Theodor Adorno

Born in Frankfurt am Main to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father who had converted to Protestantism, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno was a leading scholar of the Frankfurt School. Though Adorno was inspired by revolutionary thought and leftist ideals, his interests remained primarily theoretical. During World War II, Adorno immigrated first to the United Kingdom and then to the United States, where he worked at the University of California at Berkeley. He returned to Europe in 1949, helping to restart the Institute for Social Research and renew German intellectual culture in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Adorno’s contributions to twentieth-century thought include many influential sociological and critical studies of fascism and popular culture.