Gretel Adorno

Personal

Vocation

German chemist and entrepreneur. From 1933 to 1937 she ran a company making leather gloves in Berlin. In the 1920s, she mixed with Berlin's intellegentsia, 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, returning to Germany in 1949. Gretel Adorno became an assistant at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main. Soon after the sudden death of her husband in 1969, she attempted suicide, and was significantly impaired for the rest of her life. She was financially supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Foundation. The book, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, a summary of conversations between her husband Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, was published in 1947 by the Querido publishing house in Amsterdam. Gretel Adorno was co-executor of Theodor W. Adorno's estate as well as parts of the estate of Walter Benjamin. She died in 1993. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)