye moments he calls Freddie (as in
that is astonished almost to help- Teddie—here composited with
lessness but then suddenly flashes Friedel, to boot) and with whom
into illumination” (cr 163), the he at one point undertakes a jour-
motif of childhood and the infan- ney to the town of Sulzbach (as in
tile gaze implicitly impugns the amorbach).16 The passage describ-
friend for failing to grow up and ing the trip, its agonizing confes-
let go of the (love) object. In an- sions and rapprochements in and
other instance of the reversals that out of bed, now reads like a pre-
characterize this relationship—but quel to the correspondence, the ex-
veiled behind the intellectualized position for the story that begins to
motif of childhood—adorno, who unfold with the first extant letter of
came to know Kracauer at the 5 april 1923. (little wonder, then,
height of adolescence, takes the lat- that the Briefwechsel at times reads
ter to task for his inability to dis- like a novel.)
tance himself from the object. From the moment the two char-
Kracauer’s shortcoming, in ador- acters meet at some train station, the
no’s eyes, is his failure to encounter novel constructs a scenario of desire,
the object not through the bonds of focalized through the protagonist
(adolescent) love but with the os- georg, who “with enormous excite-
tensible freedom afforded by the ment imagined particular scenes”
folds of friendship between mar- while contemplating his friend’s
ried men.15 rather formal appearance and de-
meanor in the train compartment:
* * *
[T]heir evening walks, the act
While adorno’s text has become a of locking the door to their
standard reference for Kracauer room, getting undressed, con-
scholarship and the intellectual versations in bed—[he] let his
history of the Frankfurt school mind rest on images of inti-
more generally, it is less widely macy and anticipated possi-
known that Kracauer, too, strove bilities that he did not pursue
to publicize the relationship with any further, however. how
adorno—albeit in a differently, much more pleasurable to feel
because fictionally, coded form. In them only as possibilities and
his posthumously published novel postpone their potential ma-
Georg, which he completed during terialization into the distance.
oN aDorNo aND KracaUer’S BRiEFWEChsEl 689
consequently, he was happy spondence across periods of es-
about Fred’s self-conscious- trangement and great proximity
ness and took care not to dis- for the rest of his life. It is, as I have
rupt it. (G 349) suggested, a correspondence with
great caesurae—some temporal, as
But, of course, this desirous sce- in the apparent two-year gap be-
nario cannot be sustained, and the tween March 1939 and 1941, and
events at the small Black Forest re- some emotional, as in the notice-
sort during the ensuing week un- able chill that pervades the letters
fold as a painful disillusionment:17 as both men gravitate toward their
the friends sleep in separate rooms, future wives during the mid-1920s.
and Fred feels suffocated by the and, of course, there are the pro-
rotting foliage that seems to ac- found intellectual disagreements
company their relationship as a that Martin Jay has chronicled,19
motif throughout the novel. rather including a falling-out after ador-
than continue the discussions and no’s radical redaction of a text on
readings that had bound the two propaganda that Kracauer had
friends, Fred now announces a composed at the behest of the Insti-
materialist wish to “earn money as tute for Social research for publi-
quickly as possible” (G 354), and he cation in its journal (he would
begins to flirt with the female withdraw the text, accusing adorno
guests at the hotel. When the two of having “not edited my manu-
men finally do end up in bed to- script but used it as the basis for a
gether one night, Fred uses the work of your own” [B 398]); dis-
moment of greatest intimacy as the putes about the use of concepts
occasion to confess an affair with a central to the elaboration of criti-
woman, Margot, which he had kept cal Theory, such as “ideology,” or
secret from georg. In the novel, the “utopia;”20 or the testy discussion
two men somehow bridge the re- of “The curious realist” after
maining two days until their depar- Kracauer had received the printed
ture and return to their hometown version in october 1964. and yet,
estranged. The following morning, the balance of the correspondence
georg returns to the newspaper for is suffused with a profound friend-
which he works. ship, evident in the way both will
Where Kracauer then penned a share generously the details of
letter, his alter ego continues the their lives apart (in Frankfurt
discussion with “Freddie” in an in- and Berlin during the early 1930s,
ner monologue on his next busi- or in New York city and Frank-
ness trip; but whereas georg furt after adorno’s remigration in
eventually “liquidates the relation- 1949 until Kracauer’s death in
ship” with Freddie,18 Friedel holds 1966), in discussions of mutual
onto Teddie, continuing the corre- dedications of their works,21 or in
690 JohaNNeS VoN MolTKe
the way adorno patiently wields adorno, Kracauer closes by em-
his growing influence in postwar phasizing how much he
germany to help Kracauer find a
publisher and recognition in his look[s] forward to seeing
home country. you, the more time elapses,
on some occasions, though, the the closer does the Seeheimer
steady friendship is punctuated by Straße appear to me—noth-
a less (self-)protective, more direct ing can change that. We both
tone that allows its patently erotic send greetings to gretel,
origin to flash into illumination. and please accept lili’s and
Some of these are moments of in- my greetings yourself. Un-
tense insecurity, unguarded for til soon, Teddie—if all goes
once as in the desperate letter that well, which nobody can say.
Kracauer sends on the eve of (B 427)
his embarkation for america.
adorno, already in New York, had other, less urgent, moments of re-
worked tirelessly and creatively to newed intimacy tend to be birth-
help secure the necessary assurances days, Kracauer’s protectiveness of
for Kracauer’s emigration, appris- his own chronological exterritori-
ing Kracauer of his options in nu- ality notwithstanding. on 7 Feb-
merous letters to France. Now, on ruary 1949, presumably still from
28 March 1941, Kracauer writes to california, adorno writes to Kra-
“Mr. Teddie adorno” from lisbon, cauer in New York:
c/o Wagons-lits cook:
Dear Friedel, tomorrow is
Dear Teddie, these words are your birthday and, if I’m not
just to tell you that we hope to badly mistaken, it is your
sail with the Nyassa on april sixtieth. For this festive day,
15. . . . It is terrible to arrive I wish you all the very best.
as we will—after 8 years of as arbitrary as such caesurae
an existence that doesn’t de- may be by any standards of
serve the name. I have grown nature, they do have a great
older, also within myself. symbolic power within the
Now comes the last station, human realm. . . . let me
the last chance, which I must therefore join you in spirit and
not gamble away, lest every- celebrate with you with all
thing be lost . . . I will arrive a my heart, in faithful knowl-
poor man, poorer than I have edge of a thirty-year-long
ever been. friendship. There are two
wishes I have for you above
referring to the house in which he all. The first: that a solution
had come to know the young can be found that finally lets
oN aDorNo aND KracaUer’S BRiEFWEChsEl 691
you rise above all material thetic in its place. So: I wish
uncertainty. The second: that you everything good, loving,
you have the opportunity to and beautiful all the way
bring home everything that into the pianissimo of oldest
has matured in your spiri- age. With the most heartfelt
tual existence. I can think of greeting to you and lili, also
no other person for whom it from gretel, your old Teddie.
would be more apt if his de- (B 442)
cisive achievements came in
old age, after sixty—there is a Five days later, Kracauer responds
reason why you always used in kind:
to say that august was your
favorite month. and more Dear Teddie: I was so touched
than anything, what gives me by your letter. and it did ar-
the hope that you will find rive on the day itself; I found
the fulfillment of that which it at home in the evening.
you have “steadily meant” What a great joy for me—
by your very existence, is the and for lili, as well. as if I
unforced nature of every- had not known, I was newly
thing you have produced, overwhelmed at the fact of
your receptivity to experience our thirty-year-old friend-
without the overhasty drive ship and the old images
to finish. only too well do I that we drafted of ourselves,
know how much this fulfill- which contained so much
ment depends on that of my truth. I thought of the days in
first wish for a dignified ma- oberrad [their old Frankfurt
terial basis, without the fear neighborhood], of our read-
of how to go on. But I believe ing of Nietzsche and count-
that there is something in less things, small and large,
the rhythm of your life that from those years in which we
will allow the externals and were still very young, young
the internal finally to meet; enough in any case to know
after all, you, too, have been of transitoriness only what
guided by this belief yourself. one knows of many things.
Please forgive me if I speak a I am truly grateful to you
bit more ceremoniously than for your memory [Gedenken]
is customary between us—I and for your words, which
blame the strong feeling that conjured up the encapsulated
befalls me in view of this day, life of the past. It is a consola-
as well as the absence of that tion to know that you know
quotidian empirical [pres- and preserve within yourself
ence] that could put the pa- what we shared. That gives