Gretel Adorno

Margarete "Gretel" Adorno ( ; ; ; 10 June 1902 – 16 July 1993) was a German chemist and intellectual figure within the Frankfurt School of critical theory.

Family and childhood Gretel Karplus was born in Berlin on 10 June 1902, the granddaughter of the Viennese industrialist Gottlieb Karplus, and the daughter of Joseph and Amalie Karplus. She had one sister, Liselotte; they would both go on to receive doctorates. The Karplus' childhood home was situated in Prinzenallee, near the Tiergarten, Berlin.

Education She obtained her doctoral degree in chemistry from Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin, which she attended between 1921 and 1925, after the successful completion of her dissertation entitled "Über die Einwirkung von Calciumhydrid auf Ketone" ("On the Influence of Calcium-hydrate on Cetane") on 4 August 1925, under the supervision of Professor Dr. Wilhelm Schlenk, according to Stacy Lynn von Boeckmann's account of Karplus' university records. However, Gretel Adorno's colleague, Rolf Tiedemann, wrote in her obituary that she had studied under Professor Max Born; thus Born is often cited as her doctoral adviser, accordingly. She was just 23 at the time she received her promotion to Doctor of Philosophy, and she also completed doctoral coursework in two additional minors, Physics and Philosophy, with cum laude across all three subjects.

Extramarital relationships Adorno had at least two affairs with other women during more than forty years of marriage to Gretel, including a long-term affair with Charlotte Alexander during their years in Los Angeles,

Friendships of note In her university days Berlin and prior to meeting Adorno, Gretel Karplus was already acquainted with many influential German intellectuals of the twenties, including Ernst Bloch and Bertolt Brecht.

Early career After obtaining her doctorate, Karplus became a business woman and continued to reside in Berlin with financial independence up until she and Adorno emigrated from Nazi Germany to the United States in 1937.

Diskussion über Theorie und Praxis Reissued by Verso Books in 2011 as Towards a New Manifesto, this work was a series of recorded improvised conversations in 1956 between Adorno and Horkheimer, which was to be a contemporary version of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's The Communist Manifesto. Gretel remarkably was able to take down what Martin Jay describes as a "highly abstract conversation developing at breakneck speed".

Secretarial work Her assistance in recording and editing the verbal and written drafts of Dialectic of Enlightenment was neither the first nor the last time she worked alongside Adorno and Horkheimer in their intellectual activities. From 1937, the year that Gretel married Adorno, she assisted on almost all initial drafts of Adorno's works, which were dictated to her and taken down in shorthand.

Editing Aesthetic Theory When Theodor Adorno died suddenly in 1969 without having finalised the manuscript of Aesthetic Theory, Gretel Adorno and Adorno's former student Rolf Tiedemann took up the task of bringing that document to completion and publication. They discuss in the Editor's Afterword how "Adorno’s metaphor for works of art applies literally to the last philosophical text on which he worked:

Health issues For much of her life, Gretel Adorno suffered from acute chronic health issues that doctors were unable to accurately diagnose; they are frequently mentioned in both her letters to Benjamin, and Adorno's letters to his parents. These issues often left her immobilised for days and at times weeks on end. She died 16 July 1993 in Frankfurt.