Frankfurt School: Institute for Social Research

The Institute for Social Research was founded in Frankfurt in 1923 to support Marxist scholarship. Private money paid for its building, staff and collections. After the Nazis closed the Institute, its leaders continued abroad and established a base at Columbia University in New York .^[1][2][3]

Felix Weil wanted to support Marxist research. He had studied economics and written a dissertation examining plans for a socialist economy. His family's wealth made a lasting institution possible. Biographer Hans-Peter Gruber traces the building funds to Felix's maternal inheritance. His father, the grain merchant Hermann Weil, paid operating and staff costs. A 1924 agreement provided for continuing support.^[1][4]

The planned first director, Kurt Albert Gerlach, died in October 1922. Carl Grünberg, a historian of socialism and the labor movement, became the Institute's first director in 1924. His journal and research gave the Institute an established field of work. Its building opened on June 22 that year.^[1][2][5]

Grünberg's stroke in January 1928 interrupted that work. Friedrich Pollock handled the Institute's affairs during the transition. Max Horkheimer took charge in 1930 and outlined his new program in January 1931. Sources differ on when Grünberg’s directorship formally ended, with dates ranging from 1929 to 1932; Gruber, citing the Institute’s records, gives 1932.^{[1][2][6][4][7]}

Before the opening, Béla Fogarasi described the proposed Institute to David Ryazanov, director of Moscow's Marx-Engels Institute, as “a material base for Marxist research.” He hoped its university ties and Grünberg's standing would make collective Marxist research and education possible. He also proposed broader work with the Moscow Institute, explicitly calling that proposal his own private idea.^[8]

Grünberg stated his own aims at the opening. He described society as moving from capitalism toward socialism and said Marxist methods would guide the Institute's work. Researchers would study labor movements, their opponents and the ideas behind social struggles. He wanted to train young scholars. He said the Institute should stay out of day-to-day politics, and that any influence on public opinion would come through its research findings.^[5]

A 1925 article by Julius Schaxel explained how research could serve political action. Invoking Lenin's call to build working-class culture on knowledge of existing culture, he wrote: “Application presupposes teaching, and teaching presupposes research.” Schaxel presented the Institute as part of that preparation. His article gives a contemporary public argument for its political value.^[9]

Horkheimer widened the inquiry to include psychology and culture alongside economics and history. The researchers would study how economic life connected with people's beliefs and conduct. In his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory,” he argued that research should help change the social order it examined.^[6][10]

The Institute and its supporting Society for Social Research were separate bodies. The Society handled administration. Its 1923 rules put legal authority in the chairman's hands, including management of its assets. Members could vote on proposals, but a proposal failed if the chairman opposed it.^[11]

The Institute's July 1924 charter divided responsibility further. The Prussian education minister supervised the Institute and appointed its director. The director led research; the Society handled business affairs. A council included representatives of the Society and the university faculty. The charter guaranteed independence in scholarly work.^[12]

Horkheimer later used Grünberg's phrase “the dictatorship of the director” to describe the director's authority over research.^[6]

An early founding memorandum explained why scholars needed common resources. One person could not collect enough material for research across national borders. It proposed a shared library, document collections and exchanges abroad. In his January 1931 inaugural lecture, Horkheimer put the library at roughly 50,000 volumes.^[13][6]

Cooperation with Moscow made that work concrete. Weil's August 1924 meeting memo listed books to find, duplicates to exchange, documents to copy and visits to arrange. In one proposed approach to the Engels family for copies of letters, he instructed that Ryazanov and the Moscow Institute should not be mentioned. His October letter with Pollock reported that selected duplicate books had been packed.^[14][15]

The Institute also shared space with other researchers. The separate Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute began teaching in its rooms in 1929, according to Abromeit. Leo Lowenthal recalled helping arrange the shared premises. The arrangement gave psychoanalytic teaching a place within the Institute's working environment.^[2][16]

A separate publishing company provided another means of advancing the work. Registered in Frankfurt in September 1924, the Marx-Engels Archive Publishing Company listed Weil and Pollock in its management. Its purpose included producing and distributing scholarly books and journals about Marx and Engels.^[15]

The September 20 agreement set out its relationship with Moscow's Marx-Engels Institute. The company would publish the German collected edition and the Marx-Engels Archive journal in its own name, for the Moscow Institute's account. The Moscow Institute would cover costs and take the profits or losses. The company waived payment for its own services.^[15]

Weil also helped negotiate the form and timing of publication. In 1926 he reported plans to issue more volumes before the Russian Revolution's tenth anniversary. He said the participants agreed on the “ideological and commercial advantages.” Their discussions also concerned how readers would receive introductions, notes and indexes.^[17]

In April 1928, Weil wrote that Pollock had told him Ryazanov no longer wanted their participation in the publishing house. Weil was preparing to hand over management.^[18][19]

The Society withdrew from the company later that year. The notarized transfer named Moscow's Marx-Engels Institute as the sole shareholder. The change concerned the publishing company. An October letter still recorded separate salary and payment arrangements for photographic work.^[20][21][22]

The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, or Journal for Social Research, began in 1932. Horkheimer's first preface asked contributors from different fields to take part in a common study of society. The journal would publish the Institute's work and allow its findings to be tested and revised.^[23]

Lowenthal managed the journal while Pollock handled finances and administration. Lowenthal recalled that the editors shared philosophical and political aims. Paid book reviews also helped support refugee scholars.^[16][4]

War forced changes in production and audience. In July 1940, Horkheimer explained that publication could no longer rely on the French publisher and printer. The journal would appear in America as Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. He wanted its presentation to address “American social life.” Its final issue carried a March 1942 preface announcing a yearbook plan; the journal ended instead.^[24][25][3]

Lowenthal recalled that plans for a Geneva branch were part of the Institute's preparations for exile. He dated the transfer of foundation funds from Germany to the Netherlands to 1931. Nazi authorities closed the Frankfurt Institute in 1933. Columbia provided a university home in New York in 1934.^[16][3]

Herbert Marcuse 's 1942 letters record disagreements about the Institute's remaining funds and his wish to keep working with Horkheimer.^[26]

The Institute began returning to Frankfurt in 1949. It was re-established in 1950 as a private foundation with public funding. Its new building opened in 1951. Support from the City of Frankfurt and the State of Hesse marked a change from the original private financing.^[3]

The Institute's April 1941 journal issue grew from collaboration with Columbia's Office of Radio Research. Horkheimer welcomed work applying the Institute's ideas to American subjects. Paul Lazarsfeld contributed an essay examining Horkheimer's approach and examples from Theodor Adorno.^[27][28]

The Institute's records also supplied material for later histories. Martin Jay recalled visiting Berkeley in August 1968 at Lowenthal's invitation. He studied letters and unpublished manuscripts in Lowenthal's archive and discussed them with him. Jay's The Dialectical Imagination appeared in 1973. Preserved papers and participants' recollections helped later readers study how the Institute had worked.^[29]