Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life

The fascist Nazi party came to power in Germany in January of 1933, bringing an end to the previous democratic government, the Weimar Republic. Two years later, the Nazi government passed the Nuremberg Laws, which banned books and stripped German Jews and people of Jewish descent of their civil rights, barring them from professions such as the civil service and teaching in secondary schools and universities. It was this law that caused Adorno to lose his job teaching philosophy. He left Germany for Britain in 1934 and later migrated to the United States.

When the United States entered World War II in 1942, Adorno was labelled as an “enemy alien” since he was a German national. As a result, his movements were restricted. He could not be further than five miles from his place of residence, and had to adhere to a curfew that kept him at home at night. Adorno’s experiences living under fascist persecution and then in the United States as an “enemy alien” stoked Adorno’s distrust of modern governments. He thus asserted that aspects of totalitarianism existed even in societies that ostensibly rejected fascism.