The Long
Insurgency

Dossier · 1934–1944

Institute for Social Research

The Frankfurt School’s institutional base and its American branches

Chronology

An American foothold 1934–1944

193419391944

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Date notes

The full scale shows the dossier’s period. The shaded band shows the topic’s period; decade labels remain approximate.

A selected connection uses its stored years. A single known endpoint is a point, not an inferred duration.

1934–1944

An American foothold

A research institute reaches New York

The Institute for Social Research continued its work in New York after leaving Nazi Germany. In 1934, Columbia University gave it quarters at 429 West 117th Street.[1] The Institute’s own 1944 account describes New York as the center of its work after earlier European stops.[2]

Independent work inside a university

The arrangement did not put Columbia in charge of the Institute. Historian Rolf Wiggershaus describes a loose affiliation that left the Institute in control of its research and finances.[3] Max Horkheimer , its director, accepted the quarters after negotiations with Columbia scholars and its president.[3]

The new address gave a European research program an American base. It does not, by itself, show that Americans adopted the program’s ideas. The research program explains what the Institute set out to study; the Columbia connection follows the people who arranged its New York home. Wiggershaus reports that Herbert Marcuse joined Horkheimer in New York in early July 1934. Later that month, Horkheimer accepted Columbia’s offer of quarters for the Institute.[3] Marcuse’s dossier follows his later American teaching and writing.

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The research program1930–1944 The Columbia connection1934–1944 People at the Institute1930–1944