Vendor
	C.H.BECK Anna-Sophia Mäder
Original language
German

Café Marx

Philipp Lenhard

The Institute for Social Research From Its Beginnings to the Era of the Frankfurt School

Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse: the new history of the Frankfurt School Café Marx: this was the nickname given by both its friends and its enemies to the Institute for Social Research. And indeed, critical theory and the Frankfurt School have their origins in an engagement with Marxism. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Philipp Lenhard tells the story of the people, networks, ideas and places that shaped the Institute and were shaped by it in turn. He illustrates vividly why the Frankfurt School, more than any other institution, came to define the major intellectual debates of the 20th century.

The Institute for Social Research, which opened in 1924, was something special right from the start. It had its roots in the trenches of the First World War and on the barricades of the revolution. Felix Weil, the communist son of an entrepreneur, had helped to found this new research institute which attracted workers and students, politicians and artists, scientists and intellectuals alike. Another special thing about it was the fact that the Institute was able to continue its work after 1933 in spite of closure, persecution and exile. Key works like the ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’ were written in California. Philipp Lenhard explores the emergence of critical theory in American exile, and shows how it developed into the Frankfurt School in the early days of the German Federal Republic. Full of surprising insights, this book concisely and vividly illustrates the historical context in which Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin and many others became key figures of the 20th century.