Institute for Social Research

The Institute for Social Research began in Frankfurt in 1923 to give Marxist scholarship a lasting place in university life. Its money, library and staff supported work that individual scholars could not sustain alone. Its private funding later helped researchers continue in America after Nazi rule forced the Institute abroad.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Felix Weil helped turn that purpose into an institution. He had studied economics and written a dissertation on the problems of introducing socialism. In a memoir quoted by historian John Abromeit, Weil recalled discussing the plan with Friedrich Pollock and Max Horkheimer. They wanted university ties while keeping control of their research. Weil also recalled avoiding a name that openly announced Marxism because he expected it to provoke resistance.^[2][6]

The Weil family's wealth supplied the means. Historian Hans-Peter Gruber distinguishes two contributions: Felix used his maternal inheritance to pay for the building; his father, the grain merchant Hermann Weil, funded operating and staff costs. A 1924 maintenance agreement provided for continuing support. The founding plan thus had money for both a research home and the people working in it.^[1]

Kurt Albert Gerlach was expected to become the first director, but died in October 1922. Carl Grünberg, a historian of socialism and the labor movement, took the post. His research and journal gave the new Institute an established field of work.^[2][7][5]

A severe stroke in January 1928 left Grünberg unable to lead. Pollock handled the Institute's affairs during the transition. Horkheimer gained a professorship in July 1930 and agreed to take charge that October. Grünberg formally retained his title until 1932. Horkheimer presented his new research program in January 1931, before becoming sole director.^[1][8][6]

At the opening in June 1924, Grünberg described society as moving from capitalism toward socialism. Marxist methods would guide research under his direction. The subjects included labor movements, their opponents, social policy and social theories. He also wanted to train young researchers in those methods while allowing them to reach their own conclusions.^[7]

Grünberg distinguished that purpose from daily political work. The Institute would affect public opinion through its research findings, he said. Research and teaching were his stated means of advancing Marxist understanding. That program does not establish what readers or students actually adopted.^[7]

Horkheimer proposed bringing several fields into a common inquiry. Philosophers would work with economists, historians, sociologists and psychologists to study the links between economic life, beliefs and culture. Lowenthal later recalled looking to psychoanalysis to explain the steps connecting economic conditions with people's thoughts and conduct. The question was how social conditions became part of people's inner lives.^[8][4]

That inquiry retained a political purpose. In 1937 Horkheimer argued that critical theory belonged to the effort to change the existing social order. Studying capitalist society and struggling against it were connected tasks in his account.^[9]

An early founding memorandum proposed a shared library, document collections and exchanges with libraries, institutes and political parties abroad. It explained why: one scholar could not gather enough material for research across national borders. A central collection could preserve scarce records and make them available for study.^[3]

The Institute's July 1924 charter joined research freedom to a divided structure of authority. It guaranteed independence in scholarly work, but placed the Institute under the Prussian education minister's supervision. The minister appointed the director. The Society for Social Research handled business administration, while a council included representatives of both the university faculty and the Society.^[10]

Horkheimer later stressed the director's control over the research program, using Grünberg's phrase “the dictatorship of the director.” That description concerned scholarly direction, not freedom from every outside authority. He could draw on substantial resources: in 1931 he reported a library of about 50,000 volumes, used by scholars inside and outside Frankfurt.^[8]

Abromeit describes the Institute's cooperation with Moscow's Marx-Engels Institute.^[2] Weil and Pollock managed the separate Marx-Engels Archive Publishing Company, registered in Frankfurt in September 1924. A September 20 agreement assigned it the German collected edition and the Marx-Engels Archive journal. The company would publish under its own name for the Moscow Institute's account. The Moscow Institute would cover the costs and take any profits or losses.^[11]

The Institute also gave space to a new field of inquiry. In 1929 the separate Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute began holding lectures and seminars in its rooms. Lowenthal recalled helping make that arrangement possible. Sharing premises brought psychoanalytic teaching into the Institute's working environment; it did not make the two organizations one institution.^[2][4]

The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, or Journal for Social Research, began in 1932. Horkheimer's first preface explained how studies from different fields should contribute to an account of society as a whole. Social psychology had a particular role in connecting economic processes with human conduct. The journal would publish Institute findings while remaining open to correction through further research.^[12]

Pollock managed finances and administration, while Lowenthal managed the journal. Lowenthal later described a shared philosophical and political direction. He also recalled that paid book reviews helped support refugee scholars. Editorial work sustained both a research program and some of the people who could contribute to it.^[4][6]

The leadership prepared a base abroad before Hitler took power. Lowenthal recalled a Geneva branch and the transfer of foundation funds from Germany to the Netherlands in 1931. In 1933 Nazi authorities closed the Frankfurt Institute, accusing it of subversive activity. The organization now had to preserve its work outside Germany.^[4][5]

Geneva offered limited security. Lowenthal recalled that he, Pollock and Marcuse held tourist visas and had to cross the border to renew them. In 1934 Columbia supplied a university home in New York. The journal continued through its Paris publisher, linking the relocated researchers with readers abroad.^[4][5]

War disrupted that publishing arrangement. In July 1940 Horkheimer explained that the French publisher and printer could no longer be relied upon. The journal would appear in America as Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. Its mainly German-language publication had served a largely European readership. Horkheimer now wanted its outward form to address “American social life.”^[13]

Lectures created another route into print. In March 1942 Horkheimer explained that contributions by Pollock, Otto Kirchheimer and Herbert Marcuse grew from an Institute lecture series at Columbia. He announced a wartime yearbook in place of three issues annually. The journal ended instead.^[14][5]

Money also shaped the group's ability to work together. In November 1942 Marcuse told Horkheimer that Pollock had warned him the budget might last only two or three more years. Marcuse disputed that forecast. After taking government employment in Washington, he hoped to remain Horkheimer's collaborator. His letters record the effort to preserve their common work as jobs and distance pulled them apart.^[15]

The Institute began returning to Frankfurt in 1949. It was re-established in 1950 as a private foundation with public funding, and opened its new building in 1951. Support from the City of Frankfurt and the State of Hesse marked a change from its original private financing.^[5]

The April 1941 journal issue grew from collaboration with Columbia's Office of Radio Research. Horkheimer welcomed the application of the Institute's ideas to American subjects. Paul Lazarsfeld's essay identifies a specific point of exchange: he discussed Horkheimer's critical approach and used examples from Adorno's work.^[16][17]

Lazarsfeld explained how such criticism could widen a research question. Measuring responses to existing broadcasts left out material that never reached the air. Researchers could also ask which ideas were excluded because they promised poor returns or lacked a familiar format. The collaboration brought that question into a published discussion of communications research.^[17]

The Institute's American record also reached later readers through personal archives. In his 1996 preface to The Dialectical Imagination, Martin Jay recalled visiting Berkeley in August 1968 at Lowenthal's invitation. He studied Institute letters and unpublished manuscripts in Lowenthal's archive and discussed his questions with him. Jay's book appeared in 1973. Those papers and conversations supplied material for a history of the Institute, rather than simply preserving its published arguments.^[18]