Gretel Adorno

Gretel Adorno (born June 10, 1902 as Margarete Karplus in Berlin , † July 16, 1993 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German chemist and entrepreneur.

She was born as the daughter of Joseph Albert Karplus, a co-owner of the leather factory Karplus & Herzberger, and was a cousin of Hans Karplus, whose son Martin Karplus , who has lived in the United States since 1938, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2013.

From 1933 to 1937 Gretel Karplus headed his parents' company for leather gloves in Berlin . As early as the 1920s, she was in contact with numerous greats in Berlin's intellectual scene, including Walter Benjamin , Ernst Bloch and Herbert Marcuse . In 1923 she met Theodor W. Adorno , whom she married in 1937 in exile in London . In 1938 the couple moved to the United States, from where they returned to Germany in 1949. Gretel Adorno became an assistant at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main .

Soon after the death of her husband in 1969, she attempted suicide, the consequences of which left her severely impaired and in need of care for the rest of her life.

The manuscript for the book Dialectic of the Enlightenment was recorded by her as a summary of conversations between her husband Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer . The book was published in 1947 by Querido Verlag in Amsterdam.

Gretel Adorno was co-editor of Theodor W. Adorno's estate and parts of Walter Benjamin's estate.

literature

• Staci Lynn von Boeckmann: The life and work of Gretel Karplus / Adorno: Her contributions to Frankfurt School theory . Diss., University of Oklahoma , 2004.
• Christoph Gödde, Henri Lonitz (eds.): Walter Benjamin / Gretel Adorno: Correspondence 1930 - 1940 , Frankfurt a. M. 2005
• Stefan Müller-Doohm : Adorno: A Biography , Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2003
• Rolf Tiedemann : Farewell to Gretel Adorno . In: Frankfurter Adorno Blätter III , Munich 1994

Web links

• Literature by and about Gretel Adorno in the catalog of the German National Library