Most honored Mr. President, ministers, secretaries of state,
mayors, advisors, administrators, and assistants, highly esteemed
men and women of our cultural life, representitives of science,
of industry, and of the self-employed middle-class, honored public
of this festive gathering, ladies and gentlemen!

It is not by chance that we are gathered here today for the purpose
of celebrating this day.  In a time like ours, in which the true
human values have more than ever to be our innermost concern, a
statement is expected from us.  I do not wish to present you with a
patented solution, but I would merely like to bring up for
discussion a series of hot potatoes which do after all face us.  For
we do not need ready-made opinions, which anyway do not touch us
deeply, but what we need is rather the genuine dialogue which moves
us in our humanity.  What brought us together here is our knowledge
of the power of encounter in the forming of the intrahuman sphere.
The things which matter are settled in this intrahuman sphere.  I do
not need to tell you what I mean by this.  You will all understand me,
for in a particular and extraordinary sense you all have to do with
people.

In a time such as ours - I have mentioned it already - in which
the perspective of things has everywhere begun to waver, everything
depends more than ever on the individual who knows of the essence
of things, of things as such, of things in their authenticity.  We
need openhearted people who are capable of this.  Who are these
people? - you will ask me - and I will answer you: You are they!  By
being gathered here you have proven more thoroughly than by words
that you are prepared to put emphasis on your concern.  That is what
I would like to thank you for.  But I would also like to thank you
for energetically opposing, by your commitment to this good cause,
the flood of materialism which threatens to drown everything around
us.  To say it in a nutshell from the start: you have come here to be
given directions; you have come to listen.  From this encounter, on
an intrahuman level, you expect a contribution to the reestablishment
of the interhuman climate.  You expect a restoration of that homey
warmth which seems to be lacking, in our modern industrial society,
to such a terrifying degree ...

But what does this mean for our concrete situation here and now?  To
pronounce the the question means to pose it.  But in fact it means
much more than that.  It means that we expose ourselves to it, that
we surrender to it.  That we must not forget.  But in the rush
and busy work of the day, modern man forgets it all too easily.
But you who belong to the silent majority, you know of it.  For
our problems stem from a region which it is our vocation to preserve.
The wholesome perplexity which comes from this situation opens
perspectives which we should not simply block out by turning away
in boredom.  It is important to think with the heart and to
tune in the human antenna to the same wave length.  Today no one
knows better than man that which is of importance in the end.

==

``Stenciled Speech for Festive Occasions''

Christian Schutze ``Gestanzte Festansprache,'' in Stuttgarter
Zeitung, Dec 2, 1962; quoted by Theodor Adorno _The Jargon of
Authenticity_ p.89-91