Gretel Adorno

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

[1]: 55 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.

That courtship was for a significant amount of time conducted over long-distance; Karplus confided in their close mutual friend, Walter Benjamin, that this separation was the cause of much long-term emotional strain upon her.

[1]: 55 Notably, she became close friends with the German Jewish philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, whom their mutual acquaintance Siegfried Kracauer would later that year introduce to her then suitor, Theodor Adorno; at this point, 1923, Adorno was at that time still a university student at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt.

[6] 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.

When the senior partner, Tengler, died in 1934, Karplus became responsible for the factory and its more than 200 employees until she determined to liquidate the company in December 1936 for unknown reasons (Boeckmann suggests that this may have been because the relevant state records and Chamber of Commerce archives were partially destroyed in the war years).

Gretel remarkably was able to take down what Martin Jay describes as a "highly abstract conversation developing at breakneck speed".

[8] 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.