Isabelle Aubert, Marcos Nobre - The Archives of Critical Theory-Springer (2023)

Isabelle Aubert
Marcos Nobre Editors
The Archives
of Critical
Theory
The Archives of Critical Theory
Isabelle Aubert • Marcos Nobre
Editors
The Archives of Critical

Theory
Editors
Isabelle Aubert Marcos Nobre
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University of Campinas (Unicamp)
Institut universitaire de France Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning
Paris, France (Cebrap)
São Paulo, Brazil
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Preface
This book is a book of memory, history, and living theory.

Critical Theory was officially founded with the creation of the Institute for Social
Research in Frankfurt am Main, one hundred years ago, in 1923, on the initiative of
Felix Weil. To pay homage to this current of thought, also known as Frankfurt
School, it seemed important to us to recall what his work represented in its very
materiality. The aim was to make the archives speak for themselves, to show the
public the quantity of unpublished material still existing by the authors of the
Critical Theory which are now in funds in different parts of the world (in Germany,
in Italy, or in the United States). In doing so, our wish was also to underline the
often unrecognized task of archivists and editors who have brought from shadow to
light manuscripts and other material of great theoretical and historical interest
which would otherwise remain unknown to most people. These archives remain the
living memory of the authors of Critical Theory. This book wishes to remind us
of that.
But if the archives contain the history of Critical Theory, or rather what remains
of it for us, if the writings and recordings of the thinkers of Critical Theory are ulti-
mately accessible to us only through the materials deposited in the archives, these
are not mere memories. Archives are not monuments that enclose texts but places
that preserve them for new use. The history of Critical Theory continues today
through the continuous publication of new, yet untapped documents and the critical
commentary they elicit. From the archives to the editorial news of Critical Theory,
there is only one step, as the contributions to this volume show. Writing a book on
the archives of Critical Theory is a way of recalling its topicality.
With this book, finally, we wanted to show that Critical Theory remains alive 100
years after the foundation of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main.
While this current of thought was created by a small circle of heterodox Marxist
scholars in Germany, today it is widely spread throughout the world. As indicated
by the different nationalities of the researchers who have contributed to this volume,
Critical Theory is an enterprise that continues in Brazil as well as in the United
v
vi Preface
States, France, Switzerland, and Germany. This far-from-exhaustive list points not
only to the importance of Critical Theory today but also to the possibility of widen-
ing the scope of this book in that – so we hope – many other books on the archives
of Critical Theory will be published in the future.
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Isabelle Aubert

Institut universitaire de France
Paris, France
University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazilian Center Marcos Nobre
for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap)
São Paulo, Brazil
Acknowledgments
This volume is a collective work not only in the sense that it is a collection of indi-
vidual contributions. It would have been impossible to do it without the active par-
ticipation of all contributors. We have always counted on the support of all the
authors in assembling diverse materials (illustrations and relevant information per-
taining to the different archives), checking and correcting sources, translations, and
references, and making themselves available for debating their texts. In thanking all
the contributors for their constant support, we also thank most especially Rachael
Prest for her utmost skillful and committed work proofreading and editing all the
texts. We also want to thank our editor Bruno Fiuza for all the encouragement, com-
petence, and support since the very beginning of this project.
The active cooperation of the archivists and the various archives contacted was
invaluable for the preparation of the book. In addition to their contributions, we
would like to thank warmly Ursula Marx, from the Walter Benjamin Archive
(Berlin), Michael Schwarz, from the Theodor W. Adorno Archive (Berlin), and
Peter-Erwin Jansen, director of the Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal archives
(Frankfurt), for their availability and for making the publications of the images that
illustrate their chapters possible. We thank Dirk Braunstein and Maisha Gelhard,
from the Institute for Social Research Archive (Frankfurt am Main), for all the
information and orientation they provided us. We also thank the Archive of the
University of Florence for the authorization to publish Theodor W. Adorno’s last
postcard (to Friedrich Pollock), as well as the mediation provided by Philipp
Lenhard, who also authorized the publication of a photo he took that shows how the
digital access to Horkheimer Papers looks like from a computer screen.
Through the mediation and translation of Olavo Ximenes, Rolf Hecker has
allowed us to translate and publish a “simplified version” of his “Path of Marx-
Engels-Nachlass”, for which we are thankful. Olivier Voirol took the two pictures of
the former headquarters of the Institute in Geneva which illustrate his chapter on the
exile of the Institute; we thank him for allowing us to publish them. We are very
grateful to Jürgen Habermas for his personal involvement in this project and for
authorizing the publication of two of his letters. We are also thankful to Dorothea
Apel for allowing us to publish a letter from Karl-Otto Apel. We very much
vii
viii Acknowledgments
appreciated the diligence of Oliver Kleppel from the ArchivZentrum of Frankfurt

am Main, as well as Roman Yos, for all the efforts he made to make the various
materials available for publishing.
This volume has received a financial support from the Institut Universitaire de
France, to whom we express our sincere thanks. We also want to thank the State of
São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) for its support.
Contents
Part I Introduction

Researching the Archives of Critical Theory�� 3
Isabelle Aubert and Marcos Nobre
Part II Marx and Engels Archive

Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions,
and Theoretical Implications�� 17
Olavo Ximenes
Part III Walter Benjamin Archive

Into the Walter Benjamin Archive: An Interview
with Ursula Marx�� 37
Fernando Bee
Benjamin Anarchivist�� 51
Antonin Wiser
Part IV The Institute for Social Research Archive

The Attitude of the German People: The Institute of Social
Research Archive as Contemporary History�� 69
Dirk Braunstein and Maischa Gelhard
The Role of Empirical Research in Theodor W. Adorno’s Thought:
A Personal Experience at the Archive of the Institute
for Social Research�� 83
Adriano Januário
ix
x Contents
Part V Max Horkheimer Archive

Working on Cultural Memory: The Literary Estate
of Max Horkheimer in the Frankfurt University Library �� 97
Gunzelin Schmid Noerr
The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva
and the Correspondence between Max Horkheimer
and Juliette Favez�� 105
Olivier Voirol
Not Just Director, Methodologist, or Partner: A Brief History
of the Reception of Horkheimer’s Work�� 129
Paulo Yamawake
Part VI Theodor W. Adorno Archive

Adorno and the Archiving of the Ephemeral:
Remarks on His Literary Estate�� 143
Michael Schwarz
Adorno and the Post-war Artistic Debates: A Perspective
Through the Archives�� 151
Raquel Patriota and Ricardo Lira da Silva
T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education
in an “Administered World” (1955–1969): Unpublished Radio
Conversations from the Theodor W. Adorno Archive�� 165
Aurélia Peyrical
Part VII Friedrich Pollock Archive

Symbiosis and Dispersion: The Friedrich Pollock Papers �� 193
Philipp Lenhard
Part VIII Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal Archive

Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse: Analysis of the Enemy
and Volumes from the Marcuse Archive�� 203
Peter-Erwin Jansen and Inka Engel
Archive Beyond Files: A Brief Note on a Personal Experience
in the Marcuse Archive�� 217
Inara Luisa Marin
Contents xi
Part IX Between Archives

Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective
Reflections on Working in the Herbert Marcuse
and Max Horkheimer Archives�� 225
John Abromeit
Part X Jürgen Habermas Archive

The Habermas Papers: An Interview with Roman Yos�� 253
Pedro Zan and Rafael Palazi
Two Letters Between Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel,
Dated 1965: Comments on the Exchange�� 263
Roman Yos
Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse,
July 10, 1978: Translation of the Letter and Comment�� 267
Isabelle Aubert
Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives�� 275
Index�� 281
List of Figures
Fig. 1 The path of Marx-Engels-Nachlass (simplified exposition)�� 21

Fig. 1 The reading room in the Walter Benjamin Archive�� 38
Fig. 2 The boxes in the Walter Benjamin Archive�� 46
Fig. 3 Papers with Walter Benjamin’s handwriting�� 47
Fig. 1 Building of the offices of the Institut für Sozialforschung
rue de Lausanne 91, Geneva, 1932–1937, officially known
as “Bureau de l’Institut de recherches sociales
de l’Université de Francfort”�� 110
Fig. 2 Building of the offices of the Institut für Sozialforschung
rue de Lausanne 133, Geneva, 1937–1939, officially
known as “Bureau de l’Institut de recherches sociales
de l’Université de Francfort”�� 113
Fig. 1 Adorno’s preliminary note for the printing of his lecture
‘Kultur und Culture’, 9 July 1958�� 149
Fig. 1 The digitized Horkheimer papers on the website
of the University Library, Frankfurt am Main�� 196
Fig. 2 Theodor W. Adorno’s last postcard to Friedrich Pollock.
“Su concessione dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze,
Biblioteca Umanistica.” With permission from the
Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Berlin�� 197
Fig. 1 Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal, mid-1970.
(Photo: private, P.-E. J)�� 204
Fig. 2 Front cover of prophets of deceit by Herbert Marcuse
and Norbert Guterman�� 208
Fig. 3 “State and Individual in National Socialism” by
Herbert Marcuse�� 210
xiii
xiv List of Figures
Fig. 1 Letter 1: Jürgen Habermas’s letter to Karl-Otto Apel,

March 25, 1965�� 264
Fig. 2 Letter 2: Karl-Otto Apel’s reply to Habermas (undated)�� 265
Fig. 1 Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse, July 10, 1978�� 268
Part I
Introduction
Researching the Archives of Critical
Theory
Isabelle Aubert and Marcos Nobre
The Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research)1 was founded in
1923 in Frankfurt am Main on the initiative of Felix Weil and brought together
researchers from philosophy, humanities disciplines, and social sciences who
wanted to develop academic research on Marxism. Although the Research Institute
for Social Sciences in Cologne and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy were
already producing social research at that time,2 the Institute for Social Research was
unique because of its Marxist orientation. As is well-known, in his famous 1937
essay, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” Max Horkheimer, the director of the insti-
tute after Carl Grünberg, gave a name to this very specific social philosophy that
took Marx’s critique of political economy as its model: the critical theory of
1
Which form is correct, “Institute for Social Research” or “Institute of Social Research”? Both are.
The English page of the IfS website refers to the “Institute for Social Research” (https://www.ifs.
uni-frankfurt.de/home.html) but during the New York period, Horkheimer’s institute was called
“Institute of Social Research.”
2
The Königliches Institut für Seeverkehr und Weltwirtschaft an der Universität Kiel (Royal
Institute of Shipping and the World Economy at the University of Kiel), as it was originally called,
was founded in 1914 by Bernhard Harms, and the Forschungsinstitut für Sozialwissenschaften
(Research Institute for Social Sciences) was founded in 1919 in Cologne and since 2013 has been
called Institut für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (Institute for Sociology and Social
Psychology). As the Institute for Social Research, the two institutes are still active today.
I. Aubert (*)
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Institut universitaire de France, Paris, France
e-mail: [email protected]
M. Nobre
University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap),
São Paulo, Brazil
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

Switzerland AG 2023
I. Aubert, M. Nobre (eds.), The Archives of Critical Theory,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_1
4 I. Aubert and M. Nobre
society.3 “Critical Theory” refers both to “Marxism” in a broad sense and to a spe-
cific strand within Marxism – that of the group gathered around the institute.4 As a
dialectical philosophy and an oppositional and materialist theory, Critical Theory
analyzes the processes of social life with a view to liberating human beings from all
forms of domination. Its method confronts the data of the specialized sciences with
a philosophy nourished by Marx, the German idealism of Kant and Hegel, and the
psychoanalysis of Freud.5
This group of German intellectuals is often popularly known as the “Frankfurt
School,” a label that the members of the institute accepted progressively even
though they had various academic backgrounds and published personal and original
works. Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno were known first
for their own work and only later as members of the Frankfurt School. As Martin
Jay recalls, “the notion of a specific school did not develop until after the Institute
was forced to leave Frankfurt (the term itself was not used until the Institute returned
to Germany in 1950)” (Jay 1973, p. XV, footnote).6
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Institute for
Social Research, this volume, The Archives of Critical Theory, aims to shed light on
the intellectual activity of some critical theorists by investigating their archives. The
3
There is an ongoing debate about the right way to write “critical theory”: we leave it to each
author of the volume to decide whether or not to use capital letters.
4
In the text published together with “Traditional and Critical Theory,” “Philosophy and Critical
Theory,” Horkheimer wrote: “Among those who resort today to Critical Theory there are some
who, in full awareness, degrade it as mere rationalization of their momentary endeavors; others
cling to concepts that have become strange even in their literality, making them a shallow ideology,
which everyone understands because they do not think. From the beginning, however, dialectical
thinking designates the most advanced state of knowledge; and only from this can the decision
ultimately come” (1980, p. 630). If this seems to justify the inclusion of the Marx-Engels archives
in this volume, as founders of Critical Theory in a larger sense, it also raises the question of the
Marxist thinkers that were not included. The editors thought that this would be impracticable, since
determining affinities between Critical Theory (in strict sense) and specific works and/or strands of
Marxism would need a justification of their own. If we take the example, that may be considered
as the most obvious one, that of Georg Lukács. If it may be shown that his 1923 book History and
Class Consciousness (Lukács 1971) had enormous impact in the debates of the Institute, the same
cannot be said of Lukács’s later work.
5
Besides their writings, these authors’ links with psychoanalysis is visible through their support of
the Frankfurter Psychoanalytische Institut (Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute), founded in 1929
(and closed 4 years later by the Nazis). One of its founders was Erich Fromm, who was a member
of the Institute for Social Research. Later, in 1960, Horkheimer encouraged Alexander Mitscherlich
to create the Sigmund-Freud-Institut.
6
According to Wiggershaus, “The term ‘Frankfurt School’ was a label first applied by outsiders in
the 1960s, but Adorno in the end used it himself with obvious pride” (Wiggershaus 2007, p. 1).
And Wiggershaus states that some of the attributes of a school were present: “an institutional
framework” (the IfS), a “charismatic intellectual personality” with its director Max Horkheimer, a
“manifesto” (Horkheimer’s inaugural lecture of 1931 on “The Present State of Social Philosophy
and the Tasks Facing an Institute of Social Research”), a “new paradigm” (a materialist one,
namely, the critical theory of society), and a “journal,” The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal
of Social Research). But “most of these characteristics only applied to the first decade of the
Institute’s Horkheimer period, the 1930s, and to its New York period in particular” (p. 2).
Researching the Archives of Critical Theory 5
existence of archives containing the manuscripts, recordings, and other documents

of authors like Max Horkheimer, Friedrich Pollock, and Herbert Marcuse is known
in relatively few circles, even within academia. Their potential for advancing the
understanding of these authors’ works and times is even less widely known.
Yet the very history of the institute – which moved several times as its members
fled the Nazi regime and was reconstituted each time – already shows that without
archives it is impossible to fully understand the work of these researchers. The vari-
ous places inhabited by critical theorists in exile were repositories of manuscripts,
letters, and working documents. Thus, after being published for a year by Hirschfeld
in Leipzig, the institute’s journal, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal of Social
Research), was published by Félix Alcan in Paris from 1933 to 1939 and then by the
Institute of Social Research in New York City until 1941. It is worth recalling the
institute’s various homes: in Frankfurt from 1923 to 1933 and from 1951 to date;
simultaneously in Geneva, New York, and partially, Los Angeles from 1933 until
August 1950. Exile also forced individual trajectories, which explains the stays of
Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Marcuse in Paris and Adorno in Oxford.
The exile of the members of the Frankfurt School and the different moves of the
institute makes searching the archives a necessary task in order to acquire an exhaus-
tive knowledge of those authors’ writings (many of which remain unpublished), to
become familiar with the materials they used and their own particularities (e.g., the
technique of micrography used by Benjamin), and to grasp the contexts in which the
published books were written. Apropos theorists who, in the spirit of Marx, always
stressed the relations between theory and practice, highlighting the material condi-
tions in which they worked is not merely anecdotal.
As the work in the archives shows, the movements of the institute and its mem-
bers soon internationalized Critical Theory. This is evidenced by several facts: in the
mid-1930s, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung published articles by the philoso-
phers Alexandre Koyré and Raymond Aron, the anthropologist Margaret Mead, and
the geographer Albert Demangeon. The institute’s stay in New York also had a last-
ing influence on the research of its host institution, as evidenced today by many of
the research programs of the New School for Social Research. But what perhaps
best shows the Frankfurt School’s international intellectual influence, despite all the
difficulties encountered, is the extensive and varied correspondence the authors
maintained with other intellectuals of their time. Thousands of letters are kept in the
different archives; some have been progressively published (the correspondences
between Horkheimer and Adorno, Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin
and Gershom Scholem, and so on), while others are still unknown.
The time span covered by this book extends from the mid-1800s to the present
day. The volume begins with the archives of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, whose
views inspired the foundation of Critical Theory. The study of these newly demate-
rialized archives, presented here by Olavo Ximenes, should be of interest to any
researcher who wonders what documents were available to critical theorists at the
time, in contrast to those available to us today. At the other end of the timeline, this
volume includes a philosopher who is usually associated with the second generation
of critical theorists: Jürgen Habermas. The case of Habermas is unusual, as he is still
involved in building his own archive. Not all the material is yet available, but the
correspondence, that is, has enormous value and interest, as shown by the interview
Rafael Palazi and Pedro Zan conducted with Roman Yos.7
Between these two ends, the volume dedicates a section to the archives of the
institute itself and several sections to specific critical theorists, in addition to cross-
referencing the archives of different authors. The archives of the authors studied
here are those of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Walter Benjamin, Max
Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Friedrich Pollock, Herbert Marcuse, Leo
Löwenthal, and Jürgen Habermas. The book is composed of articles by researchers
and editors who worked in the different funds and articles by and interviews with
researchers who were or are in charge of some of the archives or who are especially
familiar with the material.
Unfortunately, not all the members of the Institute for Social Research could be
included in this volume, be it for the difficulty of finding a researcher available to
write on a specific literary estate or be it (as in most cases) because a proper estate
is not available. It does not aim to be exhaustive, but it can be considered as an initial
exploratory step into the subject. Hopefully there will be much more to come on the
issue of Critical Theory’s archives.
Presenting these different archives is also a way to remind us that the Institute for
Social Research was itself created as an archive. This is not solely because its first
de facto director, Carl Grünberg, was a historian, who edited the famous Archiv für
die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung (Archive for the History
of Socialism and of the Workers Movement). The main reason is that one of the
previous aims of the institute was to become a unique archive of the workers’
movement.
This story is the one depicted by Henryk Grossmann, one of the most prominent
members of the institute.8 In a letter written to Paul Mattick in 1931, Grossmann
wrote that the institute was “a neutral institution at the university which is accessi-
ble to everyone. Its significance lies in the fact that for the first time everything
concerning the workers’ movement in the most important countries of the world is
gathered. Above all, sources (congress minutes, party programs, statutes, newspa-
pers, and periodicals) … Whoever in Western Europe wishes to write on the cur-
rents of the workers movement must come to us, for we are the only gathering point
for it” (Grossmann 1969, pp. 85–86; Jay 1973, p. 14). “Neutral” in this case means
no affiliation – as a group9 – to a specific party or to a particular political strand of
Marxism. The project was to bring together different conceptions and practices of
Marxism. The institute as such chose to maintain a prudent distance from direct
action, despite its commitment to Marxism. His claimed neutrality notwithstanding,
7
The review work of Habermas’s correspondence by Luca Corchia (2017) should be remembered
here. Regarding the (re)connection of Habermas’ work with Critical Theory’s initial project in the
1930s, see Aubert (2015).
8
Grossmann exemplifies the case of other theorists who could not be included in the volume. There
is no well-established archive for Grossmann’s papers.
9
Some of the participants were close to a party or affiliated to one.
Grossmann’s phrasing of “the most important countries of the world” demonstrates

what was then a commonplace Marxist preconception, despite the fact that the very
first successful proletarian revolution took place in Russia, a country that was not
seen as one of “the most important” before 1917.
Of course, one can ask if Grossmann’s description in this letter effectively cor-
responded to reality. It could have been a project that Grossmann and others were
working on because, in another part of the letter not quoted by Jay, he asks Mattick
if he could provide the institute with the material it still lacks. In Grossmann’s
words, “We have a lot, if only on larger books; we are missing brochures, posters,
factory newspapers, photos of important personalities of the labor movement, their
letters (which we especially collect in our manuscript department)” (Grossmann
1969, p. 86). In fact, by this time, the institute had already collected a significant
mass of books and documents concerning the workers’ movement – for the library
alone, Martin Jay speaks of “over sixty thousand volumes” (Jay 1973, p. 29).
All these precious materials were almost entirely lost after the Nazis, in March
1933, “entered the building in the Senckenberganlage, then Viktoria-Allee 17, con-
fiscated it and sealed it”.10 The abrupt closure of the institute and the dark events that
followed make one realize in retrospect how hard the authors included in this vol-
ume had to fight to preserve their writings from destruction or from being scattered
into different hands in different places. Let us recall, for example, the case of Walter
Benjamin. Some of the letters he received were lost because he had to flee Berlin in
a hurry. Other papers from him were found in Israel because Benjamin had sent
them to Gershom Scholem. In Paris, where the Gestapo seized his belongings just
after he got on the last train out of the city, Benjamin had been able to give some
manuscripts to Georges Bataille. Others came to Adorno in New York. In the inter-
view conducted by Fernando Bee with Ursula Marx, the reader will not only learn
about the turbulent and difficult process of building up the Walter Benjamin Archive
but also that there are still other collections in this archive, such as those of Florens
Christian Rang or Gisèle Freund.
Even when the members of the institute were relatively safe from Nazi prosecu-
tion, as they were in the United States in the mid-1930s, their position as immi-
grants put them in constant danger. They had to hide their Marxist affinities in one
way or another to avoid being labeled communists and a threat to a country whose
mission was to fight the then Soviet Union. The various peregrinations of the
authors, moves of the institute, and the conditions of exile comprised a large part of
their writings. Those that were not simply lost were difficult to collect and unite in
a single place and archive. For a long time, this has also resulted in varying degrees
of accessibility.
Whoever undertakes to visit all the archives of the critical theorists would have
to make a long journey around the world. As the different contributions to this vol-
ume explain, after being moved to different places, most of the documents were
10
Schmid Noerr’s entire text presents a precious reconstruction of the fate of the premises and of
the documents of the institute from the Nazi period until Horkheimer’s return to Frankfurt after the
end of World War II.
progressively repatriated after World War II and centralized in Germany: in Frankfurt

am Main for Adorno, Horkheimer, and Leo Löwenthal in particular, in Berlin for
Benjamin (and for Adorno later on), and in Tübingen for Erich Fromm. But there
are some documents archived in other countries: as Philipp Lenhard shows in his
contribution, some of Pollock’s papers are in Florence, Italy. On the other side of the
Atlantic, in various places in the United States, we can find the papers of the think-
ers who did not return to Germany after the war: Marcuse, Löwenthal, Franz
Neumann, and Otto Kirchheimer, for instance.
Today, organization ranges from the complete digitization of some of the
archives – or at least the complete cataloging of the documents – to literary estates
that are not yet effectively archived. Franz Neumann’s papers, for example, are scat-
tered between the estates of Marcuse and Otto Kirchheimer. It is not so surprising
that many estates are not (fully) archived when one considers the human and finan-
cial resources needed to catalog all an author’s remaining papers. At that time, long
letters were common – approximately half of the Horkheimer-Pollock estate con-
sists of letters, for instance – and manuscripts, in the original sense of the word,
were rather the rule for books, courses, collective research projects, public interven-
tions, and so on.
There is also the question of the preparation of the archives by the authors them-
selves. Michael Schwarz, for instance, reminds us at the very beginning of his con-
tribution to this volume that at the time of his sudden death Adorno had not yet
thought about organizing his own estate. According to Schwarz, Adorno had no
archival attitude toward his own works, which include musical compositions.
Another difficulty regarding the archival work around most of these authors is
that the conditions in which the materials were preserved were not homogeneous
and were sometimes extremely poor. To understand the amount of work involved to
establish a proper archive, one need only look at Gunzelin Schmid Noerr’s chapter
in this volume as an example. Schmid Noerr, a dedicated researcher, spent 11 years
cataloguing Horkheimer’s literary estate with the support of numerous university
librarians. A separate group of about ten people took care of the inventory. In
Horkheimer’s case, the editorial work lasted more than 18 years.
This should be enough to prove that this volume is also dedicated to highlighting
the invisible work of archivists and editors, and their frequently double or triple
workload as archivists, researchers, and editors of an author’s works. We should
remember that what a researcher can do with archive material depends on the mate-
riality itself, as Olivier Voirol points out in his contribution. And such a materiality
has not only to do with the content of the authors’ estates but also with their mate-
rialization, so to speak, through the work of archivists and editors. That is why this
volume gives a voice to archivists and editors, as well as to researchers.
The question of the material media itself has been always of decisive importance
to the history of Critical Theory. In the case of Marx and Engels, we obviously have
no recordings and, for Benjamin, only a few, but we do for the authors who were
still alive after World War II, when television, film, and radio recordings became
relatively abundant and could be preserved. Thus, the critical theorists represented
in this book deliberately chose to intervene in the public sphere, taking advantage of
the various instruments available at a particular moment.
It is certainly very important to distinguish between archives that have been so
far extensively digitized or published in book format and others that still await pub-
lication. Opposite cases in this respect may be the Marx-Engels and the Horkheimer
estates on the one hand and those of Marcuse or the Institute for Social Research on
the other. But even when archives are extensively digitized, such as the Marx-Engels
estate, researching the archives is still important, as Olavo Ximenes’s chapter
clearly shows.
Given the differing current states of the archives, we tried to balance between
different objectives and aspects in the composition of this book. Readers will find
information about the content of each archive and the history of its constitution. The
various contributions present many ways in which the materials may be explored
and explain how such explorations affected or may yet affect the state of the
research. The contributors develop theoretical reflections on what it means to work
in such archives, sometimes relating their own personal experience of this work.
John Abromeit’s contribution, for example, shows the realities of archival work in
the early 1990s, what is still required today, and the difficulties faced. For example,
although he took a course on reading eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German
scripts, he and Stephan Bundschuh, another Marcuse specialist, tried in vain to deci-
pher Martin Heidegger’s handwriting in a letter to Marcuse.
This collective volume on the archives of Critical Theory is published to com-
memorate the 100th anniversary of the institute, known for its innovative and
groundbreaking interdisciplinary approach. However, despite a section devoted to
the archives of the institute, to which the various authors were attached in different
ways and at different times, the vast majority of the existing archives are those of
individual authors. This poses particular problems.
Adriano Januário’s contribution to this volume emphasizes the interdisciplinary
character of the work of the institute in the sense of collective empirical interdisci-
plinary research work. This is not always sufficiently emphasized, in our view,
when it comes to interpreting the legacy and the contributions of Critical Theory,
which are often treated in terms of individual works, of contributions of only philo-
sophical and theoretical nature, or in terms of a generic and empty label such as
“Frankfurt School.” This constant back and forth between individual and collective/
interdisciplinary works is essential to understanding both dimensions, especially
when it comes to empirical research, which is often very innovative, as Januário’s
analysis of the Gruppenexperiment (1955) clearly shows.
Another dimension to considering both individual and collective work as a whole
may be found, in our view, in a passage by Adorno that stands as the epigraph of
Dirk Braunstein and Maischa Gelhard’s contribution: “In setting up his own
archives, the subject seizes his own stock of experience as property, so making it
something wholly external to himself. Past inner life is turned into furniture just as,
conversely, every Biedermeier piece was memory made wood” (Adorno 2006,
p. 166). These words from Adorno allude to the saying – probably Jean Paul’s, he
adds – that memories are the only property no one can take from us. It is not
surprising, then, that Adorno associates such an “impotently sentimental consola-

tion” with the Biedermeier style, with that kind of bourgeois despair of “leaving
traces behind,” as Walter Benjamin said of the bourgeois form of life. The aphorism
ends with another Benjaminian touch: “it is foolish and sentimental to try to keep
the past untainted by the present’s turbid flood” (Adorno 2006, p. 167).
This book takes Adorno’s words seriously in reflecting on the archives of Critical
Theory. His message is the guiding thread of this enterprise, as it should be for any
examination of the archives of Critical Theory. Archives are not only about private
persons as private persons, if there is such a thing as a figure of privacy that corre-
sponds to its current, mostly ideological image. Archives are public facilities in
which scholars and the public can conduct research. While it is certainly “foolish
and sentimental” to try to seal them from the turbulent present, they acquire a spe-
cial objectivity when they are researched and when they are published.
This objectivity should not be misunderstood. There is always a risk that the
content of newly discovered material will be taken as the unquestionable truth about
the authors. Yet it would be wrong to be so resolute. As Inara Marin shows, referring
to the editions of Marcuse’s essays, when archival texts are published, editorial
choices are made that sometimes unintentionally influence the selection of texts and
give a different view of the author’s thinking.
When considering thinkers who have stressed the need for social theory to evolve
to better account for the present time, fixed interpretations would be misplaced. An
element of contextualization is obviously important to avoid this pitfall. In any
archival research, the question always arises as to why certain materials were not
made public: were they unfinished versions of later published work or mere drafts?
Were they avenues of thought left untouched? Was it private correspondence? Or
why, after their broadcast, were they archived, as is often the case with radio record-
ings? In the case of critical theorists, the importance of their reflections on the times
makes it impossible to take the materials discovered about them in the archives as
museum pieces. It seems more accurate to consider them as moments in evolving
thought. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr agrees with Jan Assmann in distinguishing three
dimensions of memory – individual, communicative, and cultural – and this volume
emphasizes memory’s cultural dimension.
But this is not its unique focus. As Paulo Yamawake reminds us in his contribu-
tion on Horkheimer, the critical theorists portrayed occupied different positions,
often simultaneously, in the administration of the institute, in the collective and
individual research itself, and in the personal relationships they cultivated (“the
director, methodologist, and partner”). And let us not forget those who even now
remain largely unknown and invisible, such as Juliette Favez, sometime director of
the Geneva branch of the institute, who is portrayed by Olivier Voirol in this volume
through her correspondence with Horkheimer. These different positions influence
not only the theoretical and empirical work of the authors presented here through
their archives but also the very reception of the work, the various interpretations
evolving over time according to the weight attributed to each of the positions they
occupied. They also influence their personal relationships, as shown by Peter-Erwin
Jansen and Inka Engel in the case of the lifelong friendship and intellectual
companionship between Marcuse and Löwenthal. And, one of the objectives of this
book being to highlight experiences of working with the archives, some of the con-
tributions to this volume are about sharing the individual and communicative dimen-
sions of experience.
The book aims to capture several perspectives on the archive in the same way
that critical theorists have had several relationships with it. First, some of them did
archival research themselves. This is true for Marx and Engels before the
Frankfurters, for example, and among them for Benjamin and Pollock. Second,
quite remarkably, some theorists have also reflected on the very idea of being
archived. This can be seen as another specificity of what the archiving of critical
theorists entails: their work was itself thought to be resistant to archiving, just as the
work of some artists resists museumization, so to speak. As already shown by
Adorno’s quote, critical theorists aimed to resist objectification. A good illustration
is Benjamin’s idea of the “salvation of phenomena,” according to which every docu-
ment of civilization is at the same time a document of barbarism.
In this sense, the specter of Walter Benjamin is always present. There are many
ideas to be saved, some of which we are still unaware of. Are there other possibili-
ties for the development of capitalism in Marx’s writings that we are oblivious to?
Are there possibilities that have remained hidden because of editorial choices that
favored certain materials over others? The reflections made by Antonin Wiser in his
contribution on Benjamin’s own thinking about archives and archiving, and his
position as an “anarchivist,” are essential to understanding this point.
All researchers should be aware that the first publication of previously archived
documents can change the way one looks at all the previously published texts. One
example among many is that of Adorno. Since the early twenty-first century, various
new works on Adorno have interpreted things differently, for example, Brian
O′Connor’s landmark book.11 But much remains to be done with the archival mate-
rial that are unpublished, as the chapter by Raquel Patriota and Ricardo Lira dem-
onstrates. Dirk Braunstein’s book Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy
(Braunstein 2022) is a good example of how unpublished texts can change readings:
it shows how the critique of economics was central to Adorno’s theory of society
and was not, as is generally thought, a relic of the past. Aurélia Peyrical’s contribu-
tion to this volume is also based on archival work, but from a different perspective,
highlighting the pedagogical dimension of Adorno’s thought. While pointing to the
growing number of works on Adorno and education, Peyrical draws on four radio
interviews between Adorno and Hellmut Becker that have not received much atten-
tion, in contrast to four others that are well-known thanks to their publication in the
volume Erziehung zur Mündigkeit (1971).
The publication of original documents from the archives of individual members
of the institute is an undertaking which has been growing steadily since the 1970s.
11
O’Connor 2004. Although it is also fair to say that some books before it had already pointed to
an alternative interpretation of Adorno’s work that did not presuppose a straight line and a mere
development in his thought from the Dialectic of Enlightenment on. Examples of this alternative
consideration are Eichel (1993); Borio and Danuser (1997); Nobre (1998); and Rebentisch (2003).
Critical theorists were the first to oversee the publication of their deceased col-
leagues’ unpublished writings: together with Scholem, Adorno and his wife Gretel
took care of Benjamin’s manuscripts (Benjamin 1955), while Marcuse edited vari-
ous of Neumann’s essays (Neumann 1957). Some contributors to this volume have
made efforts to edit and publish archived documents. Thanks to the long-term work
of Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, many of Max Horkheimer’s writ-
ings are available, including his complete works (the last of 19 volumes was pub-
lished in 1996) (Horkheimer 1996). In addition to the correspondence between
Löwenthal and Kracauer that he published with Alfred Schmidt (Leo and Kracauer
2003), Peter-Erwin Jansen edited six volumes of unpublished writings by Herbert
Marcuse between 1998 and 2006 and, more recently, several series of lec-
tures (Marcuse 2015, 2017). Dirk Braunstein published Adorno’s Philosophie und
Soziologie (Adorno 2011) and four volumes of his “Frankfurter Seminare” (Adorno
2021), while Michael Schwarz edited a volume of 20 lectures and speeches given by
Adorno between 1948 and 1969 (Adorno 2019). In parallel with an exhibition held
in Paris in 2011 at the Museum of Jewish Art and History, the book Walter
Benjamin’s Archive: Images, Texts, Signs (Benjamin 2007), edited by Ursula Marx,
Michael Schwarz, Gudrun Schwarz, and Erdmut Wizisla, develops Benjamin’s por-
trait by presenting various collections of all kinds of his papers (notebooks, loose
sheets, letterhead, reused papers). Together with Jaeho Kang and Graeme Gilloch,
John Abromeit recently edited Siegfried Kracauer’s Selected Writings on Media,
Propaganda, and Political Communication (2022). Finally, Philipp Lenhard is edit-
ing the complete writings of Friedrich Pollock in six volumes; two are currently
available (Pollock 2021; Pollock Forthcoming).12
Before closing this introduction, as editors of this volume, we would like to raise
some self-critical questions. One of the merits of archival research is that it brings
to light forgotten elements of history, whether individual, biographical, intellectual,
political, or even diplomatic. Certainly, each of the contributions in the volume
brings to light unknown or little-known aspects of a particular author or of the insti-
tute – who remembers, for example, the role of Juliette Favez when the institute was
in exile? More generally, who pays attention to the role of women (like Gretel
Adorno) in the creation and development of the Frankfurt School? It is also certain
that each of the proposed studies provides objective and indisputable elements that
allow us to sort out certain competing interpretations and to open the way to new
lines of thought. Nevertheless, all the research gathered in this volume reflects the
accessibility of certain archives compared to others or how the enterprise of
archiving the writings of one or another of the authors currently stands. Hence the
question, by widening the gap between theorists who are increasingly in the light
and those who remain more in the shade, are we not contributing, despite our own
12
Philipp Lenhard is also preparing a book about the history of the Institute for Social Research
from 1923 to 1973, due to be published in 2024. Let us mention here also the essays of Franz
L. Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer edited by William Scheuerman (Neumann and Kirchheimer
1996) and the complete writings of Otto Kirchheimer edited recently by Hubertus Buchstein
(Kirchheimer 2019).
intentions, to making the best-known authors (Marx, Adorno, Benjamin) even better
known, to the detriment of other members of the institute whose papers have been
less well preserved (Neumann, for instance) or who are not present in this volume
(Erich Fromm, to mention one)? We very much hope not.
This should also remind us that interpretations and research are marked by their
place and context of production. In this volume we have contributors (including
interviewees) from five different countries: 10 from the so-called Global South
(Brazil, in this case), 14 from the Global North (France, Germany, Switzerland, and
the United States). Such a combination cannot change or compensate for the unequal
exchanges within academia – to say nothing of the gender imbalance that we must
answer to in editing this volume – much less the unequal exchanges within capital-
ism more broadly. However, it may at least draw attention to these inequalities, as it
may do for the different interpretations that different contexts may produce. For
instance, in his introduction to his interview with Ursula Marx, Fernando Bee recalls
Jeanne Marie Gagnebin’s remarks on the connection between the Brazilian recep-
tion of the writings of Benjamin and the political situation of the country, which was
under a military dictatorship for most of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s.
Given all these considerations, it is clear that the overview presented in this vol-
ume cannot be comprehensive; the project of reflecting on the archives of Critical
Theory in light of the current state of research can only be a work in progress. We
hope that reading The Archives of Critical Theory will help to uncover more of the
critical theorists’ still unpublished materials.
References
Adorno, Theodor W. 1971 [2021]. Erziehung zur Mündigkeit. Vorträge und Gespräche mit Hellmut
Becker 1959 bis 1969. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 2006. Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. London and New York: Verso.
———. 2011. Philosophie und Soziologie, ed. Dirk Braunstein. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
———. 2019. Vorträge 1949–1968. Nachgelassene Schriften. Abteilung V: Vorträge und
Gespräche, ed. Michael Schwarz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 2021. Die Frankfurter Seminare. Gesammelte Sitzungsprotokolle 1949–1969. ed. Dirk
Braunstein. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Aubert, Isabelle. 2015. Habermas: Une théorie critique de la société. Paris: CNRS Éditions.
Benjamin, Walter. 1955. Schriften. Vols. 1–2, ed. Theodor Adorno, Gretel Adorno, and Friedrich
Podszus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 2007. Walter Benjamin’s Archive: Images, Texts, Signs, ed. Ursula Marx, Gudrun Schwarz,
Michael Schwarz, and Erdmut Wizisla. London: Verso.
Borio, Gianmario and Hermann Danuser. (Eds.) 1997. Im Zenit der Moderne: Die Internationalen
Ferienkurse für Neue Musike Darmstadt 1946–1966. Vols. 1-4. Freiburg: Rombach.
Braunstein, Dirk. 2022. Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy. Trans. Adam Baltner. Boston: Brill.
Corchia, Luca. 2017. Vorlass Jürgen Habermas. Korrespondenzen (1954–1994).
J. W. Goethe-Universität/Archivzentrum.
Eichel, Christine. 1993. Vom Ermatten der Avantgarde zur Vernetzung der Künste: Perspektiven
einer interdisziplinären Ästhetik im Spätwerk Adornos. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Grossmann, H. 1969. Marx, die klassische Nationalökonomie und das Problem der Dynamik.
Frankfurt am Main and Vienna: Europäische Verlagsanstalt and Europa.
Horkheimer, Max. 1996, Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 1–19, ed. Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin
Schmid Noerr. Berlin: Fischer.
Jay, Martin. 1973. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute
of Social Research, 1923–1950. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kirchheimer, Otto. 2019. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 1–6, ed. Hubertus Buchstein. Baden-
Baden: Nomos.
Kracauer, Siegfried. 2022. Selected Writings on Media, Propaganda, and Political Communication,
ed. John Abromeit, Graeme Gilloch, and Jaeho Kang. New York: Columbia University Press.
Löwenthal Leo and Siegfried Kracauer. 2003. In steter Freundschaft. Briefwechsel 1922–1966, ed.
Peter-Erwin Jansen. Lüneburg: Zu Klampen.
Lukács, Georg. 1971 [1923]. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics.
London: The Merlin Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. 2015. Herbert Marcuse’s 1974 Paris Lectures at Vincennes University: Global
Capitalism and Radical Opposition, ed. Peter-Erwin Jansen and Charles Reitz. Kansas City
and Frankfurt am Main: CreateSpace.
———. 2017. Transvaluation of Values & Radical Change. Five Lectures 1966–1976, ed. Peter-
Erwin Jansen, Sarah Surak, and Charles Reitz. Toronto: York University.
Neumann, Franz L. 1957. The Democratic and the Authoritarian State. Essays in Political and
Legal Theory, ed. and with a preface by Herbert Marcuse. Glencoe: The Free Press.
Neumann, Franz L. and Otto Kirchheimer. 1996. The Rule of Law Under Siege. Selected Essays,
ed. William Scheuerman. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Nobre, Marcos. 1998. A dialética negativa de Theodor W. Adorno: a ontologia do estado falso.
São Paulo: Iluminuras.
O’Connor, Brian. 2004. Adorno’s Negative Dialectic. Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical
Rationality. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Pollock, Friedrich. 2021. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 1–2, ed. Philipp Lenhard. Berlin: ça ira.
———. Forthcoming. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 3–6, ed. Philipp Lenhard. Berlin: ça ira.
Rebentisch, Juliane. 2003. Ästhetik der Installation. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Wiggershaus, Rolf. 2007 [1986]. The Frankfurt School. Its History, Theory and Political
Significance. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Isabelle Aubert is an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-

Sorbonne, and a member of the Institut universitaire de France. She is the author of Habermas.
Une théorie critique de la société (CNRS, 2015). She is the coeditor of Dialogues avec Habermas
(CNRS, 2018), Niklas Luhmann: Une théorie générale de la société (Editions de la Sorbonne,
2023) and Adorno: Dialectique et négativité (Vrin, 2023).
Marcos Nobre is a professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Campinas (Unicamp),

and senior researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap). He has books on
Adorno, Lukács, Hegel, and on Critical Theory more broadly. In 2022, Springer published his
Limits of Democracy: From the June 2013 Uprisings in Brazil to the Bolsonaro Government.
Part II
Marx and Engels Archive
Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass:
Archive, Editions, and Theoretical
Implications
Olavo Ximenes
1 Introduction
Marxist scholarship is becoming gradually more philologically oriented, to the

extent that Marx and Engels are now considered classic authors (Neuhaus 2013).
Consequently, academic reception and research relate to praxis increasingly indi-
rectly. For this reason, I am proposing to separate, at least analytically, Marxism’s
broader reception from the academic reception. The difference between reception
and academic research appears, for instance, in Pagel’s Der Einzige und die
Deutsche Ideology (The Unique and the German Ideology) (Pagel 2020) where he
argues in his introduction (pp. 1–42) that his approach and philological interpreta-
tion and reconstruction of Marx and Engels’s key concepts would allow him to
bypass the long history of “The German Ideology’s” broader reception. Other
examples of how this difference appears in the secondary literature can be found in
Johnson’s articles (2019, 2022). However, in the latter case, Johnson uses a philo-
logical approach to reevaluate the historical reception of “The German Ideology”.
In any event, the history of Marxism’s genesis as a theoretical and political field
and that of the different published versions of Marx and Engels’s works (MEGA-1,
MEGA-2, MEW and MECW) (Marx & Engels 1975) relies on this distinction; its
reception both by the wider public and by academia shapes the field of Marxism. I
argue that there are at least four intertwined aspects that Marx and Engels scholars
and the general public must keep in mind while reading their work:
O. Ximenes (*)
Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), São Paulo, Brazil

Switzerland AG 2023
18 O. Ximenes
• Marx and Engels’s reception in a broad sense, which for the most part was con-
nected to pressing issues of praxis.
• The academic reception, which is increasingly more philologically oriented and
consequently less connected to praxis.
• The history of publishing Marx and Engels’s oeuvre.
• Access to the Marx-Engels-Nachlass.1
This background informs the sections of this essay to come. Precisely for that rea-
son, I would like to acknowledge the very important work that has been carried out by
the editors associated with the MEGA-2 project,2 for it is mainly they who research the
Marx-Engels-Nachlass. However, one could ask: what relevance does such research
hold for the field of Marxism?3 One could argue that it is unlikely anything could still
be found that has not already been published in one of its various forms. This objection
seems sound, except for some overlooked facts. The MEW edition was intended as a
study edition, not a comprehensive research edition (Draper 1985, appendix II).4 That
edition bore marks of politically and ideologically oriented commentaries, particularly
in its prefaces and notes.5 Another very different kind of problem regarding MEW
editions is how “The German Ideology” and Das Kapital were published (Carver and
Blank 2014a; Anderson 2010). As for the MEGA,6 all 114 volumes (Sperl 2005,
pp. 344–345) were due to be published by the 2020s, bringing the project to a close;
however, at the time of writing, its conclusion is still open to question.7
1
Among specialist scholars, it is customary to use the German term Marx-Engels-Nachlass to refer
to Marx and Engels’s literary estate. There is a unique German word to describe the notion of
preservation (of the Nachlass) and its transmission: Überlieferung.
2
See Rojahn (2001) for a brief recollection of the Marx-Engels-Nachlass’s history and the history
of its publication.
3
For a dated but historically interesting description of Marx-Engels research centers until 1985, see
Draper (1985, Appendix IV).
4
MEW is a selection of Marx and Engels’s works, correspondence, and some manuscripts that
comprises about 44 volumes. They are known for their famous blue hardcovers. I must express my
thanks to Prof. Dr. Rolf Hecker for indicating to me that, contrary to what I believed, the MEW
project is not halted. New volumes with new prefaces are still being published by the Dietz and
Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. For more information, see: https://marxforschung.de/mew/, https://
marxforschung.de/mew_2/, https://dietzberlin.de/reihe/mew/, and https://www.rosalux.de/doku-
mentation/id/14064/ (Accessed 5 January, 2023).
5
Draper also addresses MEW’s politically motivated prefaces and notes (1985, p. 209). Years later,
Sperl (2005, p. 351) would also criticize the editorial prefaces and the Apparat, which consisted
mainly of German translations of the same texts in the second edition of the Russian Socinenija
(Hubmann 2007). However, in the same vein, Draper argued that the overall outcome of the texts
the MEW were positive. For another critical approach to MEW, see Hubmann (2007), and for an
analysis of MECW, see Anderson (2010, Appendix).
6
For a critical appraisal of the second section of MEGA, finished in 2012, see Van der Linden and
Hubmann (2018).
7
Some volumes of the third and fourth section will be published only in a digital format. See
https://www.bbaw.de/forschung/marx-engels-gesamtausgabe (accessed 5 September 2022). Each
volume published in MEGA-2 comprehends two books: the first contains the primary text, which
is faithfully reproduced; the second book is the Apparat, with editorial indications for variations,
corrections, explanations, and miscellaneous material.
Publishing Marx-Engels-Nachlass: Archive, Editions, and Theoretical Implications 19
To answer in detail the question of what remains to be found in the Marx-Engels-

Nachlass, I would have to delve into a series of interconnected issues, which would
far exceed the scope of this text. For instance, I would need to provide an account of
how the transmission and preservation (Überlieferung) of the Marx-Engels-
Nachlass8 was carried out (Mayer 1966; Hecker 1996); then, I would have to tell the
story of how the Marx-Engels-Nachlass, originally under the protection of the
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), was sold to the International Institute
of Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam; and, last but not least, it would be necessary
to explain the story behind the general access to Marx and Engels’s works and
manuscripts through their different forms of publishing. Many hours of study have
been dedicated to each of these topics, and, consequently, innumerable articles,
book chapters, notes, and conferences have been published (Rubel 1974; Hundt
2000; Vollgraf et al. 1997, 2001; Hecker et al. 2000; Sgro’ 2016).9 It is certainly
impossible to encompass all that work here; therefore, before I venture into some
general answers to such difficult topics, I think it is important to start with some
basic facts regarding the Marx-Engels-Nachlass and its foundations.
2 The Marx-Engels-Nachlass
Two-thirds of the estate is currently housed in the IISG in Amsterdam, which began
collecting this material in 1938.10 Much of the remaining material is located in
Russia, at the Russian State Archives of Socio-Political History (RGASPI). Here
one can find part of the Marx-Engels correspondence,11 a draft of the preface to
“The German Ideology” (1845–1847), as well as parts of the Grundrisse
(1857–1858) and other economic manuscripts. In the Russian archive, in addition to
original materials, there is a vast trove of photocopies; notably, this includes copies
of the manuscripts of “The German Ideology” made by David Borisovič Rjazanov
8
Hecker’s 1996 paper included some new details about the failed Russian attempt to buy the Marx-
Engels-Nachlass from the exiled SPD. A new version has now been published (Hecker 2021). For
the history of the allegedly stolen “economic manuscripts,” see Mis’kevic (2013) and Rojahn
(2013). For how Rjazanov came into possession of The German Ideology’s “Vorrede”, see
Rjazanov (1971 [1928], p. 217). For a brief account about Rjazanov’s background and later arrest
on Stalin’s orders, see Rokitjanskij (1993). For a map of the line of possession of Marx and
Engels’s literary estate, see Hecker (1999, p. 234; and Fig. 1). A very short version of the history
of the Nachlass can be found in Hecker (1999, pp. 231–233).
9
All the published volumes of the Beiträge zur Marx-Engels-Forschung (Neue Folge) are filled
with very important articles. One should also monitor the Wissenschaftliche Mitteilungen edited by
Berliner Verein zur Föderung der MEGA-Edition e.V.
10
For a complete overview of the Marx-Engels-Nachlass as held by the IISG, visit: https://hdl.
handle.net/10622/ARCH00860
11
According to the IISG website, part of the Marx-Engels correspondence that was in the posses-
sion of the Longuet family until the 1950s was later moved to the RGASPI.
20 O. Ximenes
at the beginning of the twentieth century, from the originals then in the possession
of the SPD.12
Fortunately, with the advent of the internet and the popularization of digitization,
it is no longer necessary to go in person to the IISG headquarters in Amsterdam to
consult the original manuscripts of Marx and Engels.13 The institute makes almost
all its services available on its official website, and, if a manuscript has not yet been
digitized, it is even possible to ask for a digital copy.14 Thus, any researcher can
potentially consult the manuscript in its authentic form when necessary.15
To summarize, the Marx-Engels-Nachlass – cataloged and classified – is spread
mainly between two different institutions, of which only one grants virtual access to
Marx and Engels’s collected manuscripts (see Fig. 1 for a graphic overview of the
path of Marx-Engels-Nachlass). It is also necessary to note that the availability of
digital copies of manuscripts, letters, and other documents only partially solves the
accessibility problem. An arbitrary list of the difficulties involved in dealing with
these historical documents encompasses the following:
• A reasonable command of the German language and, more specifically, of
nineteenth-century written German is essential.16 The orthography and the use of
commas, among other things, changed during the twentieth century. From this
point of view, the researcher will also need to know how to decipher the German
Gothic script used at the time.
• The fragmentary state of manuscripts, disfigured by time and use, requires great
effort and, often, guesswork on the part of the reader. In addition, there are fre-
quent abbreviations of definite and indefinite articles, pronouns, and proper
names, and nicknames are even used. In this aspect, especially when dealing
with letters, newspaper articles, or occasional texts, it is necessary to have at least
a basic knowledge of the historical context (that precise information is provided
by the working groups of MEGA in each MEGA volume).
• Finally, Marx’s poor penmanship is infamous, and it is indeed very difficult to
decipher.17
12
According to Rokitjanskij (1993), Rjazanov collected an archive of more than 15,000 documents
and 175,000 copies.
13
The Marx-Engels-Nachlass as it is preserved in the IISG extends to 5.6 meters; its access is not
restricted, and about 2678 items are available online. The archive was digitized between 2012 and
2016. See https://hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH00860 (accessed on September 4, 2022).
14
Unfortunately, in the case of RGASPI website, it appears to be entirely in Russian. I do not know
if it is possible to consult the collection virtually. See http://rgaspi.org/
15
An interesting use of IISG’s online collection and its rather collaborative attitude towards
demands can be consulted in both articles by Dr. Sarah Johnson (2019 and 2022). For instance,
Johnson (2019) used some of The German Ideology’s digitized manuscripts to provide comple-
mentary information to the critical Apparat. Even if the use of such digitized manuscripts was not
the core of her article, it is still remarkable she was able to refer to that material to enrich the story
of the complex process of writing and then publishing the manuscripts of “The German Ideology.”
16
It should also be noted that Marx and Engels wrote in several languages (e.g., German, English,
French, and classical Latin and Greek), and they often mixed those languages together in the same
document.
17
See, for instance, Stern & Wolf (1972, pp. 176–184).
Private collection
Karl Marx (Letters/Books with
(-1883†) dedication among
other things)
Laura/ Jenny/ Eleanor

Paul Charles /
Lafargue Longuet Edward
Aveling Friedrich Engels
(-1895†)
Engels’ Kautsky
Family
SPD Archive Bernstein
and Library
Rjazanov/Wien in
Berlin Nikolaevskij
Kriger
Prussian Secret
State Archives
Marx-Engels Berlin-Dahlem
Copenhagen
Institute
Moscow
Donations,
purchases, and
sales
(auctions)
Marx-Engels- International
Lenin Institute of
Institute Social History -
Amsterdam
Institute of
Marxism-
Leninism in the
Central
Institute of Committee of
Marxism- SED
Leninism in the
Central England
Committee of
CPSU
Party Archiv
Party
Foundation
and Mass
org.
(SAPMO)
Russian Center
for IISG
Conservation Private
Longuet Amsterdam
and Research collection
Paris Karl Marx and/or
Moscow
House in libraries and
Trier Archives, e.g.,
in Japan.
Russian State Archive of

Archive of social
Socio-Political History
democracy
Friedrich-Ebert
Foundation © Rolf Hecker, 1999 (2022)
Translated by Olavo
Ximenes
Fig. 1 The path of Marx-Engels-Nachlass (simplified exposition)
Once these barriers have been overcome, one fundamental piece of information is
still missing: after all, what constitutes Marx and Engels’s literary estate, which for
the most part is kept by the IISG? The archive brings together manuscripts, about
200 notebooks of excerpts and notes, letters from and to Marx, and even books that
Marx commented on. The collection at the IISG also contains Marx and Engels’s
personal documents and official records, including documents and correspondence
from Marx’s wife Jenny. Documents from the rest of the Marx family can also be
22 O. Ximenes
found in the archive, as can, of course, the manuscripts, notebooks, and letters to and
from Engels. All these items were inventoried in categories (from A to S, receiving
their own number within each category).18 It is possible to consult the numerous
notebooks of excerpts, notebooks, and studies of Marx, as well as preparatory mate-
rials for works such as Das Kapital. As Hecker (1999, p. 224) shows, Marx’s note-
books indicate that his range of interests encompassed, among other fields, history,
philosophy, geology, mineralogy, and ethnology. It is also particularly interesting to
look at the material grouped under the editorial title “The German Ideology”.19
Much of the aforementioned material has, in fact, already been published in
MEGA-2, and some are still only available as an original manuscript in the collection.
There is another way to understand this rich archive, which is to consider the four
sections of MEGA-2.20 The first section comprises Marx’s and Engels’s published
and unpublished writings on economics, politics, and history, as well as newspaper
and conference articles (including “The German Ideology” and The Holy Family);
the second section is dedicated to everything related to the book project Das Kapital,
including the Grundrisse.21 The third section brings together all of Marx and
Engels’s correspondence (Hubmann 2020b)22; and finally, the fourth section covers
notebooks and studies, excerpts, and diverse marginalia from Marx and Engels’s pens.
Here it is important to make a quick detour. Evidently, the MEGA edition, its
sections, and what has been and will be published from the archive in each section
are a byproduct of a series of decisions and editorial guidelines. For that reason, it
is necessary to take a step back to the 1990s, when the MEGA-2 project was resumed
after the USSR stopped supporting it.23 The overall problem of a Gesamtausgabe
project consists mainly in how to publish the Marx-Engels-Nachlass, which
18
For a detailed inventory of the archive, see the IISG website. It should, however, be noted that the
most recent inventory of the archive was carried out between 1959 and 1965 with funding by the
Ford Foundation. At that time it was divided into two volumes: volume I (part A to E) for Marx and
volume II (parts H to M) for Engels. See the appendices in https://hdl.handle.net/10622/
ARCH00860
19
The two first inventory lists of the Marx-Engels-Nachlass can be consulted in Mayer (1966,
pp. 168–189). Both lists have their intrinsic historical value, as for, among other things, one can see
that the so-called “The German Ideology” manuscripts were listed in very different positions.
Another point of historical interest is that the latter list shows Marx’s missing economic manu-
scripts, which were sold by Dr. Marek Kriger to the Soviets.
20
See also Internationale Marx-Engels-Stiftung (n.d.).
21
For a critical appraise of the MEGA and an account of the criticism of its second section (dedi-
cated to The Capital and preparing works), see Marxhausen (2006). For an older criticism of the
second section of MEGA-1, which was copied by MEGA-2, see Veller (2001 [1936], p. 281). For
an encompassing history of MEGA, see Hecker et al. (2018).
22
Hubmann (2020b, p. 1274) informs us that the majority of the Marx/Engels correspondence is
being stored in the RGASPI in Moscow. Interestingly, the first MEGA did not plan to edit the cor-
respondence from third parties (Hubmann 2020b, p. 1275). That is why the correspondence as
edited in MEW was of importance. Lastly, the first MEGA was published without an all-
encompassing planning; see Sperl (2005, pp. 347–8).
23
The MEGA-1 was abandoned in the 1940s. The new MEGA-2 was launched in the 1970s, but
with the fall of the USSR at the end of the 1980s, it was once again left without funding.
consists mainly of unfinished materials (Grandjonc and Rojahn 1996, p. 65). A dif-
ferent set of issues, linked with the more prosaic one of funding, concerned the ways
in which the scope of MEGA-2 could be reduced according to strict scientific rea-
soning. It is worth remembering – as Grandjonc and Rojahn (1996) did – that the
first MEW should not have bypassed the number of volumes of the complete works
of Lenin; still, a curtailment was the order of the day. Those issues have now been
resolved: the new 1993 Editionsrichtlinien (editorial guidelines) (Grandjonc and
Rojahn 1996, p. 63) should provide the editors with enough scientific criteria for
curtailment of the new volumes of MEGA-2. By describing the new plan for
MEGA’s four sections (pp. 66–78), the authors also made explicit mention of parts
of the Nachlass that could be left out of the published volumes, which underlines
that one must not only be aware of what goes into MEGA volumes but also of what
may have been left out. A closer look at Grandjonc and Rojahn’s article is of great
help to understand the countless editorial choices made when compiling MEGA.
Let us leave aside, for the moment, the inherent editorial choices. It is not diffi-
cult to imagine that Marx and Engels’s literary estate, the access to it, and, conse-
quently, its publication were and are of paramount importance to forming a correct
and historically accurate understanding of their contributions. For example, the
publication and dissemination of Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
and “The German Ideology” in the 1930s, as well as Grundrisse in the 1940s,24
completely changed the reception of the authors’ work (Hobsbawm 1978, p. 366).
More recently still, the full publication of the manuscripts of “The German
Ideology,” published within the scope of MEGA-2 I/5 (Marx and Engels 2017), is
faithful to the text and philologically accurate, promising to shake the Marxist
reception of historical materialism, in addition to proving wrong the almost century-
old reception of that so-called work (Pagel 2020, pp. 1–42).25
There are specialists in dealing with the Marx-Engels-Nachlass, organized into
MEGA working groups, spread internationally, including in the United States,
Russia, Germany, and Japan.26 The MEGA project, in its turn, is linked to different
institutions: the International Marx-Engels Foundation (IMES); the IISG; the
RGASPI; and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW), at last
24
All these titles were later editorial attributions, and they are therefore not present in the manu-
scripts’ corpus. For instance, regarding the Grundrisse, there were, at the time of is publishing, a
handful of possible editorial titles. The famous title Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie
was, in fact, a late decision of its editor, Paul Veller. For a list of possible titles for the Notebooks
of 1857–8, see Vasina (2011, p. 39). In fact, the Grundrisse title problems influenced how it was
first edited and its subsequent reception, but to delve into that issue would require an entirely dif-
ferent essay. In the case of “The German Ideology,” it is particularly difficult to summarize the
problems concerning the traditional use of “The German Ideology” as a title to a supposed work.
For a brief account of these problems, I strongly recommend Hubmann and Pagel (2018).
25
Pagel (2020, Einleitung) argues that his manuscript-based approach could allow him to bypass
the reception regarding the manuscripts to “The German Ideology” and its relation to Max Stirner.
26
MEGA’s third and fourth sections were divided between groups in Moscow and Berlin (Grandjonc
and Rojahn 1996, p. 64). Grandjonc and Rojahn also provide a series of appendices, detailing how
the workload of the MEGA was allocated at the time across an international network of scholars.
24 O. Ximenes
financed indirectly by the German state.27 The working groups, which gather the
material cataloged in the IISG and RGASPI collections, are responsible for publish-
ing Marx and Engels’s letters, notebooks, and unpublished materials as faithfully as
possible, following the editorial guidelines.28 Current editions of MEGA are accom-
panied by extensive introductory material on the edited text, an accurate description
of the physical condition of the material, and the history of the transmission and
preservation (Überlieferung) of these texts. In a way, the editors, as well as the other
researchers in the MEGA working groups, make a bridge between the material in
the archive and Marx and Engels scholars. They are the ones who overcome the
numerous barriers to access that I mentioned earlier. It is they who, by trade, read,
decipher, and prepare for publication each item of text, contextualizing each item
historically for a wider audience.
This means that there is intense, interesting, and current research into the Marx-
Engels-Nachlass, and, moreover, it seems to be confined primarily to a group of
specialists who have all the necessary knowledge to deal with and to decipher the
manuscripts. However, the question of what relevance the Marx-Engels-Nachlass
has for the field of Marxism when answered in these terms seems to be of little inter-
est either to specialists – who know how the editorial process of the complete works
of Marx and Engels operates – or to the wider public, who do not have the necessary
technical knowledge to deal with the collection, relying mainly on study editions.
However, appearances can be deceiving, and our topic is not yet done. There are still
two more aspects to cover.
“The German Ideology” and Researching the Nachlass:

2.1
A Brief Account
It is theoretically possible to independently decipher and even edit manuscripts

from the Marx-Engels Archive, even those that have already been published either
in MEW or MEGA. Thus, it is possible to create one’s own versions of established
texts without necessarily relying on the editorial choices either of MEGA or of
27
See Union der Deutschen Akademien der Wissenschaften (2018/19). See also: https://mega.
bbaw.de/de/projektbeschreibung. First, after a meeting in 1989, the IISG and the Karl-Marx-Haus
(which at the time was not only a museum but also a research center under the Friedrich Ebert
Foundation) launched a new institution – the IMES in 1990. Two years later the MEGA project
was joined by the BBAW, which granted it the access to Germany’s Akademienprogramm des
Bundes und der Länder.
28
To my knowledge, one of the first articles about the then new plan for MEGA-2 and its new
guidelines is Grandjonc and Rojahn (1996). Reading this article, the first striking thing is that the
1990 MEGA planning, as laid down by Grandjonc and Rojahn, has been pretty much followed to
the letter, with exception made for the more recent publication of volumes in a digital format.
According to Grandjonc and Rojahn (1996, p. 63), until 1990 and under Russian/Soviet adminis-
tration, 43 volumes of MEGA-2 were released, and in 1991/1992, 4 more volumes, which had
already been prepared by the Russians, were also made available to the public.
MEW.29 The most emblematic case of this happening concerns “The German
Ideology.”30 The first complete edition of these manuscripts appeared in the first
version of MEGA-1 in 1932,31 when the project was being overseen by the Soviets.
At the time, most of the estate was stored by the SPD, which meant that the first
MEGA edition of those manuscripts was only possible because Rjazanov was
allowed to photocopy the Nachlass in Berlin. It follows that much of what was pub-
lished in MEGA-1 was edited from those copies – their editorial work was not based
on the original manuscripts.32 In that same year, Landshut and Mayer independently
and autonomously published their own version of “The German Ideology” (in Marx
1932a), based on the manuscripts in Berlin. See also Marx (1932b) where Landshut
and Mayer provide a very brief account of their work in the SPD Archive. Their
version, although it contained similarities to the MEGA-1 I/5, was a wholly differ-
ent creature. Between 1937 and 1938, a French translation of Landshut and Mayer’s
edition of “The German Ideology” (Marx 1937, 1938) appeared in Paris, which
included other manuscripts33 from the SPD archive. To some extent, this version
was a new and different edition of this material. A few decades later in 1974, again
autonomously and independently, a version of “The German Ideology” appeared in
Japan, published by Wataru Hiromatsu. In 2019, after the publication of MEGA-2
I/5 (Marx and Engels 2017), a group of Sino-Japanese researchers, using both the
edited material in the MEGA-2 I/5 and the manuscripts in the archive, launched an
online and interactive version of the first part of “The German Ideology,” presenting
and editing the text in a completely original form.34
29
IISG owns the rights to the manuscripts. On their website, it is stated that access to the archive is
free of charge, as long as that the use of the manuscripts does not affect the interests of the MEGA-2
project. Each published edition has its own copyright policy. See Appendices, “Zugänglichkeit”,
on: https://search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/ARCH00860
30
For a brief recollection of the history behind “The German Ideology”, see Hubmann (2020a,
pp. 868–870).
31
Here is not the place to revisit the story behind the first attempt in a complete work of Marx and
Engels. For that information, see Vollgraf et al. (2001, 2010) and Sperl (2005). A very brief account
by Hecker (1996, p. 5) informs us that 21 volumes would be released in the first section (Work,
Articles); 13 volumes would form the second section (Das Kapital and preparatory works); 10
more volumes would constitute the third section (Correspondence); and 2 more the last section
(Register). Hecker also tells that until World War II, 13 volumes of MEGA-1, both full and partial,
were published in addition to Engels’s Anti-Dühring and Dialectic of Nature and Marx’s
Grundrisse. These three last volumes were published outside the official MEGA-1 listing.
32
For example, small text losses in the manuscript could be recovered by comparing the original
currently preserved in the IISG and the photocopies still available in Moscow.
33
The French edition published The Leipzig Council and “Saint Bruno,” manuscripts which were
left out of the Landshut and Mayer’s edition. This is a small testimony to the editorial amalgama-
tion of “The German Ideology” book.
34
See http://www.online-dif.com/index.html. There is also another version (or translation) of the
first part of “The German Ideology” that I want to register here. In 2014, Carver and Blank (2014b)
translated and published “I. Feuerbach” based on texts already edited in the Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch
2003 (Marx et al., 2004.). I, personally, cannot determine whether Carver and Blank’s version fills
the criteria to be considered an independent edition or if it is simply a translation. In any case,
26 O. Ximenes
Meanwhile, two different events occurred that demonstrate the importance of

archival work. In the 1960s, Siegfried Bahne discovered unpublished handwritten
sheets belonging to the German Ideology project in a folder that belonged to Eduard
Bernstein. Bernstein was one of the first to publish parts of the “III. Saint Max” (of
“The German Ideology”). Bahne’s discovery shed light on the level of bias in the
ongoing editions, which contrived an (un)finished “work” out of a collection of
documents and manuscripts35 that were, in fact, composed over a long period of
time and for changing purposes. Years later, another remarkable thing happened:
during the preparation of the first two volumes of Marx and Engels’s correspon-
dence (comprising the letters up to December, 1848), within the framework of the
new MEGA-2 (which was launched at the end of the 1960s, beginning of the 1970s),
Galina Golovina (1979) also made a surprising discovery about the German
Ideology manuscripts: they were written for a quarterly magazine and not, as almost
universally supposed, for a book. In fact, the book form of the manuscripts was an
editorial amalgamation from the 1920s. Golovina’s thesis went unnoticed for a long
time,36 but later, in the new MEGA-2 I/5 edition of the manuscripts to “The German
Ideology” (Marx and Engels 2017), it would be proven absolutely correct.
Those discoveries led to a new approach to “The German Ideology,” as one can
see in the MEGA-2 I/5 (Hubmann and Pagel 2018). For instance, we now know that
the so-called chapter “I. Feuerbach” was pieced together from different sources.
Marx and Engels did not write any such chapter at that time. Indeed, most of its
contents originate in “III. Saint Max” and “II. Saint Bruno,” which raise another
fact: Marx and Engels’s goal was originally to criticize Max Stirner, not Feuerbach.
It was a relatively late decision to separate some parts of Bauer’s and Stirner’s man-
uscripts in order to later compose – from those sources – a new chapter or a new
article. Last, but not least, the term “historical materialism” does not exist in the
manuscripts, and Marx and Engels’s own concept of history and critique of ideol-
ogy was a byproduct of their criticism of Bauer and Stirner. This means that “ideol-
ogy” as a critical weapon and Marx and Engels’s conception of history were not
starting points in the manuscripts themselves – they were a product of Marx and
Engels’s criticism.
In both Bahne’s and Golovina’s cases, dealing with the archive prompted a series
of editorial changes and opened potential avenues to new interpretations of that
period of Marx and Engels’s cooperation. This is just one small example of the
complex situation regarding archival work, its theoretical implications, and its pub-
lishing forms.
Carver and Blank’s acknowledgments mention that they based their work on that
Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch.
35
The new manuscripts prompted new editions of “The German Ideology.” For the long version of
this long history, see “Introduction” of MEGA-2 I/5 and the book by Pagel (2020), particularly the
introduction and the chapters dedicated to “The German Ideology.”
36
For that point, see the interview with Hubmann and Pagel (2022, p. 51–56).
2.2 Reading Marx Today: The Nachlass

and a Scientific Revolution
There is still a potentially rich field of exploration in the Marx-Engels-Nachlass as

discussed above, even if mediated by MEGA-2 and other editions. The larger issue
at hand is the often overlooked fact that Marxism was politically and theoretically
constituted before there was an edited corpus of works by its founders (Musto 2007,
p. 485).37 For this precise reason, the successive generations38 of editors of the
Marx-Engels-Nachlass played key roles in opening the field to new possibilities for
the reading and interpretation of Marx and Engels’s achievements, as by doing that
editorial work, they were ideally placed to publish new texts or manuscripts.
Whether they were up to the task and if they failed the wider public in the cases of
“The German Ideology,” the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and
other instances are issues that I will not address here.39 The underlying fact remains
that through their editorial work it was possible to create (sometimes, apocryphally)
a Marxist theory40 and, in many cases, to popularize Marx and Engels’s oeuvre. I
believe, although I cannot prove it, that some previous MEW editions and perhaps
even some of MEGA in its Soviet version were inspired by the political goals that,
to some extent, may have prejudiced the very editions of some volumes that were
published with a politically motivated, critical Apparat (Hubmann 2007; Anderson
2010), which consequently prejudiced the reception of some manuscripts.
Many Marxists, such as Marcello Musto (2007, p. 447), have attested that Marx
and Engels published relatively little during their lifetime – barring some
37
For an overall view of the term “Marxist” and how the theory behind it began to be spread, it is
worth reading Haupt (1978) and Andreucci (1979).
38
Hundt (2000, pp. 11–13), in his memorable tribute to the editors Rolf Dublek and Richard Sperl,
pinpoints four generations of Marx-Engels-Nachlass editors. The first generation was born from
labor movements and left-wing organizations and parties. This generation knew Marx and Engels
or, at least, Marx’s daughters personally. Among them were names like Kautsky, Bebel, Mehring,
and Rjazanov. They independently edited the archive; the prospect of a Werke or a Gesamtausgabe
was mainly a dream. The second generation consisted of the professional editors of MEGA-1, to
cite just a very few: Rjazanov, Adorastkii, and Paul Weller (who were responsible for editing the
Grundrisse). The following generations are MEGA-2’s Soviet team and, finally, the current editors
of the MEGA-2, which was resumed in the 1990s. According to Hobsbawm (1978, p. 363), what
Hundt later called the second generation was not directly influenced by Engels’s judgment of his
and Marx’s achievements.
39
I do not write this essay to assign blame or praise, especially of the editorial work done specially
in MEW or in the MEGA. In fact, for the most part, the editors worked under political surveillance,
and so the question is not about individual blame. As far as I am concerned, I do think that the
judgment of Draper, Sperl, Hubmann, and many others on that issue can be trusted. The two most
famous cases of unreliable editions of the Nachlass are precisely “The German Ideology” and the
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. In the case of MEW, besides the problem with
“The German Ideology,” the criticism was mainly that this edition did not make available all the
manuscripts of Das Kapital and others (Anderson 2010, appendix).
40
As is the case of “The German Ideology,” which was produced to be a fundamental work of
historical materialism.
28 O. Ximenes
well-known exceptions, e.g., their newspaper contributions – given the extent of

their archive. Some works or books considered fundamental to Marxist theory were,
in general, posthumously published, including Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844, “The German Ideology,” the Grundrisse, and even the last two
volumes of Das Kapital (Hobsbawm 1978; Fineschi 1999, 2008).
In the last part of this essay, I argue that the access to Marx’s manuscripts – when
reliable or philologically accurate – led to a “true revolution” (Fineschi 1999,
pp. 199–200) in how those theoretical achievements can be interpreted (Johnson
2019, 2022; Pagel 2020). Even the notorious debate, much in vogue in the 1960s,
regarding the difference between a young Marx and a mature one relies on access
(be it through translations or direct reading of a German edition) to the Marx-
Engels-Nachlass. In fact, the increasing accessibility and the new critical editions
(mainly the post-1990 MEGA-2) shed new light on Marx and Engels’s overall intel-
lectual output. This does not mean that we should ignore the previous reception but
rather reappraise it. The most acute formulation of new issues facing Marxist schol-
ars is by Fineschi (1999, pp. 199–200), who speaks of MEGA’s achievements since
1975 as a true “scientific revolution.” Similarly, in Musto’s (2020) view, MEGA-2
presents a new “profile” of Marx, because MEGA’s volumes (sections II and IV in
particular) allow a new reception of Marx that is no longer overshadowed by Soviet
socialism.
As is now clear, such a “scientific revolution” is now possible because the public
has been gradually granted broader access to Marx and Engels’s manuscripts (espe-
cially for “The German Ideology”, the economic manuscripts of the MEGA’s sec-
ond section, and Marx’s notebooks of the fourth section41). This situation even
presents the question of what kind of manuscripts, notebooks, and works should be
considered a part of the Marxian oeuvre. To some degree, Hundt (1993) is right to
call the Marxian oeuvre a Werk im Werden (a work in development), as, so he argues,
on one hand, many wrong interpretations of Marx’s achievements can be diluted by
a broader access to Marx’s own oeuvre; on the other, one must uphold the notion of
unity in the Marx-Engels-Nachlass.
Such discussion is not new. Veller (2001 [1936], pp. 279–291), who was not only
responsible for publishing the Grundrisse, despite Stalin, but also for publishing it
with an appendix volume with notebooks, argued in the 1920s and 1930s that the
Grundrisse and other economic manuscripts could only be correctly understood
when read together with Marx’s notebooks and Books of Crisis, because Marx, in
many instances, copied material directly from his notebooks. In his view, it was a
mistake for MEGA-1 to not publish all the notebooks. Fortunately for us, this mis-
take was addressed in MEGA-2’s fourth section, dedicated entirely to marginalia,
excerpts, and notebooks.
41
Among many other notebooks that are now available are the Paris Notebooks (MEGA-2 IV/3),
the Manchester Notebook (MEGA-2 IV/4–5), and Marx’s notebooks on the crisis of 1857
(MEGA-2 IV/14). For an analysis of the Manchester Notebooks, see Bohlender (2018). For a
dated, but still valuable, overview of Marx’s notebooks, see Rubel (1974, pp. 301–359).
2.3 Conclusion
The new MEGA-2, as many others have already testified, continues to effect a true
revolution in the reception of Marxism.42 The relatively new, completed Part II (con-
cerning Das Kapital) provides new insight into how mature Marxist theory could
have been developed. The true, deconstructed version of “The German Ideology” is
presented in the MEGA-2 I/5; for now one can access its manuscripts without the
almost century-old sedimented layers of reception and interpretations, which had
formed a true palimpsest. The MEGA-2 has rendered the manuscripts in their
authentic form. In addition, the access to the Marx-Engels-Nachlass opens the field
to potential new editions and interpretations of those manuscripts. The different
forms of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 in MEGA are also of
real importance, as they provide a chronological account of its composition by
Marx. More evidence of the relevance of the MEGA and the work in the archive is
that even before the post-1990 new version, the MEGA-2 III/8 (1990) was able to
correct the dates over which the first notebook of the Grundrisse was written
(January 1857, not October 1857 as it is stated in MEGA-2 II/1 from 1976 and
1981).43 This was made possible by the editing work on Marx and Engels’s corre-
spondence of the period (1856–1858). Finally, the new MEGA-2, by editing the
Marx-Engels-Nachlass, has been providing a large public with access to Marx’s
notebooks. There is a very long-running discussion about the place that such note-
books have in the Marxian oeuvre and its interpretation. For some scholars, those
notebooks are to be taken as wholly a part of Marxist oeuvre (Hundt 1993; Veller
2001 [1934]). However, the fact remains simple: the access to these notebooks
grants us an inside view on Marx’s “way of doing research” (or the famous
Forschungsweise).
Ultimately, the history of Marxism (both as a theory and as political movement)
depends to some degree on the history of the publishing of Marx and Engels’s
works, letters, and manuscripts, which in turn depends greatly on the many research-
ers that delve into the Marx-Engels-Nachlass. Considering that MEGA-2 has not
yet come to an end, one suspects that a variety of novelties are still to surface in the
MEGA volumes to come.
42
Perhaps a grimmer vision of this can be found in Kurz (2018, p. 81), where he wonders if the new
evidence (and editions) that could render Marx’s theory more problematic would lead to a revision
of the interpretations done so far. A more optimistic view regarding the resumption of MEGA-2,
which followed strict academic criteria and, consequently, was supposedly immune to political
motivations, see Neuhaus (2013).
43
MEGA was able to correct itself on the go. In 1976 and 1981 (see Marx, 1976 and 1981), the
Grundrisse was published under MEGA-2. As it can be consulted both in the “Einleitung” and in
the Apparat, it was said that Marx began working in these notebooks mainly from October 1857
onwards. Ten years later, as one can read in the “Einleitung” in Marx & Engels (1990, Einleitung,
22*–24*), the MEGA corrected itself by figuring out an earlier and more precise beginning to the
Grundrisse.
30 O. Ximenes
After reading this paper, one could still be puzzled as to why the publishing for-
mat should matter at all for Marxist scholars and the general public. However, that
question is badly formulated from the start. The publishing format continues to
influence the study and interpretation of Marx and Engels’s ideas because, and this
cannot be stressed too much, a great deal of their literary estate remained unpub-
lished and was a collection of manuscripts and notebooks. In addition, in some
cases, their work was published under the influence of propaganda and political
motivations. Taking that into account, it is not farfetched to state that the field, both
in terms of its general reception and, more narrowly, how it was received academi-
cally, has been both formed and informed by that same history of publishing.
Particularly with the new MEGA-2, the history of publishing Marx and Engels’s
works is becoming increasingly more relevant to both the general public and aca-
demia. Equally, a more philological academic approach to Marxism is becoming
standard. Perhaps the true question that remains to be answered by scholars is how
critical can that philological approach still be.
I would like to finish by saying that, despite the numerous barriers to access,
intense research in the archive continues, although as a rule few specialists use the
manuscripts daily; most rely on the appraised work done by the editors of MEGA-2.
However, having access to the Marx-Engels-Nachlass – even if virtual and digital –
is essential to keep abreast of what is still missing in MEGA’s editions, what has
been done so far, and what could be left behind in such enormous undertaking.
Acknowledgments I would like to thank Felipe Mello for first reading this paper. It is also very
important to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Rolf Hecker for allowing me to translate and repro-
duce his illustration of Der Weg des Marx-Engels-Nachlass (“The Path of Marx-Engels-Nachlass”),
and for recommending a new bibliography and for making some remarks about my draft. Any
errors of translation are mine. I was very lucky for all support provided by Dr. Gerald Hubmann
during my research period in Berlin. I am still deeply in his debt for his continuing support. It goes
without saying that I am responsible for my views (and errors) expressed in this essay.
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Dissertation on “Marx’s ‘German Ideology’ and the Grundrisse”.
Part III
Walter Benjamin Archive
Into the Walter Benjamin Archive:
An Interview with Ursula Marx
Fernando Bee
1 Introduction
In the 1960s, Theodor W. Adorno had already spoken of a “Benjamin Archive.” He

used this expression to refer to the collection of Benjamin’s documents found in
Potsdam (Marx et al. 2009, p. 176), although, in this decade, he had in fact man-
aged, together with the efforts of the Institute for Social Research, to build himself
a “Benjamin Archive,” first in New York and then in Frankfurt. This was the
Benjamin-Archiv Theodor W. Adorno, and it continued to exist after Adorno’s
death within the Theodor W. Adorno Archive in Frankfurt am Main. Gershom
Scholem also had an archive of Benjamin manuscripts in Jerusalem at the same time
(Marx et al. 2009, pp. 176–178; p. 197).1
It is striking how widely distributed are the collections of writings bequeathed by
Walter Benjamin and how each of them has a story to tell, involving different
friends, cities, and interesting events that happened during his moving and emigra-
tion. However, the creation of an archive separate from Adorno’s literary estate has
been a more recent enterprise. The Walter Benjamin Archive was founded in 2004
by the Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur (Hamburg
Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture), a nonprofit private founda-
tion under civil law, created by Jan Philipp Reemtsma in April, 1984. One of its
objectives was to make Benjamin’s and Adorno’s archives accessible to the public
1
See specially the excerpts of Rolf Tiedemann and Hildegard Brenner in the first of these two
selections.
F. Bee (*)

Switzerland AG 2023
38 F. Bee
and to promote their legacy, as we were informed by Ursula Marx, who has worked
at the archive since March, 2004.2
Since its foundation, the Walter Benjamin Archive has been housed at the
Akademie der Künste, at 60 Luisenstraße in Berlin.3 Founded in 1696, the Akademie
is one of the oldest cultural institutions in Europe and is now funded by the German
federal government’s Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
Despite bearing his name, the Walter Benjamin Archive contains more than one
collection. In addition to Benjamin’s bequest and an extensive and ever-growing
library, the archive contains other archival holdings, including those of Florens
Christian Rang and Gisèle Freund. It is also possible to access the library of Leo
Löwenthal, as well as the reproductions of manuscripts held at the Theodor
W. Adorno Archive in Frankfurt am Main.
For visitors, the reading room on the second floor is the heart of the archive (see
Fig. 1). There, they can check the archives, the collections, and the library. But there
is a lot more behind the scenes. The archive is not just a reading room. As a research
associate of the archive, Ursula Marx, our interviewee, will help us understand a
little more about its role, structure, history, and the procedures necessary for safe-
guarding the different kinds of documents contained within it, such as restoration
Fig. 1 The reading room in the Walter Benjamin Archive

2
www.adk.de/en/academy
3
Marx et al. (2007) is a very informative and visually rich resource for those interested in knowing
more about Benjamin’s collection of documents. See also Marx (2011, pp. 15–16).
Into the Walter Benjamin Archive: An Interview with Ursula Marx 39
and specialized storage. She and her colleagues are responsible for handling
Benjamin’s manuscripts and assisting the visitors. Furthermore, they also contribute
to the new editions of his works – Werke und Nachlaß. Kritische Gesamtausgabe
(Works and Bequest. A Critical Complete Edition) (Benjamin 2008–2024) – and the
website project Walter Benjamin Digital.4
But why build an archive? What could be its significance and effect today? We
know that Benjamin, from the beginning of his adulthood, was interested in preserv-
ing his work. In a letter dated 1911, he asks his friend Herbert Blumenthal to save
his letters so that he can create a diary of his activities (Marx et al. 2009, pp. 134–135).
He kept this interest until his escape from Paris at the beginning of the Second
World War. However, at this critical moment, he was moved by the fear of losing all
his writings, his personal library, and other carefully selected documents archived
during his life, rather than by the wish to build something new. Hannah Arendt men-
tions that this concern was realized when the Gestapo entered his flat in Paris and
confiscated his belongings (Schöttker and Wizisla 2006, p. 64). “He managed to get
on the last train to leave Paris. He had nothing with him but a small suitcase with
two shirts and a toothbrush. (…) I only heard from him by letter until September.
Meanwhile, the Gestapo had been to his flat and confiscated everything. He wrote
me very depressed. His manuscripts have been saved in the meantime, but at that
time he was right to think he had lost everything,” Arendt wrote to Scholem in 1941
(Marx et al. 2009, p. 156).5 Some of those manuscripts she forwarded to Gretel and
Theodor Adorno and the Institute for Social Research after Benjamin’s death, as he
had wanted (Marx et al. 2009, p. 162).6
Luckily, before his escape from Paris, Benjamin had split his archive into three
smaller parts (Marx et al. 2009, p. 196). One was confiscated, but the other two were
entrusted to friends in different places. His intent was to protect his archives from
the current circumstances and, if possible, to reassemble them in the near future. In
fact, a few years before the outbreak of the Second World War, he was already trying
to put his documents back together, with Scholem’s help: “My archive (...) must –
whatever my relations with Scholem may be – remain with him. Since my life in
emigration has become the most inconvenient, it has taken on a doubled importance
as the only almost all-encompassing collection (besides my own archive, which is
not even completely centralized at present) of my writings, which are scattered
everywhere,” he wrote to Kitty Marx-Steinschneder in 1936 (Marx et al. 2009,
p. 148).7
After Benjamin’s death, Adorno and Scholem immediately considered publish-
ing a collection of his works: “It seems most important to me to collect all of
Benjamin’s texts that are attainable at all, with the ultimate goal of a complete
4
www.walter-benjamin.online
5
My translation
6
Dora Benjamin mentioned this in a letter.
7
To have a better understanding of the archive’s meaning for Benjamin, see Antonin Wiser’s essay
in this volume.
40 F. Bee
edition,” wrote the former to the latter in November, 1940 (Marx et al. 2009,
pp. 154). Retrieving Benjamin’s documents was essential to achieving this aim, but
accomplishing it was certainly more difficult than they had expected. The war and
the severance of the documents acted against them. Two years after the plan had
been established, on 19 February, 1942, Adorno wrote again to Scholem highlight-
ing the difficulties: “The whole question of an edition of Walter’s works can be
approached only after the war. Happily enough, however, there are several people
who have a kind of Benjamin archive. Besides his own material, our private mate-
rial, and the extensive material of the Institute, Walter’s old friend Cohn has a pretty
complete archive, which he certainly would make available. I feel confident that you
also have many things which are otherwise inaccessible and, if we combine our
efforts, it should be possible to reconstruct Walter’s oeuvre to a rather great extent”
(Marx et al. 2009, p. 157).
Since those years, the building of an archive has been considered a solid founda-
tion from which to share Benjamin’s ideas with the public and for posterity. The
German Illuminationen (Benjamin 1961) and the English Illuminations (Benjamin
1968), which included a preface by Arendt, were examples of editions published
from materials gathered through the efforts of his friends. These editions opened a
path to broader reception of his writings, even outside German- and English-
speaking countries; the same happened with the French and Italian translations that
appeared from the 1960s onward. For example, in the 1960s, the German editions
of Benjamin’s writings weren’t available and accessible for Brazilian researchers
and students, so he was mostly received through the Italian and French editions and
translations. Jeanne-Marie Gagnebin wrote that, in Brazil of the 1960s, Benjamin
was received as a theorist of allegory, translation, and language and as a Marxist
critique focused on the emancipatory aspects of the art. This latter perspective was
especially interesting for a country experiencing extremely strong censorship by the
military dictatorship at the time – a situation that would continue in the following
years (Gagnebin 2021). In addition to that, Benjamin had not to confront in Brazil
the “fame” of being a marginal theorist of the Baroque, as he had to in the German
context (Haas and Weidner 2014).
In fact, these editions not only expanded but influenced the reception of
Benjamin’s writings. After all, the process of editing and publishing concerns the
selection of materials and how they will be made available. It necessitates an inter-
pretation of the material. Sometimes this entails strong disagreement and institu-
tional and political restraints, as we have seen with the archives and editions of Karl
Marx (Hubmann et al. 2022). And sometimes it is influenced by the views of the
editors and academics, as we can see in the exclusion of some texts and the focus on
others in the editions of Benjamin’s works. For example, the essay “Karl Kraus,”
included in the German book Illuminationen (Benjamin 1961, pp. 374–408), was
not included in the English edition Illuminations (Benjamin 1968). Similarly,
reviews and critiques from this same period have still not been translated into
Brazilian-Portuguese, while some writings of his youth and the different versions of
the essay “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit” have
even been retranslated (Benjamin 1972–1991, vol. 1, pp. 431–469).
These effects on the publication and reception of an author’s writings show us

that an archive is not a mortuary for dead works but a living repository. The projects
undertaken by the archive in the present day demonstrate its active life. In the fol-
lowing interview, Ursula Marx tells us how the presence of Benjamin’s legacy can
be observed in many places: in new book editions, in the educational and cultural
fields, in the digital world, and in art exhibitions, to mention only a few. She shows
us, in other words, how the archive is a safe home for a legacy that likes to prome-
nade across different genres, study areas, and cities, as Benjamin himself liked to.
This interview has been translated from German.
2 Interview with Ursula Marx
Fernando Bee Ursula Marx, can you please introduce yourself and talk a little bit
about your background?
Ursula Marx I studied German literature, theater studies, and English philology in
Marburg an der Lahn and Berlin. After graduating, I completed an internship at the
Literature Archives Department of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 2003.
During that time I learned to work with literary estates and assisted the former head
of the department in the preparations for an exhibition on the author Christa Wolf.
FB How does your history with the Benjamin Archive begin?
UM During the preparations for the exhibition, the idea of founding a Walter
Benjamin Archive at the Akademie der Künste was being considered. It was initi-
ated by the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Culture, the
funder of the Theodor W. Adorno Archive in Frankfurt am Main. The foundation
had been in possession of Benjamin’s estate since 1996 and at the same time repre-
sented the copyrights to his works. Berlin, as Benjamin’s birthplace, seemed to be
the appropriate place for an independent Benjamin Archive, especially since the
archive of the Akademie offered ideal conditions for securing Benjamin’s legacy
and making it visible. In addition, Erdmut Wizisla, a proven Benjamin expert and
director of the Akademie’s Bertolt Brecht Archive, was appointed head of the
Benjamin Archive. So I had the rare and great good fortune to be able to remain at
the Akademie der Künste and to work as a research assistant in the Benjamin
Archive.
FB How is the archive structured? Who visits it?
UM In addition to Benjamin’s estate, the Benjamin Archive preserves the archives

of Florens Christian Rang (a lawyer, theologian, and friend of Benjamin) and Rolf
Tiedemann (the former director of the Theodor W. Adorno Archive and editor of
Benjamin’s Gesammelte Schriften); the bequest library of Leo Löwenthal, the liter-
42 F. Bee
ary sociologist and collaborator of the Institute for Social Research; and collections
on the photographer Gisèle Freund and on Fritz Fränkel, an addiction physician,
neurologist, and friend of Benjamin. Moreover, reproductions of the Theodor
W. Adorno Archive, located in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research and
directed by my colleague Michael Schwarz, can be viewed in our reading room.
Visitors to the archive also have access to an extensive international specialist
library, audio documents and newspaper clippings on Adorno and Benjamin.
Currently we are a staff of five: apart from those already mentioned, they are my
colleague Julia Bernhard (also responsible for Benjamin as well as for the Rang
Archive) and my colleague Oliver Kunisch (digitization and photo requests,
Alexander Kluge Archive of the Akademie der Künste).
In 2019, before Covid-19 restricted the access to the archive, researchers from
over 16 nations traveled to Berlin to work in our reading room. Visitors are students,
doctoral candidates, professors, visual artists, filmmakers, actors, architects, cura-
tors, translators, writers, publishers – in short, anyone who is interested in literature
and is involved with Benjamin either professionally or privately. It is remarkable
how present and relevant Benjamin’s ideas still are in current academic and cultural
debates, not only in the German-speaking world but also internationally. This is
impressively demonstrated by the many translations of his writings (at present
Benjamin is translated into more than 50 languages) as well as a growing number of
worldwide conferences, exhibitions, and university seminars.
FB Which documents of the estate are kept in the archive? Are there documents
that have not survived?
UM Benjamin’s estate includes manuscripts from all phases of his work (with
drafts and fragments), working materials (including notes, excerpts, and notes on
the Baudelaire book and Arcades Project), notebooks, hand copies and proofs with
corrections, personal documents (address books, card indexes, private records, doc-
uments on internment, inheritance and divorce documents, will and farewell letters
from 1932, photographs), and correspondence from the years 1922–1940, with,
among others, Gretel and Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Dora Benjamin (his
sister), Dora Sophie Benjamin (his wife), Stefan Rafael Benjamin (his son), Ernst
Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Norbert Elias, Elisabeth Hauptmann, Hermann Hesse, Max
Horkheimer, Siegfried Kracauer, Werner Kraft, Gertrud Kolmar, Leo Löwenthal,
Asja Lacis, Jula Radt-Cohn, Ernst Schoen, Gershom Scholem, Jean Selz, Wilhelm
Speyer, and Margarete Steffin. Contracts, correspondence with publishers, accounts,
and manuscripts by other authors have also been preserved.
From his early years, only those materials that Benjamin gave to friends or
acquaintances for safekeeping have survived. Many papers must be considered lost,
as evidenced by an early overview of his archive that he prepared and which are
preserved among his papers. Even before the French exile, Benjamin led a rather
unsteady life, marked by numerous moves and travels, and so from the beginning of
his literary activity, he made (or had made) copies of his writings and sent them,
with precise instructions and adequately insured, to selected friends. It is thanks to

this strategy alone that his work has survived so extensively. In particular, the safe-
guarding of those writings that Benjamin was unable to publish helped to preserve
his literary legacy. After his death, these materials were tracked down by his friends
and, in substantial measure, were brought together. Apart from the bequests in the
Benjamin Archive, other larger Benjamin collections exist in the Jewish National
and University Library in Jerusalem (from the estate of Gershom Scholem), at the
Justus Liebig University in Gießen (from the estate of the lawyer Martin Domke),
and in the Russian State Military Archives in Moscow (from Benjamin’s last Paris
apartment). Unfortunately, Benjamin’s extensive library remains lost to this day;
only the children’s book collection (which survived the turmoil of the war in the
care of his wife Dora Sophie) is now kept at the Department for Children’s and
Young Adult Literature Research in Frankfurt am Main. It has just been restored and
is open to the public.
FB How were Benjamin’s papers found and how did they get into the Benjamin
Archive?
UM After Benjamin died, a major part of his papers, which had been left behind
with his sister Dora in Lourdes, were forwarded to Theodor W. Adorno, who was
working with the Institute for Social Research in New York at the time. Benjamin
had chosen Adorno to be his designated literary executor. The manuscripts were
handed over by Martin Domke, a German lawyer and student friend of Benjamin’s
who emigrated to the United States in 1941. In his luggage he took such important
writings as the notes “Central Park” for Benjamin’s book project on Charles
Baudelaire, the theses “On the Concept of History,” and the early study “Fate and
Character.” The manuscript of the Arcades Project, however, was not among them,
as Adorno remarked to Gershom Scholem: there had been rumors, he wrote in
February 1942, that it was deposited in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.
The rumors were confirmed, and in 1947, the Arcades Project was given to
Adorno, along with other papers housed in the library. Georges Bataille, to whom
Benjamin had given these manuscripts before fleeing Paris in 1940, commissioned
Pierre Missac to secure them. After Adorno’s return to Germany in November 1949,
they were transferred to the reestablished Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt
am Main as part of the Adorno Archive. Over the years, Adorno was able to com-
plete his Benjamin collection through his own research. However, some early writ-
ings and letters to Benjamin from the period of exile are, sadly, still missing.
Benjamin had been forced to leave a large part of these and other materials
behind in his last apartment in Paris. They were confiscated by the Gestapo and,
together with other looted property, were probably taken to the archives of the Reich
Security Main Office8 in Berlin. Later, due to the approaching war, they were moved
from there to Silesia. After the end of the war, the Red Army transferred the
8
Reichssicherheitshauptamt
44 F. Bee
holdings to Moscow, where they were placed in the so-called “Special Archive.”9 In
the course of the repatriation of cultural property to the German Democratic
Republic (GDR), the Benjamin manuscripts were transferred to the German Central
Archive in Potsdam in 1957 and, for reasons of jurisdiction, to the Akademie der
Künste of the GDR in East Berlin in 1972. Of particular note among these papers,
in addition to the letters, are the works for radio, which have been preserved almost
exclusively in this part of Benjamin’s estate. Only afterward did it become known
that the Moscow materials had not been returned in their entirety to the GDR. A
small stock of newspaper clippings, journals, correspondence, handwritten notes,
drafts, and texts by other authors are, as already mentioned, still preserved in the
Russian State Military Archives in Moscow.
A third part of the literary estate was discovered by the Italian philosopher
Giorgio Agamben during his research at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris in June,
1981. These were manuscripts that Georges Bataille had received from Benjamin
for safekeeping and had hidden there himself. While he later forwarded most of
them to Adorno, as described, he kept some of them in his possession. After
Bataille’s death in 1962, his widow gave the writings – including the hand copy of
Berlin Childhood around 1900, a typescript of the essay “The Work of Art in the
Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” materials for the Brecht commentaries,
the planned book on Charles Baudelaire, and early sonnets – to the Bibliothèque
nationale, where Agamben tracked them down almost 20 years later.
In 1996, the Hamburg Foundation, authorized by Walter Benjamin’s heirs,
brought together all three parts of the estate in the Theodor W. Adorno Archive in
Frankfurt, where they were kept until the Benjamin Archive was founded in Berlin
in May 2004.
FB How do you see the relationship between the work of the Benjamin Archive
compared to the earlier actions of friends, colleagues, and editors to preserve
Benjamin’s manuscripts? To what extent has the professionalization and develop-
ment of the archive changed the work?
UM As early as November 1940, barely 6 weeks after Benjamin’s death, Gershom

Scholem wrote to Adorno: “I believe that it is the duty of his friends to rescue his
papers, in whatever way the current circumstances allow, and to ensure the arrange-
ment of a dignified memorial” (Adorno and Scholem 2021, p. 16). In the following
years, this duty was duly fulfilled. With the support of many others, they tracked
down and brought together the estate, which was scattered all over the world. With
editions such as the Schriften (Writings) (Benjamin 1955), Briefe (Letters)
(Benjamin 1966), and later the Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings)
(Benjamin 1972–1991), they made Benjamin’s oeuvre known to a wider public in
the first place. The present work of the Benjamin Archive is thus based on a solid
foundation. It is incumbent upon us to continue this important legacy. The founda-
tion of an independent Benjamin Archive in May 2004 and the associated transfer
9
Sonderarchiv
of the estate to a federal institution were important steps in this direction. With its
professional infrastructure, the archive of the Akademie der Künste fulfills essential
prerequisites for the long-term safeguarding and preservation of Benjamin’s papers.
FB Can you explain what measures were taken to preserve the collection? What
technical procedures were involved? What must be considered when handling the
originals?
UM At first, all papers and photographs were examined by external restorers and,
if necessary, treated. Following the restoration, the entire estate was digitized and
the digital reproductions secured in various locations. To ensure long-term preserva-
tion, it is also essential that the manuscripts are not exposed to major fluctuations in
temperature, light, and humidity. For this reason, the originals, packed in acid-free
folders and archive boxes (see Fig. 2), are housed in a dark, climate-controlled
storeroom (room temperature between 14 and 18 degrees, relative humidity at a
minimum of 35 and a maximum of 50 percent) and are only consulted on rare occa-
sions. This is why visitors to the archive do not receive originals but work with
scans on computers in our reading room. Benjamin’s manuscripts are thus protected
from new damage and contamination. In Benjamin’s case, working with digital
reproductions actually has advantages: he first drafted his texts with a pen or foun-
tain pen (and sometimes with a pencil) before having them typed, and although his
handwriting is relatively legible, it is mostly very, very small (see Fig. 3). The scans
make it possible to enlarge Benjamin’s handwriting and make it more legible.
FB What is everyday life like in the archive? What are your tasks?
UM The tasks in the archive are very diverse and varied: in addition to taking care
of visitors on site, we process written inquiries and loan requests from curators who
would like to show Benjamin manuscripts in their exhibitions. We give guided tours
of the archive and organize conferences and workshops on Benjamin and curate
exhibitions, such as the most recent one in 2017 on Benjamin and Brecht. The
Benjamin Archive also contributes to Werke und Nachlaß. Kritische Gesamtausgabe
(Benjamin 2008–), which has been published by Suhrkamp Verlag since 2008. The
edition, commissioned by the Hamburg Foundation and edited by Christoph Gödde,
Henri Lonitz, and Thomas Rahn, comprises a total of 21 volumes, 10 of which have
been published already. In addition to various ancillary work, we are also involved
as editors: while Julia Bernhard and Erdmut Wizisla are responsible for volume 12
(Essays zur Literatur (Essays on Literature), I am editing volume 4 (Goethes
Wahlverwandtschaften (Goethe’s Elective Affinities)) together with Martin Kölbel.
FB Can you tell us something about this work? What are the procedures from the
source documents to the production of a volume? How does this edition differ from
the Gesammelte Schriften?
46 F. Bee
Fig. 2 The boxes in the Walter Benjamin Archive
UM The first step is the text compilation, i.e., the transcription of all manuscripts,
typescripts, and prints assigned to the respective volume. At the same time, research
is carried out in other archives for possible further versions of a text. Benjamin often
sent his manuscripts or copies of his writings to friends and colleagues. These cop-
ies can be important for editing work if they contain corrections, additions, or com-
Fig. 3 Papers with Walter Benjamin’s handwriting
ments. As soon as a reliable text corpus is available, work on the commentary

begins. This means identifying quotations used by Benjamin, comparing them with
the original sources, and documenting possible discrepancies. Factual explanations,
references to parallel passages in Benjamin’s writings, and variants on other
48 F. Bee
s urviving versions of the texts are also noted in the line commentary. Research in
archives and library databases is necessary for the document section of each vol-
ume. This includes testimonials on the genesis and reception of the edited texts,
such as contemporary reviews, publisher’s advertisements and announcements, and
letters. This task sometimes resembles that of criminologists: after an initial search
for clues in Benjamin’s estate and correspondence, one expands the search to the
personal environment (research in archives of friends, acquaintances, and c olleagues,
as well as in newspapers and journals close to them). We also ask experts, archive
staff, and professional colleagues for advice. On the basis of all this work, the his-
tory of the genesis and publication (from the first mention by Benjamin to the first
publication) is written, as well as the editorial epilogue, which locates the texts
assigned to the respective volume in Benjamin’s oeuvre and reveals important the-
matic references. From the editors, the finished manuscript first goes to the main
editors, the Benjamin Archive, and Suhrkamp Verlag for further editing (illustra-
tions, rights acquisition) and proofreading before it is handed over to Friedrich
Forssman, the designer of the edition, for typesetting.
In contrast to previous editions, Werke und Nachlaß provides insights into the
creative processes of Benjamin’s writing. What he deleted, replaced, rearranged, or
added is reproduced true to type. All modifications, errors, and detours remain
transparent and comprehensible to the reader. The various surviving versions are of
equal importance to the printed text or the “latest version,” which the Gesammelte
Schriften mainly focused on. The title of the edition – Werke und Nachlaß (Works
and Bequest) – already draws attention to this difference. The latter refers not only
to Benjamin’s writings that have survived in the archives but also to their material-
ity. The external form and shape of the manuscripts is attributed a meaning-creating
significance. Therefore, every commentary includes a detailed description of the
texts: paper types and formats, watermarks, ink colors, traces of rust from paper
clips, ink stains, or paper folds can provide decisive clues to the dating, transmis-
sion, and classification of the texts in the respective oeuvre.
Volumes with particularly complex manuscripts additionally appear with a par-
tial digital edition of the manuscripts that can be found at Walter Benjamin Digital.10
Benjamin’s manuscripts can be enlarged and overlaid with the transcription created
for the book edition. With the help of a full-text search and the name index, they can
also be filtered according to certain criteria. In addition to volume 11 (Berliner
Chronik/Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert (Berlin Chronicle/Berlin Childhood
around 1900)), which was published in 2019, volumes 17 (Pariser Passagen/Paris,
die Hauptstadt des XIX. Jahrhunderts (Paris Arcades/Paris, the Capital of the
Nineteenth Century)), 18 (Charles Baudelaire. Ein Lyriker im Zeitalter des
Hochkapitalismus (Charles Baudelaire. A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism)),
and 20 (Notizhefte und Notizblocks (Notebooks and Notepads)) will be completed
with a partial digital edition of the manuscripts. Benjamin’s translations will be
documented on this platform, as well.
10
www.walter-benjamin.online
Another difference concerns the handling of the notebooks and notepads: while
the texts preserved in them were either published in volume 6 of the Gesammelte
Schriften under the heading “Fragmente” (Fragments) or assigned to other volumes
according to their appropriate thematic framework, an additional, separate volume
is reserved for them in Werke und Nachlaß. These texts are printed a second time, in
their original context. The neighboring relationships that are revealed in this way
uncover new intellectual connections that are very difficult to reconstruct from the
previous edition.
FB What impact do you think the archive has had on readers, research, and the
publication of Benjamin’s writings (both in German and in other languages)?
UM The archive is still the only place where Benjamin’s work can be seen in its
entirety. Digitization provides a new basis for the reception of his writings. It allows
researchers to explore the estate with their own eyes, independently of the published
texts, and to develop new research perspectives that may have received little or no
consideration. The Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Benjamin 2008–) also contributes to
this. By emphasizing the entire estate and the dynamic process of writing, it opens
up new approaches to Benjamin’s oeuvre. The Kritiken und Rezensionen (Critiques
and Reviews) (Benjamin 2008–, vol. 13, ed. Heinrich Kaulen), for example, con-
tains more than 200 pages of previously unprinted texts, compared to volume 3 of
the Gesammelte Schriften. If the focus is not only on the result, the finished text, but
equally on what was rejected, the detours and aberrations of Benjamin’s writing,
this also changes how it is understood.
For this reason, too, Werke und Nachlaß is being translated into French before
completion. The Œuvres et Inédits. Édition intégrale critique is published by
Éditions Klincksieck in Paris and is the responsibility of Michel Métayer. So far,
volume 8, Sens unique (One-Way Street) (Benjamin 2019); volume 13, Critiques et
recensions (Critiques and Reviews) (Benjamin 2018); and volume 19, Sur le con-
cept d’histoire (On the concepto of history) (Benjamin 2023) have been translated;
volume 3, Le concept de critique esthétique dans le romantisme allemand (The
Concept of Aesthetic Criticism in German Romanticism) (Benjamin 2009), was
published by Librairie Arthème Fayard. It would be desirable if other publishers
followed this example, so that Benjamin’s writings can be disseminated as widely
as possible internationally.
References
Adorno, Theodor W., and Gershom Scholem. 2021. Correspondence: 1939–1969, ed. Asaf
Angermann. Trans. Paula Schwebel and Sebastian Truskolaski. Cambridge; Medford: Polity.
Benjamin, Walter. 1955. Schriften. Vol. 1–2, ed. Theodor W. Adorno, Gretel Adorno and Friedrich
Podszus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 1961. Illuminationen, ed. Siegfried Unseld. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
50 F. Bee
———. 1966. Briefe, ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp.
———. 1968. Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books.
———. 1972 [1991]. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 1–7. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 2008. Werke und Nachlaß. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Vols. 1–21. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
———. 2009. Le concept de critique esthétique dans le romantisme allemand, ed. Uwe Steiner.
Trans. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Anne-Marie Lang, Alexandra Richter. Oeuvres et inédits.
Vol. 3. Paris: Fayard.
———. 2018. Critiques et recensions. Vol. 13, ed. Heinrich Kaulen and Michel Métayer. Trans.
Marianne Dautrey and Philippe Ivernel. Oeuvres et inédits. Paris: Klincksieck.
———. 2019. Sens unique. Vol. 8, ed. Detlev Schöttker and Michel Métayer. Trans. Christophe
Jouanlanne. Oeuvres et inédits. Paris: Klincksieck.
———. 2023. Sur le concept d’histoire. Vol. 19, ed. Gérard Raulet and Michel Métayer. Trans.
Jacques-Olivier Bégot. Oeuvres et inédits. . Paris: Klincksieck.
Gagnebin, Jeanne-Marie. 2021. Sur la réception de Walter Benjamin au Brésil. Dissonância:
Revista de Teoria Crítica 5: 31–54.
Haas, Claude, and Daniel Weidner. 2014. Einleitung. In Benjamins Trauerspiel. Theorie –
Lektüren – Nachleben, 7–25. Berlin: Kultur Verlag Kadmos.
Hubmann, Gerald, Ulrich Pagel, and Olavo Ximenes. 2022. A ‘Ideologia alemã’ não é um livro:
Conversa sobre a nova edição dos manuscritos da Ideologia alemã. Dissonância: Revista de
Teoria Crítica 6: 28–56.
Marx, Ursula. 2011. Das Walter Benjamin Archiv. In Benjamin-Handbuch: Leben – Werk –
Wirkung, 15–16. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler.
Marx, Ursula, Gudrun Schwarz, Michael Schwarz, and Erdmut Wizisla, eds. 2007. Walter
Benjamin’s Archive: Images, Texts, Signs. Trans. Esther Leslie. London; New York: Verso.
———, eds. 2009. Dokumentation. Von Walter Benjamins Archiven zum Walter Benjamin Archiv.
Eine Geschichte in Dokumenten. In Heft 31/32/Neufassung. Walter Benjamin, ed. Heinz
Ludwig Arnold, 134–210. Munich: Verlag.
Schöttker, Detlev, and Erdmut Wizisla, eds. 2006. Arendt und Benjamin. Texte, Briefe, Dokumente.
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Fernando Bee has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Campinas (Brazil). He wrote his
Dissertation on the work of Walter Benjamin. His research interests include Critical Theory and
the effects of digital technologies on society.
Benjamin Anarchivist
Antonin Wiser
There are perhaps only two manners, or rather two greatnesses,

in this madness of writing by which whoever writes effaces
himself, leaving, only to abandon it, the archive of his own
effacement.
Two greatnesses to measure that act of writing by which
whoever writes pretends to efface himself, leaving us caught in
this archive as in a spider’s web. Jacques Derrida, Two Words
for Joyce
Wir ordnens. Es zerfällt. Wir ordnens wieder und zerfallen
selbst. R. M. Rilke, Duineser Elegien
I
The nature, history, and state of Walter Benjamin’s archive have been well-
documented for many years.1 When the first volume of the Gesammelte Schriften
(Collected Writings) was published in 1974, the editors Rolf Tiedemann and
Hermann Schweppenhäuser gave an initial overview of the Benjaminian estate
available at the time, following the efforts made since 1941 by Theodor W. Adorno
and Gershom Scholem to bring together the dispersed writings. While stressing that
the history of the passing-on of this estate was still incomplete, they traced the broad
outlines of the process of its dispersion, which occurred despite the fact that
Benjamin, “collector that he was, had archived his manuscripts and prints of his
works with unusual care” (Tiedemann and Schweppenhäuser 1974, p. 758).
His emigration in March 1933 forced him to leave most of his documents behind
in Berlin, although a large number of them were brought back to him in Paris by
friends, as he informed Scholem in a letter of 16 October of the same year. When he
1
I would like to thank Levon Pedrazzini for his careful proofreading and valuable assistance in the
preparation of the English version of this text.
A. Wiser (*)
Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

Switzerland AG 2023
52 A. Wiser
left Paris in the summer of 1940, he proceeded to a new partition: “The material that
was least important to him remained in the flat. The most important part – the hand-
written sketches of the book of passages, the typescripts of the memorandum on the
Passages and the unpublished section of the work on Baudelaire – were hidden by
George Bataille in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. Benjamin took the rest of his
archive with him on his escape, the most substantial part in volume” (p. 759). The
fate of these three fractions was diverse and is better known now than it was 50 years
ago: the documents that remained in Paris – in particular the large volume of letters
received by Benjamin and the texts and recordings of his radio interventions – were
seized by the Gestapo, brought back to Berlin, and then stored in Upper Silesia;
some were destroyed toward the end of the war, some seized by the Red Army, then
transferred to the special archives in Moscow, and finally repatriated to East
Germany in 1957. In 1972, they were entrusted to the Akademie der Künste. It was
not until 1996 that they were added to the archive that Adorno set up in Frankfurt
(Marx 2011, pp. 15–16).
The manuscripts Benjamin took with him on his escape ended up largely in the
hands of his sister Dora, who sent them to Adorno in America in early 1942. But the
leather briefcase he had with him when he tried to cross the Spanish border at
Portbou, containing a presumably important manuscript, is known to have been lost.
The last part, which had been entrusted to Bataille, was given to Pierre Missac at the
end of the war, who sent it to Adorno in 1947. However, some of the documents
hidden in the Bibliothèque nationale, particularly those relating to the Passagen-
Werk (Arcades Project), were only discovered in 1981 by Giorgio Agamben and
repatriated to Germany in 1997.2
Founded in 2004 as an autonomous section of the Hamburg Foundation for the
Promotion of Science and Culture,3 the Walter Benjamin Archive (WBA) preserves
all the material that has been collected since 1940 at the Akademie der Künste in
Berlin. In 2006, to mark this foundation, the WBA published a volume entitled
Walter Benjamins Archive: Bilder, Texte und Zeichen (Walter Benjamin’s Archive:
Images, Text and Symbols) (Marx et al. 2011), which provides an overview of the
diversity of the material preserved. Richly illustrated with facsimiles and accompa-
nied by a critical commentary describing “the activity of the author as an archivist
of his own writings” (p. 11), it details Benjamin’s method and procedures as a col-
lector, as well as identifying certain philosophical underpinnings present in the
author’s texts, thereby shedding light on his overall work. More recently, the digiti-
zation of some 12,000 pages of documents – manuscripts, typescripts, notebooks,
letters, postcards, newspaper cuttings, photographs, etc. – provides easy access to
the author’s work to researchers from all over the world, many of whom it is possi-
ble to meet in the small workroom at Luisenstrasse 60 in Berlin-Mitte.
2
For a more detailed discussion of these aspects, see the interview with Ursula Marx by Fernando
Bee in this volume.
3
Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur.
Benjamin Anarchivist 53
Since the aforementioned historical and technical elements are known, well-
documented, and widely accessible,4 I here propose to examine an original concep-
tion of the archive that emerges from a reading of Benjamin’s writings.
II
When one discovers the meticulous care Benjamin took in preserving his docu-
ments, when one reads of his passion for collections and collectors, when one knows
how many hours he spent accumulating vast documentary material on the nine-
teenth century at the Bibliothèque nationale, it is perhaps surprising that an archive
as a major concept never fully crystallizes in his writings. Furthermore, among the
extensive gallery of conceptual characters that one encounters in his work, one
looks in vain for the figure of the archivist – although a few of them, as I will men-
tion later, come close.
However, reflections on the archive are not absent in Benjamin’s pages. Indeed,
in his correspondence, these reflections unfold most explicitly. As early as 1931, in
his letters to Scholem, Benjamin refers on several occasions to his writings as an
“archive.” The letter of 28 October, 1931, is particularly significant:
Du bist ja Kenner meiner Arbeit und vor allem: Bibliograph genug, um, auch ohne daß ich
Dir je Andeutungen darüber gemacht hätte, mein Verhältnis zu meinen Sachen und insbe-
sondre zu der Art meiner Publizität vorstellen zu können. Der mir selbst manchmal stören-
den Bedenklichkeit, mit der ich dem Plan irgendwelcher 'Gesammelten Schriften' von mir
gegenüber stehe, entspricht die archivalische Exaktheit, mit der ich alles von mir Gedruckte
verwahre und katalogisiere und wenn ich von der ökonomischen Seite der Schriftstellerei
absehe, darf ich sagen, daß für mich die paar Blätter und Blättchen, in denen sie auftreten,
mir das anarchische Gebilde einer Privatdruckerei darstellen. Daher ist auch das
Hauptobjektiv meiner publizistischen Strategie, alles, was ich verfasse – von einigen
Tagebuchnotizen abgesehen – um jeden Preis zum Druck zu befördern und ich darf sagen,
daß mir das – unberufen – seit etwa vier oder fünf Jahren gelungen ist. Das Ensemble
meiner Schriften dürfte – mit Ausnahme von Ernst Bloch […] – wohl überhaupt nur Dir
bekannt sein. (Benjamin 1978, p. 541)
You are, of course, a connoisseur of my work and, above all, enough of a bibliographer to
be able to imagine my relationship to my own work and especially to the nature of my
publicity, even without my ever having made mention of it to you. The scruples, sometimes
disturbing even to me, with which I view the plan of some sort of “Collected Works” cor-
respond to the archival precision with which I preserve and catalog everything of mine that
has appeared in print. Furthermore, disregarding the economic side of being a writer, I can
say that for me the few journals and small newspapers in which my work appears represent
for me the anarchic structure of a private publishing house. The main objective of my pro-
motional strategy, therefore, is to get everything I write – except for some diary entries –
into print at all costs and I can say that I have been successful in this – knock on wood! – for
about four or five years. You are probably the only one who knows the totality of my writ-
ings, if you disregard Ernst Bloch. (Benjamin 1994, p. 385)
4
They are also the subject of specific and valuable insight in Fernando Bee’s contribution to
this volume.
54 A. Wiser
Before commenting, I would like to underline that what we have just read is
formulated in a private correspondence that has now been made public, exposed to
eyes other than those of the intended recipient. We know, through the “postal effect”
analyzed in detail by Jacques Derrida (1987), that a letter can in law (de jure) always
be lost, go astray, or be read by someone other than its addressee. Moreover, all this
is still at stake when it arrives perfectly at its destination – as if a remnant had been
lost as soon as it began its journey, possibly reappearing elsewhere, later, otherwise,
or never.
Benjamin writes to Scholem, who knows his work but, most importantly, knows
about books, about bound and published writings. Benjamin, in this private letter to
his intimate friend, the only one who has knowledge of all his work, is going to
speak of an even more intimate relationship, from within himself to himself. “Mein
Verhältnis zu meinen Sachen”: my relationship to my own affairs, to those things
that concern me; that’s what the letter is about. Let me specify that this does not yet
concern the question of Benjamin’s relationship in exile to his books, abandoned in
Berlin, or to his notebooks left in Paris – we are not yet at that point in October
1931. So, in this private letter to his intimate friend, Benjamin is about to evoke the
intimate relationship to his own affairs. But before saying anything about it, he asks
Scholem to represent it to himself, without preliminary allusion. This shows the
closeness he postulates. Not only does Scholem know him so well that Benjamin
need not tell him anything, but he is familiar with Benjamin’s ongoing work – and
his books. Thus, in the element of the written word lies the closeness that needs no
words, no allusion, thereby relying to representation alone. The intimate relation-
ship that he is on the verge of talking about would, in fact, hardly need to be pre-
sented to his friend, because the latter could represent it based on what he is already
familiar with. It will not be a revelation and will present nothing new, because,
essentially, what Scholem is about to read, he – the connoisseur – already knows: he
has already read it. Benjamin’s writings speak for him, before he does, anticipating
and representing him even before he needs to present anything.
Needless to say, Benjamin will say it all the same – and all this seems to be an
announcement or advertisement. What is this personal thing, this relationship to his
own affairs, about? It’s about “in particular” the relationship zu der Art meiner
Publizität, to the way of presenting oneself publicly as part of a promotional strategy.
I interrupt this close reading for a moment to emphasize that the question of the
archive is situated in a space divided between private and public, intimate and exti-
mate. At the opening of Archive Fever, Derrida recalls the topo-nomology of the
archive:
As is the case for the Latin archivum or archium […], the meaning of “archive,” its only
meaning, comes to it from the Greek arkheion: initially a house, a domicile, an address, the
residence of the superior magistrates, the archons, those who commanded. The citizens who
thus held and signified political power were considered to possess the right to make or to
represent the law. On account of their publicly recognized authority, it is at their home, in
that place which is their house (private house, family house, or employee’s house), that
official documents are filed. The archons are first of all the documents’ guardians. They do
not only ensure the physical security of what is deposited and of the substrate. They are also
accorded the hermeneutic right and competence. They have the power to interpret the
archives. Entrusted to such archons, these documents in effect state the law: they recall the
law and call on or impose the law. (Derrida 1996, p. 9–10)
The archive was therefore primarily a private place, a home, where public docu-
ments were collected and sheltered in order to better circulate publicly, under the
authority of their interpreter, their public content: the law. Such would be the topo-
nomological order organized by the archive, the distribution of the space it com-
mands, and where it settles.
Benjamin’s letter, as we shall see, outlines a strategy for his archive that will
subvert this order. But first, the correspondence seems to confirm the terms of two
gestures of reserve that he describes to his correspondent. The first is a störende
Bedenklichkeit (Benjamin 1978, p. 541), a hesitation, a doubt, a scruple, if not quite
an objection, which disturbs the author and does not leave him at ease in the place
that should rightfully be his. This hesitation concerns a project that had been dis-
cussed nearly 2 years earlier, in a letter to Scholem dated 20 January, 1930, written,
unusually, in French:
Quant aux travaux j’espère en pouvoir rendre compte publiquement en quelque temps,
Rowohlt étant disposé de publier sous forme d’un livre, un choix de mes essais, comme tu
as été assez gentil de me le proposer, dans une de tes dernières lettres. (Benjamin
1978, p. 507)
I soon hope to be able to submit my work for publication. Rowohlt is inclined to publish a
selection of my essays as a book, something you were kind enough to suggest in one of your
last letters to me. (Benjamin 1994, p. 359)
We understand that the suggestion to publish a volume of collected writings

comes from the “connoisseur of his work” and that this project has not yet been
made public: it remains known solely to two intimate friends. Twenty months later,
this project is still unfinished because Benjamin doubts, hesitates, and objects. What
bothers him is not the project itself, nor the choice of writings. What bothers him is
the arrangement and layout, the principle of their organization: the plan. Standing in
the way of the publication of these Gesammelte Schriften, Benjamin’s qualms –
those that Scholem, who had suggested the idea and who knows Benjamin’s work
well, can imagine on his own – are concerned with his reluctance to put these col-
lected essays in order.
This reservation is matched (entspricht) by another. “The scruples, sometimes
disturbing even to me… correspond to the archival precision with which I preserve
and catalog everything of mine that has appeared in print” (Benjamin 1994, p. 385).
It is here that the motif of the archive appears, to qualify the scrupulous accuracy
with which Benjamin preserves (verwahren) and catalogs (katalogisieren) his own
published writings. One scruple refers to the other – and in contrast to the English
translation, in the German text, it is the “archival precision” (archivalische Exaktheit)
that responds to the “disturbing concern” (störende Bedenklichkeit) (Benjamin
1994, p. 385). Benjamin has reservations about the public presentation of the order
of his writings – an order he scrupulously reserves for himself in the private conser-
vation of his archive. Of course, a plan is not a catalog: the latter records and holds
the paratactic list, while the former presupposes an intentional, thoughtful
56 A. Wiser
arrangement, according to some internal or intimate principle of the collected

works, but both arrange and organize. In this way, Benjamin accommodates himself
to the archival arrangement, while its publication obviously disturbs him. The
archive is thus kept in a private place, where the author keeps it safe, perhaps even
secret (verwahren, the dictionary tells us, can mean “to store, carefully” (sorgfältig
aufbewahren) but also “to keep captive” (gefangen halten) – maintenir au secret in
French).
However, this does not mean that Benjamin renounces publication or refuses to
reveal himself to the public. On the contrary, it is worth remembering that here he
exposes to Scholem the nature of his publicity (die Art meiner Publizität). The
archive’s reserve is at the end of a promotional strategy (publizistiche Strategie) that
it completes. Indeed, the fonds that Benjamin, the archivist, preserves and catalogs
are made up of his published writings. Thus, the archive is found or placed at the
end of a circular path, where the author’s works initially took on the public form of
texts printed in journals and newspapers (Blätter und Blättchen) before returning to
their sender as their private recipient. What, then, is Benjamin’s strategy? To make
public everything he writes, to leave nothing as a private text (except, as he speci-
fies, some diary entries that escape this destination). It is a strategy of (nearly) con-
tinuous or complete public presentation, (almost) without rest. But that strategy has
two facets, or a double bottom: it is not the publication but the private archive that
constitutes the real end, inverting the traditional order of the archive and subverting
its subsumption to the arkhé, to the command of the public order.
For if the archive was initially, according to Derrida, the preservation of public
law in the private home of the archon, it was by this very fact under the control of
the representative of public authority. Its destination, through the hermeneutic
medium of the archon, is the public sphere. Benjamin explicitly reverses this para-
digm: it is only a diversion which he uses for private purposes. He himself describes
this gesture as anarchic: “I can say that for me a few journals and small newspapers
in which my work appears represent for me the anarchic structure of a private pub-
lishing house” (Benjamin 1994, p. 385). But I would go as far as to define this
operation as both anarchic and anarchistic, since what he describes to Scholem is a
real diversion of public fonds to a private end – the constitution of a personal
archive – as he privatizes the publishing circuit. In so doing, he also reverses, con-
ceptually as well as through his archival practice, the order of subordination of the
private pole to the public pole, challenging the archontic – and public – authority
over the archive. Finally, the operation is also anarchic-anarchistic in contrast to the
plan of the collected works: published to the winds, scattered like leaves in autumn
in various newspapers – Blätter und Blättchen – Benjamin’s writings are dispersed
in a disordered manner with no regard to the centripetal movement of the collected
works that should come to organize them and place them under the authority
of a plan.
Benjamin’s archival practice thus unfolds or represents itself (sich darstellt) in a
complex movement removed from the economic logic of what Marx calls the sphere
of circulation. The strategy turns away from the economic aspects of writing – “dis-
regarding the economic side of being a writer” – by which it could represent a
pecuniary profit for the author and implies, instead, publishing “at all costs”
(Benjamin 1994, p. 385). The movement, however, resembles the Hegelian ruse of
Darstellung: externalization as an unreserved loss or expenditure (Entäußerung)
serves the return to the self, the interiorization through the Aufhebung of this
moment of exteriority. The Benjaminian archive can be seen as the Aufhebung of the
publication of one’s work (and verwahren means also, für eine Weile aufheben, “to
keep for a while”) where the expenditure of funds is reversed: the gain of fonts.
What has been gained, between the handwritten works and what is collected by
archival meticulousness, is the universal form of the printed word. The erasure of
the handwritten line, of the ductus, of any trace of the body of writing, the operation
is therefore also carried out à corps perdu, to use another Hegelian expression: but
it is a game where he who loses wins. It becomes economic again in a roundabout
way, by subjecting the game of gains and expenses in the public sphere to the order
or law (nomos) of the home (oikos), the private place where the archive ends up.
“Anarchival economy” is how I would like to refer to this threefold anarchistic
operation by which Benjamin publishes – in a disordered manner – everything but
the whole, which he subtracts and reserves for himself in private through the subver-
sive diversions of a public presentation in which the corpus of what will become the
archive is spread out, dismembered, in the open. In the drawing of this loop,
Benjamin gains a “publicity” that is not his being-known – this, on the contrary, is
disguised in its unity by the fact of public dispersion – but his being-published and,
by this, the possibility of a secret, remembered unification of his body of work in the
universal form of the printed words. This economic operation produces “anarchi-
val” effects: it exposes by preserving, makes public by keeping secret, or, more
precisely, makes public to allow secrecy5; its paradoxical figure thus proceeds to a
diversion of the public end of the publishing, a reversal of the order of public and
private ends.
However, one of the effects of the structure of the anarchival economy is the pos-
sibility that, at the point of this reversal, something may be lost, purely and simply,
without any possible reappropriation (or what Hegel called Erinnerung) for the
archive. The operation always involves the risk that a nonrefundable expense (or
Entäusserung) sent into the public sphere will not return. This is what Benjamin
would be confronted with in the years to come.
Benjamin’s approach to the archive challenges the traditional vision and practice
of archiving and stands in an ambiguous relationship to what Derrida describes as
the archontic principle:
5
We recognize here one of the possible parent figures of what Derrida (1994) names the “visor
effect,” by which the specter of the king in armor presents itself to Hamlet, looking at him without
being recognized by him. “A spectral asymmetry interrupts here all specularity. It de-synchronizes,
it recalls us to anachrony. We will call this the visor effect: we do not see who looks at us. Even
though in his ghost the King looks like himself (‘As thou art to thy selfe,’ says Horatio), that does
not prevent him from looking without being seen: his apparition makes him appear still invisible
beneath his armor” (p. 6). In the public sphere, Benjamin’s corpus is a spectral apparition that
shows itself while veiling itself. By disarticulating the time of the presentation and its recognition,
of its recollection in presence, the anarchival dissymmetry becomes an anachrony.
58 A. Wiser
Recording tends to coordinate a single corpus, into a system or synchronicity in which all
the elements articulate the unity of an ideal configuration. In an archive there must be no
absolute dissociation, no heterogeneity or secrecy that would separate (secernere), parti-
tion, in an absolute way. The archontic principle of the archive is also a principle of con-
signment, that is to say of gathering. (Derrida 1996, p. 14)
By aiming to gather his texts close to him, Benjamin subscribes to the command-
ment of unity, the ideal of an organic unification of his own work (meine Arbeit, in
the singular). But by desiring secrecy, by increasingly organizing it through the
anarchival strategy, he deploys centrifugal forces that operate de facto against the
reconstitution of the corpus, to the point that one wonders whether the effects of
anarchive may fundamentally hinder the archiving process as much as the hypoth-
eses on which its legitimization is built.
III
In the years that followed, the strategy mentioned by Benjamin in the letter of 28
October, 1931, proved increasingly difficult to implement. Exile forced him to sepa-
rate himself temporarily from his archive. Although he sometimes managed to
retrieve parts of it – as he rejoiced in a letter to Scholem dated 16 October, 1933
(Benjamin 1994, p. 429) – he more often than not suffered from its absence. In the
course of the correspondence, the anarchival economic strategy becomes discreetly
duplicated. Benjamin refers more and more to Scholem’s archive. In January 1933,
he sent to his friend, who had emigrated to Palestine in 1923, two short prose stories
“to honour your archive, even if at my own expense” (Benjamin 1994, p. 401). The
following month, he mentioned it again, but to apologize for not being able to
include his recent texts for Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk: “As to your other requests
for your archive, i.e. my work for the radio, even I haven’t been successful in col-
lecting them all” (pp. 403–404).
In parallel with the attempts to reconstitute the archive of his own publications in
the face of the aforementioned difficulties, which were to become increasingly
acute, Benjamin duplicated his collection by depositing, when possible, a copy of
his publications into Scholem’s hands, making the “connoisseur of his work”
(p. 385), from then onward, the archon of his archive. On 1 May, 1933, in a letter to
Kitty Max-Steinschneider, he mentioned “a quite curious piece about the novel,
which, once it is printed, may yet arrive in the harbour of the Scholem archive –
probably as one of the last ships to do so” (p. 412). Sometimes Benjamin even
stopped referring to his friend’s collection in the second person. In July 1934, he
wrote, “[…] I am prepared, however, to promise you a manuscript of the final ver-
sion [of the work on Kafka] for the archive [für das Archiv]” (p. 449). Soon Benjamin
would present the Palestinian archive as the place where almost all of his published
writings were collected. In a 1936 letter to Werner Kraft, to whom he apologized for
not being able to provide a copy of Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen
Reproduzierbarkeit (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction), he
wrote: “The need to send the French text of the essay to a number of interested par-
ties in Paris has resulted in my having hardly any copies left for my friends. I sent
one to Scholem, since he has an almost complete archive of my works” (p. 532).
The following year, having just published the article on collector and historian
Eduard Fuchs, Benjamin wrote to Scholem:
I hope you will be getting the printed article before the year is out. It always pleases me to
hear of the care you bestow upon the collection of my writings. Troubled premonitions tell
me that perhaps only our combined archives could present an exhaustive collection of them
[eine lückenlose Sammlung von ihnen heute vielleicht nur unsere vereinten Archive darstel-
len könnten]. For as conscientious [exact] as I am in administering [Verwaltung] my own, I
most likely lost several pieces through the hasty departure from Berlin and the unsettled
existence of the early years of emigration. (Benjamin 1994, pp. 538–539)
The archive has not only been duplicated; in the face of political circumstances
and material difficulties and despite Benjamin’s meticulousness, it has now been
divided. It is known that, during his lifetime, the author neither saw Scholem again,
nor lived to see the reunited archive. Soon, the very possibility of a reconstitution of
the entire corpus was to be threatened: in 1939, on the eve of the war, the hypothesis
of a partial loss of the collection became real, while the sources for its completion
were drying up. Even the published but incomplete list of his writings could no
longer be sent to “the harbour of the Scholem archive” (p. 412):
If I haven’t sent you any of my scarce publications in the recent past, the reason is that only
seldom do editorial boards these days feel obliged to provide the author with more than a
single author’s offprint. You have no cause to assume negligence on my part in these mat-
ters, since it has been my intention all along to keep your archives of my writings complete.
That has become all the more urgent now, since the only fairly substantial collection, apart
from yours, is in the hands of a third party and must be considered lost by now. It is among
the effects a friend of mine had to leave behind in Barcelona. (As a curiosum, let me tell you
that just recently an extremely cursory bibliography of my writings appeared in a small
English report by the institute, alongside bibliographies of its other collaborators.) The lat-
est issue of the Zeitschrift 7:3 contains an essay of mine on Julien Benda in the review
section; I am sure you will like it. But what am I to do? I don’t have a duplicate copy.
(Benjamin 1994, p. 593)
Henceforth fragmented, the anarchive escapes the archontic command of con-

signment. This circumstance also corresponds, during the same period, to an
increase in the index of dispersion within the public sphere. Indeed, it is known that
Benjamin had been publishing texts under pseudonyms since 1933, including that
of Detlef Holz. This reinforces the anarchival effect by which the writer conceals
himself in the very act of his public presentation. In July 1933, he alluded to this in
a letter, again to Scholem:
A few pages have come into being under the title “Loggien” [Loggias], and I can only say
very good things about them and add that they contain the most precise portrait I shall ever
be able to give of myself [das genaueste Porträt enthalten das mir von mir selbst zu machen
gegeben ist]. I hope you will see the piece in print in the near future.
With it, of course, the Detlevian wood [das Deltefsche Holz] – which I have thrown upon
the flame of my life – will flare up for more or less the last time. The new press laws are
already taking shape, and after they go into force, my appearances in the German press will
60 A. Wiser
require a far more impenetrable disguise than heretofore [denn schon zeichnen die neuen
Pressegesetze sich ab, nach deren Inkrafttreten mein Erscheinen in der deutschen Presse
noch um vieles undurchdringlicher werden wird als bisher]. (Benjamin 1994, p. 424, modi-
fied translation)
So, at the moment he paints his “most precise portrait,” Benjamin steals it from
recognition and veils it beneath the pseudonym, reserving the collation of the
painted image and its subject to himself and to the intimates who are in on the
secret, including Scholem and Felicitas (the pseudonym of Gretel Karplus-Adorno).
The anarchival effect – the exhibition that evades identification, the publicity that
privatizes itself, the reversal that houses the private incognito in the heart of the
public – is at its height, but so is the disassociation of Benjamin’s body from its
archival corpus. In the aforementioned passage, Benjamin’s formulation remains
partially obscure: assuming that the “Detlevian wood” will crackle for the last time
because of the Nazi press laws, one might think that he fears that he will no longer
be able to penetrate the public sphere, but the end of the sentence suggests other-
wise; it is not his public disappearance but a further opacity in his appearance or, in
other words, the intensification of his concealment.
The text “Loggias” concerns his childhood and, notably, archives the asynchrony
that runs through it: “the rustling of the branches initiated me into a knowledge to
which I was not yet equal” (Benjamin 2002, p. 345), and while “everything in the
courtyard beckoned me,” it is only when he is distanced from it by exile, as much as
the adult is from childhood, that he will grasp the meaning of the Berlin loggias:
“the solace that lies in their uninhabitability for one who himself no longer has a
proper abode” (p. 346). Unpublished during Benjamin’s lifetime, Berliner Kindheit
um neunzehnhundert (Berlin Childhood around 1900) (2002) gathers the memory
of childhood from the standpoint of a wandering future that collects each fragmen-
tary echo.
The recollection and collation, however, do not aim at the lost unity of the small
subject; here, there is no fantasy of coherence that archiving should allow to recon-
struct. In the chapter “Die Mummerehlen,” before camouflaging himself with a pho-
tographic portrait of the young Kafka – which he passes off as his own – Benjamin
says of himself: “Early on, I learned to disguise myself in words, which really were
clouds. The gift of perceiving similarities is, in fact, nothing but a weak remnant of
the old compulsion to become similar and to behave mimetically. In me, this com-
pulsion acted through words” (Benjamin 2002, p. 374). This should be enough to
raise doubts about the purely circumstantial nature of Benjamin’s use of pseud-
onyms.6 But more broadly, I would like to suggest that if Benjamin’s consignments
are subject to centrifugal forces that drive each strand to their escape velocity,
thereby making their appearance “impenetrable,” this is not only an indication of
the failure of the anarchival strategy but also of its other facet by which the author
works, in dissimulation, toward his dissimilation, his différance (as defined by
6
A doubt that is reinforced by the almost systematic use of the name Detlef Holz to sign the private
correspondence with Felicitas, without any considerations of censorship and security. I will come
back to this in another work in progress.
Derrida) from himself. The anarchival effect is not a regrettable accident: it allows
Benjamin to evade the injunctions to identify with himself. The child who refuses to
be identical to himself in front of the camera’s mirror affirms at the same time this
possibility of being similar to that which he is not.
This is evoked in the text “Hiding Places”: “The child who stands behind the
doorway curtain himself becomes something white that flutters, a ghost. The dining
table under which he has crawled turns him into the wooden idol of the temple; its
carved legs are four pillars. And behind a door, he is himself the door.” And if he
camouflages himself among words, as the writer will later do, it is because “[…] the
mimetic gift, formerly the foundation of occult practices, gained admittance to writ-
ing and language. In this way, language may be seen as the highest level of mimetic
behavior and the most complete archive of nonsensuous similarity [unsinnliche
Ähnlichkeit]” (Benjamin 1999d, p. 721). Against the logic of the personal archive,
which, as Derrida noted, “tends to coordinate a single corpus” in “the unity of an
ideal configuration” (1996, p. 14) arises here the possibility of an archive open to
the overflow of the self, to dispersion: an archive of words that would be a fund and
resource for the anarchistic mimesis of everything that goes beyond the limits of the
proper body and the confinement in ipseity.
IV
The anarchival economy draws in its loop a movement of conservation, but it is

coupled with an opposing force. This force is familiar to Benjamin’s readers. We
know its expression in the essay published in 1931, entitled “Het Destructieve
Karakter” (“The Destructive Character”). The author praises the man who “knows
only one watchword: to make room. And only one activity: clearing away”
(Benjamin 1999b, p. 541). Such a person opposes with all his might the bourgeois
desire to preserve his traces, to leave them as a legacy in the velvet-covered interi-
ors – which is why Benjamin praised the glass architecture of Scheerbart and the
Bauhaus in 1933’s “Erfahrung und Armut” (“Experience and Poverty”): “They have
created rooms in which it is hard to leave traces” (Benjamin 1999e, p. 734). The
attire of the classical archivist would not suit the destructive character well, since
the latter “obliterates even the traces of destruction” (Benjamin 1999b, p. 541). The
destructive character opposes transmission to conservation and chooses the former,
which proceeds from a different logic; transmission is anarchistic in that it shatters
its very object so that others can take hold of it freely: “Some people pass things
down to posterity, by making them untouchable and thus conserving them; others
pass on situations by making them practicable and thus liquidating them. The latter
are called the destructive” (p. 542).
So, the portrait of Benjamin as the unhappy archivist of himself, forced by mere
circumstance to move forward in disguise and to scatter his work to the winds,
would be too coherent and therefore incomplete if we neglect the destructive aspect
or, as Benjamin refers to it in July 1929, in an article on Proust, “Penelope’s work
62 A. Wiser
of forgetting” (Benjamin 1999a, p. 238). As such, the intent to conserve and the
work of forgetting are in opposition to each other. But if, like the ancient heroine,
forgetting continuously unravels what archival memory has woven, is it not to keep
open the possibility that what has been lost on the way, like Ulysses, might be
returned? If the destructive character “reduces [what exists] to rubble – not for the
sake of the rubble, but for that of the way leading through it” (Benjamin 1999b,
p. 542), it enables a way to return for the future of that which has not yet taken place.
It is within this paradoxical logic that the Benjaminian anarchive moves.
“In the eyes of the destructive character, nothing is lasting” (Benjamin 1999b,
p. 542). We know how much Benjamin distrusted monumentalization and the trans-
formation of the past into “cultural goods,” the vanquishers’ loot. In “Über den
Begriff der Geschichte” (“On the Concept of History”), the materialist historian is
more than reserved about archiving heritage: he is ready to fight it. Where the accu-
mulated traces of the unbearable “course of things” (p. 542) clutter the future, it is
through the rubble that the anarchival rescue of what did not take place in this
course of things is perhaps at stake: memories of the vanquished, the “spark of
hope” (Benjamin 2003, p. 391), or, on the lined and wrinkled face, “registration of
the great passions, vices, insights that called on us [while] we, the masters, were not
home” (Benjamin, 1999a, p. 245).
Let us follow the trail of this rubble for a moment. In a letter to Scholem dated
26 July, 1932, Benjamin again mentions the project of collected works, reconfig-
ured as collected essays on literature. His plan seems even more compromised than
it had been a few months earlier, and Benjamin refers to the place it now occupies
alongside other deadlocked projects as “the real site of ruin or catastrophe”:
Ich will nicht von den Plänen reden, die unausgeführt, unangerührt bleiben mußten, aber
doch an dieser Stelle jedenfalls die vier Bücher aufzählen, die die eigentliche Trümmer-
oder Katastrophenstätte bezeichnen, von der ich keine Grenze absehen kann, wenn ich das
Auge über meine nächsten Jahre schweifen lasse. Es sind die ‘Pariser Passagen’, die
‘Gesammelten Essays zur Literatur’, die ‘Briefe’ und ein höchst bedeutsames Buch über
das Haschisch. Von diesem letztern Thema weiß niemand und es soll vorläufig unter uns
bleiben. (Benjamin 1978, p. 556).
I do not want to speak of the projects that had to remain unfinished, or even untouched, but
rather to name here the four books that mark off the real site of ruin or catastrophe, whose
furthest boundary I am still unable to survey when I let my eyes wander over the next years
of my life. They include the Pariser Passagen, the Gesammelte Essays zur Literatur, the
Briefe, and a truly exceptional book about hashish.7 Nobody knows about this last topic,
and for the time being it should remain between us. (Benjamin 1994, p. 396)
7
We know from the few pages published in 1932 that the philosophical-poetic record of the effects
of the drug taken by the author in Marseilles in the summer of 1928 archive a state of the subject
that is both outside of itself and paradoxically very close to itself. The text opens with a quotation
from an article by Ernst Joel and Fritz Fränkel on hashish intoxication, where we read: “Images
and chains of images, long-submerged memories appear; whole scenes and situations are experi-
enced” (Benjamin 1999c, p. 673). Thus, the drug operates like an archivist diving into the depths
of memory to retrieve the forgotten treasures. It is by withdrawing from oneself that memories
suddenly become available.
The image of destruction was to be found again a few years later in another letter
to Scholem, dated 24 October, 1935, in connection with Berlin Childhood around
1900 and the collection of letters by German authors that Benjamin had been pub-
lishing in the press since 19358:
Manchmal träume ich den zerschlagenen Büchern nach – der berliner Kindheit um neun-
zehnhundert und der Briefsammlung – und dann wundere ich mich, woher ich die Kraft
nehme, ein neues ins Werk zu setzen. (Benjamin 1978, p. 695)
From time to time I dream about the shattered book projects – the Berliner Kindheit um
1900 and the collection of letters – and then I am surprised when I find the strength to
embark on a new one. (Benjamin 1994, p. 513, modified translation)
The figure of the ruin is significant here in that it does not evoke the result of a
catastrophe but the state of what has not yet been assembled, the collapse in advance
of the collation and recollection of the fragments dispersed by the anarchival strat-
egy. We come across the rubble more than once in Benjamin’s pages; I will only
mention two of its appearances. The first one brings out the melancholic nature of a
rescue’s purpose: it is on the ruins that the angel of history, empathetic and impo-
tent, bends over, wanting to gather the scattered pieces of the possible, while the
irresistible march of progress prevents him from doing so (Benjamin 2003, p. 392).
The angel is animated by an archivist’s desire for organic collation, the restoration
of unity and life: the awakening of the dead. It is not certain, contrary to what the
end of the fragment asserts, that his failure is solely due to the power of the storm of
progress; his desire, oriented toward the putting together (Zusammenfügen), also
neglects the anarchistic claim of dissimilation. In order to accommodate the latter,
one must turn to another encounter with the rubble, which we read in the Passagen-
Werk (Benjamin 1991), and meaningfully so, by means of a quote from Baudelaire’s
Artificial Paradises:
Voici un homme chargé de ramasser les débris d’une journée de la capitale. Tout ce que la
grande cité a rejeté, tout ce qu’elle a perdu, tout ce qu’elle a dédaigné, tout ce qu’elle a
brisé, il le catalogue, il le collectionne. Il compulse les archives de la débauche, le caphar-
naüm des rebuts. Il fait un triage, un choix intelligent; il ramasse, comme un avare un tré-
sor, les ordures qui, remâchées par la divinité de l’Industrie, deviendront des objets d’utilité
ou de jouissance. (Baudelaire 1975, p. 381)
Here is a man in charge of collecting the debris of a day in the capital. Everything that the
great city has rejected, everything that it has lost, everything that it has disdained, every-
thing that it has broken, he catalogs it, he collects it. He compiles the archives of debauch-
ery, the hodgepodge of rejects. He makes a sorting, an intelligent choice; he collects, like a
miser a treasure, the garbage which, rehashed by the divinity of Industry, will become
objects of utility or enjoyment. (Translation by the author)
As Benjamin will do with “everything of his that has appeared in print” (Benjamin
1994, p. 385), the intoxicated ragpicker, whose portrait Baudelaire paints here, cata-
logs and collects. He is not a museographer: if he treats the debris of the day as an
archive, his intention is by no means simple conservation. The archive is waste, by
8
These letters, however, would be published in 1936 in Lucerne, under the title Deutsche Menschen.
64 A. Wiser
new purpose alchemically transformed from mud to gold. For the ragpicker, the
archive is only as valuable as its possible future, a new context in which it will be
made “practicable” (Benjamin 1999b, p. 542). Just as the author’s citation practice
is held up through anarchistic brigandage (Benjamin 2016, p. 84) by tearing the
citation away from its co-text in order to open up new perspectives, irreverent
though they are with regard to the law of the genre, the ragpicker’s practice has
nothing to do with the old order and inherited uses. He is the anarchivist par excel-
lence: his practical and aesthetic intelligence (for utility is not the only end of the
reject – it can be enjoyment as well) is concerned with disorder; it is among the
capharnaüm that he sees new potentialities emerge. He subverts the fundamental
division that the order of the day has established between the useful and the useless
and substitutes his own critical principle, a sorting devoid of any fetishism of relics.
Far from feeling the melancholy of a lost unity – his intoxication keeps him at a safe
distance by taking him out of himself – the ragpicker does not reconstitute anything:
he diverts. In so doing, he rearranges into an unprecedented future constellation the
abandoned archive of what has been. In his hands, the strategic economy of the
anarchive is no longer limited to undoing the archive’s spatial ordering; it reverses
its order on the chronological axis, the entire archeologic that assigned to it the
place of a past preserved at the end of the “triumphal procession [of] the masters of
today” (Benjamin 2003, pp. 391–392). With the ragpicker, the anarchive turns, liter-
ally, into the avant-garde.
V
The archive is incomplete, as we know. The documents Benjamin took with him on
his flight to Spain are lost, probably forever. Their importance in relation to what
remains will always be unknown. This incomplete corpus is matched by the absence
of the body of its author, whose place of burial is unknown. But the division of the
archive, as we have seen, began long before, from the moment it was exposed to the
effects of the anarchive. In Benjamin’s work, these effects create tensions, contrary
gestures, divergent lines, and centrifugal and centripetal movements that no system-
atic hypothesis seems to be able to bring back to a perfect coherence.
It seems to me that this observation, like the path I have outlined here, can lead
us to question our own relationship to the Benjaminian archive. There is undoubt-
edly a violence in the destructive character, just as there is violence in the integral
conservation (one thinks of Max Brod’s broken promise to destroy Kafka’s manu-
scripts upon his death). We could therefore reflect on the uses of the archive using
Benjamin’s categories of violence (Benjamin 1996), even if the parallel lacks rigor:
there would thus be, in the archive, a conservative use, a founding or instituting use,
and a destructive use. One aspect of Benjamin’s complex archival behavior repre-
sents the conservative use as far as he strives to preserve, in the midst of historical
turmoil, the unity of his personal archive; but there is also an instituting use, the one
applied by the WBA, i.e., gathering under the author’s name of all the dispersed
members of the corpus – an institution which is also that of Benjamin as name, as a

unity, a principle, and arkhé of collation and preservation. It is from the same act of
instituting a name that the posthumous Gesammelte Schriften proceed, as well as
the manifold academic uses: the study of an object (or even a monument) of the his-
tory of ideas, the scholastic appropriation, the accumulation of scholarly knowl-
edge, and the doxographic reconstructions that flush the author out from under his
masks make it the object of colloquiums, debates, and, sometimes, scientific con-
flicts around the establishment of the truth (of the text, of the work, of the author).
And then there remains the open question of a destructive use of the archive, of what
the archive keeps or institutes: the organic, ordered, and organized unity. This last
use, anarchic, anarchistic, or anarchival, encounters the violence of the quotation,
which undoes context, disregards the unity of the (body of) work, mocks the author-
ity of the proper name as much as the readings that authorize it, and forgets a little
about “Benjamin” as the common thread weaving through the archive, giving it
coherence. But, in doing so, does it not secretly agree with the centrifugal move-
ments of dissimulation and dissimilation that run through the scattered texts signed
by Walter Benjamin, Detlef Holz, C. Conrad, K. A. Stempflinger, Karl Gumlich, or
J. E. Mabinn?
Without in the least neglecting or devaluing the fundamental importance of the
founding principle and always dependent on an infinite debt to the conservative one,
I am inclined to think that a future for Benjamin lies in the third, destructive use. As
annoying as it may be at times – when fashion tends to cite his name indiscrimi-
nately (but precisely, it is then first and foremost his name that is cited) – this usage
seems to me to be the one most capable of tearing Benjaminian thoughts, concepts,
and images away from the pinprick of a truth embedded in the patronymic, in order
to make them available to take their place in new, radically critical constellations,
still to be drawn (along lines of anarchistic convergence with the archives named,
e.g., and among others – Derrida, Foucault, Butler, or Haraway) and necessary to
imagine a possible future “while fanning the spark of hope in the very heart of past
events” (Benjamin 2003, p. 391).
References
Baudelaire, Charles. 1975. Paradis artificiels. In Œuvres completes. Tome 1, ed. Claude Pichois,
377–398. Paris: Gallimard.
Benjamin, Walter. 1978. Briefe. Vols. 1 and 2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———, 1991. Passagen-Werk. In Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5–2, ed. R. Tiedemann,
H. Schweppenhäuser. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 1994. The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin: 1910–1940, ed. Gershom Scholem and
Theodor W. Adorno. Trans. Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
———. 1996. Critique of Violence. In Selected Writings.1: 1913–1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and
Michael W. Jennings, 236–252. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press.
66 A. Wiser
———. 1999a. On the Image of Proust. In Selected Writings. 2,1: 1927–1930, ed. Michael
W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith. Trans. Rodney Livingstone, 237–247. Cambridge,
London: Harvard University Press.
———. 1999b. The Destructive Character. In Selected Writings. 2,2: 1931–1934, ed. Michael
———. 1999c. Hashish in Marseilles. In Selected Writings. 2,2: 1931–1934, ed. Michael
———. 1999d. On the Mimetic Faculty. In Selected Writings. 2,2: 1931–1934, ed. Michael
———. 1999e. Experience and Poverty. In Selected Writings. 2,2: 1931–1934, ed. Michael
———. 2002. Berlin Childhood around 1900. In Selected Writings. 3: 1935–1938, ed. Howard
Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Trans. Edmund Jephcott, Howard Eiland and others, 344–414.
Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press.
———. 2003. On the concept of history. In Selected writings. 4: 1938–1940, ed. Howard Eiland
and Michael W. Jennings, 389–400. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press.
———. 2016. One-Way Street, ed. Michael Jennings. Trans. Edmund Jephcott.Cambridge,
Derrida, Jacques. 1987. The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
———. 1994. Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new inter-
national. New York: Routledge.
———. 1996. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Marx, Ursula. 2011. Das Walter Benjamin Archiv. In Benjamin-Handbuch, ed. B. Lindner, 15–16.
Stuttgart, Weimar: J.B. Metzler.
Marx, U., G. Schwarz, M. Schwarz and E. Wizisla, Eds., 2011. Walter Benjamin, Archives: Images,
Textes Et Signes. Trans. Philippe Ivernel. Berlin; Paris: Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaïsme
Akademie der Künste, Archiv Klincksieck.
Tiedemann, Rolf and H. Schweppenhäuser. 1974. Editorische Bericht. In Walter Benjamin. 1991.
Gesammelte Schriften, vol. I-2, ed. R. Tiedemann, H. Schweppenhäuser, 749–796. Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp.
Antonin Wiser holds a PhD in literature and is the author of several translations (W. Benjamin,
Th. Adorno, M. Frisch) as well as a monograph devoted to the utopia of literature in Adorno’s
work: Vers une langue sans terre. Adorno et l’utopie de la littérature (Maison des sciences de
l’homme, 2014). He currently teaches at high school in Lausanne (Switzerland).
Part IV
The Institute for Social Research Archive
The Attitude of the German People:
The Institute of Social Research Archive
as Contemporary History
Dirk Braunstein and Maischa Gelhard
In setting up his own archives, the subject seizes his own stock
of experience as property, so making it something wholly
external to himself. Past inner life is turned into furniture just
as, conversely, every Biedermeier piece was memory made
wood. –Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia
1 History of the Archive
In November 1931, Friedrich Pollock wrote a letter to the president of the

Reichsarchiv1 in Potsdam, revealing that Max Horkheimer, the new director of the
Institute of Social Research (IfS), was planning “to postpone the purely historical
work of the Institute and [to concentrate] all resources on sociological and social-
philosophical work.” Therefore, it would not be possible to “further expand the
archive of the Institute. We are considering the idea of selling the archive,” namely,
to the Reich Archive. Pollock continues: “The entire archive consists of 629 boxes
in which 3461 folders are filed […]. The content of this collection consists of vari-
ous kinds of documents on the history of the political, the trade union and the coop-
erative labor movement as well as some […] peripheral works. The material is
composed of leaflets, posters, circulars, brochures, organizational statues, etc.”
(Bundesarchiv R 1506/1134, sheet 119). At that time, the so-called Archive of the
Institute of Social Research was not the product of collecting self-developed
1
The Reichsarchiv (Archive of the German Reich/Reich Archive) was the precursor to the present-
day Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives) as the national German archive.
D. Braunstein (*) · M. Gelhard

Institut für Sozialforschung (IfS), Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Switzerland AG 2023
70 D. Braunstein and M. Gelhard
documents but rather comprised documents that one would today expect to find in a
research library. As it turned out, the Reich Archive did not have to give any further
thought to the question of the cost incurred by that acquisition. In the spring of
1933, the IfS as an institution having already gone into exile in the United States,
along with some of its employees, the building in Frankfurt was confiscated by the
Gestapo2 and shut down. The measure was based on the Reich Law on the confisca-
tion of communist assets implemented shortly before. This law allowed the state
authorities to seize the assets of communists and institutions deemed to be commu-
nist without compensation. What would have been given to the Reich Archive as a
contribution was appropriated, distributed, or destroyed by Karl Demeter, the head
of the Reich Archive Department in Frankfurt, on behalf of the Führer. In a letter to
the board of trustees at the Frankfurt University dated April 19, 1940, Demeter
wrote: “An approximately 5-kilogram portrait bust of an unknown man and a por-
trait plaque of the economic and social science faculty of Frankfurt given on the
occasion of the 70th birthday of Karl Grünberg. I immediately arranged for both
bronze objects to be collected for metal donation. Heil Hitler!”3 (Bundesarchiv R
1506/1107, sheet 10). Thus, almost no material from the period before the National
Socialists took power was preserved at the institute or by its employees. Only the
study “Workers and Employees on the Eve of the Third Reich,” conducted by Erich
Fromm with the participation of Hilde Weiss,4 survived. These documents include a
fragment of the study mentioned with its survey material from 1929 to 1931, the
interim report from 1936, and papers regarding the evaluation in English from the
years 1937 and 1938. In addition, material has been conserved from four studies
that the institute carried out in exile in the United States, including letters that arose
during the “prize contest” project, which will be discussed below. The remainder of
the archive material, i.e., more than 95% of it, dates back to the post-World War II
period and was initially simply stored as accumulated material in secretariats,
administration offices, and in the library of the institute, as there was no prospect of
a permanent archive. “In 1986, a commissioned employee of the Institute began to
systematically organize the archive inventory and to develop a concept for filing its
records. This became possible due to the designation of one room solely as an
archive, the archive materials are accommodated in this room to the present.
Steadily, the written material as well as the data media have been and are being col-
lected to this very day” (Sonnenfeld 2016, p. 209) – namely, by the author of these
lines herself: in 2006, the first archivist of the IfS, Dr. Christa Sonnenfeld
(1945–2015), began to compile, structure, file, and register the stored material.
Virtually single-handedly she began to establish what is today the Archive of the
Institute of Social Research.
Since the IfS as a private foundation under public law is not part of the Goethe
University Frankfurt, there was initially no legal framework in which the archive
2
The Geheime Staatspolizei, (Gestapo), was the secret police force of Nazi Germany.
3
Carl Grünberg (1861–1940) was founding director of the Institute of Social Research in 1924.
4
After emigrating to the US in 1939, Weiss changed the spelling of her first name to Hilda.
The Attitude of the German People: The Institute of Social Research Archive… 71
could have been situated. It remained, so to speak, a private collection held together
only by the goodwill of the institute committee. In order to transform this situation
and, in addition, to benefit from the accumulated knowledge of an established
archive, the IfS entered into a cooperation with the archive center of the library of
the Goethe University Frankfurt (Sonnenfeld 2017, p. 398). Consequently, the IfS
Archive as an institution has come under the jurisdiction of the Hessian Archives
Law, which sets a legal framework for its remit.
In terms of the size of the collection, the IfS Archive can be estimated to be of
medium size. Differing from, for example, a personal estate archive, the collection
is constantly growing: the current extent of the archive material is about 150 lin-
ear meters.
In 2015, the Institute of Social Research as an institution was evaluated by the
German Science and Humanities Council (Wissenschaftsrat)5 on behalf of the
Hessian Ministry of Science. The evaluation report states that the Theodor
W. Adorno Archive and the IfS Archive offer “collections of great importance for
the contemporary history of the Federal Republic of Germany. On an international
level, there is no other institute with a similar research profile and range of activities
in the tradition of the Frankfurt School” (Wissenschaftsrat 2015, p. 8). Furthermore,
it states that the archive at the Institute of Social Research holds “connected collec-
tions of fundamental importance for the scientific, cultural, and contemporary his-
tory of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as for the history of ideas and the
current further development of Critical Social Theory worldwide. However, the cur-
rent conditions of use, the lack of a scientifically sound concept for the development
and digitization of the holdings, as well as the available technical equipment and
networking do not do justice to the importance of the collections” (p. 11). This
appraisal is still valid in large part, although due to this evaluation in August 2016
the part-time position of archivist was created with funds from the Hessian state.
Since October 2019, there has also been a position for a graduate assistant (10 h/
week) whose initial task was to process an extensive photo collection (ordering,
indexing, cassation), which had gone to the archive as a collection the same year.
Even though these implementations had an impact on the condition of the archive,
due to its constant growth and its costs, it cannot fulfill its tasks satisfactorily.
2 Tasks of the Archive
The tasks of the IfS Archive can roughly be divided into four areas.
5
This council is an official scientific body sponsored by German federal and state governments.
2.1 Collection
The collection of documents worthy of archiving, namely, text, image, audio, and
video documents, is the first task of the archive. It is primarily a document archive
without any museum-like character. Its area of collection includes material from
internal administration (mostly at the level of the directorate); from internal research
(including preparation and findings as well as failed research projects); from lec-
tures, courses, and (public) events at the institute; and from collaborative research.
2.2 Preservation
The conservational long-term preservation of the archive material is carried out in

several steps: from the stock-securing storage of the archive material and the regula-
tion of accessibility, through to deacidification and cleaning measures for paper
documents, and finally to the digitization of the archive material for the purpose of
long-term information security.
One of the tasks is the complete archival preparation of the paper material, i.e.,
reviewing; removing any pieces of iron; organizing and collecting, either in special
folders or archive binders; and the final horizontal storage of the material in acid-
free archive boxes. In the early days, the archival material was collected in standing
folders. This has proven inadequate because, first, the used folders were not acid-
free and thus attacked the material and, second, older paper material cannot with-
stand its own weight when stored upright and begins to disintegrate. It is estimated
that between one-fifth and a quarter of the total material has up to now been repack-
aged to or immediately collected into archival boxes, and approximately 120 linear
meters of material have yet to be repackaged. In addition, a thus far undetermined
number of archive boxes contain, for unknown reasons, entirely unsorted and unpro-
cessed paper documents that were not archivally filed but were merely temporarily
stored in boxes during the construction of the archive. These boxes must be identi-
fied, and their contents completely sorted and individually processed.
Although new material is being added, by far the largest part of the archive docu-
ments contain acid, as the institute used acidic paper up until the 1980s. In order to
preserve the components in the medium term, deacidification measures must be
taken to protect the paper from decay (which has already begun in a small number
of cases). The archive staff are in contact with the relevant offices of the federal
government’s Special Program for the Preservation of the Written Cultural Heritage,
who are in favor of assuming the costs for mass deacidification.
The IfS Archive contains a relatively large quantity of floppy disks, most of
which have not been assigned to the archive records and some of which are of
unclear provenance and unknown content. To ensure that the material can be viewed
and subsequently processed, image files of the diskettes need to be created. This has
the advantage of initially saving their content without having to check and weigh up
their archival value; it also saves formats that cannot be checked in situ, i.e., on a PC
with a currently common operating system and appropriate software. In addition,
several hundred audio cassettes, audio tapes, audio reels, VCR tapes, and shellac
records with radio recordings can be found. Some of these have been assigned to the
respective projects from which they originate and have been integrated into the col-
lection, but others are of unclear provenance and unknown content.
If one wishes, one can also turn the partial state of archival indexing in one’s
favor: “The higher the degree of indexing, the more perfectly the holdings are
arranged, the smaller the chance for accidental finds” (Ehrsam 2021, p. 48). For
example, during an examination of the material, the archivist came across a manu-
script by Felix Weil (1945), which researchers had previously considered lost.6 The
material in question here is currently being packed in archive folders, transferred to
archive boxes, and provisionally catalogued while being freed from metal and foil.
It is initially being protected as far as possible from further decay; more in-depth
evaluation and indexing of the documents will take place after the conservation
measures have been completed. It would be the ultimate goal of the conservational,
organizational, and exploratory measures – and this certainly applies to every
archive – to achieve a state in which the collection is processed to such an extent that
at least as much existing material can continue to be processed as new material is
added. With the current available financial resources, however, this is unrealistic.
While a deacidification measure is to be carried out in the next 2 years with funds
from the federal government, as well as the IfS’s own budget, there is currently no
financing plan for digitization, even though it is urgently needed.
2.3 Usability
According to the Hessian Archives Law, the IfS Archive must also ensure the usabil-
ity of the archive material for internal and external researchers and institutions, as
well as nonscientific entities and institutions.
However, the contents of 146 of the archive boxes, some of which were repack-
aged from upright stored folders into horizontal and acid-free boxes, have not yet
been recorded in public finding aids nor have the contents of the 120 linear meters
still stored in standing files nor, inherently, the material that has not yet been pro-
cessed at all.
The means of choice for setting up a database to provide information about the
holdings of the IfS Archive has so far been to enter them into the Archive Information
System Hesse (Arcinsys)7: this approach, however, was and is connected to consid-
erable disadvantages. The underlying software is not user-friendly either for the
6
The study refers to a simple functional concept of antisemitism, less developed than anything the
IfS had worked out at that time. Therefore, the publication of Weil’s text is not planned at present.
7
See arcinsys.hessen.de.
processor or the customer, and the depth of indexing is unregulated and, in this
respect, inconsistent within the archive material itself, as well as between the main
archives in Frankfurt and Hesse. The descriptions provided are at times impractical
and partly misleading. In short, the public database often does not assist research.
However, this circumstance can only be improved by a concerted effort on the part
of the Hessian archives as well as the Hessian government.
In reference to user support, due to the multiple tasks that the archivist and the
graduate assistant have had to perform, with a part-time position and 10 h per week,
respectively, they have often been forced to offer interested parties appointments
that were not always user-friendly, because timely support, assistance, and supervi-
sion could not be offered at short notice. Unrestricted traffic (where users are not
required to register in advance) will not be possible at the IfS Archive, because the
lack of resources – i.e., the limited personnel, as well as the insufficient amenities,
prevent it.
It is urgently required that all projects carried out at the IfS so far are listed,
including information on which of these projects archive material can be found on.
This list, in the form of a migratable database, would be the basis for the internal
order of the archive, for the subsequent data migration into any external database,
and for any further use and research of the archive material. The data obtained
would have to be curated in the long term and thus kept usable and up to date.
2.4 Research out of the Archive
Employees’ activities include improving the external perception of the IfS Archive,
contributing to research and enabling follow-up research, and publishing out of the
archive. Accordingly, more than a dozen publications have been produced so far
(Adorno 2015, 2016, 2018a, b; Adorno and Popper 2019; Becker et al. 2020;
Braunstein 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021; Braunstein and Link 2019a, b, c; von
Haselberg 2020).
Currently, an IfS working paper is being prepared by the archivist and the gradu-
ate assistant, which will present all the projects that have been realized at the IfS in
the past 100 years. In addition, the correspondence between Adorno and Ludwig
von Friedeburg is being prepared for publication by Suhrkamp Verlag.
3 Examples of the Archive Material
3.1 Group Experiment
After Horkheimer, Adorno, and Pollock returned to Frankfurt in the late 1940s, they
found the old institute building a bombed-out ruin. The new building – today’s insti-
tute – was inaugurated in 1951, but in the winter of 1950/1951, in the basement
rooms of the old building, the plan for the most time- and manpower-consuming
empirical study ever realized by the institute (to date) was compiled (Demirović
1999, p. 357; von Friedeburg 2000, pp. 25–6).
The US High Commission for Occupied Germany (HICOG), i.e., the military
government of the American occupation zone in Germany, not only provided the
financial means for the construction of a new institute building, but its Reactions
Analysis Branch also financed the survey of the political consciousness of West
Germans (Crespi 1952, p. 215; Hoeres 2010, p. 70). HICOG, concerned about the
continuing nationalism of West Germans, commissioned extensive reports on West
German public opinion in the first phase after the founding of the Federal Republic
of Germany (Merritt and Merritt 1980). The aim of the study conducted by the IfS
was to find out whether and how the population of the newly founded Federal
Republic of Germany was capable of democracy and which reeducation measures
would be required to advance the political and cultural democratization of West
Germans (Braunstein and Link 2019b). In order to determine the political con-
science of the population, the IfS decided to invite members of different strata of the
population to group meetings and to have them talk to each other. They wished to
achieve a deeper understanding of the attitudes present in the population toward
certain political topics which were the subject of these talks: on the one hand,
National Socialism, World War II, the Holocaust, and the question of guilt for what
had happened, and on the other hand, the political future of Germany, nationalism,
the current occupation policy, relations with America and Russia, the question of the
remilitarization of the Federal Republic, and the participants’ attitudes toward
democracy (Becker et al. 2020).
In order for the discussions within the Group Experiment to be topic-centered,
the IfS developed a “basic stimulus,” which is still standard in group discussion
procedures (Lamnek 1998, pp. 136–9). This basic stimulus was the so-called
Colburn Letter (Pollock 1955, pp. 501–3): a fictitious letter written by a fictitious
sergeant named Colburn from, as the case may be, the US or British occupation
forces, in which he conveys his impressions of Germany to his home country
(p. 41; p. 53).
Each discussion was conducted by an investigator and an assistant. While the
main researcher moderated the discussions to a basic extent, the assistant was
responsible for the technical setting on site. The Colburn Letter, which had been
recorded onto vinyl, was played before each round of discussion. The ensuing dis-
cussion was tape-recorded. Social-statistical data were collected from all partici-
pants, but not the names of the participants: they were all given aliases so that they
could express themselves as freely as possible without fear of potential conse-

quences; not even the main researcher and the assistant knew the subjects’ names.
Finally, a report on the mood in the group, its composition, peculiarities, etc. was
prepared for each discussion by the investigator (von Haselberg 2020, pp. 197–240).
The audio tapes with the discussions were listened to by stenographers at the IfS
in 1951. They transcribed the recordings, and from those transcriptions, double car-
bon copies were made so that more than one researcher could work with a protocol.
It was found that the transcriptions were still insufficient; it became apparent during
the study that it was important not only to have the pragmatic content of the state-
ments but to reproduce exactly what was said. So, in a second correction process,
each typescript was revised by hand based on the recordings. The composed written
material was not retyped but used directly as the basis for the subsequent evalua-
tions. The audio tapes, some of which were only rentals, were eventually either
returned or taped over during later research projects; no tape with material from the
group sessions has survived, probably also because poor sound quality made listen-
ing very difficult.
After completion of the project, the written material was bound into books and
given to the institute’s library. There exists a red, a gray, and a blue series, corre-
sponding to the bindings. Handwritten corrections were made in all three series, so
that three approximately but not completely identical versions of all protocols were
produced.
To be able to evaluate the material qualitatively and quantitatively, a “scoring
manual” was created in 1951 (IfS Archive, F2/70). With its help, constituent pas-
sages of the discussion contributions could be assigned specific topics (Osmer 1952,
p. 168). Within these topics further distinction was made, depending on assessment.
For example, coding “16,8” meant “Attitude to the Jews: attempt to break off topic,”
whereas the code “16,9” meant “Attitude to the Jews: detection of renewed anti-
semitism in Germany.” These coding numbers were noted in the margins of the
transcripts, occasionally with dashes indicating to which section of the text this
assignment applied. In addition, annotations and internal procedural instructions for
further evaluation of certain passages can be found as marginal notes in the docu-
ments. This means that textual differences between the three series can be found,
primarily regarding the subsequent evaluation of the transcriptions, which, as
explained, were only working material for the following interpretation.
The original plan was to publish the research results from the Group Experiment
in several independent texts devoted to different subfields. These so-called mono-
graphs were written between the end of 1951 and the beginning of 1955, under
Adorno’s direction. The political reservations that ultimately prevented the publica-
tion of the monographs became clear in one of Adorno’s speeches in April 1954 (by
which time the preliminary versions of the texts were available), when he said in a
staff meeting: “Today I would like to talk to you about the group study, which is the
child of our love, but also of our concern. The question of its publication presented
us with serious difficulties. […] Almost all monographs of the group study were not
suitable for publication; their content would have caused too great a shock among
readers” (Becker et al. 2020, p. 21). Similar concerns were expressed a month later
by René König, to whom some discussion protocols were sent for reviewing and
evaluation, because the research group considered publishing one or more protocols
as examples. König wrote to Adorno: “Do you think it is good and ‘advisable’ to
print the protocols in extenso? The conclusions they open up are shocking” (König
2000, p. 450). Consequently, the IfS invited selected experts to a conference in
1953 in order to discuss the “disturbing” results of the study, which, as Pollock
wrote, “have no public character whatsoever” (Becker et al. 2020, p. 20).
Only a little – prominently Adorno’s contribution “Guilt and Defense” (“Schuld
und Abwehr”) (Adorno 2010), which was included in his Gesammelte Schriften
(Collected Writings) (Adorno 2003) – finally made it into the only contemporary
publication that the IfS organized on the Group Experiment: in 1955 within the
institute’s then current series of publications (Pollock 1955). The foreword by Franz
Böhm8 gives an idea of the extent to which the published discussion parts of the
group study presented themselves to a democrat as “the most harassing and heart-
less superior-thinking [Herrendenken]” (Böhm 1955, p. XVI).
The institute’s Group Experiment is regarded in research circles as a milestone
of empirical social research. The underlying methodology is considered the first of
its kind; sometimes it is even referred to as “the legendary group study, also called
Group Experiment” (Klingemann 2014, p. 488). This is probably related to the fact
that, although the explosive nature of the material had been anticipated due to the
historical situation – the population speaks very openly about its past and its politi-
cal attitudes 1 year after the founding of the Federal Republic – remarkably little is
known about the content or procedure of the Group Experiment: it offers nothing
less than insight into the “non-public opinion” (Böhm 1955, p. XI) of West Germans
immediately after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany. This was why
the IfS was so extremely reluctant to publish results. Yet the story told by the accu-
mulated material of the Group Experiment study continues to this day. Accordingly,
the material does not merely constitute the founding documents of research into
West German authoritarianism but can also be considered as a record of the genesis
and prehistory of West German authoritarianism itself.
Most of the material on the Group Experiment has been preserved as project
documentation in the IfS Archive, contained in 33 archive boxes comprising
121 units. To do justice to the special scientific significance of the material, the IfS
is currently preparing an application for third-party funding, the aim of which is to
make the material available to the public. One means to this end is a digital edition,
which will be offered as an open-access service. For the experts, this offer provides
the opportunity for follow-up research within the disciplines of the history of sci-
ence, especially the history of sociology, empirical methodological research, the
history of mentality, contemporary history, historical sociology, political theory
(theory of democracy), research on authoritarianism, psychoanalytical research,
research on antisemitism, racism, and sexism.
8
Franz Böhm was chairman of the IfS Foundation Council and member of the Bundestag for the
Christian Democratic Union of Germany.
This edition will pursue two aims: first, to offer a reconstruction of the proce-
dure, in this respect, an analysis with a scientific-methodical-historical goal is
required. The edition will make the genesis of the Group Experiment transparent
and disclose its historicity without restriction. The archival documents are thereby
recorded as cultural artifacts in their own right and made accessible as a digital
archive. That way, a reconstruction of the process enables follow-up research within
the fields of history of science (especially sociology) and methodological research.
Second, the largely unknown contents – i.e., the discussion transcripts them-
selves as source material in addition to the monographs and the accompanying
material – are to be made fully accessible. It is of crucial importance to curate the
group discussions as an indexed and annotated text corpus, which comprises a read-
able text and ensures the order, internal interconnectedness, and searchability of the
material. Only the scientifically reliable processed corpus and its digital publication
will provide for follow-up research within the history of mentality, contemporary
history, historical sociology, and political theory.
3.2 The Contest on the German People and Antisemitism
Another project is the edition and publication of all letters that have been preserved
in the archive from the institute’s so-called prize contest. In October 1943, the insti-
tute launched an appeal in the German-Jewish New York exile newspaper Aufbau,
which stated, among other things: “The Institute of Social Research at Columbia
University in New York is engaged in a study of German anti-Semitism. One aim of
these studies is to bring facts to light, knowledge of which may contribute to a cor-
rect treatment of the defeated [Germans]. For this purpose, also the experiences of
German Jews and non-Jewish anti-Fascists are to be made fruitful” (Anonymous
1943, p. 5). To this end, those readers who had fled Germany were called upon to
share their “experiences with Nazi anti-Semitism” with the institute by letter. A
brief “Preliminary Report on The Contest on the German People and Antisemitism”
provides information on the course of this action and some of its results. They can
be found in the first volume of the still unpublished “Studies in Antisemitism”:
The Institute of Social Research thought it would be useful to ask Jewish refugees from
Germany to describe their personal experiences with the attitude of the German people
toward Jews after 1933, especially with those Germans who were not militant Nazis.
A prize contest was conducted in German-language newspapers in the United States
read by this group. We asked them write letters telling of their experiences. The judges of
the contest, which has not yet closed, are Thomas Mann; Prof. Paul Tillich of the Union
Theological Seminary; Max Horkheimer, director of the Institute of Social Research and
Manfred George, editor of Aufbau.
So far 110 letters have been received. After eliminating those which contained no infor-
mation or whose contents were mere complaints, we were left seventy scripts whose authors
could be identified as to the scope of their experience. These scripts contained about 260
individual episodes relating to our subject.
The sample is a fairly homogeneous cross section of the assimilated Jewish middle-
class. Fifty writers can easily be identified as liberal Jews. There are many intellectuals
(doctors, lawyers, writers) among them, and many who seemed to have occupied high posi-
tions in business. Most of them refer to their Aryan acquaintances in high positions. No man
forgets to mention his participation in World War I and his decorations. Nearly all were
more or less patriotic Germans. One writer was a socialist newspaperman and lawyer, two
are Zionists, none seem to be of Eastern origin, and very few are orthodox Jews. Many
admit that they write in an effort to be just to the German people or to show either that
German people are not Nazi or that they are not antisemitic. Out of twenty-nine who are
explicit about their positive attitude toward Germany, only eight say that they have changed
their opinion on the nature of the Germans. Two writers are Aryan members of the under-
ground movement. Seven are interested in politics and state their experience in politi-
cal terms.
Nearly half the writers look upon National Socialism as a plebeian revolution against
which they have a common front with decent people of the upper income brackets. Half of
those who make explicit statements on their attitude of the workers express some amaze-
ment at their anti-fascist stance. All those who made their first acquaintance with Aryan
anti-fascists in a concentration camp report their surprise at being treated so well by their
companions in suffering. Reports of acquaintances in concentration camps were not
included in the following survey.
We have also omitted a number of episodes or reports which are based on the suscepti-
bilities of the victim of antisemitism and reflect merely their effort to find some comforting
idea in an adverse world. Such instances abound in the content. They consist of statements
like “my companion was deeply moved when I told him about the death of my brother”, in
reports of order or correctness in the execution of Nazi orders, in gratitude for the slightest
sign of consideration on the part of a Nazi official. Most of these instances actually refer to
shifting of the burden from one Jew to another. (IfS Library 113598/1, pp. 241–3; original
in English)
The 110 entries have been preserved in the IfS Archive. The “contest” has attracted
great interest both among archive users and in contemporary history, so that the
publication of the material – thoroughly edited and annotated – was an obvious
choice. It will be published in the present IfS publication series.
4 What of It?
With this essay, we want to demonstrate two things in particular: first, that the inter-
nal structure of the IfS Archive, as well as the research possibilities at the archive, is
currently lacking due to inadequate resources and capabilities, both financial and
human, and second, that the archive houses documents the importance of which, for
historical research as well as for contemporary analysis, the German Science and
Humanities Council is convinced, as are we.
In short, the archive’s equipment and resources are disproportionate to its
importance.
Undoubtedly, a great many archivists (as well as employees at public institutions
in general) can join in this lament. Is this reason for despair? Rather, it is reason to
demand a fundamental change to the existing conditions!
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Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
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———. 2017. Das Archiv des Instituts für Sozialforschung (IfS), Frankfurt am Main. In Handbuch
Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Soziologie. Band 2: Forschungsdesign, Theorien und
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Dirk Braunstein holds a PhD. He is an archivist and research assistant at the Frankfurt Institute
for Social Research. He is the author of Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy (Brill, 2023). He
is the editor of the four volumes of Die Frankfurter Seminare Theodor W. Adornos. Gesammelte
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2020, she has also been working in the collection department of the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt
am Main.
The Role of Empirical Research
in Theodor W. Adorno’s Thought:
A Personal Experience at the Archive
of the Institute for Social Research
Adriano Januário
The purpose of this chapter is to show how the Institute for Social Research archives
can contribute to shedding new light on Adorno’s writings, especially by bearing in
mind the history of publications of his texts in Brazil and, perhaps, throughout the
Americas. Over the years, the image of Adorno’s work was traced from the monu-
mental Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas 1984; mainly Chap. 4).
However, that image is no longer dominant, and meaningful publications have
recently to cast it into doubt (Thyen 1989; O’Connor 2004; Hullot-Kentor 1989;
Sommer 2016). Knowledge of the archives of the Institute for Social Research can
help to frame and reinforce a new perspective on Adorno’s writings, to understand
conceptual constellations that were left aside. In this chapter, I want to draw atten-
tion to a specific constellation: education, resistance, and democracy in Adorno’s
late works. This constellation could only arise from the research developed at the
Institute for Social Research between 1950s and 1960s. On the theme of democracy,
Adorno did not deepen his analysis of a democratic organization of society in a
specific work or book, either because of the limitations and concerns expressed in
his critical model of the period or because he did not have the time to develop the
implications of considering democracy as a potential. However, it does not mean
that he neglected this topic. What we want to show here is that the theme of democ-
racy appears linked to the themes of education and resistance in his writings. Adorno
did not look at these themes externally. The themes of democracy and education
were subjects of diverse research projects at the Institute for Social Research
throughout the 1950s and 1960s, in which Adorno participated at different levels.
With this objective in mind, I will (1) make a brief presentation of some empiri-
cal studies developed at the institute throughout the 1950s and 1960s and (2) present
the constellation formed by education, democracy, and resistance in some of
his works.
A. Januário (*)

Switzerland AG 2023
84 A. Januário
1 The Research on Democracy and Education

at the Institute for Social Research
The purpose of this section is not to be exhaustive in explaining the extent and the
importance of the archive in Frankfurt; Dirk Braunstein and Maischa Gelhard’s
masterful chapter in this volume fulfills this role. I want only to mention some of the
research carried out at the institute during the period in which Adorno was director.
The objective is to indicate to what extent there was a very rich framework of data,
research, and reflection from which Adorno was able to elaborate his most famous
interventions, such as “Education after Auschwitz” (1966) and from which I could
formulate the conceptual constellation of democracy, education, and resistance.
For the purpose of this chapter, understanding the return from exile of the insti-
tute to Frankfurt am Main is meaningful. The return project was primarily designed
by Max Horkheimer. He thought that it would be possible to influence the paths of
reconstruction in West Germany in the late 1940s and early 1950s. For him, Critical
Theory had the potential to play a big role in this process. The German cultural
climate, so Horkheimer thought, was characterized by sustaining a critique of the
dominant pattern of scientific production, a type of environment that was increas-
ingly rare in the United States (Adorno 1969). Based on this and other diagnostic
assessments, Horkheimer and his “inner circle” decided to return to Frankfurt by
invitation of the state of Hessen, the city of Frankfurt, and the Goethe University
Frankfurt. The first negotiations on the reconstruction of the Institute for Social
Research took place from early 1948 and 1949, and began in September 1950 with
funding from the McCloy-Fonds (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 17), the city
of Frankfurt, and the Gesellschaft für Sozialforschung (Society for Social Research).
At the inauguration of the reconstructed building, Horkheimer recalled his open-
ing speech of 1931, highlighting that his diagnosis and proposal for an institute was
still valid. He hoped that the institute could indirectly intervene in the development
of students and in the process of rebuilding the university. Education in the social
sciences and the understanding of social processes could be an indispensable ele-
ment of academic study, and the institute could also influence the reconstruction of
sociology in Germany. According to Horkheimer, students should learn to read and
understand Plato and Aristotle, “but we believe that, by reading and understanding
them, they will gain something for the social problems of the present time and could
freely understand in view of today’s problems, if they study the shared ideas of
Western culture” (Horkheimer 1952, p. 10). Sociology could assume the philosoph-
ical tradition, and while it could not replace the role of philosophy, it could be
guided by modern and empirical methods mediated by a compression and by a fig-
ure that would establish the mediation between philosophy and sociology. In his
own words, in the “current” social and historical stage, philosophy should be ascer-
tained and confirmed by these empirical methods of sociology, so that such a con-
cept of reason would represent the figure of life relations in its totality.
The Role of Empirical Research in Theodor W. Adorno’s Thought: A Personal… 85
Following this orientation, several research projects were carried out in the 1950s
and 1960s with the objective of investigating German society. Adorno officially
assumed the directorship of the institute in 1958, participating more directly in
research and also in public-facing institutional activities. What follows is a brief
description of these studies based on the material in the Archive of the Institute for
Social Research.
1.1 Research on Democracy in West Germany
In the winter of 1950/1951, one of the best known and richest studies of this period
began: the Group Experiment (Gruppenexperiment) funded by the High Commission
for Occupied Germany (HICOG) (Pollock 1955). It is important to start with this
study because it ended up becoming the best-known model of the institute, being
internationally recognized as the “Method of the Institute for Social Research”
(Mangold 1960). The study aimed to investigate the behavior and opinions of char-
acteristic groups of the German population in relation to political issues and their
worldview. The results demonstrated how some political ideologies are coined in
the public sphere and how these ideologies determine individual opinion.
The participants in the discussions on the theme “German guilt” with respect to
the war and the annihilation of the European Jews were indicative of the social psy-
chological potential of the population in general, so the question of guilt organized
the field of ideological politics in the early 1950s. One of the results of that study
was Adorno’s Schuld und Abwehr (Guilt and Defense) (Adorno 2003). In this spe-
cific study, 25 discussion protocols were recorded, resulting in a large record of
arguments that supported the “defense syndrome” (p. 121). The arguments that
denied, diminished, or relativized what happened served as a defense (Abwehr)
against knowledge of what actually happened and helped to build a collective iden-
tity. The evaluation of the content of the discussion contributions was confirmed in
a very sustainable way through Volker Hagen’s analysis of group dynamics.
The group discussion method was applied in the following studies, being com-
bined with other methods of empirical research (i.e., collecting more classic data
such as profession, age, family situation, children, etc.). The central issue of group
integration was also taken as a starting point for research in 1952–1953, in collabo-
ration with seven other European countries, with the aim of promoting a compara-
tive study. The study, named Oslo-Studie (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 22),
was funded by the Ford Foundation and is now in the institute’s archive. The aim of
the research was to ascertain the similarities and differences between the popula-
tions of different nations and their overt or covert authoritarian tendencies.
This aspect of the unmanifested potential for authoritarian tendencies in light of
the prejudice present in the German population regarding the Allied army’s continu-
ing presence in West Germany ended up being the foundation of the research on
“The effectiveness of foreign radio programs in West Germany” (Institut für
Sozialforschung 1999, p. 22), conducted in 1951 and funded by Voice of America
86 A. Januário
and Columbia’s Bureau of Applied Social Research. The initial objective was to
observe the German view on the traditions and democratic culture of the Allied
soldiers. The study interviewed 180 experts, each one giving four interviews. The
objective was to evaluate the transmissions of Voice of America and the BBC in
addition to transmissions that came from the East – that is, from the Soviet Union.
In the same year, the institute directed the research on Project Candor (Institut für
Sozialforschung 1999, p. 24), funded by Voice of America and Columbia’s Bureau
of Applied Social Research. This study, unlike the previous one, which was carried
out with experts on radio broadcasts, was conducted with German listeners regard-
ing their opinion on the position of the United States.
In 1953 and 1954, the study Image de la France. Un sondage de L’opinion pub-
lique allemande (“Image of France: a poll of public opinion in the German Federal
Republic”) (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 24) was produced, with the aim of
ascertaining the opinion of the 1792 participants on the character and typical char-
acteristics of the French; in a second round of the study, 188 interviews were con-
ducted. As a result of this research, the nationalist and ethnocentric tone was the
most decisive in relation to opinions about France. What is very clear in this study
is that as the Germans spoke about the French, they also said something about them-
selves, which was reinforced by a survey of various data from the interviewees.
The institute’s research program also produced another study with great research
potential for the period: “Totalitäre Tendenzen in der deutschen Presse, 1966” (On
Radical Right Tendencies in the German Press, 1966). The study, as the title sug-
gests, investigates the potential of the extreme right in Germany, by monitoring
changes in the population’s attitude toward democracy.
In the second half of the 1960s, the subject of far-right propaganda in the National
Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) was systematically researched by the insti-
tute. The NPD understood itself to be a constructive opposition to the coalition in
Bonn, defending the parliamentary system. Between 1966 and 1968, during the
biggest economic crisis of the recent German Republic, the NPD had a significant
electoral result. In the investigation “For the reception of the propaganda of the
extreme right” (Jaerisch 1975), a catalog of slogans, unmodified from the propa-
ganda of the NPD, was presented. The results confirmed that the role of the shock
caused by the economic crisis on the one hand and the aggravation caused by the
mass demonstrations of the student movement on the other were crucial to accep-
tance of the nationalist propaganda and the perception of minorities as public ene-
mies. State and social reactions were seen as very fragile, which means that material
actions would be much more effective in combating authoritarianism than broader
cultural notions of changing the psychological characteristic. In other words, stud-
ies showed that democracy should solve more practical economic and strategic
issues. This solution would be much more effective than mere propaganda for
democracy. The studies presented so far had as their principal theme democratic
culture in West Germany. They can be understood as directed and systematic studies
with the objective of understanding the authoritarian syndrome present in the popu-
lation of the German Republic at the time. Additionally, in the same spirit, the
Institute conducted the research “Study on the consequences of denazification on
small and medium-sized communities in the three zones [of occupation] of the
national republic [of Germany]” (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 28), carried
out in 1953 and funded by HICOG. Several projects were brought together within
the framework of the Johns Hopkins University, coordinated by John Montgomery;
these also had their counterparts in Italy and Japan on exactly the same theme. It is
important to note that the study did not refer exactly to the denazification process
but rather to its consequences from the point of view of the population at the time.
One of the most important works for the institute in the 1950s was the
Heimkehrerstudie (“Study of Returnees”) carried out in 1957. It was funded by the
Bundeszentrale für Heimatdienst (National Center for the Service of the Nation)
together with the Verband der Heimkehrer (Association of Returnees). The central
question was about the prisoners of war and their negative experiences of returning
to Germany, i.e., after experiencing captivity during the war, what would be the
conceptions of the soldiers when they returned to a completely different, democratic
Germany?
A quick glimpse of these studies allows us to understand the amount of data
available on democracy and the functioning of the German public sphere in that
period. The statements we find in the intervention texts of Theodor Adorno, as I
emphasized in the first part of this chapter, found a good part of their empirical
basis here.
1.2 Education and Democracy Among the Students
Horkheimer and Adorno focused their attention on the change in the function of
Bildung based on the transformation of capitalist society and how these changes
reverberated in the development of the subject. The diagnosis in several texts of the
period points to the domination of industrial production over culture, which ended
up spreading to what Adorno called a Halbbildung (semi-formation) (Januário
2020), as well as humanist formation (Bildung), which is opposed to the functional-
ism of an “administered world” – a tradition to which some of their theoretical
works could be linked from the beginning; it is noteworthy that Horkheimer and
Adorno taught various courses on Hegel and dialectics. Their objectives included
not allowing these subjects to be either scapegoated as part of the anti-communist
campaign or completely determined by the Communist Party of Soviet Union.
“Research on Frankfurt students” (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 32) was
carried out between the winter of 1951 and 1952 within the framework of empirical
sociological practice. The study had a pedagogical character. It aimed to investigate
the independent work of students and a way of thinking that expressed responsibil-
ity for their own actions. In fact, this study ended up being integrated into another
much larger, the almost unfathomable “Universität und Gesellschaft” (“University
and Society”) (Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 33), carried out between 1952
and 1954. There is an immense number of documents related to this study, which
deserves a more adequate investigation (impossible to cover in this chapter). The
88 A. Januário
study focused on the opinions that students had about the universities they attended.
The objective was to map the students’ opinions about the connection between the
university and society, taking into account the various student stages, from fresh-
man to graduate, including any professional internships, and without neglecting
technical university students. The evaluation of the research results was developed
by both the institute and the University of Leipzig (Anger 1960).
Student und Politik (The Student Research) (Habermas 1961), conducted in two
parts between 1952 and 1953, followed a random sample of 507 students who com-
pleted a survey that comprised 50 open-ended questions. As the first phase of this
study showed, the material situation of the students was exceptionally bad. The
main reason for the research was to investigate the students’ motives and attitudes
toward the university and to measure the relationship between technical and non-
technical knowledge. It intended to differentiate students who had a pragmatic view
of their own training – who saw it as a means to an end – from those who were
interested in a more comprehensive type of training, more closely linked to their
course subject. The results showed quite significantly that a large proportion of the
students had no interest in the subject they were studying.
These results were confirmed by the Expertenbefragung (Research of Experts)
(Institut für Sozialforschung 1999, p. 33). This research aimed to isolate academic
competence from psychological attitudes that were not shown in the final course
exam. The research was primarily directed at the immediate impressions of the
examinees, their clothing, and spiritual independence, as well as their forms of
behavior and disposition toward self-direction in future studies – that is, their capac-
ity for autonomy. There is an important point in this study about the position of
women in German society after Nazi domination.
It was from this theme that the famous study Student und Politik (Student and
Politics) (Habermas et al. 1961) emerged, in which Jürgen Habermas participated.
When we observe the second part of the “Student and Politics” study, the courses
were also investigated from the point of view of content and method and, mainly,
their role in the students’ political development. At the end of 1959, the investiga-
tion Politik und Gesellschaft im Unterricht (Politics and society in the classroom)
(Teschner 1968) was prepared. The study carried out by the institute was “Zur
Wirksamkeit politischer Bildung. Eine soziologische Analyse des
Sozialkundeunterrichts an Volks-, Mittel- und Berufsschulen” (Towards the effec-
tiveness of political formation: a sociological analysis of Social Studies classes in
secondary, professional and adult education schools) (Institut für Sozialforschung
1999, p. 40). The results showed once again that the effectiveness of the social stud-
ies discipline on students’ democratic attitudes, as well as their political positioning,
was ostensibly small (Habermas 1969; Friedeburg 1989). The results of this research
were hotly debated by Adorno and Helmut Becker throughout the 1960s.1 These
debates and others’ interventions on education will be the theme of the next section.
1
See the chapter in this volume “Th. W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an
‘Administered World’ (1955–1969): Unpublished radio Conversations from the Theodor
W. Adorno Archive,” by Aurélia Peyrical.
2 Education, Democracy, and Resistance in Theodor

Adorno’s Thought2
In their “preface” to the new edition (1969) of Dialectic of Enlightenment,

Horkheimer and Adorno wrote some ponderations related to the diagnosis of that
book, which was originally published in 1947: “The development toward total
integration identified in the book has been interrupted but not terminated: it threat-
ens to be consummated by means of dictators and wars. Our prognosis regarding
the associated lapse from enlightenment into positivism the myth of that which is
the case, and finally of the identity of intelligence and hostility to mind, has been
overwhelmingly confirmed” (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002, pp. XI–XII). “Total
integration” – how Horkheimer and Adorno qualified the new form of social domi-
nation based on instrumental rationality – had not yet taken place; it had been
suspended.
The question that arises after reading this excerpt from the 1969 preface is as
follows: why would total integration still not have reached its goal, maintaining
itself as a trend? What did the authors consider this momentary suspension of it?
The answer appears in the thesis that this chapter defends, namely, that total integra-
tion did not take place because something that had not been diagnosed in 1947
would be available in a society dominated by the late industrial capitalism of the
1960s: potentials of resistance.
As mentioned at the beginning, Erziehung (education) appears as one of these
resistance potentials – for Adorno, a special potential. Nevertheless, the specificity
of the position of education in Adorno’s thought cannot be formulated without
understanding the problems linked to Bildung (formation)3 and its history in
Germany (Bollenbeck 1994). At the beginning of “Theory of Pseudo-Culture
(1959)” (Adorno 1993), Adorno states that the problems of education and formation
are not only linked to the pedagogical scope but also to the problem of culture – that
is, the crisis of “bourgeois culture” (p. 16).4
In the development of bourgeois society, after its rise, culture would have become
something merely “spiritual,” separated from social praxis itself. At the same time,
the idea of formation would have been limited merely to describing an education
aimed at a practical end, in a very restricted sense, referring to the development of
technical knowledge. That conception of formation
would be understood simply as
specialization, while “culture” would have become mere erudition or, worse, raw
material from which the cultural industry would produce its goods and put them on
the market. Opposed to and, at the same time, derived from Bildung, Halbbildung
2
I developed some of these arguments in Educação e resistência em Theodor Adorno
(Januário 2020).
3
I prefer to translate Bildung as “formation” rather than “culture.” I developed that question in my
book – see (Januário 2020).
4
Unfortunately, it will not be possible to address all the theses about the notion of “culture” and its
specific problem, which were presented by Adorno.
90 A. Januário
(pseudo-culture/formation) occupies the place that was previously destined for for-
mation, that is, the formation of the “subjective side” (Adorno, 1975. p 66).5
Therefore, pseudo-culture would be precisely what the “alienated spirit” imposed
throughout history. According to Adorno, pseudo-culture would have been “social-
ized” and would not necessarily be linked to a social class. Not only has it become
possible for almost all people living in advanced capitalist societies, it has also
become one of the constituent elements of advanced capitalist society.
However, according to Adorno, the critical option would not be reaffirming
something as the formation was, because its emergence is closely linked with the
rise of the bourgeois class at modernity. In other words, neither the “current” bour-
geoisie nor any other class would support such a “formation.” In Erziehung – wozu?
(“Education – for what?”) (Adorno 1971), Adorno states that “the idea of a mode of
harmony, as Humboldt still had in mind, between what works socially and people
that are formed (ausgebildeten Menschen) cannot be more reached” (Adorno 1971,
pp. 118–119).6
However, that bourgeois Bildung (formation) developed an important potential,
namely, the idea of autonomy. Although it is no longer possible to aspire to the
potential of “bourgeois education” due to the evolution of capitalist society, it is in
the field of education that Adorno points out that it would be possible to stimulate
exactly this “individual” aspect, that is, Mündigkeit (majority/maturity). The educa-
tional field, even in social conditions dominated by the late industrial capitalism,
aims to educate, socialize, and prepare individuals to live in society. At the same
time, it would be possible to allow, in pedagogical practice, the conditions for the
expression of individual autonomy. That expression appears as resistance in late
industrial capitalism.
Adorno considers that it would be possible to update that potential of autonomy,
the core of the notion of Bildung. While potentials for emancipation are not avail-
able from the point of view of Critical Theory, since social organization in late
industrial capitalism blocks the profound transformation of society, Adorno sees the
old notion of Bildung as capable of critically pointing to the limits of Halbbildung.7
The central question is as follows: what is the goal of education? That question was
discussed in the debate between Adorno and Helmut Becker in Erziehung – wozu?.
According to Adorno, those principles through which the characterization of
Bildung was constituted (mainly around the idea of autonomy) were formulated in
a way that they could have become principles that would be available to everyone at
the moment the bourgeoisie emerged as a revolutionary class. These principles did
not need to be questioned in the past (during the ascension of bourgeoisie society);
5
The idea of Halbbildung is associated with the products of the cultural industry. However, it will
not be possible to develop all the theses related to these hypotheses here.
6
The evolution of scientific knowledge expressed in numerous scientific disciplines. In other
words, a “complete” formation and the “complete” formation of the “personality” are guidelines
that are impossible to carry out in the present time, according to Adorno.
7
That consideration of pseudo-culture (Halbbildung) appears in different essays and empirical
research led by Adorno at the Institute for Social Research.
they were culturally “given.” Therefore, the question “education, for what?” was not
an issue; its potential emancipatory meaning was already given in the culture.
In the twentieth century, that “given” character of Erziehung is not obvious.
Asking “education, for what?” indicates that the goal is no longer given in the cur-
rent culture. For Adorno, when the meaning of wozu has become lost, it is impos-
sible to “restitute it through the sake [Willen]” (Adorno 1971, p. 106). However,
Adorno suggests a goal for education in his writings. One of the most critical events
selected by Adorno was the Holocaust, and education can fulfill its role as a poten-
tial of resistance in this case: “The claim, that Auschwitz not happen again, is the
premier demand of all education” (p. 88). Auschwitz was not a coincidence. The
organization of society allowed this kind of event and the tendencies for National
Socialism remained similar in 1960s society, and still do today. The objective orga-
nization of society, pointed out by Adorno in his diagnosis of the 1960s, ends up
requiring as a presupposition a subject adapted to the social situation as it is given
through the capitalist organization of society. The dominant rule in this form of
organization is uncritical adaptation to the status quo.
However, Adorno proposes an education for contradiction and resistance which
is part of a common base: Mündigkeit and the consequent development of individual
autonomy based on the public clarification of the different issues and social taboos.
From the point of view of political organization, Germany was a democracy and as
such required autonomous subjects as a presupposition for its legitimacy. Adorno
presents his notion of education precisely in that sense. For him, education would
not be a kind of “training” (Menschenformung) or only a “transfer of knowledge”
(Wissensübermittlung) accumulated by scientific research, although this transfer is
included in educational activities. Simple knowledge transfer is not a satisfactory
goal for any educational program, or this knowledge would lose its proper meaning.
According to Adorno, education consists of “the production of a true conscience”
(Herstellung eines richtigen Bewußtseins) (Adorno 1971, p. 107).
This statement has several important implications for the purposes of this article.
The main one consists precisely of a political implication: “a democracy, that not
only works but also operates according to its concept, demands Mündigkeit.” This
characterization of democracy requires what Adorno considers a “true conscience.”
The potentials of resistance in a capitalist society are in the democratic political orga-
nization. However, according to Adorno, that kind of society would require “inter-
ested people” that can influence “the education as education for contradiction and
resistance.” For Adorno, “an effective democracy only can be imagined in a society
where the individuals are mature (mündigen Menschen) ” (Adorno 1971, p. 107).
In the connection between democracy and Mündigkeit, Adorno finds the ground
on which his proposal for an education for resistance can be established. The link
between democracy and Mündigkeit is so close that whoever defends ideals against
Mündigkeit is an anti-democrat, which means that the opposite is also correct: who-
ever defends the democratic organization of society necessarily ends up defending
the demand that people be able to make conscious decisions independently.
However, according to Adorno, to speak about Mündigkeit is “too abstract”
(Adorno 1971, p. 108). Education by itself is not capable of modifying the social
92 A. Januário
structure as a whole. Adorno’s proposal for an “education for contradiction and

resistance” relies on education for Mündigkeit in the Enlightenment movement’s
sense and occupies a central position in the diagnosis of the 1950s and 1960s.
In the debate that closes the book Erziehung zur Mündigkeit, Adorno begins by
stating that “in a democracy,” “Mündigkeit seems self-evident.” To be “more pre-
cise,” says Adorno, it is possible to resort to Kant’s famous essay, “Answering the
question: What is Enlightenment,” in which Kant defines Mündigkeit by positioning
its opposite, Unmündigkeit (self-imposed immaturity). Adorno points out that the
famous phrase “enlightenment is the exit of men from their self-blaming immatu-
rity” is true when its cause is not the “lack of understanding [Mangel des Verstandes]”
but the lack of resolution and courage (Mut) to make use of one’s own understand-
ing. It is precisely at this point that Mündigkeit raises the notion of autonomy
defended in Adorno’s texts on education (Januário 2020; Schneewind 1998).
Although this program of enlightenment belongs to the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury, Adorno argues that “this program of Kant, which even with the greatest ill will
[bösesten Willen] could not be reproached as something that lacks clarity, still seems
to me to be extraordinarily current” (Adorno 1971, p. 133).
With regard to the obliviousness to the rise of Nazism in Germany, Adorno
affirms: “This refers immediately to democratic pedagogy” (Adorno, 1971, p. 24),
which requires clarification of the reasons why a process of “forgetting” the past
would be underway in Germany. It is this aspect of clarification that brings with it
the possibility for individuals to reflect and decide with much more certainty about
the given conditions. It allows the clarification of certain processes that could be
obscured by the social situation. The objective is clarifying those principles on
which the rise of Nazism was based and how they are still in operation in “current
society.” The elaboration of the past would take place through a democratic peda-
gogy and enlightenment, which should be aimed at the interlocutors of the antisem-
ites, “making them aware (bewüsst zu machen) of the mechanisms that rise to racial
prejudice” (Adorno, 1971, p. 27). The elaboration of the past as clarification would
mean an inflection toward the subject, reinforcing his self-awareness through the
idea of democratic pedagogy.
These aspects of clarification, employed by Adorno in the period of the 1960s,
are also present in the text “Erziehung nach Auschwitz” (“Education after
Auschwitz”) (Adorno 1971). At one point in the text, Adorno states that openly
discussing the “configuration of politics” means, at the same time, making the
mechanisms of political power expressly “clear.” For him, political education should
be transformed into “sociology,” that is, to present and “clarify” the play of social
forces that underlie the “surface of political forms” (Adorno, 1971, p. 27). Again,
this form of enlightenment can reinforce self-awareness and individual judgment.
Both the clarification and the notion of Bildung are related to Adorno’s more gen-
eral consideration of bourgeois subjectivity. Although domination has reached such a
degree that it intends to annul individual autonomy, Adorno does not advocate a com-
plete abandonment of bourgeois subjectivity. An example of this position can be seen
with the very concept of Bildung, which also allows us to glimpse potentials that, in
this social organization of late industrial capitalism, appear as resistance.
Returning to the debate on Erziehung zur Mündigkeit, Adorno resorts to Kant’s

text to continue presenting his arguments. For him, Kant provided a negative answer
to the question “Do we currently live in an enlightened age?.” Kant’s is emphatic:
“No, but we certainly live in an age of enlightenment [Zeitalter der Aufklärung].”
With this answer, Kant gave a “dynamic” character to the category of enlighten-
ment. However, if this question were asked “today,” it would be difficult to ensure
that because of “the unimaginable pressure on people” (Adorno, 1971, p. 144). This
unimaginable pressure is surely the one expressed in that tendency toward total
integration:
The reason is evidently the social contradiction. The social organization [gesellschaftliche
Einrichtung] in which we live continues to be heteronomous, that is, no one can really exist
in today’s society according to their own determinations. While this is happening, that soci-
ety forms people [Menschen] through innumerable channels of mediating instances, in such
a way that they absorb and accept everything in terms of this heteronomous configuration,
which has deviated from itself. That situation reaches the institutions, and reaches the con-
troversy about political education and other similar subjects. (Adorno, 1971, p. 144)
Social organization plays a determined role in the adaptation of subjects to capitalist

society. It tends to shape the individuals through innumerable channels. In the social
situation in which individuals find themselves in late industrial capitalism, an edu-
cation which is concerned with achieving Mündigkeit must be focused on contra-
diction and resistance, that is, it must be focused on aspects that are against the
tendency to total integration:
I would say, even at the risk of you reproaching me for being a philosopher, which in fact I
am, that the figure in which majority [Mündigkeit] takes shape today, which cannot simply
be presupposed because, first of all, it would have to be produced in everyone, in every-
where, that also the only effective realization of Mündigkeit is in this: some people, who are
concerned about it, influence with all their energies that education would be an education
for the contradiction [Widerspruch] and for the resistance [Widerstand]. (Adorno
1971, p. 145)
Despite the heteronomous configuration of a capitalist society, democracy allows

support of the defense of Mündigkeit. However, in contemporary society, Mündigkeit
is not merely presupposed; on the contrary, what is pointed out in a contemporary
diagnosis is that there is a tendency toward total integration. This does not mean, as
we have seen, that there is no concrete possibility of resisting social domination.
Resistance and contradiction are prefigured as a possibility for the concrete realiza-
tion of Mündigkeit.
References
Adorno, Theodor. 1969. Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie. Neuwied/Berlin: Hermann-

Luchterhand Verlag.
Adorno, Theodor W. 1971. Erziehung zur Mündigkeit: Vorträge und Gespräche mit Hellmut
Becker 1959–1969, ed. Gerd Kadelbach. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 1975. Gesselschaftstheorie und Kulturkritik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
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———. 1993. Theory of Pseudo-Culture (1959). Telos. Critical Theory of the Contemporary 95
(Spring): 15–38.
———. 2003. Schuld und Abwehr. Eine qualitative Analyse zum Gruppenexperiment. In
Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, vol. 9.2, 121–324. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Anger, Hans. 1960. Probleme der deutschen Universität: Bericht über eine Erhebung unter
Professoren und Dozenten. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr.
Bollenbeck, Georg. 1994. Bildung und Kultur: Glanz und Elend eines deutschen Deutungsmusters.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1961. Student und Politik : eine soziologische Untersuchung zum politischen
Bewusstsein Frankfurter Studenten. Neuwied am Rhein: Luchterhand.
———. 1969. Protestbewegung und Hochschulreform. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 1984. Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society.
Trans. Thomas A. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, Jürgen, L. von Friedeburg, C. Oehler, and F. Weltz. 1961. Student und Politik. Eine
soziologische Untersuchung zum politischen Bewußtsein Frankfurter Studenten. Neuwied/
Berlin: Luchterhand.
Horkheimer, Max. 1952. Ein Bericht über die Feier seiner Wiedereröffnung, seine Geschichte und
seine Arbeiten. Frankfurt am Main: Institut für Sozialforschung.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. 2002. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical
Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Hullot-Kentor, R. 1989. Back to Adorno. Telos. Critical Theory of the Contemporary 81 (Fall).
Institut für Sozialforschung. 1999. Forschungsarbeiten. Mitteilungen. Heft 10/September 1999.
Jaerisch, Ursula. 1975. Sind Arbeiter Autoritär? Zur Methodenkritik Polit. Psychologie. Studien
Zur Gesellschaftstheorie. Frankfurt am Main; Köln: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
———. 2020. Educação e resistência em Theodor Adorno. São Paulo: Edições Loyola.
Mangold, Werner, 1960. Gegenstand und Methode des Gruppendiskussionsverfahrens. In
Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie, vol. 9. Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
O’Connor, Brian. 2004. Adorno’s Negative Dialectic: Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical
Rationality. Cambridge: MIT.
Pollock, Friedrich. 1955. Gruppenexperiment. Ein Studienbericht. In Frankfurt Beiträge zur
Soziologie, vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
Schneewind, Jerome B. 1998. The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sommer, M. 2016. Das Konzept einer negativen Dialektik. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Teschner, Manfred. 1968. Politik und Gesellschaft im Unterricht: Eine soziologische Analyse der
politischen Bildung an hessischen Gymnasien. Frankfurt Beiträge zur Soziologie. Vol. 21.
Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
Thyen, Anke. 1989. Negative Dialektik Und Erfahrung: Zur Rationalität des Nichtidentischen Bei
Adorno. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
von Friedeburg, Ludwig. 1989. Bildungsreform in Deutschland: Geschichte und gesellschaftlicher
Widerspruch. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Adriano Januário studied Philosophy, and received his PhD from the University of Campinas.
He did a research internship at the Humboldt Universität of Berlin between 2014 and 2015. His
postdoctoral research was conducted at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap)
with a research internship at the Institute for Social Research (IfS) in Frankfurt am Main
(2017–2018). He published the book Education and Resistance in Theodor W. Adorno
(Loyola, 2020).
Part V
Max Horkheimer Archive
Working on Cultural Memory:
The Literary Estate of Max Horkheimer
in the Frankfurt University Library
Gunzelin Schmid Noerr
On the occasion of the digital activation of the online portal for the literary estate of
Max Horkheimer,1 I would like to report on my previous work processing these
materials and combine this with reflections on the archive as cultural memory. To
help me visualize the corresponding external processes once again, I interviewed
some people and looked through selected files in the university library and in the
Institute for City History in Frankfurt. While reading some of the documents, I was
able to remember myself as someone else; I returned to – in my imagination or, once
again, in reality – the once familiar places and watched myself plan and carry out
activities that in reality had long since been completed. I experienced (even if only
in a small way) what it is like to become “historical to oneself” – an expression that
my teacher Alfred Schmidt liked to use and which, in a broader sense, also corre-
sponds to the self-understanding of Critical Theory, which was grounded in the
awareness of its historical situation.
From this experience, one can see that memory – as Jan Assmann has theorized
on various occasions – has three dimensions: an individual one, it contains what one
remembers personally; a communicative one, what contemporary witnesses remem-
ber and what they tell others about it; and a cultural one, what is handed down in
1
The digitized reproduction can be found on the website of the university library of the Goethe
University Frankfurt am Main at URL: http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/horkheimer.
This chapter is a translation of Schmid Noerr, Gunzelin. 2015. “Arbeit am kulturellen Gedächtnis:
Der Nachlass Max Horkheimers in der Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main.” Zeitschrift für
Kritische Theorie, 40/41, pp. 186–195.
G. S. Noerr (*)
Hochschule Niederrhein, Mönchengladbach, Germany

Switzerland AG 2023
98 G. S. Noerr
symbolic media and is part of our collective self-image. In this report, I would like
to explore the question of the extent to which the archive functions as cul-
tural memory.
The documents reveal that, in Horkheimer’s own view, the core of his material
legacy to the city of Frankfurt initially consisted less in his manuscripts and letters
than in his book collection. The first draft of a donation agreement bears the date of
February 14, 1956 – his 61st birthday. This was 3 years after the end of his rector-
ship and 3 years before his early retirement. He formulated a few conditions for his
gift, one of which was that he could reverse it if political conditions in Germany
darkened again. Horkheimer was never able to completely free himself from this
basic fear of a possible “fascicization” of the democratic state (as it was later called
in student circles). In this respect, the widespread assumption that he established
himself all too quickly in restorative postwar Germany is incorrect.
A decade later, in September 1966, the then director of the library, Clemens
Köttelwesch, traveled to Montagnola near Lugano, where Horkheimer had since
moved, to take a look at the future bequest. In the same year, the city of Frankfurt
officially accepted the donation by magistrate’s resolution, incidentally without the
clause, which the city administration did not want to accept.
In his report on this visit to the Office for Science, Art and National Education,
Köttelwesch was impressed by the rare complete editions he had seen, especially of
French philosophers of the eighteenth century but also of more recent editions such
as a complete collection of Karl Kraus’s Die Fackel. In addition, he reported that
Horkheimer had said in conversation that he would also leave his archive of numer-
ous, partly unpublished manuscripts and letters to the Frankfurt library. The same
applied to the books, manuscripts, and materials of Friedrich Pollock.
Pollock died in 1970, Horkheimer in July 1973. A few months later, in October
1973, the legal representative of the Horkheimer Foundation approached the library
to arrange the actual transfer of the books and materials. This was then carried out
in 1974. The 1975 annual report of the city and university library mentions that Mr.
Friesenhahn was engaged in cataloguing the estate. Friesenhahn was a retired senior
librarian who had formerly worked in the German Library and who had since spent
2 to 3 hours a day in the mornings in the Horkheimer Archive, then situated on the
first mezzanine floor of the Frankfurt library, then overlooking Zeppelinallee,
actively filling his retirement by taking inventory of Horkheimer’s letters. The direc-
tors in office after Köttelwesch, Klaus Dieter Lehmann, and Wilhelm R. Schmidt, as
well as the head of the manuscript department at the time, Gerhardt Powitz, created
the organizational framework conditions, stable in the long term, for the develop-
ment of this and other Frankfurt scholars’ archives.
In December 1977, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research
Foundation) approved a research assistant position for the further indexing of the
archival holdings, which I took up in March 1978 through the mediation of Alfred
Schmidt, Horkheimer’s literary executor. I had completed my rather extensive dis-
sertation with him in 1977, and he obviously expected me to have enough staying
power for the forthcoming editing work. In fact, I needed it, because the cataloguing
and editing work lasted until 1995 – more than 18 years. Both the ordering and
Working on Cultural Memory: The Literary Estate of Max Horkheimer in the Frankfurt… 99
cataloguing of the archive and the editing work were regularly supported by library
staff. The annual report of 1979 mentions a separate working group that dealt with
the inventory; according to my recollection, there were about ten people over the
years. The extraordinarily extensive inventory comprises more than 200,000 sheets
of (often double-sided) letters, manuscripts, and other materials. It was made acces-
sible to the scientific public in 1984, after 11 years of archival processing.
About half of the Horkheimer-Pollock Archive consists of letters, primarily from
the 1930s to the 1960s. The core holdings include the correspondence between
Horkheimer and Pollock, as well as with collaborators of the (temporarily emi-
grated) Institute for Social Research: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich
Fromm, Henryk Grossmann, Leo Löwenthal, Herbert Marcuse, Franz Neumann,
Karl-August Wittfogel, and many others. The other half of the double estate con-
tains collections of manuscripts and materials, including, notably, those from the
institute’s work with the research projects on anti-Semitism, authoritarianism, and
prejudice that it had been carrying out since the 1930s, as well as tape recordings,
photographs, newspaper clippings, and documents.
The construction of such an archive requires meticulous and lengthy work. What
were once open-ended learning processes, effects on other people, and confronta-
tions with those who think similarly or differently have found expression here in an
almost incalculable abundance of paper, in scribbles that are difficult to read, in
corrections and corrections of corrections, in the detritus of writerly productivity,
and in material that was collected and filed away for occasions and purposes that are
now unknown. Many sheets – of poor quality from the 1930s and 1940s – have
become brittle from paper acid and are disintegrating around the edges. Film from
old adhesive strips has long since peeled away from the glue. Photos are yellowed.
One must not imagine the work of archiving is mere filing. In fact, in the case of
a disorderly beginning, references to content must also be reconstructed from the
very outset. This requires open interpretations, i.e., interpretations that do not stand
in the way of further interpretations but rather make them possible in the first place.
The order to be created is a reconstruction of the meaning hidden behind the diver-
sity of the material. The archivist – and then, even more so, the editor – must clas-
sify, for example, isolated correction sheets into hierarchies of text drafts, of
separated and adopted text parts. He must identify individual pages or whole trea-
tises to assign them to an author, a period of time, or a factual context. Or he has to
guess at the intention which once moved the author to collect certain materials; did
they support his views, or did he regard them as symptoms of a view contrary to his
own, worthy of his opposition? The answers to such questions may depend on the
formation of the schemes of order, which, in turn, affect the possibility of further
work with the material.
Archives are not an end in themselves. Beyond their functions to collect and
preserve, they have two main tasks. First, they are the indispensable prerequisite for
estate editions, critical complete editions, or historical-critical editions. Second,
they are sites of research, where answers to the most diverse questions of theoretical
history are sought. This involves not only the work of the respective author, the
reconstruction of the preconditions, developmental stages, and reception
100 G. S. Noerr
consequences of theoretical concepts but also more removed discourse formations.

It is the often richly branching corridors that lead to or away from the formations of
thought elaborated in the work that need to be constructed.
Thus, the archive is more than just a material and institutionalized special case of
everyday understanding. In everyday interaction we understand statements and
events by interpreting them against the background of our previous understanding
in relation to changed, new contexts. In this process, personal memory ensures the
individual’s need for identity and continuity. In contrast, the archive is a form of
memory that outlasts personal death and thus enables linkages far beyond personal
and communicative memory. It becomes part of the cultural memory that helps to
satisfy the need for social identity and continuity of experiences and forms of
thought in the current of historical change and also against the resistance of collec-
tive repression.
Archives – in the broadest sense – arise wherever anything at all is recorded in
any medium and stored permanently. At the inception of written cultures, archives
served state administration. In contrast, historical archives, which preserve some-
thing in order to serve historical knowledge, have only been in use since the end of
the eighteenth century. Archives can be assigned the same metaphor as Critical
Theory once used in its self-designation during emigration, a “message in a bottle”
to unknown future addressees.
The link to past thought that has coagulated into writing is a culturally indispens-
able but precarious undertaking. Arthur Schopenhauer drew attention to this diffi-
culty: “thoughts reduced to paper are generally nothing more than the footprints of
a man walking in the sand. It is true that we see the path he has taken; but to know
what he saw on the way, we must use our own eyes” (Schopenhauer [1851] 2000:
555). Accordingly, written accounts do not actually convey knowledge directly but,
at best, mark stopping points for such knowledge. With the death of an author, even
if his writings are preserved, a piece of the intelligibility of his thinking also disap-
pears. His life contexts, his open questions, and drafted answers ceaselessly melt
away. What was originally part of a communicative exchange becomes an object of
external appropriation.
“To be dead is,” in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre, “to become prey to the living.
That means therefore that a person who tries to grasp the meaning of his future
death is obliged to discover himself to be the future prey of others” (Sartre 2018:
678). In this respect, the publication of the archive, especially digitally, is an ambiv-
alent thing. On the one hand, it removes organizational barriers to its use, which
may encourage “looting” by less scrupulous recipients, but on the other hand, it
reveals, at least potentially, the living people and circumstances behind the works.
This can help to make this booty, if not snatched away, a little bulkier and more
indigestible for those who come after. Dealing with tradition can basically fall into
two opposing extremes – traditionalism and traditionlessness. In traditionalism, the
past is codified, consecrated, and ritualized. In traditionlessness, on the other hand,
ignorance and a failure to recognize what has been handed down become the pre-
vailing attitudes. In modernity, which was precipitated not least by the idea of per-
petual progress for the better, traditionalism is generally rather marginal and requires
special justification. It becomes a matter for specialists and professional custodians

of lore such as historians, collectors, librarians, archivists, editors, museum staff,
preservationists, canonists, etc. They stock and guard their treasuries, where the lore
is preserved and, to a lesser extent, exhibited.
Popular opinion associates this work primarily with one particular substance:
dust. This view comes from the perspective of passionate housewives or househus-
bands and cleaning managers, but in truth there is no more dust in archives than in,
say, offices or railway carriages. The alleged dust of the archive is rather a metaphor
for history that has become tiresome in the face of the questionable pipe dream of
an ever-new tabula rasa.
Traditionalism or forgetfulness of tradition, monument or dustbin – at least that
makes a difference in the end. But one is certainly not a sensible alternative to the
other, for what these two forms of reaction have in common is that they thereby
withdraw themselves from critical analysis and examination. In contrast, a self-
reflexive attitude is closely related to a productive, present- and future-oriented
engagement with tradition. Incidentally, this also applies to the treatment of the
“tradition” of Critical Theory itself. By inviting an emotionally impregnated com-
mitment to a great cause, it has also provoked an overidentification in some and a no
less exaggerated repulsion in others. We see something similar in the unresolved
parental relationships of adolescents. Instead, an “adult” approach to the tradition of
Critical Theory involves a critical recognition of its achievements.
Adorno repeatedly dealt with such a dialectic of tradition and its “certain nega-
tion” in relation to literature, theater, music, and the visual arts. Because he was
particularly interested in the historical-social content of the works, he found it intol-
erable to reproduce their traditional form independently of the respective state of the
“historico-philosophical sundial” (Adorno 1991, p. 46; see also Adorno 1992a:
269), as he attributed this, for example, to the musical traditionalists of modern
neoclassicism. But he also distanced himself just as resolutely from a secretly eco-
nomically determined ignorance of tradition: “What does not prove socially useful
to the market here and now is not valid and is forgotten. Even if one dies, it is as
good as if he had never been, and he is as absolutely replaceable as anything func-
tional” (Adorno 1992b, p. 76). Instead, he was concerned with “a behavior that
raises tradition to consciousness without bowing to it.” “What is alive in works is to
be sought within them; for layers that were concealed in earlier phases and only
manifest themselves when others die and fall away” (p. 79). Adorno made the rela-
tionship to tradition a paradox by stating apodictically: “Tradition can only return in
that which inexorably denies itself to it” (p. 82). Whether this postulate is ultimately
tenable or represents an exaggeration that leads into aporia is not – fortunately – for
archivists to judge. They must, however, decide what, of the countless written mani-
festations, they should preserve and thus make part of cultural memory. Archivists
create an important prerequisite for what Adorno demanded, namely, neither to
ignore tradition nor to adopt it with faith in authority but instead to get to the bottom
of the historical conditions of culture.
In addition to the general work of preservation and indexing, there is then the
further decision of whether and to what extent a cultural heritage remains in the
102 G. S. Noerr
realm of the only latently or potentially accessible or occupies a recognized place in

contemporary culture: whether it belongs, according to a designation by Aleida
Assmann, to the “cultural archive” or to the “cultural canon.” While the “cultural
archive” (or “memory store”) consists of the totality of what is preserved as material
culture, the much more narrowly defined “cultural canon” (or “functional memory”)
consists of what is (or is to be) appropriated by the present – the “classics,” so to
speak. The decision as to whether something is archive or canon is not made by
archivists alone, but also by them.
Now, with the possibility of digitizing the cultural archive, something new is
obviously coming into play that goes far beyond the mere technical change of the
storage medium. It is part of a profound structural change, comparable at least to the
upheavals in the wake of the invention of printing in the fifteenth century. Digitization
democratizes, as it were, the decision as to whether something moves from the cul-
tural archive into the cultural canon. The traditional stock tends to become available
to all interested parties and can also become the subject of public discourse in a
completely new form. The two components of cultural memory – “archive” and
“canon” – become more mutually permeable.
This is by no means intended to lead to a general celebration of the digital soci-
ety. It is also obvious that the advantages of digital information transfer are accom-
panied by considerable threats to personal rights and democracy. Technical progress
threatens to undermine both individual freedom and public social life. For this very
reason, however, it is important to strengthen and make use of the progressive
aspects of digital technologies. What is productive about culture is, not least, its
critical potential, its ability to transcend that which derives its legitimacy merely
from the fact of its existence. “There is,” says Horkheimer, “no cultural study with-
out cultural criticism, because criticism is the truth of culture itself” (Horkheimer
1989 [1950], p. 17). Historical consciousness, as cultural memory, acquires a cru-
cially important significance for Horkheimer within the framework of his critical
materialism. According to materialist insight, the individual and cultural longing for
happiness and justice is under the dictate of death. This affects not only the indi-
vidual but ultimately the entire human species. This is the starting point for every
effort to create a better future. Horkheimer’s materialism – in contrast to that of
Marx-Engels – builds on the metaphysical mourning of the recognition of human
finitude. A possible progress for the better does not justify the sufferings of previous
generations – an “idea which,” as Horkheimer wrote in a letter to Adorno, “I only
wondered that those bearded fathers were so far from” (Horkheimer 1996, p. 50).
“No future heals any more that which has happened to humans who have passed
away (…). In the middle of this immeasurable indifference [of natural history], only
human consciousness can be the place in which suffered injustice is sublated, the
only instance which is not satisfied” (Horkheimer 2005 [1935], pp. 18–19). This is
the central task of historiography.
Against this background, it may become clear how Horkheimer himself would
have viewed projects such as the archiving of estates, the edition of his writings, and
now also the digital portal. He would not have legitimized them in the sense of codi-
fying a doctrine but as documenting a historical stage of theory formation, and that
means the preservation and enrichment of cultural memory for the purpose of
understanding the present.
References
Adorno, Theodor W. 1991 [1957]. On Lyric Poetry and Society. In: Adorno, Th. W. Notes to
Literature. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 1992a [1961]. Trying to Understand Endgame. In: Adorno, Th. W. Notes to Literature.
Vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 1992b. On Tradition. Telos. December, 1992, pp. 75–82.
Horkheimer, Max. 1989, Korreferat zu Rothacker’s Probleme und Methoden der
Kulturanthropologie (1950). In: Horkheimer, M. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 13: p.17. Frankfurt
am Main: S. Fischer.
——— 1996. Letter to Adorno of 11.6.1949. In: Horkheimer, M. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 18.
pp. 49–51 Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.
———. 2005. On Bergson’s Metaphysics of Time [1934]. Radical Philosophy. n. 131 (May/June
2005): pp. 9–19.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 2018. Being and Nothingness. New York: Washington Square Press.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. 2000 [1851]. Parerga und Paralipomena. Short Philosophical Essays. Vol.
2. Oxford: Clarendon.
Gunzelin Schmid Noerr studied philosophy and social sciences in Munich and Frankfurt am
Main. Together with Alfred Schmidt, he edited Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften und Briefe
(Collected Writings and Letters) at S. Fischer Verlag. From 1978 to 1996, he was the director of
the Max Horkheimer Archive in Frankfurt. After professorships in Dortmund and Darmstadt, he
taught from 2002 to 2016 as a professor of social philosophy and ethics at the University of
Applied Sciences in Mönchengladbach
The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile
in Geneva and the Correspondence
between Max Horkheimer and Juliette
Favez
Olivier Voirol
By reading the texts published by the authors of Critical Theory, one discovers a
synthetic theoretical construction disclosed by an elaborate conceptual language.1
Critical Theory thus presents itself to the given reader by means a complete and
“finished portrait” so to speak. As such, multiple aspects of the process of theoriza-
tion implied by the finished conceptual construction are shunned by these clear-cut
elaborations. This “finite” result is what social philosophy primarily considers the
content of the “finite” theory and its concepts, without giving much attention to the
rough practices and hesitant activities of theorization. However, as Charles Taylor
points out, following an idea already formulated by Charles S. Peirce (Taylor 1985;
Peirce [1907] 1934), social theory is as important in its “finite” dimension as in its
practices of elaboration – in its “doing” – in order to fully grasp its hesitant and
often contingent paths of elaboration.
What is true for any practice of theorization in social theory is also true for
Critical Theory. Perhaps even more so, since it was elaborated in the midst of a
singular social and historical experience – marked by persecution and exile – forc-
ing its authors to systematically reflect on the conditions of their own “theoretical
doing” and obliging them to permanently rethink and remake the theorization pro-
cess according to the sociohistorical experience they were undergoing. Exile neces-
sarily implies a disruption of the framework of research and theorization and
therefore cannot but affect it. Above all, Critical Theory was mainly elaborated
1
I would like to thank Levon Pedrazzini for his proofreading and counsel in the writing of the
English version of this text.
The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence Between Max
Horkheimer and Juliette Favez
O. Voirol (*)
Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

Switzerland AG 2023
106 O. Voirol
based on its practice of social research thanks to the “interdisciplinary materialism”

(Bonß 1993; Gangl 1986; Honneth 1993; Horkheimer 1993a [1931]; Voirol 2012)
from which it proceeds, articulating social research and social philosophy (Abromeit
2011; Schmidt 1974, 1986, 1993). Such anchoring of theory in social research
makes theorization partly dependent on the development of sociological inquiries.
I would like to address this question of the material part of theory by focusing on
certain aspects of theorizing activity, of which the archives of Critical Theory – and
more particularly those of Max Horkheimer – offer a privileged view behind the
scenes of the text. Seen from the archives’ perspective, theoretical construction
appears in its contingencies and its practical difficulties, in its concrete trials and
tribulations, as much as it can be seen in the context of its effective and required
ongoing elaboration – thus including its material aspect. By examining the theory
from this perspective, a series of elements that have been erased from the surface of
the “finished” theory emerge: difficulties of and obstacles to the research, temporal
or financial constraints, administrative complications, abandoned paths or hypoth-
eses, discarded data, and also several research activities made by the dexterous
touch of social inquiry, without which theoretical work would remain a dead letter.
Only archival work makes it possible to carry out this work of revealing what the
“finished” theoretical constructions conceal. As one dives into the archives, starting
from the “ready-made” theory that can be read on the surface of texts and concepts,
what suddenly appear are the underground practices of theorization and the crafts-
manship of Critical Theory, with all their diverse activities, their “modi operandi”
and practical materialities.
In order to address this question, I will focus on a specific period in the history
of Critical Theory, namely, the IfS’s exile in Geneva in the early 1930s, which pre-
ceded the American exile by a few years (Abensour 1977). Using archival research,
I will examine this period in Switzerland focusing on the correspondence between
Max Horkheimer and Juliette Favez – secretary of the IfS from 1932 and then direc-
tor of the Geneva branch between 1938 and 1940. I will first review the political
context of the IfS’s exile in Geneva between 1931 and 1935 and then identify ele-
ments of the extensive and prolonged correspondence between Max Horkheimer
and Juliette Favez, which potentially will contribute to my discussion of the issue of
the “material part of theory.”
1 The First Exile of the IfS
Only a few weeks after Hitler came to power in January 1933, Max Horkheimer was
banned from teaching by the Nazis, thereby losing his position as a professor of
social philosophy at the University of Frankfurt a few months later, in April. He
was, in fact, one of the first academic victims of the anti-Semitic policies of National
Socialism, along with Paul Tillich, Karl Mannheim, and Ugo Sinzheimer. The house
in which he lived with Friedrich Pollock on the heights of Frankfurt, in Kronberg im
Taunus, was searched and expropriated. As for the IfS, of which Horkheimer had
The Material Part of Theory: The IfS Exile in Geneva and the Correspondence… 107
been the director since 1931, it was requisitioned by the NSDAP (National Socialist
German Workers’ Party) and used by the Hitler Youth organization.
Between February and April of 1933, Horkheimer continued to teach at Frankfurt
University, ready to flee at the slightest threat. In reality, he was already living in
Switzerland and “had spent most of 1932 in Geneva” (Jay 1973, p. 29). The IfS had
succeeded in setting up its headquarters in the city in the course of 1932, and it was
from Geneva that Horkheimer made short trips to Germany, traveling by car and not
by train in order to escape police controls at the railroad border posts. “During
February, the last month of the winter semester, he suspended his lectures on logic
to speak on the question of freedom, which was indeed becoming more question-
able with each passing day. In March he slipped across the border to Switzerland,
just as the Institut was being closed down for ‘tendencies hostile to the state’” (Jay
1973, p. 29). Meanwhile, several IfS me Wiggershaus mbers such as Hilde Weiss
and Karl Otto Wittfogel were encountering serious problems at the border, the latter
being arrested and interned in a concentration camp for 9 months, escaping death
only thanks to the tireless efforts of his wife Olga Lang, who succeeded in mobiliz-
ing the intellectual community on his behalf. There is no doubt that the IfS members
would have faced concentration camps, leading to an almost certain death, had they
not managed to escape the Nazis (Jay 1973: p. 29; Wiggershaus 1994: p. 128).
1.1 The Political Context of an Exile
The IfS’s choice of Geneva as its first place of exile is not coincidental nor is it sim-
ply related to the fact that Switzerland, being spared by fascism, seemed to be an
ideal exile destination. Above all, it was the IfS’s research on labor, the working
class, and employees that led its members to develop a close collaboration with the
International Labour Organization (ILO), founded in 1919 and headquartered in
Geneva alongside the League of Nations, in the district of the city housing interna-
tional institutions (Ghebali 1989; International Labor Organization n.d.). The con-
tacts established by Friedrich Pollock and Erich Fromm with its director Albert
Thomas (1878–1932), whose interest in empirical research on labor and the work-
ing class was profound, provided the IfS with an institutional framework. This
enabled analysis of the empirical data on the German working class gathered by
Erich Fromm and Hilde Weiss – the first IfS research conducted under Horkheimer’s
direction (Fromm 1984; Bonß 1984; Weiss and Garz 2006).
Partly because of this research (Löwenthal 1987), IfS members became aware of
the low level of progressive political consciousness among a significant part of the
German working class and petty bourgeoisie, therefore bringing to the fore the pres-
ence of a dangerous vulnerability to authoritarianism (Fromm 1984; Horkheimer
1934; Marcus and Tar 1984). Long before the Nazis came to power, the IfS felt the
need to search for exile destinations and to open other branches abroad. Geneva
(along with the Netherlands and, later, Paris, London, and New York) initially pre-
sented the most promising solution. The ILO offered an ideal framework for research
108 O. Voirol
and reflection on labor and its institutions, harboring sociologists, psychologists,

economists, and lawyers, in accord with the interdisciplinary and theoretical spirit
of the institute. In January 1931, Horkheimer’s inaugural lecture as director of the
IfS – entitled “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an
Institute for Social Research” – evokes this collaboration with the ILO in Geneva.
He states this cooperation after having specified the role of social philosophy in its
relations with social research: “we will have to consult extensively with expert spe-
cialists. (…) It will be important, furthermore, to compile and evaluate documents
not available in book form. A branch office of our Institute will be opened in Geneva
in order to facilitate the scholarly evaluation of the sociologically important mate-
rial contained in the rich archives of the International Labor Office. Mr. Thomas, the
director of the ILO, greeted our plan with approval, and has most cordially promised
his cooperation” (Horkheimer 1993a [1931], pp. 13–14).
At the same time, Geneva provided an international setting that allowed the insti-
tute’s members to develop contacts with other countries and other social realities in
a rather “cosmopolitan” space (Meyer 2013; Kott and Droux 2013). Members
joined Geneva gradually: Herbert Marcuse as early as 1932, Leo Löwenthal and
Friedrich Pollock the following year. As Germany sank into Nazi barbarism in
1933, many IfS members were in Geneva, continuing their research under new con-
ditions, temporarily sheltered from the threat of Nazi persecution. However, their
situation remained precarious, as Leo Löwenthal testifies in his autobiographical
account:
We were not too sure about our situation in Switzerland. (…) You have to imagine our situ-
ation in Geneva. Only Horkheimer had an unlimited residency permit, so only he could
have a home with all his furniture there. Pollock, Marcuse, and I could not do this; we had
to keep our libraries and furniture in a bonded warehouse. We remained visitors. We had
only tourist visas, and every few weeks or so we had to go across the border to Bellegarde
and reenter with a new visa. And there was much more. We often found that Jewish emi-
grants were scrutinized closely, and in their cases regulations were enforced most strictly.
We took this as an indication that fascism would eventually spread to all of Europe; at that
time we still did not anticipate a war. (Löwenthal 1987, p. 30)
Probably thanks to its strong liberal heritage in the wake of the 1848 Constitution,
Switzerland seemed to be partly protected from a heavy thrust toward fascist author-
itarianism, without being entirely spared from the phenomenon (Wolf 1969).
However, after the financial crisis of 1929, the tensions between labor and capital
increased considerably, and from 1932 onward, the economic situation deteriorated,
leading to several demonstrations and strikes. In Geneva, the left managed to favor-
ably occupy the social and political terrain: the period of “Red Geneva” began when
the left won the 1932 elections, leading to a cantonal government with a leftist and
extreme left majority. This political situation was socially underpinned by a high
number of demonstrations, blockades, and worker strikes (Rey 1978;
Grounauer 1975).
On the other side, “the economic crisis, the nationalist context, the rise of Italian
fascism in the late 1920s, and especially Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 led to the
emergence of a multitude of Frontist movements in Switzerland, beginning in late
1932 and in the years that followed, with a peak during the ‘Spring of the Fronts’ in
1933” (Gaffino 2013: p. 843; Joseph 1975). These tensions culminated in November
1932 in Geneva, the epicenter of class conflicts in Switzerland, when at the end of
an anti-fascist demonstration against a rally of the fascist “Union Nationale” under
the leadership of George Oltramare, the militia army fired on the workers’ demon-
stration, leaving 13 dead and dozens injured. This remains a unique event in Swiss
history, as the only time that the militia army fired it happened to be against the
working class of its own population. Following this brutal repression, it was not the
fascist leader who was imprisoned; the socialist deputy Léon Nicole, a key figure of
“Red Geneva,” was indicted for riots and sentenced to 6 months prison by the
court – a sentence which epitomizes the anti-socialist repressive climate of the time
(see Batou 2012).
Therefore, Switzerland was not spared the rise of a threatening fascist far right,
even if these movements remained relatively weak in comparison to the interna-
tional situation. The Geneva-based Union Nationale (1932–1938), whose explicit
aim was to lead a fascist revolution, had at best some 1,000 members, ardent admir-
ers of Hitler and Mussolini. The attitude of the “classical” bourgeois right was par-
ticularly disturbing; their marked hostility to the working class, aversion to socialism,
and fear of communism motivated a sympathy for fascism. The years during which
the members of the IfS stayed in Geneva corresponded with this tense “Red Geneva”
period, to the rise of fascist movements in Switzerland, and to these inconstancies on
the part of the bourgeois right. From their location at rue de Lausanne 91 (see Fig. 1),
at the crossroads of the popular Pâquis district and the very cosmopolitan district of
international Geneva, not far from the locations of demonstrations and strikes, the
IfS members could not fail to notice this universe of political tensions.
1.2 Social Research and Social Philosophy
In Geneva, the IfS continued the empirical research it had begun in Germany on the
question of authority and authoritarianism, examining the processes of its formation
within the family. By crossing the contributions of Freudian psychoanalysis and
historical materialism, the idea was to analyze the way in which the new configura-
tions of capitalism, particularly since the economic crisis of 1929, affected the
structures of socialization, and in particular the family, considered to be a “small
society” in which social subjects begin their existence along with the self-formation
(Fromm 1970a, 1970b [1932b]; Funk 2000). The question was to examine to what
extent the impact of growing unemployment and the decomposition of traditional
family structures under the pressure of modernization opened up possibilities that
contributed to the formation of a mature individual or, conversely, to the formation
of a vulnerable individual, to the rise of authoritarianism, and to the decline of
democratic commitment. A remarkable sociological study on mass unemployment
made in Marienthal, a small town in the suburbs of Vienna whose population became
unemployed after the closure of the textile factory on which it depended, seemed to
110 O. Voirol
Fig. 1 Building of the offices of the Institut für Sozialforschung rue de Lausanne 91, Geneva,
1932–1937, officially known as “Bureau de l’Institut de recherches sociales de l’Université de
Francfort”
indicate the latter. In the struggle for survival, half of the inhabitants sank into
despair and apathy; less than a fifth of them still hoped and continued their social
and political engagement (Jahoda et al. 2002 [1933]; Fleck 1990).
In connection with this research on family, other studies were undertaken regard-
ing the transformations of culture, and especially the future of working-class cul-
ture, which was impacted by the reduction of the working day thanks to class
struggles and the emergence of the growing phenomenon of free time, enabled by
the structures of capital (Sternheim 1932; Marcuse 1937). For a research institute
whose initial project was rooted in Marxism, the effort to understand the transfor-
mations of capitalism and the future of economic planning in the post-financial
crisis remained a major axis of investigation (Migdal 1981; Pollock 1932; Lenhard
2019). Surprising as it may seem, the only social research really carried out within
the framework of this collective interdisciplinary research was in Switzerland dur-
ing the institute’s exile in Geneva, on the relationship to authority, family, and sexu-
ality in adolescents – a social inquiry based on questionnaires distributed to more
than 1000 adolescents in large cities across the country (Lazarsfeld and Leichter
1987 [1936]).
Moreover, Horkheimer and his colleagues had embarked on a long-term program
reviving the so-called social philosophy associated with Hegel and Marx, whose
point of reference was not the individual – contrary to liberal philosophy – but
“social formations” (Horkheimer 1993b [1932]). In a similar Hegelian spirit (Hegel
was seen by Horkheimer as the last thinker to have succeeded in articulating empiri-
cism and philosophy, science and metaphysics), the project of Critical Theory con-
sisted in taking on, from top to bottom, a reconstruction of social philosophy hinged
to an interdisciplinary materialism. In order to produce a critique based on the con-
cept of a “whole” society, the perspective of a “social totality” was to be construed
through the synthetic articulation of different contributions in specific scientific dis-
ciplines (political economics, social psychology, cultural criticism), under the aegis
of social philosophy (Abromeit 2011; Voirol 2012).
Horkheimer’s attention to both sociology and philosophy, to the empirical and
the metaphysical, is reflected in Dämmerung (Horkheimer 1934; Horkheimer 1978
[1934]), published under the pseudonym Heinrich Regius by Oprecht and Hebling
in Zürich (Stahlberger 1970). Through the enmeshment of poetical and speculative
aphorisms, Horkheimer depicts social situations in order to elicit socioeconomic
questions regarding issues of class and social structure. He also reflects on capital-
ism’s mutations, thereby proposing a clear view of its inherent violence and the
distress it generates in human beings. Through sociological sketches, he tries to
grasp the “spirit of the times” by situating himself not outside or above these
depicted situations but within them – like the philosopher he criticizes in the apho-
rism “Sky Scraper,” perched on the top of his tower, contemplating the world yet
unable to grasp that which sustains his overhanging view.
Although empirical and theoretical work was intensive at the IfS during this
period, putting together, among other things, the collective volume Studien über
Autorität und Familie (Studies on Authority and the Family) (Horkheimer, Fromm,
Marcuse 1936; Institute of Social Research 1937), which was completed in 1935
and published the following year, the stay in Geneva turned out to be the first stage
in the institute’s exile. Having been able to develop fruitful contacts in New York,
particularly thanks to Fromm’s knowledge and contacts with the psychoanalytical
112 O. Voirol
milieu, the IfS was offered conditions in the United States that were ideal for the
pursuit of its research – a welcoming context certain to shelter the IfS members
from the barbaric turmoil hovering in Europe (Marcuse 1945; Jay 1986, 1993;
Wheatland 2004a, b, 2009). Switzerland, situated at the heart of the continent, was
not being spared these upheavals. The IfS hence decided to move to New York,
gradually traveling to the metropolis in the course of 1934 – Fromm and Horkheimer
in May, Marcuse in July, Pollock and Löwenthal in August. However, all the infra-
structure set up during the IfS’s exile in Geneva remained in place, providing an
indispensable anchorage for the functioning of the IfS in Europe (see Fig. 2), start-
ing with its secretariat and office at rue de Lausanne 91 and including the links they
had established during their stay, notably with the scholarship holders. It would
henceforth be the IfS’s main point of contact on the continent, alongside the Parisian
antenna, the Felix Alcan publishing house, and the Dutch antenna, which served as
treasury and was Horkheimer’s official address up until 1942.
2 The Correspondence Between Max Horkheimer

and Juliette Favez
Within the previous context, a correspondence between Max Horkheimer and

Juliette Favez emerged. The first letter available in the archives was sent to Geneva
from New York by Horkheimer on October 12, 1934 (Nachlass Horkheimer
177.I.6.011). It begins, “Liebe Frau Favez” – a greeting that was to be repeated
regularly thereafter – to which the latter replied with “Lieber Herr Professor
Horkheimer.” The letter indicates from the outset that this exchange follows on from
other letters in a correspondence that had probably been initiated when Horkheimer
left Geneva for New York in the summer of 1934, although the initial links in the
chain appear to have been dispersed.
This inspires an initial remark on the material conditions of archives, which pro-
vide unique access to these exchanges, and the existence of which ensures that they
will not be erased forever. Only traces that have been archived make it possible to
revive these exchanges with all their themes and concerns. The loss or absence of a
single document in the archive can cause an entire epistolary exchange to be misun-
derstood. One cannot but be filled with satisfaction and admiration for the consider-
able amount of effort and work that has been and continues to be done by former
archivists and researchers, all of whom are highly dedicated to the conservation and
organization of the archive. The absence of this continuous effort would thwart any
further investigation. On this material level of archival research, it should be empha-
sized that the Horkheimer archive is particularly well organized, thanks to the
meticulous work done over the years, starting with the edition of Max Horkheimer’s
Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings) by Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid
Noerr and the Horkheimer Nachlass at the University of Frankfurt (Horkheimer
1996). The documents are numbered and well classified, and the directory is largely
Fig. 2 Building of the offices of the Institut für Sozialforschung rue de Lausanne 133, Geneva,
1937–1939, officially known as “Bureau de l’Institut de recherches sociales de l’Université de
Francfort”
digitized and partially accessible online (Jehn and Knepper 2015). Almost all the
epistolary exchanges are typescripts, and so it is rare to have to stare at almost
unreadable handwriting as can often be the case in this kind of research.
114 O. Voirol
The correspondence between Juliette Favez and Max Horkheimer is extremely

rich, extending from October 1934 to 1942 and consisting of 611 letters. The fre-
quency of the exchanges was sustained, often with few days’ interval, but it could
also be more relaxed when the day-to-day affairs of the institute in Geneva were less
intense. In any case, within the abundance of the Horkheimer collection, his corre-
spondence with Juliette Favez is one of the most important, lengthy, and sustained,
compared to those maintained with his many other regular correspondents, the most
important being Adorno, with whom he exchanged thousands of letters between
1927 and 1969 (Adorno and Horkheimer 2004). For example, the correspondence
with Erich Fromm includes 129 letters exchanged between 1934 and 1946, and that
with Walter Benjamin comprises about 200 letters between 1934 and
1940 (Wiggershaus 1994, 2013). Obviously, the number of letters alone does not
indicate the intensity of an exchange, which could have been conducted through
other means, like regular discussions or phone calls (Schmid 2012). However,
everything indicates that from the moment Horkheimer left Europe in 1934, his
epistolary communications intensified to such an extent that it became an essential
part of his activity. His links with a part of the outside world developed henceforth
through his correspondence, so much so that his letters are a reliable indicator of his
way of working, his preoccupations, his contacts and network, and, finally, his
whole relational and intellectual “ecosystem.”
2.1 The Content of the Exchanges
The correspondence between Juliette Favez and Max Horkheimer deals with differ-
ent questions relating to the organization of the IfS’s research activities, the admin-
istration of the Geneva branch (which was, in fact, the center of the institute from
the end of 1932 to the end of 1934), editing, publication, and also the management
of sources and contacts with authors and readers of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung
(Journal for Social Research) (International Institute of Social Research 1934;
Horkheimer 1939). The letters also address less directly professional questions
about the present political situation, how to deal with it, and how to help people in
difficulty along with different prospects of exile, as had been the case for
Horkheimer’s own parents in Bern. In addition to numerous exchanges on current
administrative and management issues and these contextual elements, these letters
also contain intellectual and philosophical aspects – although the latter do not domi-
nate the mass of exchanges – about substantive theoretical issues. Juliette Favez’s
capacity for dealing with these theoretical issues displays her sharp intellectual
skills, making her an important partner in the research and editing processes,
although her role was largely secretarial and organizational.
To be accurate, the content of this correspondence deals primarily with adminis-
trative questions related to the functioning of the IfS in Geneva. It concerns the
management of funds, the operating costs of the office, questions about the prem-
ises (at 91 rue de Lausanne), relations with the ILO and the city of Geneva, as well
as requests for support addressed to the institute by scholars, researchers, and for-
mer students. The institute constantly supported a number of people whose situation
in Germany was critical and who requested financial support, grants, or funding for
their research (or survival, as the situation deteriorated); these requests were often
for small sums, which the institute provided in most cases. In addition to this, the
management of journals, newspapers, publications, relationships with editing
houses, and the management of funds and their distribution were also part of the
main Geneva office’s work. At the request of Horkheimer, publications or reprints
were sent to various colleagues or scholars from the Geneva office, which thus
served as a publishing and distribution post for IfS writings in Europe. The whole
process was handled by the Geneva secretariat and thus by Juliette Favez.
To these predominantly administrative aspects of the correspondence are added
conceptual questions, which can often be found in these exchanges. An important
part of these exchanges comprises the theoretical questions which arose from
Juliette Favez’s editing work on manuscripts she received. The readings she carried
out – in particular on the massive volume of the Studien über Autorität und Familie
(the Studies on Authority and Family) – often raised conceptual questions demand-
ing further clarification and reformulation, which led her to regularly address
Horkheimer or other IfS researchers like Fromm or Pollock regarding the consid-
ered issues. Another part of the Geneva office’s activity concerned research activi-
ties and the acquisition of books, articles, journals, and newspapers. Such activities
might also involve attending seminars, conferences, or colloquia and even providing
accurate reports on the discussions being held there. It is one of the ways in which
IfS members kept abreast of ongoing discussions within the European scientific
community after having left the old continent. Furthermore, at Horkheimer’s
request, Juliette Favez was invited to research and document articles and books and
to write detailed reviews on them, such as the complete review she wrote on Sade
for Horkheimer.
Finally, the exchanges display a more personal dimension, in which the relation-
ships between the members come to the fore. The letters provide instances of Favez
caring for people close to her, of sensitive feelings, of impressions on the sociopo-
litical situation, of nostalgia, of fear and uncertainty regarding nature or the environ-
ment, of nature’s beauty, or simple and prosaic statements on the weather both in
Geneva and in New York. These elements are present in a very scattered way
throughout a correspondence that shifts between different registers, administrative
and intellectual, thereby nourishing the exchanges with an important sensitive
dimension (Reinlein 2003). Added to this is an element, as Juliette Favez takes it
upon herself to ask a series of personal, even sometimes quite intimate, questions
about the life of Horkheimer and his wife: she sometimes manages his medical
mail, retrieves some of Maidon Horkheimer’s X-rays, and deploys all her energy to
helping Horkheimer’s parents find refuge in Switzerland and to settle in the best
conditions. They finally found these in Bern, where they both died at the end of the
war. These exchanges are marked by mutual respect, recognition, sometimes even
tenderness, and also a significant enthusiasm for the intellectual and editorial activi-
ties of the institute. It is obvious from these exchanges that their collaboration,
116 O. Voirol
always characterized by a respectful distance, is the fruit of an intense cooperation

during the first years of the IfS in Geneva.
2.2 The Juliette Favez Enigma
It is a paradox that someone who, from looking at his correspondence, seems to

have been most significant to Horkheimer has remained completely ignored by the
history of the institute and, more widely, of Critical Theory. Her material and rela-
tional contribution was nevertheless decisive because it intersected with fundamen-
tal exchanges concerning the functioning of the institute itself. Moreover, she was
the first woman to take on the role of director after Andries Sternheim left Geneva
for Amsterdam in 1938. Despite this important role in the history of Critical Theory,
it remains difficult to know who Juliette Favez really was, where she – a polyglot,
fluent in German, English, and French – came from, and how she came to partici-
pate in this intellectual experience. We know nothing about her origins, her activi-
ties preceding her work at the IfS, or what she did after her collaboration there.
These things can only be discovered using material available in the archives, and
only a consequent search of other archives in the cities and institutions she passed
through can answer these questions. In the existing literature, Juliette Favez appears
only once in Martin Jay’s book The Dialectical Imagination, where reference is
made to her role as director of the Geneva branch (Jay 1973: p. 113); she is also
mentioned four times in Rolf Wiggershaus’s book The Frankfurt School, where she
is described as Horkheimer’s secretary and correspondent, and little more is learned
about her (Wiggershaus 1994: p. 177, 248, 253).
While research in the archive of Critical Theory tells us little about these matters,
it does tell us several notable things about her existence during her collaboration
with the IfS. We learn incidentally that she was in Frankfurt in the late 1920s, for
she herself refers to the fact. In a letter of October 4, 1938, Favez writes to
Horkheimer about a student who wrote to the IfS requesting a copy of its journal
and who she says was “not known to us from the period in Frankfurt” (frankfurter
Zeiten). From her letters, one can only deduce an excellent knowledge of philoso-
phy and the social sciences, and one can assume that she studied philosophy and
sociology in Frankfurt, probably having attended Horkheimer’s and his colleagues’
classes. Between the lines, we also learn that she had a son who was about to begin
his schooling in Geneva in 1938 and who was now “fluent in French,” which indi-
cates that he had been socialized in another language until then. A letter dated May
15, 1935, briefly states why a package could not be delivered, explaining that “her
man does not understand German” and therefore could not act as mediator (Nachlass
Horkheimer 130.VI.7.523). This may indicate that she married a Genevan, the name
“Favez” having indeed been associated with the city for generations.
In another letter, dated July 22, 1935, we learn that she attended at least some of
her classes in the Frankfurt area. A written answer to Horkheimer points out that a
certain Frau Madeleine Scherer-Hahn, who was being discussed, used to be her
classmate: “By the way, I went to a class with Madeleine Han, so we’re school-
mates” (Ich bin übrigens mit Madeleine Han in ein Klasse gegangen, wir sind also
Schulkameraden). In the same letter, she speaks of her son’s playful activity enabling
her to carry out her secretarial work and write the letter: “As you probably know, my
son is here at the moment. He has grown up a lot and gives me a lot of pleasure. At
the moment, he is on the roof talking to the trains that go by, so I can work quietly”
(Wie Sie sicher wissen, ist augenblicklich mein Junge da, der sehr gross geworden
ist und mir viel Freude macht. Augenblicklich ist er auf dem Dach und unterhält sich
mit den Zügen, die vorbei fahren, so kann ich ruhig arbeiten) (Nachlass Horkheimer
172.I.6.011). Finally, it must be noted that the question of languages is of para-
mount importance to one of the most enigmatic people in the history of the IfS in
view of the role she played in its material aspect and the importance she had for
Horkheimer in the 1930s.
2.3 Elements of a Correspondence
I would like to examine in detail a series of examples from this correspondence by

highlighting the elements that are relevant among the dimensions identified above.
In doing so I shall examine the “material part of the theory” to which Juliette Favez
rigorously committed herself. The first aspect concerns the important work of docu-
mentation, but also of receiving, returning, and sending manuscripts to different
places in the world. The Geneva office became a hub where manuscripts arrived and
were redistributed to New York, London, Paris, and several cities in Germany. This
work, carried out by Juliette Favez, also involved very delicate aspects related to the
persecution of members of the IfS and other opponents to Nazism in Germany. In a
letter dated March 25, 1935, Horkheimer asks Juliette Favez to get the Völkischer
Beobachter2 and send it to him by “the quickest way,” assuming that this German
newspaper is easy to find in the Naville kiosks in Geneva: “Dear Mrs. Favez, Please,
get me the Völkischer Beobachter of February 19, 1935, and send it here by the
quickest way. I believe that you can obtain it without further ado through Naville.
With warmest regards” (Liebe Frau Favez, Bitte, besorgen Sie mir den Völkischen
Beobachter von 19. Februar 1935 und senden Sie ihn auf dem raschesten Weg hier-
her. Ich glaube, dass Sie ihm ohne weiteres durch Naville beziehen können. Mit
2
Founded in Munich in 1887 under the title Münchener Beobachter, the Völkischer Beobachter
(unnamed in 1919) was published by Franz-Eher-Verlag (which also edited Adolf Hitler’s Mein
Kampf). It was the press organ of the NSDAP from 1920 to 1945 and was edited by Hitler until
1933 – he wrote numerous articles in the VS until 1922. The Völkischer Beobachter was more
interested in agitation than in information and described itself as a “fighting journal” (“Kampfblatt”)
in sharp differentiation from the “bourgeois newspapers”. Starting with a circulation of about
8,000 copies, it reached 100,000 copies during the Reichstag elections of 1930, making it as one
of the largest newspapers in Germany. The circulation increased enormously with the success of
Nazism during the 1930s, reaching 1.7 million copies in 1944. It ceased publication a few days
before the German capitulation in April 1945 (Heider 1997; Tavernaro 2004).
118 O. Voirol
herzlichem Gruss) (Nachlass Horkheimer 135.VI.7.523). Juliette Favez responds to

Horkheimer’s request with a message whose content says a lot about her work, as
well as about the context of enduring political repression, particularly linked to the
surveillance that the Frankfurters felt and palpably suffered, including during their
stay in Switzerland. It also says something about the relations between the different
countries (Nazi Germany, Switzerland, France, the United States) at that time and
about the way the IfS found itself in the middle of this hellish turmoil. Addressing
Horkheimer from Geneva on April 10, 1935, she replied as follows:
Thank you for your last letter and card. The offprints, which arrived a week later than the
letter, were sent to the addresses indicated as soon as they arrived. Concerning the Völkischer
Beobachter that you asked for, it is as follows: Switzerland has banned the import of the
Völkischer Beobachter as a countermeasure to Germany’s banning of Swiss newspapers. It
is impossible for me and for Naville to obtain a copy that I could send on to you. However,
the Völkischer Beobachter is now being sent to the Paris branch, since we cannot obtain it
in Switzerland. Now that the subscription fee will be paid by us, Geneva, I have written to
Eher [the editor of the journal] to send the desired issue to the Paris branch, where it is
needed, since it is missing there. I could have ordered it from Eher directly for the New York
Institute, but I did not know whether you would be keen on communicating the name of the
N.Y. branch to Germany. However, as the publisher knows the Paris branch, I found the
chosen way to be the easiest to get the issue to you. Paris is informed that it will be sent to
you as soon as it is received.
Ich danke Ihnen für Ihren letzten Brief und die Karte. Die Sonderdrucke, die erst eine Woche
später als der Brief eintrafen, wurden sofort als sie ankamen an die angegebenen Adressen
geschickt. Mit dem Völkischen Beobachter, um den Sie bitten, hat es folgende Bewandtnis:
die Schweiz· hat als Gegenmassnahme, dass Deutschland die Schweizer Zeitungen verbi-
etet, die Einfuhr des Völkischen Beobachters in die Schweiz verboten. Es ist mir und auch
Naville unmöglich, eine Nummer zu beschaffen, die ich Ihnen weiterschicken könnte. Der
Völkische Beobachter wird aber nun, da wir ihn in der Schweiz nicht beziehen können an
die Pariser Zweigstelle geschickt. Ich habe nun, da die Abonnementsgebühr von uns, Genf,
bezahlt wird, an Eher geschrieben, dass er die gewünschte Nummer an die Pariser
Zweigstelle schickt, wo sie benötigt wird, da sie dort fehlt. Ich hätte sie bei Eher auch direkt
für das New Yorker Institut bestellen können, ich wusste aber nicht, ob es Ihnen angenehm
ist, wenn der Name der N.Y. Zweigstelle nach Deutschland mitgeteilt ist. Da der Verlag
jedoch die Pariser Zweigstelle kennt, fand ich den gewählten Weg den einfachsten, um
Ihnen die Nummer zukommen zu lassen. Paris ist unterrichtet, dass sie Ihnen sofort nach
Eingang zugeschickt wird. (Nachlass Horkheimer 134.VI.7.523)
In this reply it is worth noting the tact with which she proceeds in her activity as
“post officer” across Europe, keeping in mind the context of persecution and avoid-
ing any maneuver that might enable the Nazi regime to obtain the IfS New York
address. This awareness of the danger of the situation, which recurs throughout the
correspondence, can also be found in another letter, dated January 9, 1936, where
Juliette Favez wonders whether it is wise to bring a certain Karl Dörter – whose
brother Willy, a former doctoral student at the IfS, was incarcerated by the Nazi
regime – “to 91.” She suggests meeting him somewhere else “where the walls have
no ears”:
Dear Professor Horkheimer, (…) This morning Mr. Dörter, the brother of our Dörter
[Willy], who will probably be released in a few days, called from Mainz and announced his
visit for Sunday. He will come to my house, and we shall there be able to discuss everything
in peace. The walls there have no ears, and his visit will not be noticed at all. I don’t know
if it would mean anything if he came to 91, but if we do something for “Bub” afterwards,
which will certainly become known, it might be better for Mr. D. himself. I will then report
to you what I have heard. I, myself, have little hope that “Bub” D. will be able to leave.
Lieber Herr Professor Horkheimer, (…) Heute morgen rief Herr Dörter, der Bruder unseres
Dörters [Willy], der in diesen Tagen wohl freikommen wird, aus Mainz aus hier an und
kündigte seinen Besuch für Sonntag an. Er wird zu mir nach Hause kommen und wir können
dann dort in Ruhe alles besprechen. Dort haben die Wände keine Ohren und sein Besuch
fällt auch gar nicht auf. Ich weiss zwar nicht, ob es irgend etwas auf sich hätte, wenn er
nach 91 käme, aber falls wir nachher, was sicher bekannt werden wird, etwas für “Bub”
tun, ist es vielleicht für Herrn D. selbst besser so. Ich werde Ihnen dann berichten, was ich
gehört habe. Ich selbst habe wenig Hoffnung, dass “Bub” D. wird verlassen können.
(Nachlass Horkheimer 91.VI.7.523)
The case of the Dörter brothers occupies a significant place in the correspon-
dence between Favez and Horkheimer during these years. Willy Dörter was a young
researcher who was linked to the IfS in Frankfurt and, being politically active, had
been arrested, condemned before a Nazi “people’s court,” and subsequently impris-
oned in a concentration camp. His brother Karl wrote to Favez and Horkheimer
asking for their help in this complicated situation. His exchanges shed light on the
political situation in Germany and the changes taking place in the country, in con-
nection with the quick Nazification of society. In a letter dated November 12, 1934,
Juliette Favez reports a conversation she had with him in Geneva during one of
his stays:
On Friday, Mr. Dörter [Karl] was here, until now he had not been able to pick up my first
letter sent to Forbach, it came back after not being picked up within four weeks, yours
neither, which is still in Forbach. He had business in Basel and also had to go to Zürich. So,
he stopped by in Geneva. (…) Mr. Dörter told us a lot about the mood in Germany, which
is increasingly affecting circles that had been best-disposed toward Hitler: an understanding
that Hitlerism had brought Germany to the brink of the abyss, a foresight of the collapse of
the economy with unforeseeable consequences, discontent and loud grumbling everywhere.
(…) The elite of the old S.A. is taken over into the S.S., whose name was mentioned with
horror. The people hate and fear them. They were informed about the mistreatment in the
concentration camps, but even outside the concentration camps they felt as if they were in
a prison and everybody who was halfway reasonable and had not got a job through
Hitlerism, grumbled that this state of affairs was unbearable.
Am Freitag war Herr Dörter [Karl] hier, der bis jetzt weder meinen ersten nach Forbach
gerichteten Brief, der zurückkam, nachdem er innerhalb von vier Wochen nicht abgeholt
wurde, noch den Ihren, der noch in Forbach liegt, hatte abholen können. Er hatte
geschäftlich in Basel zu tun und musste auch nach Zürich. So kam er in Genf vorbei. (…)
Herr Dörter erzählte viel von der Stimmung in Deutschland, die auch die Hitler bestgesinnt
gewesenen Kreise immer mehr ergreife: ein Einsehen, dass die Hitlerei D’land an den
Abgrund gebracht hat, ein Vorsichsehen des Zugrundegehens der Wirtschaft mit unabseh-
baren Folgen, Unzufriedenheit und lautwerdendes Murren überall. (…) Die Elite der alten
S.A. wird in die S.S. übernommen, deren Namen man mit Grausen erwähnte. Das Volk hasst
und fürchtet sie. Über die Misshandlungen in der Konzentrationslagern sei man unterrich-
tet, man fühle sich aber auch ausserhalb der Konzentrationslager wie in einem Gefängnis
und jeder, der halbwegs vernünftig sei und nicht durch die Hitlerei ein Pöstchen ergattert
habe, murrt, dass dieser Zustand unerträglich sei. (Nachlass Horkheimer 175.I.6.011)
120 O. Voirol
The letters describing the political situation in Germany are rich in descriptions of a
system of terror that invaded everyday life, breaking down the barriers of civiliza-
tion one by one. In a letter from Geneva addressed to Horkheimer on January 13,
1937, Willy Dörter describes this political and ideological situation and with his
own words formulates in political terms the broad outlines of what will later on be
philosophically conceptualized in the “dialectic of enlightenment”:
My very personal experiences in Germany specifically pointed to an ideological consoli-
dation of fascism. Experiences with bearers of the practical Marxist movement revealed
closed-mindedness and theoretical disorientation. Both showed an increasing dissolution
of all those categories grouped around the concept of ‘humanitas’. We are largely accus-
tomed to think through these categories, we have grown up with them. In a very broad
sense, one could speak of the ‘dismantling of the human’. One could perhaps put it this
way. It has become difficult, I would say almost impossible, to be or to remain a decent
human being in Germany, and probably not only in Germany. But the splendor of these
categories is revealed precisely by the hatred to which they are subjected and the longing
that springs from the awareness of their lack. The question of terror is only a partial ques-
tion in this context (…). Today, however, I read the following words from a letter of
Goethe to Zelter: ‘Let us hold on as much as possible to the spirit in which we came here.
We will, with perhaps a few more, be the last of an epoch which will not return as soon’,
and I must confess that these sentences seem to me today also to have a more general
meaning.
Meine ganz persönlichen Erfahrungen in Deutschland speziell deuteten auf eine ideolo-
gische Festigung des Faschismus hin. Erfahrungen mit Trägern der praktischen marxist-
ischen Bewegung enthüllten Unaufgeschlossenheit und theoretische Desorientierung.
Beide zeigten eine zunehmende Auflösung aller derjenigen Kategorie, die sich um den
Begriff der ‘Humanitas’ gruppieren. In diesen Kategorien sind wir weitgehend gewohnt
zu denken, mit ihnen sind wir gross geworden. Man könnte in sehr weitem Sinn von einem
‘Abbau des Menschlichen’ reden. Man kann es vielleicht so ausdrücken. Es ist schwer,
fast mochte ich sagen unmöglich geworden, in Deutschland ein anständiger Mensch zu
sein oder zu bleiben, und wahrscheinlich nicht nur in Deutschland. Aber den Glanz die-
ser Kategorien enthüllt gerade der Hass, dem sie ausgeliefert sind und die dem Bewußtsein
ihres Mangels entspringende Sehnsucht. Die Frage des Terrors ist in diesem
Zusammenhang nur eine Teilfrage (…). Ich las heute jedoch die nachstehenden Worte aus
einem Brief Goethes an Zelter: ‘Lasst uns soviel wie möglich an der Gesinnung fest-
halten, in der wir herankamen. Wir werden, mit vielleicht noch Wenigen, die Letzten sein,
einer Epoche, die sobald nicht wiederkehrt’, und ich muss gestehen, dass mir diese Sätze
heute auch eine Allgemeinere Bedeutung zu haben scheinen. (Nachlass Horkheimer
157.I.6.011)
2.4 Mail Management
Another example of the “material part of theory” also concerns this practical orga-
nization of the institute’s correspondence, as well as its writings and publications.
Juliette Favez asked Horkheimer if he wished to extend the subscription to an ani-
mal rights association’s magazine, Le Chien. An enthusiastic answer came a few
days later in a letter sent from New York, dated July 2, 1935: “Only in memory of
the good Doy do we want the old journal. You know he is dead, don’t you? Now all
our animals in Cronberg are dead. This is already a bit sad” (Schon in dem Gedächtnis
an den guten Doy wollen wir die Zeitschrift alten. Sie wissen doch, dass er tot ist?
Jetzt sind alle unsere Tiere in Cronberg tot. Das ist schon ein bisschen Traurig)
(Nachlass Horkheimer 173.I.6.011). This material dimension of the subscription to
an animal magazine and the support given by Horkheimer to an association for ani-
mal protection clarifies elements present in Horkheimer’s philosophical texts in
regard to the domination of nature, such as the thematization of the misery and
mistreatment of animals.
In an aphorism from Dämmerung (1934), Horkheimer uses the metaphor of the
skyscraper to describe the modern capitalist society we live in: at the very top are
the rulers, the “magnates of the trusts of the various capitalist power groups, who
rule but fight each other”; then the managers, the liberal professions, “the small
magnates,” and the “staff of important collaborators”; the middle classes made up of
military men, teachers, “small employees,” “political executors,” “engineers, and
office managers”; then “the remnants of small independent existences, the crafts-
men, merchants, peasants, and so on”; followed by the proletariat, from the “per-
petually unemployed” to the “poor, the old, the sick”; the “coolies of the earth” who
are crumbling in misery; and then, at the very bottom, the animals. “Below the
spaces where the coolies of the earth are dying by the millions, one would still have
to represent the indescribable, unimaginable suffering of the animals, the animal
hell in human society, the sweat, the blood, the despair of the animals” (Horkheimer
1934: pp. 81–82). Horkheimer’s awareness of the misery inflicted on animals by
human societies, and the domination of nature that underpins it, was acute and was
not a purely philosophical gesture divorced from any practice. It was an attitude
toward existence and toward animal life, which manifested itself, among other
ways, through membership of an animal rights association and subscription to its
journal.
2.5 The Materiality of Thinking
The third example concerns intellectual work and its materiality. After having
received the manuscript of the “Sammelband” (the collective volume Studies on
Authority and Family) in order to type it, Juliette Favez wrote to Horkheimer from
Geneva in a letter dated June 8, 1935, to confirm receipt. In the letter, she inciden-
tally manifested an obvious enthusiasm for these texts. She wrote these few sen-
tences testifying to the material part of theorization and of the concrete aspects of
typewritten thought:
As you know, I am also reading the corrections for the volume. I have just finished your
essay. How I admire you, what tremendous work has gone into it. I hope I will also be able
to work with you again; when I read it, I can see you so clearly in front of me, how you
dictated, corrected, and changed until finally everything turned out to your complete satis-
faction. That is what makes one happy when one is allowed to work with you, that one
122 O. Voirol
experiences for oneself how you struggle, so to speak, to say the best in the most beautiful
form, and that is why one is then also happy with you when everything has turned out in
such a way that you are satisfied. Does your current secretary feel the same way or is that
typically German? Hopefully it will be true that you will come here next year for a little
longer time. If you saw the sky, the lake, the park and the mountains now! Simply indescrib-
ably beautiful. I think of you so often. Poor Dr. P. [Pollock] had to leave so soon, too. Of
course, when duty calls, everything has to take a back seat, but it would have been nice if
he could have enjoyed the early summer here.
Wie Sie wissen, lese ich auch die Korrekturen für den Sammelband. Jetzt gerade bin ich mit
Ihrem Aufsatz fertig geworden. Wie bewundere ich Sie, welch ungeheuere Arbeit steckt
darin. Hoffentlich kann ich auch wieder einmal mit Ihnen arbeiten; beim Lesen sehe ich Sie
so genau vor mir, wie Sie diktierten, feilten und änderten bis dann endlich alles zu Ihrer
vollkommenen Zufriedenheit ausgefallen war. Das macht einem gerade Freude, wenn man
mit Ihnen arbeiten darf, dass man selbst erlebt, wie Sie sozusagen darum ringen, das Beste
in der schönsten Form zu sagen und deshalb ist man dann auch mit Ihnen glücklich, wenn
alles so ausgefallen ist, dass Sie zufrieden sind. Empfindet Ihre jetzige Sekretärin auch so
oder ist das typisch deutsch? Hoffentlich wird es wahr, dass Sie nächstes Jahr für etwas
längere Zeit hierher kommen. Wenn Sie jetzt den Himmel, den See, den Park und die Berge
sähen! einfach unbeschreiblich schön. Ich denke so oft an Sie. Der arme Dr. P. [Pollock] hat
auch so schnell wieder fortgemusst. Natürlich, wenn die Pflicht ruft, dann muss ja alles
zurückstehen, aber es wäre doch schön gewesen, wenn er gerade diesen Vorsommer hätte
hier geniessen können. (Nachlass Horkheimer 128.VI.7.523)
The body in action, the fingers striking the keys with regular pressure, her sensi-
tive description of this situation allows us to perceive the material dimension of
thinking through writing, the rhythm of the voice, the hesitant formulations, and the
progressive construction of thought. We see in this passage how much theory is not
only an “ideal” process but it is made up of tangible activities anchored in bodies
and situations. Furthermore, it is achieved through different tools: the voice, the
pencil, the paper, and the machine. This extract also shows us a very “gendered”
relationship between Juliette Favez and Max Horkheimer: a secretary and her boss
(philosopher) not only involving a caring, listening dimension but also one of power
specific to a professional relationship.
3 The Archive of Reconstruction
A few concluding remarks should be made about the specificity of archival work in
the research on Critical Theory, its history, and the parts of it that are ignored. Unlike
other currents of thought that have not been the subject of consistent research in the
history of ideas and whose archives have not been methodically organized, Critical
Theory has given rise to a great deal of research. Its history is documented; it is
known and recognized, at least in its most important themes and periods. An impor-
tant theoretical, historical, sociological, and philosophical corpus presents this the-
ory and its developments, its different aspects and historical moments, with its
authors, research experiences, disputed conceptual issues, and internal and external
debates and disputes. All these works of research on Critical Theory may today be
considered an integral part of its corpus, just as are its founding texts, all figuring
among its major achievements. Indeed, how could one imagine Critical Theory
today without the works of Martin Jay (1973), Rolf Wiggershaus (1994), Susan
Buck-Morss (1977), or Alex Demirović (1999) or without the critical reconstruc-
tions of Jürgen Habermas (1987) and Axel Honneth (2007), not to mention Seyla
Benhabib, Helmut Dubiel, Nancy, Fraser, Douglas Kellner, Stefan Müller-Doohm,
Albrecht Wellmer, and many others? And this is to cite only the most canonical
contributions that illuminated different aspects of Critical Theory no less than the
history of the institute. Thus, engagement in Critical Theory today is inseparable
from the making and remaking of its history, thereby reconstructing its possibilities
for the present.
Archival research on Critical Theory is currently founded in these fertile achieve-
ments. Consequently, to materially handle and consult these archives means to strip
oneself from any “immaculate” point of view, thereby committing to the complex
history of the archive itself whose traces are well organized on the material level
(presence and organization of archives) as much as on the semantic level (existence
of research and interpretations). By entering the archives, one is therefore far from
setting foot on a terra incognita made up of traces (notes, letters, manuscripts, type-
scripts, press articles, transcriptions, radio recordings, etc.) appearing like hiero-
glyphs to be deciphered to construct their signifying framework. Consequently,
research on Critical Theory is nourished by an organized theoretical and historical
narrative from which one cannot be abstracted. It is thus a “ready-made” theory and
a history already written.
But even if one knows the history of Critical Theory very well in advance, med-
dling in its archives is always an experience: it is bodily contact with the material
paper, the handwritten documents, telegrams, postcards, photographs, typescripts,
and recordings, many of which have not been touched for decades, waiting for
someone to “wake them up” (Farge 2013; Gumbrecht 2003). From the outset, it is
thus a different view and grasp of Critical Theory: one discovers people (like the
Dörter brothers) who were never mentioned before, who were relevant to the main
actors during a specific period of time only to disappear later on and be forgotten.
One discovers concepts and concerns that were salient at a specific period and that
have, again, been forgotten. One can find sensitive writings that echo an experience
of a past situation or the thread of prolonged exchanges and similar conversations
that span several years. Entering an archive is therefore an experience of research
characterized by permanent astonishment. When reading letters, for example, at
times one discovers a whole new world whose content resists the researcher’s com-
prehension, without being nevertheless completely unfamiliar (Link 2017). It is
thus the equivalent of a practice that experiences newness through familiarity.
Consequently, a question arises regarding the nature of the archival experience of
Critical Theory: following the canonical books on the history of Critical Theory
already mentioned, are archival researchers condemned to fill in blank pages of this
history to complete a picture that is already substantially filled in (although a con-
siderable amount of work remains to be done) or is the archival experience on the
threshold of producing novel and updated information? In my view, it is less a
124 O. Voirol
question whether the new research experience can fill an epistemic void, thereby
completing an already rich history with elements that have been heretofore neglected
(themes, research, places, contacts, people, etc.), than one of whether it changes
something in the main picture of Critical Theory or affects its overall structure.
I shall here adopt the latter perspective: the research in the archive of Critical
Theory – and thus on the past – is not an addition to a grand narrative to which each
piece of research would contribute in its own way. It is a contribution to a theoretical
reconstruction in the sense that themes and investigations from the past that have
been “silenced” for contingent reasons start to speak again at the heart of our pres-
ent. This allows us to rediscover these themes and to revisit an existing theory. It is
in this sense that archival research allows us to carry out a theoretical reconstruc-
tion, whose operation consists less in drawing out past elements that respond to the
concerns of the present (Habermas 1987[1981]), than in asking different questions
of the past, thereby opening the present to other possibilities (Voirol 2022).
Unlike the reconstruction of a concept or a theory that starts from the issues of
our present time, archival research makes possible a “dialectical reconstruction”
(Voirol 2022: pp. 62–65) based on our archival experience of the past: we immerse
ourselves in an era – in our case the early 1930s – embracing its difficulties, ten-
sions, preoccupations, and problems. Dealing with correspondence implies experi-
encing exchanges and conversations, narrated by impressions, people, places, and
situations and affected by the possibilities that their contemporary existence encap-
sulated. Archives connect us with life in its most sensitive and dramatic sense: they
awaken voices that have been silenced forever, along with all the issues that ani-
mated them. In our case, they bring back the “material part of theory,” simultane-
ously allowing a “dialectical” reconstruction grounded in the processual experience
of research itself. Far from being a mere conceptual or idealistic reconstruction, this
dialectical reconstruction operates by means of a sensitivity experienced through
contact with the archives. Although this approach is most certainly fraught with an
initial knowledge of the “finished” theoretical corpus, it accesses the archive not
only by means of this knowledge but also against it, thereby striving to make the
archive speak to our present by extracting the words from its entrails.
For the current generation working on the history of Critical Theory, archives are
now their unique interlocutors (Dirks 2002). Unlike the previous generation of
scholars who were able to interact directly with the people they were researching –
as it is the case with the members of the so-called second generation who interacted
with members of the first, such as Martin Jay, whose manuscripts were discussed
with Horkheimer and Pollock – the current generation must now delve into the
archives and other publicly available theoretical works. Archives have become the
only way to revive this universe of relationships, thought, and research and to live
these manners of thought and social investigation and modes of theoretical writing.
Archives have become the only subtext of the known and recognized text of “fin-
ished” theory: as partners in discussion and research, brought to life by our experi-
ence, they are the material and practical basis for a further reconstruction of a
Critical Theory destined to be anchored in its current time.
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Olivier Voirol studied social sciences and social philosophy. He is Senior Lecturer at the
University of Lausanne (Switzerland), Lecturer at the University of Paris-Descartes (France), as
well as an associate researcher at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main. He pub-
lished on recognition theory, social invisibility, culture industry and digital capitalism. His current
research deals with the pathologies of the public sphere and the rise of authoritarianism as well as
the early history of Critical Theory.
Not Just Director, Methodologist,
or Partner: A Brief History
of the Reception of Horkheimer’s Work
Paulo Yamawake
Horkheimer was reluctant to republish his works. For instance, during the 1960s, it
was not easy to find his Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal for Social Research)
writings, even in Germany – the issues were locked in the Institut für Sozialforschung
(Institute for Social Research [IfS]) basement for years (Benhabib et al. 1993,
p. 10). The Dialektik der Aufklärung became an “underground classic” (Jay 1976,
p. 255) and could be read only in unofficial editions. Decades after the publication
of his writings, there was a clearly growing demand for a republication. Why did
Horkheimer resist for so long?
The main reason is a theoretical one. In accordance with Critical Theory’s found-
ing principle, he maintained that the truth is historical and has a temporal core. In
1968, when at last Horkheimer republished his 1930s essays, he wrote in the preface
of the new edition:
I have always been convinced that a man should publish only those ideas which he can
defend without reservation, and I have therefore hesitated to reissue these long-out-of-print
essays from the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. These early philosophical efforts would
require a more exact formulation today. More than that, they are dominated by economic
and political ideas which no longer have any direct application; to relate them properly to
the present situation requires careful reflection. (Horkheimer 1968, 1975a, p. v)
Horkheimer was emphatic and did not want to be misunderstood: the republication
of the essays did not suggest that they could interpret the political, economic, social,
and theoretical conditions of the 1960s. Hence, this edition has a subtitle: Eine
Dokumentation. Horkheimer seemed to be more comfortable if the republication set
a temporal limit on the diagnosis within it. And 1 year later, in the preface to the new
edition of the Dialektik der Aufklärung, Horkheimer and Adorno wrote something
similar:
P. Yamawake (*)

Switzerland AG 2023
130 P. Yamawake
Dialectic of Enlightenment was published in 1947 by Querido in Amsterdam. The book,

which found readers only gradually, has been out of print for some time. We have been
induced to reissue it after more than twenty years not only by requests from many sides but
by the notion that a few of the ideas in it are timely now and have largely determined our
later theoretical writings. (...) We do not stand by everything we said in the book in its origi-
nal form. That would be incompatible with a theory which attributes a temporal core to
truth instead of contrasting truth as something invariable to the movement of history.
(Horkheimer and Adorno 1969, p. xi)
It is true that Horkheimer’s writings from the 1930s and the Dialektik der Aufklärung
offer us many insights that help us interpret our own time. But if we want to be loyal
to the theoretical principles of Critical Theory and to the authors who wrote the
book, we must keep to the idea that truth has a temporal core. Hence, the essays and
books of the 1930s and 1940s should be read in the context of their contemporary
diagnoses.
When Horkheimer passed away in 1973, his books, letters, drafts, and writings
began to be organized and catalogued, becoming the Max Horkheimer Archive as
we know it today (Schmid Noerr 2015). As Schmid Noerr describes, the archive
essentially consists of two halves. The first comprises letters, especially with
Friedrich Pollock, but also with other IfS members, such as Adorno, Benjamin,
Fromm, Löwenthal, and Marcuse. The other half contains the manuscripts and other
materials (photos, newspaper clippings, and documents), collected and catalogued.
Since 2015, the documents have been digitized and made available online.1
It is not my intention to discuss the history of the Max Horkheimer Archive here,
but rather to show how the research within it has facilitated a deeper understanding
of Horkheimer’s works, especially those from the 1930s. I argue that the initial
interpretations of Horkheimer’s work tended to portray him as the IfS director, who
organized and brought the brilliant minds of the early Critical Theory together; the
methodologist, who laid the theoretical foundation of the interdisciplinary work of
the IfS; and the partner, who wrote the Dialektik der Aufklärung with Adorno. But
as research in the archive developed and the volumes of the Gesammelte Schriften
were published, it became possible to highlight Horkheimer’s own theory and diag-
nosis – and his own philosophy.
1 The Director, the Methodologist, the Partner:

The Reception of Horkheimer’s Work During the 1970s
and the 1980s
As John Abromeit describes, Horkheimer’s reception within the Anglo-American

circle was eclipsed by that of other writers, such as Adorno and Marcuse (Abromeit
2013, pp. 5–10). There were, however, good reasons for this: after Horkheimer left
1
Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main, “Nachlass Max Horkheimer,” accessed October 15, 2022,
https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/archive/horkheimer.html.
Not Just Director, Methodologist, or Partner: A Brief History of the Reception… 131
the directorship of the IfS in 1950, he became Rector of the Goethe University
Frankfurt and was involved with the institutional reconstruction of West Germany
after the war. It is true that his philosophical writings did not completely come to a
halt, but he was far less productive than he was in the 1930s. Conversely, the writ-
ings and political positions of Adorno and Marcuse became even better known, and
not only in intellectual and academic circles. Their best known books were pub-
lished after the war: Negative Dialektik (Negative Dialectics) (1966) and One-
Dimensional Man (1964), respectively. The authors and their works were discussed
far more widely than Horkheimer’s writings of the 1930s, which at this point had
not been republished.
At the end of the 1960s, Horkheimer conceded and agreed to a reprint of the
Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, which was published in 1970. After his death in
1973, the cataloging of his writings heralded a new dawn for the reception of
Horkheimer’s work. In 1973, Martin Jay published his well-known Dialectical
Imagination (Jay 1976), which deals with the institutional and theoretical formation
of the IfS and features a short foreword written by Horkheimer himself.
Martin Jay’s Dialectical Imagination is a great book, indispensable to anyone
who is interested in the history of the IfS and the tradition of Critical Theory. The
main character in the book is the IfS itself, rather than Horkheimer. Because of that,
what Jay stressed as Horkheimer’s contribution was his crucial role in the institu-
tionalization of the IfS, its day-to-day administration, and its theoretical founda-
tions. Although Jay does point out important highlights of Horkheimer’s diagnosis
of the social situation and his philosophical contribution – which does not only
relate to methodological foundations – the book’s focus on the IfS leads to an
emphasis on his roles as director and methodologist.
Chapter 1 “The Creation of the Institut für Sozialforschung and Its
First Frankfurt Years” details his participation in the conception of the IfS,
together with Friedrich Pollock and Felix Weil. Here, Horkheimer is portrayed as
a common link between the future members, even before the foundation of the
IfS. Indeed, every biographical note about a member tells us how he met
Horkheimer: old friend, friend of a friend, Hans Cornelius’s student, etc. Then,
Jay shows how Horkheimer was “the clear choice to succeed Grünberg” (Jay
1976, p. 24), a young and brilliant leader who took on the direction after the
departure of Carl Grünberg. The emphasis here is on his well-known inaugural
speech “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute
of Social Research,” where he laid the foundations of “interdisciplinary material-
ism” and his relationship with Marxism and the traditional sciences. In chapter 2
“The Genesis of Critical Theory”, Jay describes Horkheimer’s writings, in which
he deals with the theoretical foundation underpinning the institute’s research; he
also discusses the relationship between Marxism, philosophy, psychology, empir-
ical research, and the traditional sciences, which he then develops in the follow-
ing chapters of the book.
In chapter 8 “Toward a Philosophy of History: The Critique of the Enlightenment”,
Horkheimer’s third role arises: the partner. Jay carefully stresses the partnership
between Horkheimer and Adorno during the writing of the Dialektik der Aufklärung
132 P. Yamawake
and tries to understand what influenced each author in the process. But while
Adorno kept writing at “his characteristically furious pace” (Jay 1976, p. 256) and
became the director and main figure of the IfS after the war and return to Germany,
from the 1950s onwards Horkheimer, who had never been a prolific writer, seemed
to have even greater difficulty (pp. 254–255). Jay’s highlights could explain why
the reception of the Dialektik der Aufklärung inclined toward understanding
Adorno’s work more than Horkheimer’s. For this reason, Horkheimer was seen as
the partner.
In the literature on Adorno, for example, the Dialektik der Aufklärung could be
read as a development of Adorno’s work, influenced by Walter Benjamin, as Buck-
Morss wrote in 1977:
For Dialektik der Aufklärung was not a radical departure from Adorno’s earlier methodol-
ogy. It could in fact be seen as a concrete working out of the idea of “natural history” which
he outlined in his 1932 speech. (...) Dialektik der Aufklärung showed just as clearly the
influence of Benjamin’s Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen. (Buck-Morss 1977, p. 59)
Although this is not a unanimous interpretation of Adorno’s intellectual develop-

ment, it was very influential at the time and still is to some degree. But the influence
of Buck-Morss’ books shows that the writers on early Critical Theory at the time,
even Martin Jay, were not interested directly in Horkheimer’s work. Rather, the
interpretation of Horkheimer’s writings was a means to understanding the history of
the IfS, early Critical Theory as a whole, the main authors of the 1960s (Adorno and
Marcuse, for instance), and even the Marxist tradition (Anderson 1979). That could
explain why the roles of director, methodologist, and partner were used to under-
stand Horkheimer. I do not want to suggest that these roles are unjustly ascribed or
that they were not crucial to Critical Theory’s history – they certainly are – but to
focus solely on them obscures the development of Horkheimer’s own work and
contemporary diagnosis.
In the early and mid-1980s, these roles seem to be confirmed once again. In
1984, Jay published Marxism and Totality (1984), in which Horkheimer is analyzed
within the context of the Marxist tradition. Although here Jay dedicates a whole
chapter to understanding Horkheimer himself, the main discussions are method-
ological, dealing with the interdisciplinary materialism of the 1930s and its relation
to Marxism. Wiggershaus’ The Frankfurt School (1986) interpreted Horkheimer in
a similar way; he stresses Horkheimer’s roles as director and methodologist when
he describes Horkheimer as a “managerial scholar.” Wiggershaus argues that early
Critical Theory could be understood as a “school,” which reinforces the designation
of these roles for Horkheimer. This is far from being undisputed, but our goal here
is to understand how Wiggershaus observes Horkheimer’s role in the “school,”
which should have:
1. An institutional framework: the Institute of Social Research, which existed
throughout the whole period, even if at times only in a fragmentary way
2. A charismatic intellectual personality filled with confidence in a new theoretical

program, able and willing to co-operate with qualified scholars: Max Horkheimer
as a “managerial scholar” who constantly reminded his associates of the fact that
they belonged to a chosen few in whose hands the further development of
“theory” lay
3. A manifesto: Horkheimer’s inaugural lecture of 1931 on The Present State of
Social Philosophy and the Tasks Facing an Institute of Social Research which
later accounts of the institute always harked back to and which Horkheimer him-
self repeatedly referred to, for example, at the ceremony in Frankfurt in 1951
when the Institute reopened
4. A new paradigm: the “materialist” or “critical theory” of the general process of
social existence (…)
5. A journal and other outlets for publishing the school’s research work: the
Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (…) (Wiggershaus 1995, p. 2)
Throughout the book, the role as a “managerial scholar” becomes Wiggershaus’
main interpretation of Horkheimer’s participation in the intellectual environment of
the IfS. This is because the focus is on the IfS and, consequently, Horkheimer’s
works should be read if one is to understand the intellectual history of the institute.
However, Wiggershaus later wrote a biography of Horkheimer, the subtitle of which
is “Unternehmer in Sachen ‘Kritische Theorie’” (“An Entrepreneur of Critical
Theory”) (Wiggershaus 2013), which once again reinforces the idea of Horkheimer
as director and methodologist.
However, when Wiggershaus draws attention to the Dialektik der Aufklärung, he
carefully describes the role the book played in each author’s development.2 For him
the Dialektik der Aufklärung is seen as a paradigm which guides Critical Theory as
a whole, not limited to Horkheimer and Adorno, but including Marcuse, and not
only during the 1940s, but up until 1969 with the publication of Negative Dialektik –
a “continuation of Dialectic of Enlightenment” (Wiggershaus 1995, p 259). Again,
this opinion is not unanimously expressed in the literature about Adorno’s work, but
the point here is to observe that this interpretation suggests that the Dialektik der
Aufklärung is more important to Adorno’s work than to Horkheimer’s. Wiggershaus
argues that Horkheimer also has his own Dialektik der Aufklärung in Eclipse of
Reason (Horkheimer 1947), which was conceived in the same context and environ-
ment of the 1940s.
2
See, for example, “From the point of view of Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s development as theore-
ticians, it is clear that for Adorno starting work on the dialectics book represented the moment at
which he was able to begin writing a protohistory of idealism, of immanence, of the self-satisfied
intellect and of domineering subjectivity, in contrast to Benjamin’s project of writing a protohis-
tory of the nineteenth century. (…) For Horkheimer, on the other hand, it was a question of placing
his critiques of positivism and bourgeois anthropology in a broader context, and pursuing the
implications of his critique of the repression of religious problems and his acceptance of Benjamin’s
critique of merciless progress” (Wiggershaus 1995, p. 326).
134 P. Yamawake
2 After the Collected Writings and the Max Horkheimer

Archive Research: Horkheimer as the Philosopher
After Jay and Wiggershaus’ crucial books about early Critical Theory and the IfS as
a whole and after years of work by Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr in
publishing Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften between 1985 and 1996
(Horkheimer, 1985-1996), it is possible to observe a burgeoning in the reception of
Horkheimer’s work, especially in the Anglo-American philosophical environment.
From here on, the literature leaned toward a more independent interpretation of
Horkheimer’s work, unrestricted by a broader context, whether that be the IfS or
another author. The general tendency to interpret Horkheimer’s roles as director,
methodologist, and partner came into question.
But this dawn was not sudden. There were already some interpretations that tried
to read Horkheimer’s work and development, as well as his own philosophy. For
example, Alfred Schmidt (1977) tried to emphasize the philosophical content of
Horkheimer’s work by understanding the well-known influence on it of
Schopenhauer’s philosophy. Gerd-Walter Küsters (1980) understood that
Horkheimer’s work in the 1930s tended to be more methodological, but he shows
how productive and insightful his ideas were during the 1920s and how, according
to Küsters, he became increasingly dehistoricized until the Dialektik der Aufklärung.
Michiel Korthals (1985) tried to understand how Horkheimer criticized Lukács’
philosophy and its relationship to the theoretical foundations of interdisciplinary
materialism. However, these readings were restricted to the German language.
Although more books were being dedicated to Horkheimer’s legacy, it does not
mean that the main interpretations of his roles as director, methodologist, and part-
ner were less important. For example, in 1993 two translated works of importance
for the English-speaking Critical Theory circle were published together: Between
Philosophy and Social Science (Horkheimer 1993a), a collection of Horkheimer’s
essays from the 1930s, and On Max Horkheimer (Benhabib et al. 1993), a collection
of essays on Horkheimer’s work by great thinkers such as Alfred Schmidt, Jürgen
Habermas, Wolfgang Bonß, Thomas McCarthy, Herbert Schnädelbach, Axel
Honneth, and Martin Jay, among others. The books recognized that Horkheimer’s
work was at that time insufficiently studied. In the introduction to On Max
Horkheimer, the editors wrote:
Horkheimer has been relatively neglected in the scholarly literature. He has sometimes
been seen through the lens of journalistic memory, appearing as a historical witness whose
lifetime spanned the rise and fall of Weimar Republic, the rise and fall of National Socialism
and the Third Reich, the mass annihilation of the European Jews and post war reconstruc-
tion in the Federal Republic. Frequently, he has been assigned an organizational rather than
a theoretical role in his capacity as the “dictatorial” director of the Institute. And many
interpreters have implied that, compared to Adorno, he was always the lesser theorist, over-
shadowed in the collaboration with his brilliant junior colleague. (Benhabib et al.
1993, p. 10)
In the introduction to Between Philosophy and Social Science, G. Frederick Hunter

(1993) presents an interpretation of the reception of Horkheimer’s work similar to
that which I present here. He wrote:
Until recently Max Horkheimer’s image was twofold: on the one hand, imperious director
of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research after 1931; on the other, theoretical junior
partner to his colleague Theodor Adorno. In the last decade, however, there has been a
notable shift in image, in Germany especially, as attention has focused on the remarkable
early work collected in this volume. (p. vii)
Hunter describes Horkheimer’s image as that of the “imperious director” and the
“theoretical junior partner.” I suggest that the literature until that point understood
Horkheimer’s roles to be both director and methodologist, rather than “imperious
director.” This is because the interpretations in the 1970s did not deny Horkheimer’s
theoretical work: Jay and Wiggershaus, for instance, have a deep understanding of
Horkheimer’s writings and context and were careful enough to register it in their
books and articles. I argue that because their focus was the IfS and not Horkheimer
directly, they tended to emphasize the methodological writings of Horkheimer, such
as his inaugural speech and “Critical and Traditional Theory” (Horkheimer 1975b),
although they did not totally neglect his other writings. In fact, these methodologi-
cal writings are essential to the development of Critical Theory and the collective
work of the IfS, but the focus on it and the emphasis on Adorno and Marcuse’s work
tends to mean that Horkheimer’s theoretical contributions – such as Horkheimer’s
diagnosis of bourgeois philosophy and society – are overlooked.
In fact, Hunter, and McCole, Benhabib and Bonß, the editors of On Max
Horkheimer (Benhabib et al. 1993), witnessed the beginning of the shift in
Horkheimer’s reception. The archival work by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr and Alfred
Schmidt, which commenced publication in 1985, played a crucial role in this
change: an organized set of volumes of Horkheimer’s works in the Gesammelte
Schriften – letters, essays, journals, and drafts – was now available to scholars who
wanted to understand the development of his work. Habermas’s influence also drew
attention to Horkheimer’s early work, especially his writings published in the
Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, but the shift was not yet obvious. For example, in
part one of On Max Horkheimer, of the six essays dedicated to his writings from the
1930s, at least three discuss the methodological issues of Horkheimer’s work.
A much clearer movement can be seen with John Abromeit’s Max Horkheimer
and the Foundation of the Frankfurt School (2013). For Abromeit, the reception of
Horkheimer’s work is still too bound to the Dialektik der Aufklärung paradigm.
That is why one of his purposes is “to recover and reconstruct the model of ‘early
Critical Theory’ that largely coincides but is not identical with Horkheimer’s own
thought from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s” (p. 2) and why he limited his book to
the period up to 1941, before the Dialektik der Aufklärung and the Critique of
Instrumental Reason paradigm. But that does not mean Abromeit considers
Horkheimer solely as the methodologist who organized the intellectual environment
and the interdisciplinary collaboration, nor as the imperious director, but also as a
philosopher who examined the main contemporary concerns of his own time.
136 P. Yamawake
When Abromeit studied Horkheimer’s writings of the 1930s, he analytically dis-

tinguished four concepts that guided his interpretation:
• Materialism, the main methodological foundation of the IfS
• The anthropology of the bourgeois epoch, the diagnosis of capitalism, and the
psychosocial character of the Western capitalistic societies
• The dialectical logic, the development of his materialist analysis of the bourgeois
philosophy
• State capitalism, which shows his philosophical interpretation of the political
and economic conditions in the late 1930s and which seals the end of the para-
digm of interdisciplinary materialism
What is innovative here is that he considers Horkheimer’s methodological writ-
ings not as the sole or the main contribution to his works in the 1930s, but as one
important concept among others. This manifold interpretation is only possible due
to research carried out in the Max Horkheimer Archive. Maintaining Horkheimer’s
premise that the truth has a temporal core, Abromeit understood that the 1930s writ-
ings related to those of the 1920s:
Although Horkheimer continued to test, refine, and develop his Critical Theory through his
collaborative work at the Institute, its basic contours were already in place when he became
the director in 1931. (Abromeit 2013, p. 85)
By researching Horkheimer’s texts, essays, aphorisms, and university courses

from the 1920s, Abromeit expressed the strong thesis that Horkheimer had already
developed a critique of consciousness philosophy, even in the terms set by Habermas.
For our focus here, Abromeit’s research on the archives perceived that the main
interests and theoretical development of Horkheimer’s philosophy already existed
before he developed them in the 1930s, instead of reading the 1930s writings as a
means to understanding Critical Theory as a whole or as a prequel to the Dialektik
der Aufklärung.
Special attention should be given to the Anthropology of the Bourgeois Epoch,
the main concept of Horkheimer’s diagnosis in the 1930s, developed in the essay
“Egoism and Freedom Movements” (Horkheimer 1993b, pp. 50–110). For
Abromeit, it is especially important to highlight this concept among the other three,
“in order to counter this widespread neglect of what must be seen as the core of
Horkheimer’s Critical Theory in the 1930s” (Abromeit 2013). This is not only the
core of Horkheimer’s philosophy, but also a “concrete carrying out” which informs
the substance of his theory during the 1930s. Abromeit writes:
With his concept of the anthropology of the bourgeois epoch, Horkheimer moves beyond
and carries out concretely – at least in a preliminary way – his more general methodological
and philosophical reflections. This concept captures Horkheimer’s understanding of the
dominant character structure in modern capitalist societies and thus forms an essential part
of the substance of his Critical Theory in the 1930s. (p. 249)
When one investigates Horkheimer’s writings of the mid- to late 1920s and early
1930s, as Abromeit carefully did, one can understand why this concept is so impor-
tant. In the essay “Egoism and Freedom Movements” (Horkheimer 1993b,
pp. 50–110), where Horkheimer developed the concept, he investigated four leaders
of mass movements at the dawn of the bourgeoisie: Savonarola, Cola di Rienzo, the
Reformers (Luther and Calvin), and Robespierre. For Abromeit, this is the result of
his former reflections on the history of bourgeois philosophy (Abromeit 2013, chap-
ter 4 “The Beginnings of a Critical Theory of Contemporary Society”), the Marxist
tradition (chapter 4), and the Freudian mass psychology together with Erich Fromm
(chapter 5 “Horkheimer’s Integration of Psychoanalysis into His Theory of
Contemporary Society”). These themes appeared systematically in Horkheimer’s
essays, courses, and aphorisms even before he became the director of the IfS.
Furthermore, the concept is not only a historical investigation, but also shows
that neither mass movements nor the character traits of fascism are new: they have
roots in the beginnings of bourgeois society. This investigation is not only a histori-
cal one, but also a diagnosis of his own time – it is both synchronic and diachronic,
as Abromeit writes (Abromeit 2013, p. 16; p. 85). The same substantial core was the
foundation of the main contribution of the IfS: Studies on Authority and Family
(Horkheimer 2005). Then, Horkheimer’s participation in the book was not only
administrative – i.e., establishing the methodological underpinnings or managing
the authors – but also philosophical: the investigation of the social character of
European capitalistic societies, their origins, and the role of the patriarchal family in
their formation.
The tendency to focus on the substantial core of Horkheimer’s philosophy is also
followed by Katia Genel in her Autorité et émancipation: Horkheimer et la Théorie
critique (Genel 2013). Genel draws attention to the concept of authority as the main
concern in Horkheimer’s writings from the late 1920s to the 1940s. Her thesis is that
the investigation into authority pervades all Horkheimer’s theory, from his more
methodological essays and the organization of interdisciplinary materialism until
the empirical research and historical analysis of bourgeois society. Then, the cri-
tique of authority became a critique of the knowledge produced and of Western
rationality as Horkheimer developed his Critique of Instrumental Reason and the
Dialektik der Aufklärung in the 1940s.
Genel worked together with Julia Christ to produce a work that has a very impor-
tant role in undermining the idea that Horkheimer was Adorno’s “theoretical junior
partner” (Hunter 1993, p. vii). They published Le laboratoire de la Dialectique de
la raison (Horkheimer and Adorno 2013), a translation into French of a selection
from Volume 12 of Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften. The book helps to under-
stand the contributions of both Horkheimer and Adorno in the Dialektik der
Aufklärung. Genel and Christ’s work on the volume, published in 1985, is not
merely a translation: they draw attention to the drafts and conversations that gave
birth to the book and expanded its audience. They also coined a great expression to
describe the intellectual conversations of Horkheimer and Adorno: a laboratory of
the Dialektik der Aufklärung.
***
This more recent chapter in the reception of Horkheimer’s work, led by Abromeit
and Genel, shows that Horkheimer is not the “imperious director,” the “theoretical
junior partner” (Hunter 1993, p. vii), or the methodologist of the Frankfurt School.
138 P. Yamawake
Although these roles can be true to some extent, the main argument here is that they
obscure the substantial core of Horkheimer’s work and his own philosophy.
Abromeit and Genel do not agree on every point, but they have something in com-
mon: they understand Horkheimer as an independent and original philosopher in his
own right, and not just as a means to understanding the history of the IfS, the theo-
retical foundations of Critical Theory as whole, or the writing partnership with
Adorno. This change in how Horkheimer’s work was received was only made pos-
sible by the organization of the Max Horkheimer Archive, the publication of the
Gesammelte Schriften, and the research environment within the tradition of Critical
Theory. The idea is not to rebuild Horkheimer’s projects. Probably, as Horkheimer
himself wrote, he would not “stand by everything [he] said in the book in its original
form” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1969). It is true that by researching his work and
bringing forth its core, one could gain great insights through which to reflect on the
contemporary situation of the sciences, society, and the crisis of democracy, but we
must remember why Horkheimer was so careful about the republication of his
works: Critical Theory “attributes a temporal core to truth instead of contrasting
truth as something invariable to the movement of history” (Horkheimer and Adorno
1969, p. xi).
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Main: Fischer.
Paulo Yamawake received a doctorate degree in Philosophy from the University of Campinas
(Brazil) and conducted a research internship at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt
am Main.
Part VI
Theodor W. Adorno Archive
Adorno and the Archiving
of the Ephemeral: Remarks on His
Literary Estate
Michael Schwarz
Adorno’s death came as a surprise. He had hardly thought about his estate. Ensuring
the continuity of his papers was not on the agenda in the turbulent times around
1968. Although absorbed by student and university matters, Theodor W. Adorno
was not deterred from pursuing far-reaching publication plans even in his last years.
Ästhetische Theory (Aesthetic Theory) (Adorno 1997b [1970], 7) remained unfin-
ished, and there were other matters that he still wanted to wrap up. Adorno regarded
the papers he preserved primarily as working material, not as a historical record, nor
as a future legacy. His attitude was not archival. He was not concerned with docu-
menting his writing processes for posterity.
The estate1 is kept in the Theodor W. Adorno Archive (TWAA), Frankfurt am
Main.2 Essentially, it exists today as it was left. Its order served the practical
1
See also the overview of the estate given by Rolf Tiedemann (1992, pp. 126–136).
2
The Theodor W. Adorno Archive is an institute of the Hamburg Foundation for the Promotion of
Science and Culture. It was founded in 1985 by the foundation, which is the owner of the estate.
For the first 20 years, the archive was housed in a municipal building, under the same roof as the
Frankfurt Drug Support Centre. Since 2005, Adorno’s estate has been housed at the Institute for
Social Research, his former place of work and the ancestral home of Critical Theory. The Adorno
Archive has come into the public eye primarily through edited collections. 19 volumes of the
Nachgelassene Schriften (Posthumous Writings), initiated by Rolf Tiedemann in 1985 and later
supervised by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, have now been published, as well as 12 volumes
of Adorno’s Briefe und Briefwechsel (Letters and Correspondence) (1997a).
This chapter is a translation of Schwarz, Michael. 2021. ‘Adorno und die Archivierung des
Ephemeren. Bemerkungen zu seinem Nachlass’. In Michael Töteberg, Alexandra Vasa (eds.). Ins
Archiv, fürs Archiv, aus dem Archiv, pp. 28–36. München: edition text + kritik.
M. Schwarz (*)
Theodor W. Adorno Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany

Switzerland AG 2023
144 M. Schwarz
purposes of an office, was organized so as to facilitate locating letters and manu-

scripts and was not intended to be the order of the estate. The office organization
was primarily in the hands of the secretary, Elfriede Olbrich. From the first half of
the 1950s onwards, this included fairly complete documentation, including the col-
lection of reviews and notes on oral discussions.3
The archivist is required to preserve the organizational structure in which it was
left and, if necessary, to improve it slightly. Groups of archival documents were pre-
served. Alphanumeric signatures (e.g. Ts 432) were assigned, the first component of
which designates the respective group of documents (e.g. Ts for typescripts).
Since his death, the archiving and safeguarding of by far the largest part of
Adorno’s estate has been completed. Initially, photocopies were made of the manu-
scripts of works (Ts signatures) and the written material pertaining to the lectures
(Vo). Letters (Br), photographs (Fo) and sound recordings (TA) were later digitally
reproduced and filed. The reproductions allow the archival materials to be used
without endangering the originals. The majority of Adorno’s correspondence can be
viewed in the form of digital reproductions at the electronic reading stations of the
Walter Benjamin Archive at the Akademie der Künste (Berlin).4 There, you can also
listen to 388 sound recordings featuring Adorno. Most of these recordings were col-
lected after his death.
The estate is primarily a written one: printed, typed and handwritten. The archive
contains the books, essays and newspaper articles Adorno published, as well as gal-
ley proofs and page proofs, some of which are corrected in his own handwriting. His
library5 is located in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, which houses the
Theodor W. Adorno Archive today. Any markings have been photocopied. These
markings, marginalia and annotations – numerous in editions of the works of Søren
Kierkegaard and Edmund Husserl – transform the books into original documents
that provide interesting insights into Adorno’s readings.
The extensive collection of reviews of Adorno’s books and essays is also relevant
in terms of the historical reception of his work. These reviews, published primarily
in newspapers and magazines, evince the great response to his work in the 1950s
and 1960s. The press documentation also shows that the public reception of his
work was important to him.
A much-used component of Adorno’s estate is his correspondence with more
than 2000 interlocutors. These include Alfred Andersch, Ingeborg Bachmann,
Samuel Beckett, Ernst Bloch, Elias Canetti, Paul Celan, Hans Magnus Enzensberger,
Max Frisch, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Arnold Gehlen, Jürgen Habermas, Hermann
3
Gretel Adorno seems to have been in charge of organizing the appointments. For the planning of
a lecture at the Volkshochschule Hildesheim, Olbrich inquired through a note to Gretel Adorno:
‘Frau Dr. Adorno: TWA thinks that he could combine this with the Kiel lecture – he asks for your
vote. E. O. / No! (sgd.) G. A.’ (TWAA), shelfmark Ei 215 / 5)
4
The search facility for the estate is the archive database of the Akademie der Künste: www.
archiv.adk.de.
5
A listing is online at https://www.adk.de/de/archiv/bibliothek/pdf/Nachlassbibliothek-Theodor-
W.-Adorno.pdf (06/29/2023).
Adorno and the Archiving of the Ephemeral: Remarks on His Literary Estate 145
Hesse, Paul Hindemith, Joachim Kaiser, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Alexander Kluge,
Fritz Lang, Leo Löwenthal, Alma Mahler-Werfel, Herbert Marcuse, Arnold and
Gertrud Schönberg, Hans Wollschläger and Stefan Zweig. The extent of this net-
work of correspondence is astonishing. In total, the letters probably amount to about
40,000 pages. Only a small selection has been published so far. The correspondence
with Walter Benjamin, Alban Berg, Max Horkheimer, Siegfried Kracauer, Ernst
Krenek, Thomas Mann and Gershom Scholem appeared in the series Briefe und
Briefwechsel (Letters and Correspondence) (Adorno 1997a). Adorno used to dictate
his letters; he signed them after they were typed by a secretary. Fortunately, several
typewritten carbon copies were made and preserved in the process. As a result, the
estate’s collection of Adorno’s letters from the 1950s and 1960s is entirely pre-
served. One of these typescript carbon copies was filed in each of the ring-binder
folders containing ‘daily copies’. With these, Adorno’s correspondence can be fol-
lowed day by day.
Adorno kept 45 notebooks in which he recorded his thoughts, ideas and daily
reflections – sometimes even addresses. They can be arranged chronologically (even
though he sometimes kept several in parallel). Taken as a whole, they form Adorno’s
intellectual journal over the years. His works incorporated, in large part, reworkings
of his notes; indeed, their germination can often be found in the notebooks. An
example of this can be found in notebook K, dated September 1961 (TWAA, Ms
41): ‘Perhaps starting from the memory of my youth, that Kracauer was excluded
from a conversation of Patmos people (one became a Nazi) because he was not
authentic enough’. In fact, Adorno’s book Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (The Jargon of
Authenticity) (Adorno 1997b [1964], 6) took this as its starting point. While the
book version speaks vaguely of a ‘number of people’ and of ‘a friend’ who was not
invited to their meeting (p. 415), the notebook entry names names: the ‘Patmos
circle’ and Siegfried Kracauer, Adorno’s friend in his youth.
In connection with the manuscripts, Adorno’s compositions should also be men-
tioned. His handwritten scores have survived in the archives (clean copyist’s copies
for performance purposes have also survived). During Adorno’s lifetime, only Sechs
kurze Orchesterstücke op. 4 (1968) made it into print, which he considered a slight.
Since his death, edition text + kritik has published a comprehensive three-volume
edition of Adorno’s compositions.
Most of the versions of Adorno’s essays and books are available in typescript
form. There are 54,043 typewritten pages, a considerable number of which have
been corrected and supplemented by hand. The mixed typeface/manuscript format
is characteristic of Adorno’s method of production. A first version, which he dic-
tated to his secretary according to his own notes, was – according to the typical
procedure – subjected to further editing: Adorno made deletions, additions, substi-
tutions and rearrangements on the typescript by hand. He had the resulting version
copied by his secretary, who incorporated the handwritten changes into a new type-
script. This process – editing by hand and then having it typed up – could be repeated
several times.
Adorno’s texts are work products, created with patient effort. Their development
can be easily traced in the archive. Work processes resulted in final versions. These
146 M. Schwarz
versions, which were binding and final for him, were far removed from the first,
rough versions dictated to the secretary. Adorno once wrote: ‘the second versions
are always, for me, the decisive working process, the first ones represent only raw
material, or (...): they are an organized self-deception through which I maneuver
myself into the position of critic of my own things, which for me always proves to
be the most productive’ (Adorno 1997b, 7: pp. 539–40.) It should be added that
there were often third or fourth (sometimes even fifth and sixth) versions in which
Adorno still made crucial changes. In this way the texts repeatedly passed through
the bottleneck of a critical sense for language.
This rewriting raised the tone of the texts. It made them tighter and denser. It
seldom brought more text volume, but often a gain in intellectual focus and inten-
sity. The following applies to Adorno’s writing: he not only tried to express ideas
better, but also to improve those ideas through linguistic expression. The corrective
work processes likewise aimed to refine his thoughts.
When a work was completed, its earlier stages for Adorno were usually cast off.
Nevertheless, it remains possible to reconstruct them. He kept the versions of his
essays and books. He may have regarded them as preliminary stages, but for archi-
val research they attract lively interest, especially because of what has been deleted.
It arouses curiosity: Why did Adorno discard it? And doesn’t consideration of what
Adorno deleted allow his texts to be understood differently, and better? Is it not
more than the dross that has fallen away?
Early versions of books that Adorno only published years later, after reworking
them, are particularly revealing. This is the case with important writings on Søren
Kierkegaard, Konstruktion des Ästhetischen in Kierkegaards Philosophie
(1929–1930); Edmund Husserl, Husserlbuch (1934–1937); and Richard Wagner
(1937–1938). The printed texts of the books Kierkegaard. Konstruktion des
Ästhetischen: (Construction of the Aesthetic) (Adorno [1933] 1997b, 2), Zur
Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie (Against Epistemology: A Metacritique) (Adorno
[1956] 1997b, 5: pp.7–245-) and Versuch über Wagner (In Search of Wagner)
(Adorno [1952] 1997b, 13: pp.7–147) would later vary considerably. In any case,
when reading them, one’s understanding and insight will be enhanced by returning
to the trove of original manuscripts in the archive.
Even a literary estate rarely consists only of papers. The Adorno archivist records
that the written material (at least from the 1950s onwards) was bequeathed largely
complete, but audio documents only in limited numbers. The audio tapes that
Adorno left behind were mixed with those from other sources soon after his death.
Some of this audio material, mainly from radio stations, was collected posthu-
mously by Gretel Adorno (with the help of Alexander Kluge). Other parts of the
collection came into the Adorno Archive in the 1980s and later. Through research at
broadcasting archives, it was possible to close the many gaps left by the core collec-
tion bequeathed by Adorno.
Transcripts of Adorno’s lectures from 1958 onwards are available. (Of the older
lectures, often only the key words on which he based his speech have been pre-
served, or transcripts that had been stenographed by listeners and then typed.)
Secretaries made transcripts from tapes. After transcription, the recordings were
erased by reusing the tapes, which, especially if of good quality, were not cheap at
the time. So it happens that the Einleitung in die Soziologie (Introduction to
Sociology) (Adorno 2003) is the only lecture that has been preserved completely –
or rather, almost completely – as an audio recording. The material pertaining to the
lectures is almost entirely written (12,064 pages of typescripts and manuscripts).
As far as writings from the later years in particular are concerned, it is not uncom-
mon for them to include formulations and thoughts from lectures or talks. Adorno
had his lectures tape-recorded and then transcribed so that he could use them for
later works. The transcriptions were for himself to follow up on. They were a reser-
voir. On the typescript sheets there are sometimes diagonal strikethroughs of pas-
sages or paragraphs. This does not mean that the thoughts in question were discarded;
rather it indicates their inclusion in manuscripts of works. Some of the lectures on
aesthetics given in 1961/62, for example, have been incorporated into
Ästhetische Theory.
Even improvised lectures, conversations or interviews could contain something
that Adorno still wanted to elaborate. In a letter to Laurenz Wiedner of the Austrian
Broadcasting Corporation on 30 October 1958, he wrote: ‘(...) by chance I hear that
the little interview about Mahler that I gave in April of this year was broadcast last
Wednesday. I would be very interested to know if it had any resonance and what
kind it was. Also: whether you recorded the interview stenographically and had it
hectographed, as is the general practice in Germany for such radio events. Should
this be the case, I would be very grateful for a copy, all the more so as the matter
contains a number of motifs on which I intend to elaborate in a larger work on
Mahler. Under certain circumstances I would also be helped by the tape, which I
could have rewound and transcribed here’ (TWAA, Ru 121/9).
Some of the lectures and talks would not have survived if it had not been for the
transcriptions sent to Adorno by the organizers (at or without his instigation). Some
of the editors of these transcripts are known; some are anonymous. Unfortunately,
the transcriptions are often inadequate. In places there are omissions – gaps where
things were not understood. The incomplete and faulty transcriptions make it diffi-
cult in places to reconstruct what Adorno actually said. This, however, was the aim
of the edition of the Vorträge 1949–1968 (Adorno 2019a).
Adorno gave most of his lectures not just once, but in various places and in slightly
varied versions. ‘Kultur und Culture’ may be considered the lecture that Adorno
presented most often – a total of 18 times (Adorno 2019a, pp.156-176; pp. 638–641).
The subject matter was ideal for the Amerika Häuser (America Houses): post-war
institutions built in Germany to allow German citizens to learn more about American
culture and politics. There, the lecture was usually announced under the title ‘Some
Aspects of a Comparison between German and American Culture’.
Prompted by a newspaper report on one of these performances, Joachim Günther,
editor of the Neue Deutsche Hefte, wrote to Adorno expressing interest in publish-
ing the lecture in his journal. Adorno replied to him on 22 May 1957:
Unfortunately, I cannot give you the lecture on the possibility of a comparison between
American and German culture. And this is not at all because it has already been disposed
of, but because this lecture does not exist in literary form. I have given it quite freely in vari-
148 M. Schwarz
ous America Houses, merely on the basis of notes. To make a text out of these notes that
could be printed would be an infinitely tedious and responsible task, which I simply cannot
do. This is quite apart from the fact that it is really conceived as a lecture, in the sense of
having an immediate impact on listeners, and not as a text, and that I would be damaging
this basic character if I tried to ‘elaborate’ it. The word ‘culture’ alone – I can at best,
though not without shame, put the word in my mouth, but not in my pen. You understand
me. (TWAA, Ve 226/6)
The letter to Günther points to the fundamental difference between a lecture and an
elaborated text. Adorno emphasized it again and again: a speech is not writing; an
improvised lecture is not intended for a book or a journal. To commit it to paper and
publish it contradicted Adorno’s convictions. Printed matter required a completely
different linguistic form, namely, a ‘literary’ one, as it says in the letter to Günther:
a mature, responsible text, characterized by density, stringency and coherence of
expression.
Adorno also gave the lecture entitled ‘Kultur und Culture’ (on 9 July 1958) as
part of the Hessische Hochschulwochen für staatswissenschaftliche Fortbildung
(Hessian university weeks for continuing education in the field of political science).
The Hessische Hochschulwochen, set up for the benefit of civil servants, comprised
a series of events that soon went beyond the field of political science to cover cul-
tural or general educational topics. Adorno participated eight times as a speaker
(1954–1962). As was the convention, the contributions were included in a series of
publications, the dissemination of which he initially believed to be limited to the
event participants.6 On this occasion he gave his consent to the printed publication
of his talk, but attached to it a preliminary note ad lectores (see the typewritten draft
in Fig. 1), in which he placed the publication of the extemporaneous talk under
general reservation. His provisos were intended to prevent ‘at least some of the
misinterpretations’ to which he believed himself exposed. Adorno used this type of
prefatory remark repeatedly in publications of his improvisations. Nothing spoken
could satisfy his theoretical and literary aspirations, could ‘do justice to what he
must demand of a text’. He hesitated to agree to publication. It may seem astonish-
ing that Adorno – who was said to speak as if he were in print – claims that in his
case ‘the spoken and the written word diverge even further than they otherwise do
today’. The assertion seems less astonishing when one sees in the archive how thor-
oughly he worked on his texts in order to achieve the ‘binding force of objective
representation’, which for him was part of the morality of writing.
Whereas written works should be cogently oriented toward the represented
object, with lectures Adorno emphasized the question of effect. This is also the case
in the quoted letter to Joachim Günther. Adorno could not have foreseen that one of
his lectures; ‘Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus’ (‘Aspects of the New Right-
Wing Extremism’) (Adorno [1967] 2019a, pp. 440–467) would have its greatest
impact only after more than 50 years, ironically in written form.
6
Later, Adorno discovered that these publications had been distributed to people outside the group
of university weeks participants. He registered with horror that his lectures were even quoted in
sociological literature.
Fig. 1 Adorno’s preliminary note for the printing of his lecture ‘Kultur und Culture’, 9 July 1958
When Vorträge 1949–1968 was being prepared for publication, the manuscript
was sent to Suhrkamp Verlag. There, Eva Gilmer, head of the academic department,
suggested publishing the lecture on right-wing extremism separately. It was pub-
lished in July 2019 in a handy brochure (Adorno 2019b), with an afterword by the
150 M. Schwarz
historian and journalist Volker Weiß. The tremendous response this publication
received was astonishing. The booklet was on the Der Spiegel bestseller list for six
months, and by April 2020 approximately 70,000 copies had been sold.7 The after-
word and a multitude of reviews made it clear that this was not just a historically
preserved document of the times. It was not merely an addendum to Adorno’s writ-
ings, dutifully documented. The general and acutely contemporary relevance of this
lecture has been emphasized again and again. Much can be related to today’s politi-
cal situation, which demands explanations for the rise of national-authoritarian
movements and anti-liberal parties, for the development of a ‘new right’, which
turns out not to be new at all. This small volume has strikingly demonstrated the
degree of topical insight that a publication from the archive can contain.
References
Adorno, Theodor W. 1968. Sechs kurze Orchesterstücke op. 4. Milan: Ricordi.

———. 1997a. Briefe und Briefwechsel. Vols 1–9. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 1997b. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols 1–20, ed. Rolf Tiedemann with the collaboration of
Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss and Klaus Schultz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 2003 [1968]. Einleitung in die Soziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 2019a. Vorträge 1949–1968. Nachgelassene Schriften. Abteilung V: Vorträge und
Gespräche, ed. Michael Schwarz. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
———. 2019b. Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Tiedemann, Rolf. 1992. Theodor W. Adorno Archiv 1985–1991. Ein Bericht. In: Frankfurter
Adorno Blätter I, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, 126–136. München: edition text + kritik.
Theodor W. Adorno Archiv (TWAA)., Frankfurt am Main.
Michael Schwarz studied general and comparative literature, philosophy and German studies.
From 1996 to 2004, he worked at the Theodor W. Adorno Archive, Frankfurt am Main, directed by
Rolf Tiedemann. Since 2004, he is a staff member of the Walter Benjamin Archive, Akademie der
Künste, Berlin, and since 2022 he is the director of the Theodor W. Adorno Archive. He coauthored
the book Walter Benjamin’s Archive: Images, Texts, Signs (2015; also available in German and
French). He is the coeditor of the Kranichsteiner Vorlesungen by Theodor W. Adorno (Suhrkamp,
2014), and the editor of the Vorträge 1949–1968 by Theodor W. Adorno (Suhrkamp, 2019).
7
The booksellers’ success of Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus (Adorno 2019b) is as particu-
larly surprising because Adorno’s lecture had already been available to listen to on the
Österreichische Mediathek website since 2010 and had attracted virtually no attention. Only the
print publication, almost 10 years later, triggered a wave of reviews in print media, on the radio and
on the Internet.
Adorno and the Post-war Artistic Debates:
A Perspective Through the Archives
Raquel Patriota and Ricardo Lira da Silva
1 Introduction
In the “Draft Introduction” to his Ästhetische Theorie (Aesthetic Theory), Theodor

Adorno (1997, p. 441) claims, not without a trace of humor, that Kant and Hegel
were the last philosophers who could write on aesthetics without having a close
understanding of art. Beyond the playful tone, the statement emphasizes that one of
the fundamental consequences of modern art’s break with the rules and norms of
tradition is that aesthetics, too, can no longer be satisfied with any fixed reference
point. This means recognizing that works of art, the practices they encompass, and
the critiques that emerge from them are not external to a philosophical reflection on
art but are immanent to it.
Such a claim for the connection between theory and artistic practices reflects,
however, a dimension of Adorno’s work that reaches beyond his published writings.
In this sense, the ongoing publication of his estate has significantly expanded the
field of studies on his work. Beyond the disclosure of unfinished writings and previ-
ous versions of canonical texts, these publications have revealed an essential dimen-
sion of the philosopher’s oeuvre: the relevance of his public interventions, whether
through participation in radio debates, lectures, or courses. In his archives, the mag-
nitude of these materials – both transcripts and recordings – indicates Adorno’s
engaged intervention in the public sphere and his connection with artistic practices
and expresses an argumentative form that is essentially distinct from his writings, a
form that could contribute to the elucidation of his work (see also Schwarz 2011).
R. Patriota (*)
Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazilian Center for Analysis and
Planning (Cebrap), Natal, Brazil
R. L. da Silva
Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), São Paulo, Brazil

Switzerland AG 2023
152 R. Patriota and R. L. da Silva
This is the case, as we will discuss, for some of his debates and courses on art and
aesthetics in the post-war context, which bring to light relevant elements for the
understanding of his later work.
To illuminate the complexity of these interventions, this chapter will be divided
into two main sections. In the first one, we will discuss how Adorno came into con-
tact with the new experiences of the post-war musical avant-garde, in particular with
the young musicians who gathered around the Darmstadt Summer Course for New
Music.1 As the archival material shows, this contact and the debates it triggered are
central to the understanding of Adorno’s later program of what he called musique
informelle (informal music) (Adorno 1998, pp. 269–322).
In the second section, we will present an overview of the post-war discussions
about modern art, which occupied an important part of Adorno’s concerns in his
later work. More specifically, we investigate how the philosopher engaged in vari-
ous debates about the directions of modernism, understanding not only the new
trends in avant-garde art, but also diagnosing a larger process of disintegration of
traditional artistic concepts. From this point on, we not only grasp the intentions
articulated in his Ästhetische Theorie, but also connect its themes to concrete
changes in artistic practices after the war.
By addressing these topics, we will turn once again to the vitality and historical
pertinence of Adorno’s aesthetic writings. Far from considering them as rigid theses
on “authentic art,” their relationship to actual artistic manifestations of his time
should be understood. Certainly, in this sense, the materials available in the Adorno
archives shed light on this actuality by revealing several dimensions of the philoso-
pher’s activities and the diversity of his interests regarding art, which will be cov-
ered here in a panoramic and non-exhaustive manner.
2 The Darmstadt Music Debates and the Origins

of Adorno’s Conception of a Musique Informelle
Archival materials are of great relevance to the investigation of Adorno’s musical

writings. As is well known, of the 20 volumes that constitute his Gesammelte
Schriften (Collected Writings) (Adorno 1997–2003), eight correspond to works
devoted exclusively to music; most of these works are devoted to avant-garde music,
a topic mediated by Adorno’s profound knowledge of the most advanced
compositional techniques of his time. However, what is less well known is that
behind this impressive body of work, there is an equally impressive network of
1
Founded in 1946 in the context of Germany’s reconstruction and denazification, the International
Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt (Darmstädter Internationale Ferienkurse für neue
Musik) became one of the most important forums for avant-garde music composition in the post-
war period, bringing together names such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Bruno
Maderna, Luigi Nono, and others. As we will briefly see in the next section, Adorno participated
actively in the festival in the 1950s and 1960s.
Adorno and the Post-war Artistic Debates: A Perspective Through the Archives 153
debates around the key problems of New Music, whether in the form of conferences
and public interventions, or in private correspondence with composers, performers,
and musicologists of different generations.
Beyond historical and biographical relevance, the reconstruction of such debates
is decisive for the understanding of the very concepts in Adorno’s critical models.
Paddison (1993) has shown, for example, that Adorno’s diagnosis in a work as cen-
tral as Philosophie der neuen Musik (Philosophy of New Music) (1949) cannot be
understood in all its complexity if the debates surrounding the category of musical
material are not taken into account. Adorno’s defense here of the Schoenberg School
against Stravinsky’s musical neoclassicism is, above all, based on the theoretical
constellation formed by categories such as progress and restoration, musical coher-
ence and authenticity. And a decisive step to the emergence of this theoretical con-
stellation, as Paddison (1993, p. 81) argues, are the debates between Adorno and the
composer Ernst Krenek that took place around 1930. They were recorded both in
articles published in the musical journal Anbruch and in correspondence between
the two. In interpretations like Paddison’s, therefore, the actual musical disputes can
be said to be constitutive and not collateral to Adorno’s theory of music.
While it is true that this approach is more consolidated in the literature regarding
Philosophie der neuen Musik, the investigation of the role of post-war musical
debates in Adorno’s late work has gained relevance more recently. And such rele-
vance seems even more justified if we remember that, in comparison with the men-
tioned debate with Krenek, for example, the archival material concerning the
musical debates of the post-1950 period is significantly more abundant than that of
the 1920s and 1930s. In the last few decades, commentators have shown a growing
interest in Adorno’s interaction with the generation of young composers of the
Darmstadt School and the impact of this interaction on his writings on music after
the 1950s. In works such as those by Borio (1993, 2006), Zagorski (2020), and
Linke (2018), for example, there is a change of focus from the music of Schoenberg’s
generation to Adorno’s relationship with prominent post-war composers such as
Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and György Ligeti, among others.
To be sure, this shift in focus in no way means that Adorno disavowed his attach-
ment to the Second Viennese School, or that he accepted uncritically the new devel-
opments in post-war musical composition. However, a thorough historical
reconstruction of the debates of this period is a task that remains to be done2 and,
with it, an assessment of the impact of these debates on the interpretation of
Adorno’s late writings on music. To what extent does his reception of the new post-
war musical practices shape his critical theory of music? And what role did the
dialogue with the new generation of musicians play in this process? A look at the
estate material relating to the Darmstadt debates can shed light on what lies behind
Adorno’s later writings, especially for the formulation of his program of a musique
informelle in the 1960s.
2
In our view, Borio (1993, 2006) is the author that made the most decisive steps in this direction.
According to Reichert and Schwarz’s historical reconstruction, Adorno was first

invited to attend the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music a few
months after his permanent return to Germany from exile (Adorno 2014, p. 640).
This began a long involvement: he participated nine times between 1950 and 1966.
At this time, Adorno’s prestige as the author of Philosophie der neuen Musik was so
well recognized that in 1951 he was invited to replace Schoenberg himself in con-
ducting the Working Group for Free Composition at Darmstadt. His contact with the
new generation of serialist music at this seminar, however, was marked by a polemic
involving Stockhausen who, at the age of 23, was attending the festival for the
first time.
For Stockhausen, Adorno’s criticism of one of the pieces presented in this semi-
nar was a sign that he misunderstood the new directions in post-war compositional
technique. This was indicated by his questioning of the piece’s lack of coherence,
especially the absence of musical construction through the thematic-motivic varia-
tion typical of Schoenberg’s language. For Stockhausen, Adorno’s mistake was pre-
cisely to look for something in the piece that was incompatible with the new serialist
aspirations. Stockhausen’s famous riposte was that Adorno’s censorship of the piece
was equivalent to “looking for a chicken in an abstract painting” (Grant 2001, p. 67).
Beyond its anecdotal character, this episode deeply affected Adorno’s negative
reception of the music produced by the young Darmstadt composers in the early
1950s. Such a “fundamental experience” (Grunderfahrung) (Metzger 1980, p. 96),
as he later named it, would give rise years later to the controversial lecture “Das
Altern der Neuen Musik” (The Aging of the New Music) (Adorno 2002), first
broadcast in 1954 on SDR Radio Stuttgart. In it, Adorno argues that Darmstadt’s
integral serialism would be executing a kind of downgrading of the compositional
techniques discovered by Schoenberg’s generation. This would become apparent in
two main ways: first, in the unreflected expansion of the numerical ordering prin-
ciple of the twelve-tone series to all dimensions of the material – not only pitch, but
also rhythm, dynamics, and timbre. Adorno considers that this mechanical expan-
sion of the numerical ordering principle would lead to a kind of musical automa-
tism, transforming technique into a prescriptive method for compositional work.
Adorno’s second concern was the rejection by the young composers of any
expressive-subjective trace still present in the musical language of Schoenberg’s
generation. For him, the composers of integral serialism – Boulez being its most
prominent exponent – sought to achieve a kind of musical tabula rasa, resulting in
the elimination of subjective freedom and the complete fetishism of the fully ratio-
nalized compositional technique (Adorno 2002, p. 187). What Adorno called
“aging” referred, therefore, to a diagnosis that post-war New Music had lost the
critical impulse that once birthed the musical avant-garde of the previous
generation.3
3
In this sense, integral serialism is one of the most striking examples of the limits of the rational-
ization of the material. By recognizing the limits of such rationalization, Adorno will turn to the
phenomenon of the entanglement (Verfransung) of artistic genres in the 1960s, as we will see in
the next section.
As one might have expected, Adorno’s lecture had a largely negative reception in
the musical circles of the young composers associated with the Darmstadt School.
According to the correspondence of this period, as early as May 1954, Adorno
received a letter from the 23-year-old music critic Heinz-Klaus Metzger, who
declared the intention to publish a critique against his lecture.4 Indeed, Metzger’s
purpose was to demonstrate that Adorno’s position vis-à-vis Darmstadt music was
contradictory to his own theory, developed years earlier in Philosophie der neuen
Musik. In short, Metzger intended to perform an immanent critique of Adorno’s
conference in order to defend the progressive character of the generation of Boulez,
Cage, and Stockhausen.
This intention took some time to materialize. It first appeared as a radio confer-
ence in 1957 with the controversial title “Das Altern der Philosophie der neuen
Musik” (The Aging of Philosophy of New Music), later published in the fourth issue
of the journal Die Reihe. In this critique, Metzger’s main argument was based on
one of the fundamental categories of Adornian theory: the musical material. For
Metzger (1980, pp. 67–68), Adorno was betraying his own theory by not recogniz-
ing in the practice of the Darmstadt composers the attempt to overcome the contra-
dictions present in the musical material of Schoenberg’s generation. Furthermore,
Metzger points out the lack of reference to the most significant works of Darmstadt
music, such as Boulez’s Le Marteau sans Maître (1955) and Stockhausen’s Gesang
der Jünglinge (1956). Adorno’s omission indicated that his critique was based on
his unfamiliarity with more recent musical material, which leads to a rather severe
conclusion: by fixating on a particular historical stage, that of Schoenberg’s genera-
tion, the accusation of “aging” in Darmstadt music would rather reveal the aging of
Adorno’s own position (Metzger 1980, p. 88).
Metzger’s critique initiated a prolific debate with Adorno, which unfolded not
only publicly but also in the correspondence between the authors between the late
1950s and early 1960s.5 If we look at this material, we see that already in early
1957 – i.e., even before the publication of Metzger’s polemical text – there is an
important discussion about his arguments against Adorno’s lecture. To support his
position, Adorno argues that his criticism of Darmstadt’s integral serialism was not
at all abstract, as charged by Metzger, but was based on concrete experiences, such
as the aforementioned episode involving Stockhausen. Furthermore, Adorno main-
tains his criticism that a blind rationalization of artistic procedures leads to the
threat of technical fetishism, something that shows itself in certain musical trends of
that period (Metzger 1980, p. 96).
However, Adorno recognizes his lack of familiarity with the technical details and
with the scores of the serialist works at the time he prepared his lecture. According
to him, he only later encountered the most relevant works mentioned by
4
The correspondence between Adorno and Metzger can be found in Theodor W. Adorno Archive,
under the signature TWAA Br 1005.
5
Among them is the radio debate between the authors with the title “Jüngste Musik – Fortschritt
oder Rückbildung” (Youngest Music – Progress or Regression), which was broadcast on WDR in
1958 (Metzger 1980, p. 90).
Metzger – something that allowed him to recognize many merits in Boulez and
Stockhausen’s oeuvres (Metzger 1980, p. 95). Moreover, in the correspondence
Adorno shows himself receptive to the more recent works of the Darmstadt School
and even asks Metzger to recommend pieces and theoretical works that the young
music critic considered most relevant at that time (TWAA Br 1005). This material
would provide the resources for the preparation of the conference he would deliver
that same year in Darmstadt, “Kriterien der neuen Musik” (Criteria of New Music),
which includes many topics brought up in the debate between Adorno and Metzger
(Adorno 1997–2003, vol. 16: pp. 170–228).
One consequence of Adorno’s engagement in these debates is his greater open-
ness to the music of the Darmstadt School in his later writings. In some cases, this
openness appears in subtle ways. For example, in the preface to the new edition of
Dissonanzen (Dissonances) (Adorno 1997–2003, vol. 14), a collection of essays
that includes “Das Altern der Neuen Musik,” Adorno adds a brief positive remark
regarding some works by Stockhausen and Boulez. For him, pieces such as Zeitmaße
(1956) by the former and Le Marteau sans Maître by the latter show that at least part
of the more recent production of the Darmstadt School cannot simply fall under the
diagnosis of Das Altern der Neuen Musik (Adorno 1997–2003, vol. 14: p. 12).
This openness to post-war musical developments becomes more evident in
Adorno’s late program of a musique informelle. In the lecture-manifesto Vers une
musique informelle, delivered at the 1961 Darmstadt Summer Courses, Adorno
(1998, pp. 269–322) is explicit in recognizing a new trend that points beyond the
rigidity of integral serialism. For Adorno (p. 276), some of the criticisms raised by
the Darmstadt composers on the musical practices of the previous generation, such
as Stockhausen’s investigations on the dimension of rhythm, for example, are con-
tributions that should not be ignored when it comes to understanding the new musi-
cal material. In another essay from the same period, Adorno (p. 182) suggests that
even the experiments on chance and indeterminacy in musical composition brought
to the debate by John Cage, for example, become significant symptoms of the
exhaustion of serialism in its most systematic form.
However, one must not forget that such openness does not mean that Adorno
adhered uncritically to the new developments in post-war avant-garde music. Even
acknowledging Stockhausen’s own contribution and the counter-gesture of aleatoric
music against serialism, Adorno does not refrain from elaborating sharp criticisms
of both. Furthermore, part of the repertoire of Schoenberg’s generation, especially
from the period of free atonal music, remains an unavoidable reference in Adorno’s
late musical writings. This shows that the program of musique informelle should not
be understood as a revisionist attempt of any sort. It is an effort to find a new theo-
retical framework fit to face the problems and challenges posed by post-war music.
Such an effort is evident in the many subsequent debates in which Adorno partici-
pated throughout the 1960s: in the discussion with György Ligeti and others in 1966
on the topics of musical form and musical time after serialism,6 as well as in the
6
Later published as internal discussion (Internes Arbeitsgespräch) between Theodor W. Adorno,
György Ligeti, Rudolf Stephan, Herbert Brün, and Wolf Rosenberg (Adorno et al. 1999).
debate with Boulez in 1969 on the category of métier,7 which would later appear in
a work as important as Ästhetische Theorie (Adorno 1997, pp. 292–293). Examples
like these show that discussion and debate are intrinsic to the understanding of
Adorno’s late musical writings.
3 Modern Art and Its Developments: The Verfransung

of the Arts
When considering the range of topics with which Adorno became involved during
the 1950s and 1960s, one can observe that the discussions on the post-war musical
avant-garde addressed in the previous section were part of a larger set of interven-
tions about the place of modern art after the war. Following his return to Germany,
Adorno began to intervene in a vast number of public debates, approaching aspects
of German cultural life and analyzing trends in the artistic movements of the time.
This involvement, which is well documented in the archives, not only discloses
Adorno’s position as a public intellectual, but also indicates the context of discus-
sions that shaped his late writings. In this section, we shall address this aspect of
Adorno’s work with a panoramic analysis of his engagement in relevant disputes
about the challenges and possibilities facing modern art.8 More precisely, we will
discuss how Adorno theorized about a certain “crisis” of modern art in the post-war
context, an issue that would pave the way for a transformation in his theoretical
position, leading him to postulate the phenomenon of the “entanglement”
(Verfransung) of the arts.
An initial crisis of modern art is expressed, in Adorno’s statements, as a profound
change in the technical conditions of artistic production. Adorno addressed this
topic in 1950, when he took part in an important discussion on the continuity of
modern art: the Darmstädter Gespräch, which had as its main theme “Das
Menschenbild in unserer Zeit” (“The Image of Man in our Time”) (Evers 1951).
During sections of this debate, Adorno pointed out modern art’s position, mention-
ing the once called “crisis of the artwork” (Krise des Werks) (p. 194). In that con-
text, recognizing such a crisis did not constitute a pessimistic judgment about the
end of art, but was mainly related to “structural transformations in the preconditions
of artistic production” at the time (p. 194). In turn, it could be said that this struc-
tural change would concern the transformation of the very idea of “modern” that
configured modern art, reflecting the historical rupture that affected the artistic
movements, their irresolute character, and the lack of parameters defining the ongo-
ing trends.
7
In the archives, there is a recording of this discussion (TWAA Ta 329) with the title “Avantgarde
und Metier.”
8
The discussions addressed in this section were also explored in the doctoral thesis, Patriota (2021).
These ruptures and the need to rethink modern art were also expressed in a series
of radio debates in which Adorno participated in the 1950s, prompting a further
development in the topic of this crisis. Such is the case, for example, in “Nachzügler
oder Vorbereiter? Vom Wert der Epigonen” (Latecomers or Precursors? On the
Value of Epigones) (TWAA TA 036) and in “Gespräch über abstrakte Kunst”
(Discussion on Abstract Art) (TWAA TA 081).9 The former, which was conducted
with Carl Linfert, dealt with the situation of the avant-garde in the post-war period,
considering the potential risk that modern art would lose its transformative and criti-
cal core when compared to the collective energies that shaped the modernist prac-
tices before the war, in its “heroic” times.10 As discussed earlier, at the time Adorno
was concerned with the new trends in modern music, in particular integral serialism
and the threat that avant-garde techniques would turn into automatized and rational-
ized practices.
The second discussion – “Gespräch über abstrakte Kunst” (TWAA TA 081) –
was a radio debate at the Hessischer Rundfunk with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. This
debate reflected on the continuity of modern art in the post-war years, considering
the particular case of abstract painting and its possible connections with ongoing
musical developments. Similarly, the consequences of the new musical avant-garde
(integral serialism) indirectly appear to indicate that the new art should reconsider
its critical relation with the past and with tradition.11 That theme would be deepened
and further developed, later shaping the essay “Über einige Relationen zwischen
Musik und Malerei” (On some relationships between music and painting) (Adorno
1995) published in 1965 and addressed to Kahnweiler.
When looking at this set of discussions, it is possible to observe the recurrence
and development of the topic of “aging” in the background, be it the aging of New
Music or, as Adorno will further postulate, the aging of modern art12 as the possible
loosening of the critical forces of modernism after the war – in a nutshell, the very
sense of a “crisis.” But far from being a mere pessimistic assessment, what will be
developed from this recurrence is a reconsideration of the paths open to modern art,
taking into account the transformations it has undergone. In brief, the topics “crisis”
and “aging” indicate precisely that “modernity” and the advanced character of the
new art could no longer be understood solely through judgment of the progressive
9
For a broader look at Adorno’s radio discussions, see also Schwarz (2019).
10
The indication of a “heroic” period of modernism is addressed in a vast number of Adorno’s texts
and mainly in the context of the expressionist movement. For a detailed discussion on this topic,
see Patriota (2021).
11
In the essay “Jene zwanziger Jahre” (“Those twenties”) (Adorno 2005) also dedicated to
Kahnweiler, Adorno once more refers to interrupted continuity of modern art, when comparing the
post-war artistic scenario to that of the twenties: “The uncertain relationship between the present
day and the twenties is conditioned by a historical discontinuity. And whatever now is artistically
engaged with that epoch not only eclectically reaches back to a creative productivity that has died
in the meantime, but at the same time also obeys an obligation not to forget those things that remain
unfinished” (p. 45).
12
The idea of a “fatal aging of the modern” (Adorno 1997, p. 452) appears in the Ästhetische
Theorie, indicating such possible loosening of critical forces in the development of modernism.
development of the artistic material and its rationalization (as in the case of music).
Thus, it could be said that the turning point in Adorno’s aesthetics occurs with the
breakdown of a rigid and unitary conception of modern art. Such debates raise the
fact that the boundaries between the different artistic genres could no longer define
their theorization. Rather, their correlations should be investigated on the basis of an
expanded concept of art that included emerging forms of aesthetic experience and
could express the transformation in the compositional and experiential structure of
modern art. Hence, in such interventions can be seen not only a growing concern
about the relationship between artistic genres – the multiple interconnections
between music, painting, literature, and other media – but also a relevant turn to
forms of art that were not central to his investigations, such as cinema.
An interesting piece of evidence of this increasing inclination for cinema is the
draft left by Adorno on the occasion of an interview with Fritz Lang in 1958, enti-
tled “Über die Situation des Films vor 25 Jahren und heute” (On the Situation of
Cinema 25 Years Ago and Today) (TWAA Ge 101). In this conversation – which
was not broadcast and remains registered through some of Adorno’s drafts (see also
Schwarz (2019)) – Adorno shows an interest in discussing the development of cin-
ema in America and Germany, as well as with the character of the medium as a
whole. This interest in cinema and its transformation deepened over time and, in
1962, it took on very precise contours during Adorno’s participation in the
Podiumsgespräch “Forderungen an den Film” (“Demands to the Film”), held with
young German filmmakers linked to the New German Cinema movement. In this
debate, Adorno not only analyzed the specific context of German post-war film
production, but also recognized the need to rethink cinema’s aesthetic dimension.
Such a debate on German cinema is registered as the possible “revolution of the
cinema as a whole institution” (Adorno et al. 2012, p. 40, our translation), in a
moment when Adorno reconsiders the importance of the medium and recognizes its
critical potential. The discussion on the new possibilities of avant-garde cinema
continues to flourish in Adorno’s late work and consolidates itself in the essay
“Filmtransparente” (“Transparencies on Film”) (Adorno 1982), which should be
seen as the expression of such openness to new forms of artistic experience. In this
text, Adorno not only turns his attention to cinema – a medium he previously
regarded with suspicion – but also considers that “film may become art” (p. 201), a
possibility that will expand the boundaries of Adorno’s late work on aesthetics.13
By bringing these discussions together and understanding their interrelation-
ships, it is possible to uncover Adorno’s late receptiveness to a broader concept of
art, one that is neither limited to fixed genres nor to their traditional divisions. It
could be said, then, that the crisis of modern art also reveals itself as a pathway to
rethinking the very concept of art, assuming the variety of its hybrid, experimental,
and “informal” practices. This is what Adorno begins to enunciate in the 1960s
when he refers to the entanglement (Verfransung) of the arts. This concept was then
13
This theme is also addressed in Patriota (2022), where there is a more detailed discussion on
Adorno’s reconsideration of cinema, as well as on how his late work starts to approach new
forms of art.
mobilized in the lecture “Die Kunst und die Künste” (“Art and the Arts”) (Adorno
2003), first delivered as a presentation at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and
then published in 1967. Broadly speaking, the notion of entanglement of the arts
concerns the process in which the different genres begin to approach each other in
their productive processes: musical pieces, for example, begin to adopt procedures
from the visual arts, as would be the case in Bussotti; literary works, such as those
by Hans Helms, would adopt such musical procedures as serialism14. Adorno indi-
cated that the development of the different arts was no longer connected to the dic-
tates of the genre to which they belong. Rather, artistic processes were open to adopt
materials and practices from different art forms, making room for a more complex
artistic construction and for different kinds of experiments. This hybridization, or
entanglement, of the arts would not only lead to a questioning of the genres’ tradi-
tional limits, but would also require an alternative theoretical approach. It is also
interesting to notice that cinema reappears in “Die Kunst und die Künste” – this
time presenting the possibility that film, as an art form that mixes different prac-
tices, could “even enlarg[e] art” (Adorno 2003, p. 386).
Adorno also observes such an expansion in the works of Samuel Beckett, for
example, who would be the main figure of reference for the philosopher in his late
writings. Apart from the essay “Versuch, das Endspiel zu verstehen” (“Trying to
understand Endgame”) and the drafts that he left for an essay on Beckett’s
L’Innommable, in 1968, Adorno also took part in a television debate on the work of
the Irish writer. By addressing his output, Adorno once more evokes the phenome-
non of entanglement, indicating how contemporary art was tending to some “cen-
trifugal” movement: “Beckett is strongly embedded in one tradition or in one
movement that I have named the Verfransung of artistic genres (...),” representing
the “tendency to disintegrate, to destroy, the traditional illusionary unity of the con-
cept of the work of art” (Adorno 1994, p. 95). By evoking Beckett’s work and its
experimental vein, Adorno indicates that the phenomenon of entanglement repre-
sents a broader tendency to question the traditional and unitary concept of the work
of art, challenging the boundaries between the artistic and the nonartistic.15 Contrary
to the established idea that Adorno’s aesthetics simply “focuses on the concept of
the great work of art as the guarantee of the artist’s transcendence” (Bürger 1990,
p. 60), here we clearly see Adorno opening himself up to experiments that question
the very unity of the artwork as a concept. With the erosion of its formal limits, art
would then start to expand its constructive procedures, not only by turning to experi-
mental techniques, but also by employing a variety of materials.
14
Adorno dedicates an entire essay to Hans Helms in his Noten zur Literatur (Notes to Literature) –
entitled “Voraussetzungen: Aus Anlaß einer Lesung von Hans G. Helms” (“Presuppositions: On
the Occasion of a Reading by Hans G. Helms”). There, Adorno examines the connections between
Helms’ literature and the developments of serialism in music (see Adorno 1992).
15
As also discussed in Patriota (2021, 2022), the work of Samuel Beckett represents the turn to
contingency in Adorno’s late work, for it would amount to some kind of informal and experimental
practices which refuse to control the artistic material.
Thus, it could be said that the expansion of artistic practices, as diagnosed by

Adorno in his late writings and debates, also accompanied a transformation of his
theory. In brief, the notion of entanglement emerges in Adorno’s work not as a sec-
ondary theme, but as the theoretical result of a long debate around the transforma-
tions undergone by modern art, its reconfigurations, and the response to its possible
crisis. What can be observed in Adorno’s turn to the topic of entanglement is the
blatant need for a theory that no longer establishes fixed concepts for understanding
art, but can open itself to the very indeterminability of the new artistic phenomena
and their intertwined relationships, be it openness to the “informal” in music or to
new experiments in cinema.
Furthermore, to address the confluence of the different artistic genres and the
erosion of their boundaries, as Adorno does, is also to consider that an aesthetic
theory must not simply take its theoretical basis and limits for granted. Such rethink-
ing of the boundaries of the theory clearly appears in the work Ohne Leitbild: Parva
Aesthetica (Without Model: Parva Aesthetica) (1967/1968), a kind of preamble to
what would become his Aesthetic Theory. Here, Adorno indicates the impossibility
of fixing eternal values or permanent aesthetic norms to guide art’s comprehension,
refusing any rigid theory of art, and opening the way to the questioning of art’s
meaning (Adorno 1997–2003, vol.10 (1): p. 291).
If we bring together some of the debates from the 1950s and 1960s, we can form
a clearer picture of Adorno’s late aesthetic writings and trace his main theoretical
interests. They indicate Adorno’s direct contact with art movements and critics and
reveal the framework of an aesthetic position that, far from providing theses on the
“authentic” artwork, was much more aimed at understanding new forms of experi-
mental art and the new configurations of modernism. Thus, to grasp the relevance of
Adorno’s work does not mean resorting to the Ästhetische Theorie in order to mea-
sure the quality of artistic objects, nor to seek in its propositions a complete judg-
ment on the fate of art. It is much more about understanding how his Ästhetische
Theorie was constructed in a context of changing artistic practices and how it inves-
tigates the very disintegration of the limits previously imposed on artistic genres.
This implies, for Adorno, a repositioning of aesthetics in its disciplinary dimension.
In this sense, the loss of evidence diagnosed by the opening sentence of the
Ästhetische Theorie should not be considered as a definitive diagnosis on the impos-
sibility of the theory, but as the claim for its transformation (see Patriota 2021).
Hence, it would amount to a new way of approaching the arts: the theory needs to
keep up with the expansion of artistic practices, even if this means assuming that
there is no safe haven or ultimate home for the aesthetic concepts.
4 Conclusion
As we have maintained throughout this chapter, the progressive publication of

archival material in recent years provides new insights into Adorno’s aesthetics.
Regarding the 1950s and 1960s in particular, one can note that Adorno’s writings
reflect his active participation in the various debates surrounding the artistic prac-
tices and movements that emerged in the post-war period. We have focused here
specifically on the discussions around music and the developments of modern art. In
the case of music, we sought to emphasize that Adorno’s participation in the
Darmstadt Summer Courses during this period is a crucial element for understand-
ing his late musical writings. The debates triggered by his critical essay “Das Altern
der Neuen Musik” led to a further openness toward the music of the post-war gen-
eration. It is true that this openness did not result in Adorno’s uncritical adherence
to the new practices. Rather, it showed the need to look for another theoretical con-
figuration capable of doing justice to the problems they posed. The program of
musique informelle in the 1960s sought to respond to this need.
As far as discussions on modern art are concerned, we observed that Adorno’s
late writings reflect his important engagement with the new artistic experiences of
the post-war period, encompassing the critique of a univocal concept of art. In his
public interventions Adorno addressed not only the transformations that modern art
went through, but also the need to rethink a new model of theory, capable of dealing
with the emerging cultural framework. His discussions with artists, critics, and art
historians allow us to shed light on the task of a theory that approaches the actuality
of art movements and is shaped by the diagnosis of their new configurations.
Moreover, the way Adorno considers those new post-war art experiences also allows
us to understand the tensions present in the development of modernism itself – a
theme that has been increasingly addressed and that finds interesting developments
in the works of authors such as Larson Powell (2013), Juliane Rebentisch (2003),
and Christine Eichel (1998).16
These reflections indicate that, just like the artworks he dealt with, Adorno’s
aesthetics assumes a necessarily processual character. In this sense, the archival
materials briefly mentioned here are important because they can disclose to us, in
the present day, how his work responded to the actual needs and concerns of his
time. Therefore, Adorno’s archives not only provide historical documents that fulfill
an ancillary or additional function, but allow us to understand and access the very
vitality of his theory.
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16
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its changes throughout the years. Rebentisch (2003) dedicates part of her work to discuss Adorno’s
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len Musik. Laaber: Laaber.
———. 2006. Dire cela sans savoir quoi. The question of meaning in Adorno and in the musical
Avantgarde. In Apparitions: New perspectives on Adorno and Twentieth-Century Music, ed.
Berthold Hoeckner. New York: Routledge.
Bürger, Peter. 1990. Adorno’s Anti-Avant-Gardism. Telos 86 (Winter 1990–1991): 49–60.
Eichel, Christine. 1998. Zwischen Avantgarde und Agonie. Die Aktualität der späten Ästhetik
Theodor W. Adornos. In Mit den Ohren Denken: Adornos Philosophie der Musik, ed. R. Klein
and C. Mahnkopf. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Evers, Hans Gerhard. 1951. Das Menschenbild in unserer Zeit - Darmstädter Gespräch. Darmstadt:
Neue Darmstädter Verlagsanstalt.
Grant, M.J. 2001. Serial music, Serial Aesthetics. Compositional Theory in Post-war Europe.
Linke, Cosima. 2018. Konstellationen – Formen in neuer Musik und ästhetische Erfahrung im
Ausgang von Adorno. Mainz: Schott.
Metzger, Heinz-Klaus. 1980. Musik Wozu. Ed. Reiner Riehn. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Paddison, Max. 1993. Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Patriota, Raquel. 2021. Theodor Adorno e a construção do modernismo artístico. Thesis (PhD) –
University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences, SP.
———. 2022. Cinema and the Arts: Reassessing Theodor Adorno’s Late Work. Novos Estudos
Cebrap 41 (2): 353–369.
Powell, Larson. 2013. The Differentiation of Modernism: Postwar German Media Arts. New York:
Camden House.
Rebentisch, Juliane. 2003. Ästhetik der Installation. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Schwarz, Michael. 2011. Er redet leicht, schreibt schwer. Theodor W. Adorno am Mikrophon.
Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, Online-Ausgabe, 8, H. 2, URL:
https://zeithistorische-forschungen.de/2-2011/4700. Accessed 10 Sept 2022.
———. 2019. Öffentliche Gespräche. Mit einer Chronologie. In Adorno-Handbuch, ed. R. Klein,
J. Kreuzer, and S. Müller-Doohm, 321–331. Berlin: J.B. Metzler.
Theodor W. Adorno Archiv (TWAA)., Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt.
Zagorski, Marcus. 2020. Adorno and the Aesthetics of Postwar Serial Music. Hofheim: Wolke.
Raquel Patriota is a professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte
(Brazil). Her main fields of interest are Aesthetics, Critical Theory and Modernism.
Ricardo Lira da Silva holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Campinas (Brazil). He
is interested in the relationship between music and society, especially from the perspective of
Critical Theory. His research is focused particularly on twentieth century music and on the work
of Theodor W. Adorno.
T.W. Adorno, H. Becker,
and the Challenges of Education
in an “Administered World” (1955–1969):
Unpublished Radio Conversations
from the Theodor W. Adorno Archive
Aurélia Peyrical
The separation between the intellect and reality can be

corrected not through the suppression of the intellect but by
interventions in reality, interventions that need the intellect,
i.e., theory. – Theodor W. Adorno
1 Introduction: Adorno’s Writings on Pedagogy1
It is well known that the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School is no strictly
abstract and theoretical study of philosophy, but that the German-speaking writers
orbiting the Institute for Social Research intend, with the help of philosophy,
humanities, social sciences and even occasionally of natural sciences,2 to reflect
upon and to transform our common social world to make it true to humanity’s
aspirations and needs. Yet, one tends to forget that this Critical Theory’s objective
gave birth to long-term – patent or latent – reflection on the goals, meaning, and
1
“Die Abspaltung des Intellekts von der Realität ist korrigierbar nicht durch Abschaffung des
Intellects, sondern durch Eingriffe in die Realität, die des Intellekts, das heißt der Theorie, bedür-
fen.” (TWAA_Ge_195/3) All translations of unpublished archive documents from German
to English are my own. My grateful thanks go to Michael Schwarz and the Theodor W. Adorno
Archive for permitting me to publish quotes from the archive, to all participants of the Adorno
Kolloquium at the Marc Bloch Zentrum in Berlin for reading and discussing a first draft of this
text, and especially to Gabriel Toupin.
2
Though one cannot but regret that the first generation was not more informed about natural sci-
ences of their time, its program does not theoretically exclude consideration of and reflection on
both the progress and limits of natural sciences. A great interlocutor for them could have been
Gretel Karplus-Adorno herself, who held a PhD in Chemistry.
A. Peyrical (*)
Université Paris-Nanterre, Paris, France

Switzerland AG 2023
166 A. Peyrical
practices of education, which became an even more important part of their work
after the Second World War.3 In his introduction to The Authoritarian Personality
(Adorno et al. 1950, pp. ix–xii), Max Horkheimer clearly formulates the decisive
character of this pedagogical preoccupation, including how it helps to motivate the
theoretical research and also to explain its psychological and sociological orienta-
tion. A few pages later, he adds that the “volume symbolizes that link between
democratic education and fundamental research” (p. xii).
Under the influence of Horkheimer, but also motivated by his own interest,
Adorno developed his pedagogical reflections in keeping with the results of the
empirical studies on prejudice he took part in while in America; he had by then
started to develop his own critique of culture and education. With Adorno, philo-
sophical work and political conviction cannot be arbitrarily disconnected, but they
certainly cannot be identified either. The political (empirical politics included) moti-
vates the theoretical, but theoretical truth must stand on its own merit.4 Some of
Adorno’s pedagogical texts from Critical Models (Adorno 1998) have become clas-
sic reads since the 1970s, at least in Germany, starting with the oft-cited chapter
“Erziehung nach Auschwitz”5 (“Education after Auschwitz”), written in 1966
(Adorno 1998, pp. 191–204). These texts, however, exist on the surface of a much
deeper collection of writings: Adorno devoted a lot of other talks and texts to peda-
gogical subjects throughout his career. As historians have noted, this has much to do
with the practical fact that, upon his return to Germany, Adorno assumed a consider-
able amount of responsibility at the newly reestablished Institute for Social Research
(IfS), but also at several public bodies in Hesse. As Michael Schwarz’s recent edito-
rial work shows, Adorno was quite often invited to give talks or take part in discus-
sions in the context of the western (re)construction of the German public space
(Schwarz 2011, 2021; Adorno 2019). But would Adorno have been so keen to step
in had he not already been theoretically convinced that Critical Theory6 had
3
Horkheimer’s pedagogical reflections after his return to Germany are analyzed, for example, by
Mühleisen (1978). A more recent volume takes on this task in relation to other members of the
Frankfurt School (Greis 2017).
4
Adorno’s work after his return to Germany in 1949 is not without internal tensions – a sign, in my
view, of his applying to himself the self-criticism and anti-dogmatism that he always defended. He
did so, at least partly, even during his well-publicized opposition to radical students in 1968. The
return to Germany after Hitler’s dictatorship had been defeated pushed critical theorists to ask
anew the question of the relationship between theory and practice, to which they had differing
answers. On the one hand, Adorno’s diagnosis of his time as not revolutionary and his old criticism
of Marxism for its anti-intellectualism and collectivistic tendencies tend to make him reject prac-
tice, but at the same time he thought of theorizing as a form of practice and of education as a place
for revolutionary thinking.
5
Nach here means both “after” and “according to.”
6
Meaning here the first generation of the Frankfurt School. Habermas did not, to my knowledge,
devote any substantial theoretical work to education or school after the 1968 debates on University
reform. Recently, Axel Honneth devoted a short text to politics and education (Honneth 2012).
Strangely, he does not refer to Horkheimer and Adorno. However, in a short note about Ludwig
von Friedeburg’s work on schooling in Germany (Friedeburg 1992), he characterizes Friedeburg’s
work as having maybe “the biggest political actuality” (Honneth 2006, p. 140).
T.W. Adorno, H. Becker, and the Challenges of Education in an “Administered World… 167
s omething to say about education? Outside of his university duties he mostly gave
presentations to a nonacademic public or had radio discussions with a handful of
contemporary intellectuals; some were published, others not, according to how
Adorno felt about them and whether he had time to give them a second look – to
complexify them, or to (re)write them, if need be.
In the last 15 years, educators and philosophers in and outside Germany have
increasingly appreciated the pedagogical dimensions of Adorno’s work (Cambi
1988; Mantegazza 2014; Orofino 2015; Domenicali 2020; French and Thomas
1999; Giroux 2004; Cho 2009; Heins 2012; Stojanov 2012; Mariotti 2014; Snir
2017; Olivier 2018a, b; Peyrical 2023). All commentators agree that his published
discussions with Hellmut Becker, one of the most important interlocutors for his
pedagogical reflections, are a key part of Adorno’s work on education (Adorno and
Becker 1971). In my view, the Adorno-Becker talks are neither interviews nor
debates, but dialogues between two leading West German intellectuals of the 1950s
and 1960s. The topics of the dialogues seem to originate from both interlocutors and
tackle issues about which each of them felt they had something to say for the enrich-
ment of public debate. Some topics that are of utmost importance for Adorno, but
probably less so for Becker, are not addressed at length, for example, musical edu-
cation (musicalische Erziehung und Bildung) (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 14), or
questions about the relationship between teachers and students or between students
and the university.7 When what Germans now classically call “political education”
(politische Bildung) is brought up, it is as a yet unstructured field – an issue open to
discussion, particularly in the first discussion. Aiming to provide exhaustive or even
comprehensive coverage of all those talks, in the spirit of F. H. Paffrath’s work
(Paffrath 1992; see also Schäfer 2017; Heyl and Ahlheim 2019), would be beyond
the scope of this article.
But it is worth remembering that Adorno did not see his dialogues with Becker
as an extraordinary activity, but rather as part and parcel of his philosophical and
political involvement in reframing Germany’s public sphere after 12 long years of
National Socialism. Adorno himself never systematized his reflections on educa-
tion, and the topics themselves, though his own, are also dependent on German
historical and social phenomena in Germany and the world after the war. This is in
accordance with a core idea of Critical Theory: that truth contains a noncontingent
historical moment and that philosophy is a social activity. One can only imagine that
the book on morals Adorno wished to write after Ästhetische Theorie (Aesthetic
Theory) (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 7) would have taken educational questions into
account more than was the case in the Minima Moralia. The overall impression one
gets when reading all Adorno-Becker discussions together is that of a coherent yet
open “forcefield” (Kraftsfeld), a decisive concept for Adorno in my view, a force-
field held together by several dialectical threads (authority and resistance, adapta-
tion and revolution, content and critique...) and by Adorno’s conviction that critical
7
See, for example, the dialogue with Peter Szondi in 1967 (Adorno 2000).
168 A. Peyrical
theorists must do all they could for the establishment of a radical, critical, substan-
tial, and philosophical democracy, in Germany and further afield.
Of the Adorno-Becker dialogues, the 1968 “Erziehung zur Mündigkeit” (Adorno
and Becker 1971, pp. 133–147) is the most well-known. First translated into English
in 1983 as “Education for Autonomy” (Adorno and Becker 1983) and later in 1999
as “Education for maturity and responsibility” (Adorno and Becker 1999), has also
been translated and studied in several languages.8 This and the three other published
texts, however, are not the only traces that exist of the Adorno-Becker encounters.
For my PhD on the concept of personality and the dialectics of the individual and
society in Adorno, I had the opportunity to examine the four other radio talks
between Adorno and Becker, which can be consulted at the Adorno Archive
in Berlin:
• “Kann Aufklärung helfen? Erwachsenenbildung und Gesellschaft” (“Can
Enlightenment help? The Education of Adults and Society”), broadcast on
December 13, 1956 (TWAA_Ge_086).
• “Die Gesellschaft zwischen Bildung und Halbbildung” (Society between Culture
and Half-Culture), broadcast on April 2, 1961 (TWAA_ Ge_132).
• “Zur Ideologie der Unbildung” (On the Ideology of Unculture), broadcast on
October 26, 1966, audiotape in two parts (Ta_096 & Ta_087); preparatory notes
(TWAA_Ge_195).
• “Erziehung zur Leistung” (Education for Productivity), typescript dated January
28, 1968, preparatory notes (TWAA_Ge_215).
Taking the eight dialogues together, it becomes clear that common questions and
interests grew into a long-lasting exchange of views, beneficial on both sides.
Although sometimes far from agreeing completely, it seems that Becker and Adorno
were sufficiently close to one another that their disputes were fruitful for both.
Becker enriched and complexified his reflections on his pedagogical practice with
the critical view of Adorno’s dialectical analysis, while Adorno could give Critical
Theory a larger public platform and apply to his reflections on the good, the true,
and the beautiful the issues at stake in the public debates about education at the
time. Discovering how long-lasting and manifold Adorno’s dialogue with Becker
was, and thus enriching my understanding of Adorno’s expectations for philoso-
phy’s role in the public affairs of post-war Germany, substantially contributed to the
framing of the latest version of the third part of my dissertation, wherein I focus on
how Adorno theorized the dialectics between the individual and the collective from
a political perspective, and the role of critical education for individual and collec-
tive social change.
8
Including Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Alain Patrick Olivier translated it as
“L’éducation à la majorité” in 2018 (Adorno 2019). He and I, together with Maïwenn Roudaut,
translated the remaining texts of the same volume into French, and we are preparing them for
publication.
Much debated issues, such as the relationship between the Frankfurt School and
the students of the ApO (Außerparlamentarische Opposition), as well as new per-
spectives, such as Adorno’s theory of the political and its relevance for the twenty-
first century, benefit from the light shed upon his dialectically and critically
conceptualized educational talks. Two that are particularly original are the 1956
discussion on the education of adults, a topic which, to my knowledge, had not
previously been identified as of interest to Adorno, and the 1966 one on Unbildung,
which prolongs the Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (Jargon of Authenticity) (Adorno
1970–2020, vol. 6: pp. 413–531) but also clearly displays its link with Negative
Dialectics (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 6: pp. 1–412). There, Adorno works on open-
ing critical passageways between the reified antagonism of “reactionary” versus
“progressive” pedagogical and social practices/theories. While the discussion on
Unbildung helps understand Adorno’s “Theorie der Halbbildung” (Theory of Half-
education) (Adorno 1959) a major and much discussed but difficult and often mis-
interpreted piece, Adorno’s notes on Leistung (achievement) gives us a hint of his
devotion to theoretically shaping concrete, everyday teaching practices, while dia-
lectically challenging simplistic view of the opposition between tradition and revo-
lution, adaptation and resistance.
1.1 Education as Social Critique in Adorno
In Adorno’s texts, educational questions, whether moral, social, or political, are

never separated from social criticism. One of his central theses is that education is
not only an object of study in and of itself, nor should it be seen as a mere technique
to be administered, even if it raises specific as well as technical issues. His reflec-
tions on pedagogy are always as much singled out as they are embedded within
broader philosophical, political, and social analysis. Throughout his life, he coupled
his theoretical work as well as his practice as a teacher with works on the theme of
education and culture/human development (Bildung). As always deeply rooted in
the real, in determinate materiality as a historically manifesting and yet to be cre-
ated social reality, Erziehung and Bildung are, Adorno believed, worthy of the name
only if they participate to some extent in social reflection and critique. Conversely,
social critique remains incomplete if it does not deal with the question of education.
In 1965, Adorno phrased his convictions in an unequivocal and non-reductionist
way to Heydorn and Becker:
I am of the opinion, radically of the opinion, that all the problems I have discussed about
school are in fact problems of society and that, in a certain sense – a sense, however, not to
be understood crudely – school can be regarded as a kind of microcosm of society out of
which everything can be read. (Adorno et al. 2001 [1965], p. 34; my translation)9
9
“Und ich bin allerdings der Ansicht, radikal der Ansicht, dass alle die Probleme, die ich an der
Schule erörtert habe, in Wirklichkeit Probleme der Gesellschaft sind und dass in einem gewissen
Sinn, in einem allerdings nicht grob zu verstehenden Sinn, die Schule als eine Art von Mikrokosmos
der Gesellschaft betrachtet werden kann, an dem man alles ablesen kann.”
170 A. Peyrical
Thus, it would be a mistake, and disrespectful of Adorno’s intentions, to try to orga-

nize his reflections into a systematized and abstract theory of Bildung and/or
Erziehung. Furthermore, in my view, Adorno’s contributions to pedagogy and the
philosophy of education should be apprehended on the same basis as his social criti-
cism: they are negative and critical, of dialectical character, yet sparkling with uto-
pian moments and suggestions on how to teach “less wrongly,” to paraphrase
Freyenhagen’s interpretation of Adorno’s negative moral philosophy (2013). Adorno
never believed that strictly informative broadcasting of cultural and educational
content would be enough to guarantee right or correct consciousness (richtiges
Bewußtseins), which for him was the goal of education, yet he wished to participate
in the development of a truer democratic education in which cultural products are
available for everyone to experience and of a social world that supports a complex
relationship to them. He thought – as did Kant in his time, although from a more
radical social standpoint – that only a society of adults, displaying Mündigkeit
(maturity, autonomy), could elaborate and live up to democratic rather than dema-
gogic practices.
An important linguistic point must be stressed from the outset. When dealing
with Adorno’s pedagogical reflections, one is faced with a terminological issue –
that he uses two different words for “education” in German: Erziehung (education)
and Bildung (education and culture/human development). Roughly speaking, by
Adorno’s time the word Erziehung was used to refer to the education of children –
subjects that are not yet mature. By contrast, Bildung applies to adolescents and
adults. However, this distinction between Bildung and Erziehung, although relevant
to a certain extent, should not be reified.10 This division of (also philosophical) labor
and vocabulary can be seen as a mark of the “administered world,” which sharply
separates childhood and adulthood, the semi-private and the public and the social
and political realms. In a theory so concerned with dialectics, on the one hand, and
with calling into question the social division of labor, on the other hand, education’s
dual nature must be reflexively addressed. The discussions presented here, however,
mirror this distinction more than they elaborate it: two deal with Bildung and two
with Erziehung. Their content nonetheless calls into question the fact that they are
too often approached separately.
10
The meanings of each term vary across time. For example, in Lessing’s famous Erziehung des
Menschengeschlechts (1780), on which text Adorno gave a seminar before the war in Frankfurt
when he was working as Tillich’s teaching assistant, Erziehung concerns children and adults, indi-
viduals and (religious) communities alike.
2 How It All Started: Educating Adults – A Challenge

in “Administered” Post-War Germany
Following his return to Germany after the war, Max Horkheimer contacted lawyer
Hellmut Becker to help with the legal aspects of the reestablishment of the Institute
for Social Research in Frankfurt.11 Becker was initially more interested in
Horkheimer’s work than in Adorno’s and more concerned with practical pedagogi-
cal matters than with philosophical questions, yet he began corresponding with
Adorno about invitations and radio encounters.12 In an article he published in
Merkur, “Die verwaltete Schule” (The Administered School) in 1954, Becker had
attributed to Adorno the critical use of the adjective “administered.” The adjective
was, in fact, used by Adorno, Horkheimer, and Eugen Kogon in a 1950 radio discus-
sion to describe the kind of social totality that faces and shapes individuals today
(Adorno et al. 1989, p. 122). The first radio discussion between Adorno and Becker
took place in 1956. Seven more followed between then and 1969, the year Adorno
died. Becker was one of the éminences grises of the German post-war educational
sector. The son of orientalist and Prussian Minister for Culture (1925–1930) Carl
Heinrich Becker, he first trained as a lawyer and jurist. He was married to a less
well-known but no less well-educated French-German writer and translator,
Antoinette Mathis-Becker. They met, it should be noted, when they both worked for
Nazi jurist Ernst Rudolf Huber in Strasbourg. In the 1950s and 1960s, Becker was
occasionally described as an “invisible” Minister of Education, or as the German
“Pope of Education.” He took a leading role in shaping the policies of moderniza-
tion and reeducation supported by the United States and generally accepted by the
federal government (Bohm and Bohm 2011). In 1956, he became president of the
Deutscher Volkshochschulverband (German Federation of Adult Education Centers)
and, in 1962, director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung (Max
Planck Institute for Human Development) in Berlin (Becker 1962). Both positions
allowed him to greatly influence the German education system. “Kann Aufklärung
helfen? Erwachsenenbildung und Gesellschaft” (Can Enlightenment Help? The
Education of Adults and Society) (TWAA_Ge_086) marks the first time Adorno and
Becker met for a talk at the Hessische Rundfunk and the beginning of their long-
lasting radio collaboration. Two months before their discussion, Becker and Adorno
had met at the German Adult Education Day event in Frankfurt, where each had
delivered a talk. In his “Aktualität der Erwachsenenbildung” (Actuality of the
Education of Adults) (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 20.2: pp. 327–331), Adorno gave a
preliminary sketch of his expectations regarding adult education. The meeting pro-
vided an opportunity for him to restate his optimism for a newly rebuilt institution,
but also to express his fears that this institution would not be sufficiently critical. For
11
A more detailed account from Becker’s perspective can be found in Becker 1990 and Becker and
Hager 1992.
12
Their correspondence from April 1955 through August 1965 is conserved in the form of a 130-
page document at the Adorno Archive (TWAA_Br_0073).
172 A. Peyrical
Becker, it was the perfect occasion to promote the Adult Education Centers
(Volkshochschulen or VHS). The VHS were partially funded by the state and by
those who attended the courses. Their independence and their countrywide network
give them a wide latitude. Hence, they were particularly suited, according to Adorno,
to the critical role he explicitly assigned to them – not merely to transfer knowledge,
but to develop critical thinking in the face of the apparent incomprehensibility of a
society in which adults, although grown up, feel powerless and tend to act as if they
were but objects and not subjects of history: “I would see it as the task of adult edu-
cation to break through that block,13 that is, to encourage people to no longer abso-
lutize existing circumstances” (TWAA_Ge_086/7).14
Both Becker and Adorno believed that the purpose of adult education is to
achieve the philosophical and political goals of the enlightenment, and they dis-
cussed what it would take for the VHS courses to meet the target of fostering real,
critical enlightenment. Although they largely agreed, they had different opinions
about what ‘enlightening’ people means and looks like. In the course of the discus-
sion, Adorno shows himself to be more radical and less willing to make concessions
to the “administered world” than Becker, who, in turn, seems less inclined to criti-
cize the structure of capitalist societies than his interlocutor. A little more than 10
years after the end of the war, Adorno insists mostly on the negative aspect of criti-
cal reflection:
I may perhaps take up a keyword: Resistance. (…) It is certainly one of the most essential
tasks of adult education to strengthen people’s powers of resistance to the social processes
that form and deform their consciousness. (TWAA_Ge_086/10)
Adorno did not phrase this need for resistance to (rather than wholesale rejection of)
the “administered world” as a refusal of any influence from an “outside” on a “pure
self.” Rather, he expressed it in the sense of the realization of our helplessness as
individuals in an all-powerful social order. This is for him the primary goal of adult
education: to better understand our vulnerability to (de)formation, as a first step
towards changing ourselves and society. Such a goal can be read both as the sign of
13
Here, by “block” – to my knowledge one of the very first occurrences of the term in Adorno’s
work – Adorno means both an object (society as an incomprehensible object seen by an individual
who feels completely powerless) and the process of accepting, practically and theoretically, the
status quo. Education, in his view, must make people aware of the historically produced and
becoming nature of reality, so they may go beyond their feeling of powerlessness without repress-
ing or discarding it too quickly – in 1968, he will sharply reproach some students for doing the
latter. Later in his work, Adorno makes a concept of the term, specifically in his lectures on Kant.
How Adorno’s interpretation of the history of philosophy and his concepts of social philosophy
intertwine are matters for case studies to clarify. He always saw the opposition of life and thought
as problematic; it is thus not surprising that a keyword of the Cold War that cut the world into two
superpowers, or “blocs,” found a conceptual nest in Adorno’s thought, from linguistic everyday
experience and this radio talk to the course on Kant (where it acquires a technical meaning) and
Negative Dialectics.
14
“Ich würde es als die Aufgabe der Erwachsenenbildung ansehen, diesen Block zu durchstoßen,
also die Menschen dazu zu bringen, nicht länger das, was ist, zu verabsolutieren.”
a utopian or as a resigned stance, and, paradoxically, is probably both – a call to be

aware of both the fragility and the power of ideals and realities alike.
Here it would be a mistake, in my opinion, to conclude that because Adorno
talked of ‘deforming’ consciousness, he was implicitly referring, by contrast, to a
perfectly undeformed consciousness that would or could already exist in our social
world. Certainly, Adorno’s use of ‘negative’15 terms can be misleading and lead us
to think that he has an idea, however vague, of what a rightly formed consciousness
would be. Yet, as I understand it, the very specificity of his normative discourse lies
in its negative strategy. According to it, even if we cannot say positively what an
“undeformed” or “well-formed” consciousness looks like, what matters is that there
is enough experienced suffering and irrationality in the world for us to be simultane-
ously emotionally and rationally convinced that our social world has not yet reached
a satisfactory form and that we are all somehow deformed by it. Moreover, Adorno
is consistant with his dialectics since he follows this strategy without ever endorsing
a strict body/mind or individual/society distinction ontologically or normatively.
Adorno, guided by this utopian conviction and strengthened by his personal
and theoretical analysis of the negative historical experience of Auschwitz (the
symbolic name for the undeniable failure of culture), was looking for a way to
oppose both anti-intellectual, anti-democratic practices, and purely formal and
legal democracy. He sought a negative third way between long-lasting, imperial-
ist (re)education (Russian, American or otherwise) on the one hand, and violent,
short-lived insurrections on the other, as well as a path between reactionary tradi-
tionalism and liberal bourgeois education and culture. His was an arduous quest
for a kind of educational and political Bildung that would form people’s minds
and bodies so that they are capable of resisting wrong “forms of life” and creating
and living in a society more attuned with the best of humanity. In this quest,
Adorno was as skeptical as he could be when it came to compromising with the
“administered world” (Adorno et al. 1989, pp. 138–139); it is not that administra-
tion and organization are bad in themselves, but their history taints them with the
stigma of having been primarily used as weapons of domination (Adorno et al.
1989, p. 127). Adorno stresses that any adult education worthy of the name can-
not be a seemingly harmonious mix of Weiterbildung (specialized training in a
particular field of expertise, to serve the market) and of a broader diffusion of
what is usually seen as “classical culture.” In other words, adult education, as
conceived by Adorno and Becker, should neither be taken as simply an opportu-
nity for working adults to increase their productivity by learning new skills, nor
as a place where one acquires an ideological cultural varnish so as to fit better into
“respectable” society. This second aspect is an element of a bourgeois educa-
tional paternalism that, for Adorno, was no longer relevant. Even if we consider,
as I believe Adorno undeniably did, that some products (artworks, books, films,
etc.) are more worthy of study than others, that they display a higher quality of
15
For example, the subtitle of Minima Moralia is “Reflections on/from the mutilated (beschä-
digt) life.”
174 A. Peyrical
form and content, this does not justify the condescension implied by the transmis-
sion of a reified high culture to uncultured masses. It calls, however, for rigorous
work to raise ourselves to their level, without relaxing social criticism, including
with regards to traditional cultural biases which Adorno himself was not free
from (e.g., Adorno hardly read any of the great European female novelists of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries). In the mid-twentieth century, Adorno recalls,
the promise of adult education would be betrayed if it devolved into throwing the
crumbs of an ersatz culture to people who never could or wished to attend univer-
sity. Yet it would equally be betrayed if the best products of past centuries were
deemed guilty of the evils of their times and, for that reason, cancelled or
forgotten.
Around the middle of this first conversation, disagreements emerge. In contrast
to Adorno, who emphasizes them, Becker tends to minimize the structural social
inequalities that hinder education. Becker is not only less Marxian than Adorno, less
unyielding to the “administered world”, but also less “negativist.” Adorno stresses
the difference between himself and Becker when he first formulates his negativeist
position:
(…) the possibility of giving people some kind of positive orientation in this world through
which they can be, to a certain degree, reconciled with themselves and with the world, I
consider problematic because I am convinced that this world is in disarray, and I think that
no human being who is serious can now give people recipes or slogans in the field of educa-
tion. (TWAA_Ge_086/13)16
Ten years later, in “Erziehung – wozu?” (1966) Adorno would stress his loyalty to
this negativistic approach to education by criticizing the idea of “guiding images”
(Leitbilder) because they do not correspond to the challenges of a historical and
dynamic social and political world. One senses that, in 1956, both Becker and
Adorno are simultaneously optimistic and pessimistic, but on different issues.
Adorno is pessimistic with regards to society being systematically wrongly orga-
nized because of its capitalist structure, but at the same time he believes that using
adult education to promote the critical analysis of cultural works might make it a
springboard for the development of critical consciousness. Becker is more realistic
about the fact that, until the sense of human distress is more broadly resolved, any
critical consciousness – as embedded, per Adorno’s example, in the critique of
kitsch in the latest movie productions – will not have a decisive impact on peo-
ple’s lives.
Adorno reacts by clarifying his position to avoid being accused of idealism for
defending critical consciousness. A purely cognitive enlightenment as to what is
16
“(…) die Möglichkeit, daß man den Menschen eine Art von positiver Orientierung in dieser Welt
gibt, durch die sie gewissermaßen mit sich und der Welt ausgesöhnt werden, diese Möglichkeit
halte ich deshalb für problematisch, weil ich überzeugt bin, daß diese Welt in Unordnung ist und
daß kein Mensch, der es ernst meint, nun im Bereich der Bildung dem Menschen Rezepte oder
Parolen geben kann.”
“simply there” (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 20.2: p. 329)17 does not solve social problems.
Without thinking, however, and the parallel yet distinct work of empirical and theo-
retical social transformation, political and social action will inevitably fall behind
what is expected of it – namely, according to Adorno, to end suffering and need:
I don’t believe that Enlightenment helps in the sense that if you know where you stand, that
is, if you become aware of reality, then the suffering and need, from which we start out,
would be overcome, because suffering and need do not only exist in the false consciousness
of reality, but because they really exist (…). (TWAA_Ge_086/14)18
It is interesting here to see how Adorno holds onto the most classic enlightenment
goal of demystifying beliefs and establishing a right consciousness, while at the
same time expressing a materialist Marxian standpoint. His purpose was not to
abandon enlightenment because it was too idealistic, but to save it dialectically –
that is, to perpetuate it in critical form. This meant defending the horizon of eman-
cipation embedded in the enlightenment of the eighteenth century, while embracing
the process of its changing meaning and content over time. Put simply: following
Adorno’s insights implies breaking with the idea that we must either wholly accept
or reject enlightenment. Adult education deals with a dialectic of rescue and criti-
cism of enlightenment’s promise, which has not yet been actualized.
The final important point emphasized by Adorno in “Kann Aufklärung helfen?”
sets out this logic, which shows how his educational thinking cannot be separated
from his critical philosophy of culture (Kulturkritik). He conceptualizes a distinc-
tion between geistigen Güter (spiritual goods) and Konsumgüter (consumer goods).
The latter exists strictly for the satisfaction of a current need, at least it pretends to
satisfy a need, whereas encountering the former always provides an incentive to
question and even transform oneself and society. For Adorno, one of enlighten-
ment’s aims is to overcome a certain individual and collective narcissism – a ten-
dency, reinforced by capitalist social structures, to fight relentlessly for
what one conceives of as a group or individual self-interest – while at the same time
acquiring a critical consciousness that allows self-protection from demagoguery.
3 1961: Halbbildung – What Is That Exactly?
In 1959, Adorno gave his famous talk entitled “Theorie der Halbbildung” (Adorno
1959) at the meeting of the German Society of Sociology, where Becker also gave
a presentation on “Sozialforschung und Bildungspolitik” (Social Research and
17
“[Die Funktion der Erwachsenenbildung] ist die von Aufklärung. Der neue Aberglaube, mit dem
sie es zu tun hat, ist der an die Unbedingtheit und Unabänderlichkeit dessen, was der Fall ist. Dem
beugen sich die Menschen, als wären die übermächtigen Verhältnisse nicht selber Menschenwerk.”
18
“Ich glaube nicht, daß Aufklärung in dem Sinne hilft, daß, wenn man weiß, wo man steht, also
wenn man sich der Realität bewußt wird, daß also damit das Leiden und die Not, von dem wir
ausgegangen sind, in Ordnung kommen, weil Leiden und Not nicht nur in dem falschen Bewußtsein
von der Realität bestehen, sondern weil das ja auch reale Momente hat (…).”
176 A. Peyrical
Education Politics) (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung 2014). The 1961

meeting with Becker on Radio Hessen was conceived as an opportunity to discuss
Adorno’s presentation. As he often did, Adorno begins by warning his audience not
to expect a summary of his 1959 presentation to make it easier to understand,
because summarizing ideas that are thoughtfully put into words is all but impossi-
ble. He does, however, reformulate the main thesis to be discussed:
What was (…) called “culture” has today become “socialized half-culture”, i.e., a mere
consumption of so-called “cultural goods”, which are swallowed like other goods. One
takes note of them informatively, at most one actually learns them, or one believes to take a
kind of pleasure in them, but one actually no longer comes to the most essential thing: to
experience. (...) Fresh and cheerful dissemination of culture under the prevailing conditions
today is directly one with its destruction. So much for provocation. (TWAA_Ge_132/2)
A great deal could be, and has been, said about this provocative thesis. Here I would
only like to stress the importance of the concept of Erfahrung (experience) to
Adorno’s conception of Bildung. Though very skeptical of definitions, Adorno char-
acterizes experience as “a continuous filling with spiritual things extending over
longer periods of time” (TWAA_Ge_132/2).19 Halbbildung is, in some ways, the
opposite of experience: it amounts to a “half-understood” and “half-experienced”
relationship to culture. These expressions seem to suggest that experience implies a
totality, something whole, not a half-something. However, Adorno does not strictly
defend the conservative idea of a once substantial, but now lost, Bildung. His analy-
sis is more ambiguous and fruitful. His conception of history (of ideas) is of a
Kraftsfeld, and his diagnosis of Halbbildung is based on a criticism of ready-made
alternatives, such as the dichotomy between progress and reaction. Adorno is nei-
ther progressive nor reactionary, but a determined critic and advocate of the new
and the traditional, as they concretely appear in history. This dialectical position is
evident in educational topics as much as on the concurrent and related question of
the dialectical relationship between the individual and society. On certain occasions
Adorno seems to agree, as did Horkheimer, with the historical diagnosis that at an
early stage of liberal times (in early nineteenth-century Germany) a small number
of (male) individuals had the opportunity to fully realize themselves as individu-
als by realizing Bildung’s ideals (TWAA_Ge_132/2).20 The transfer of this histori-
cal experience to larger parts of society did not succeed (as historical events have
proven, according to Adorno) and the opportunity to realize it fully, in the sense that
all humankind would be included in this individualization process, was missed. On
other occasions, however, Adorno’s debunking of his own conceptions’ nostalgic
moment leaves room for a more utopian concept of Bildung, closer to the paradoxi-
cal concept of tradition, as “Nostalgia for something that has never been” (Adorno
1997, p. 306). In this alternative sense, experience, as a different and idiosyncratic
19
“(...) einer über längere Zeiträume sich erstreckenden kontinuierlichen Füllung mit geistigen
Dingen.”
20
For example, in the 1950 radio talk between Horkheimer, Adorno, and Eugen Kogon entitled
“Die verwaltete Welt oder die Krisis des individuum,” see Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s replies
(Adorno et al., p. 125, 127).
relation to cultural goods, would not be “full” in the sense of totality, but would be
a process that has no ready-made form, no assigned course or end. It would have no
pre-definite temporal limit and content.
Objects of Bildung could only be experienced if we had enough time, including
time to spare – one of many possible signs that we would live in a fulfilled and ful-
filling society. Experience – and Bildung with it – is a lifelong process and will
continue as long as society exists. It is a kind of attitude that cultural products, in the
“emphatic sense” of “spiritual goods” I mentioned earlier (i.e., products which
would not be reduced to their exchange value in the form of goods) – that those
products we experience expect from us, the realization of a critical/productive rela-
tionship that leaves neither subject nor object unaltered. Adorno provides two
counter-models to experience: “information” on the one hand, wherein the subject
does not let the object enter, question, or modify them, and, conversely, a sort of
“pleasure,” wherein the subject almost physically consumes the object, integrates,
and destroys it. As a rational-emotional complex subject-object relationship, experi-
ence in the full sense of the term, is, first, for Adorno, the opposite of relating to
information understood in a positivistic way. Positivistic information illegitimately
atomizes the object and duplicates this atom on a linguistic level. The subject thus
faces an object that has been reduced to pure identity with itself. Second, real expe-
rience is opposed to a predatory attitude toward the object, which only relates to it
in a controlling manner (Herrschaft). In both cases, the subject only relates to itself
or to a substitute of the object. In this second respect, Adorno suggests, the old
bourgeois elite itself never really experienced an (emphatic) relationship to cultural
and educational productions.21 The fetishistic, dominating relationship to culture
that prevails in the upper class is no model of the perfect spiritual experience.
Adorno advocates a negative delineation of an emphatic concept of Bildung.
Something must be criticized, something “saved” from both sides: from the com-
modification/diffusion of cultural products in the form of information, because of its
democratic goals, and from the destructivity/worship of the ahistorical “dominant”
standpoint on art, because it understands works of arts as spiritual, sacred totalities.
In his reply, Becker grants Adorno his definition of Halbbildung, but wonders
whether Adorno’s condemnation of what he calls the culture industry goes too far.
He asks whether everything in our present cultural situation indicates a threat to
Bildung. Are there not positive aspects to this Halbbildung, such as the fact that it
allows for the democratization of culture? Becker shows himself to be more opti-
mistic than Adorno about what is usually meant by “democratization,” namely, the
intensification and industrialization of the production of cultural goods. For Adorno,
however, democratization in that sense is insufficient, because it does not reflect on
the social conditions in which it takes place.
21
“The constantly expanding difference between social power and powerlessness denies to the
powerless – and tendentially already to the powerful – the real preconditions of autonomy which
the concept of culture ideologically preserves” (Adorno 1993, p. 22).
178 A. Peyrical
The question of democratization opens the door for Adorno to clarify his position
in response to the criticism that he defends an elitist view of Bildung.22 To answer
the question of whether Bildung should target a happy few or should rather be made
available to everyone, Adorno presents what I would call a “dialectic of democrati-
zation”: on the one hand, he says, one must keep in mind that massifying culture,
i.e., reproducing such cultural goods as books or films on an extremely large scale,
to make them available to everyone, does not leave them intact; on the other hand,
however, Adorno is opposed to either limiting access to cultural products, or to his-
toricism, a backward-looking stance that insists on the “authenticity” of past cul-
tural goods and reifies spiritual-intellectual works by locking them up in their own
“good old” times (TWAA_Ge_128). Must Shakespeare’s plays be presented exactly
as they were in the sixteenth century? Should it be forbidden to play Beethoven’s
sonatas on the radio on the grounds that they were never written for that purpose?
one might ask Adorno – and his answer is hard to imagine. What is clear, however,
is that Becker grasps the difficulties of such questions when he recalls that in 1920s
Berlin, the “newly cultured” public complained against the Volksbühne when its
staging of a classical bourgeois play did not look as seventeenth century as they
expected...
Another fascinating aspect of the discussion lies in Adorno’s explanation of how
and why his conception of Bildung cannot be confused with a reactionary one,
despite his criticism toward the massification/mutilation of culture. He does so by
strongly criticizing the concept of popular/folk culture (volkstümlichen Bildung).
For Adorno, it is this concept of popular culture, rather than his critical theory of
cultural production in late capitalism, that embodies a reactionary and paternalistic
view of culture. The concept of popular/folk culture indeed reifies people into a
social group, “the people” (das Volk), that would by its very nature be unfit to par-
ticipate in elite culture. This criticism of the concept of popular culture shows that
Adorno’s theory of culture is very demanding, but not reactionary. His conception
of Bildung may require, de facto, great effort from teachers and students alike (this
distinction is, after all, not a strict one) but there is no de jure elitism here. Adorno
concludes that the circulation of a second-class concept of Bildung – a Bildung that
only amounts to the increasing availability of cultural goods – cannot change soci-
ety; however, together with society’s self-reflection, this can help foster social
change. In a society without classes, the idea of popular culture loses its very rai-
son d’être.
Adorno’s negative and dialectical approach concentrates on what he calls “truth
content” (Wahrheitsgehalt) by rejecting the relevance of Manichean alternatives
that are presented to us as inevitable (e.g., that adaptation and resistance are mutu-
ally exclusive, an authoritarian either/or). Rather than demanding that one takes a
side, he asks us to understand the dialectical intertwining of those sides and their
mutual insufficiency. It is strange, then, that Adorno states:
22
Adorno can indeed be seen as a “progressist elitist” (Caruso n.d.).
Yes, I would leave the concept of adaptation out of consideration in this context, because
people are forced to adapt anyway. Education today does not have to promote adaptation,
but more essentially resistance. (TWAA_Ge_132/18)23
Why does he insist here only on the dimension of resistance and criticism proper to
Bildung, and not also on its positively formative aspect? This emphasis on “resis-
tance” within the dialectic of Bildung justifies itself, in Adorno’s view at least, on
the basis of a diagnosis of his times, which, according to him, already adapts stu-
dents almost too much to the existing culture and economy. This suggests that the
negative dialectician must be aware of historical and contemporary trends – a sug-
gestion which poses, among other problems, the question of how to grasp a histori-
cal moment, which Adorno does not address here but discusses elsewhere (Adorno
and von Haselberg 1983 [1965]).
Later in the 1960s, notably in his next dialogue with Becker in 1966, Adorno
qualifies this judgment and stresses that the adaptative, integrative moment essential
to Bildung is not to be discarded if one hopes it can revolutionize society from the
inside, while at the same time actualizing its already existing potentials. He will
then raise the following question: to what extent must the self let go of itself (which
is not at all the same as “expressing”) in its relationship to other selves and to soci-
ety? His answer lies in an original way of conceptualizing Entäusserung (external-
ization/alienation), a point which is too complex to discuss here. On this topic, at
least, it is clear that the discussions with Becker made Adorno more aware of the
balance needed between adaptation and resistance.
4 1966 – “Ideologie der Unbildung”: Adorno’s

Anti-conservative Theory of Bildung
How should we translate the rare Adorno’s neologism “Unbildung”? If we consider

that the main meaning of Bildung in this context is “culture,” it should be translated
as “unculture.”24 However, the dialogue more focused on pedagogical than civiliza-
tional issues. If we understand Bildung as “formation,” another translation could be
something like “deformation,” but this translation can be misleading. It has the dis-
advantage of insisting on the ‘positive’ negative dimension of such a pedagogy (as
if Adorno knew what a undeformed culture looks like), and not on the strictly nega-
tive, mutilating aspect of it (beschädigend). A third, equally unsatisfactory possibil-
ity would be to translate Unbildung as “uneducation” or “noneducation.” This has
the advantage of underlining the absence of Bildung, but it robs it of its impact
outside the closed field of pedagogy.
23
“Ja, ich würde den Begriff der Anpassung in diesem Zusammenhang außer Betracht lassen kön-
nen, weil die Menschen zur Anpassung sowieso gezwungen werden. Bildung hat heute nicht die
Anpassung zu befördern, sondern wesentlich den Widerstand.”
24
Cook (1993) translates it as “lack of culture.”
180 A. Peyrical
In 1964, 2 years before his radio encounter with Becker,25 Adorno published
Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (Adorno 1970–2020, vol.6: pp. 413–531), his book
against Heidegger, which was initially conceived as part of Negative Dialektik
(Adorno 1970–2020, vol.6:pp. 1–412). The dialogue with Becker extends the cri-
tique of the Jargon to pedagogy and education, dimensions that were hardly men-
tioned in the book but already implicit in Adorno’s hardly known criticism of music
pedagogy, that I can’t discuss here (see Kertz-Welzel 2005; Jost 2015). In addition
to the record of the radio talk, Adorno’s preparatory notes and five pages of excerpts
from pedagogical texts are preserved in the archives. These notes and quotations
make it possible to identify the authors criticized anonymously by Adorno in the
course of the discussion: Otto Friedrich Bollnow, Fritz Blättner, and Heinrich
Weinstock, all of whom were in some way interested in or fascinated by National
Socialism and who occupied important positions in German post-war secondary
and higher education. To this list he adds Klaus Schaller, a younger, influential, anti-
idealist pedagogue. Adorno exposes here the authoritarianism and conformism of a
pedagogical language that mystifies the existing pedagogical world and reinforces
the powers that be. It is a conception of education diametrically opposed to
Mündigkeit – one of Adorno’s central imperatives of enlightenment-inspired educa-
tion. The originality of Adorno’s dialectical approach, as displayed in these dia-
logues, is twofold. First, it takes form in a negative anti-foundationalism, which
Adorno endorses, but which is also, interestingly, sharpened by Becker. He, taking
Adorno at his word, calls into question any attempt by his interlocutor to formulate
a positive definition of the mündig (mature) and gebildete (educated) person.26
Second, it lies in the fact that Adorno always attempts, with the help of his diagnosis
of the present, to distinguish between moments of truth (Wahrheitsmomente) and
untruth (das Unwahre) within his opponent’s own theories. He sketches this distinc-
tion here; within three tendencies he evokes: the idealist-Humboldtian neo-
humanism of the nineteenth century, the contemporary anti-humanism of his time,
and the “Heideggerian-Jargon” pedagogy. The negativity of his dialectic consists in
opposition to all reductive and one-sided thinking and, most importantly, the binary
thinking that presents itself in the form of apparently obvious and unsurpassable
alternatives: here, specifically, the alternatives of so-called “progressive” and
25
In June 2022, only a recording of the discussion entitled “Ideologie der Unbildung” was at hand
at the Adorno Archive. At the end of August 2022, Michael Schwarz and I discovered the existence
of a transcript of the discussion in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Akte:
VI. HA, Nl Hellmut Becker, Nr. 821.
26
In the dialogue before this one, entitled “Erziehung – wozu?,” Becker suggested that Adorno
might want to be careful not to absolutize the definition of Mündigkeit as resistance. At the begin-
ning of the Unbildung dialogue, Adorno starts by recalling this suggestion, saying that Mündigkeit
as resistance represents a moment in the set of social categories and of the categories of sociology
of education, not the whole of it. Mündigkeit should thus not be defended abstractly as a value that
is true in itself, but as embodying the moment of autonomy within a truly human theory of educa-
tion. This example shows that not only do the dialogues form a certain unity despite their various
subject matter, but also that they represent a dialogical, dynamic, and possibly thought-provoking
event for Adorno.
“ conservative” pedagogy. He suggests that those alternatives usually obscure more

than they enlighten social phenomena. But, contrary to idealist philosophers,
Adorno does not understand his work as a philosopher and sociologist as the
replacement of doxa through purely philosophical definitions. To give a hint of
Adorno’s way of reflecting, I concentrate here mostly on his critique of the “Jargon”
pedagogy.
The conservative “Jargon” pedagogy he targets here is characterized by one main
intention: a priori narrowing (Verrengung) (TWAA_Ge_195/3) the field of living
social experience, in the name of a secure, forever valid, and mythical social destiny
into which the pedagogues incite the younger generations to insert themselves, as
into a Procrustean bed. To show this concretely, Adorno quotes and comments a
“well known pedagogue who comes from Heidegger,” F. Bollnow, without
naming him:
Whereas in classical educational thinking – that is to say this kind of pedagogical thinking
that this pedagogue refuses – it is a matter of man’s developing his spiritual powers in the
most diverse educational contents possible, “encounter” – and this is what our pedagogue
wants – means something much harsher, namely that a reality fatefully breaks into his life,
which mercilessly tears him out of his previous habits, which forces him to confront and
thus shakes him to his core. (Paffrath 1992, p. 136; my translation)27
Adorno debunks what he calls a Metaphysizierung (metaphysization) of the con-

straining social conditions of existence. In the pedagogical framework of the Jargon,
this mystification takes the form of praise for hardness, submission to destiny, and
violent dispossession of the self. Instead of encouraging young people to become
aware of themselves, to question themselves and their cultural environment while
trying to simultaneously insert themselves in already existing social relations,
Jargon pedagogues orchestrate what appears to Adorno to be a sabotage of Bildung
and of critical thinking. It is important to note that any negative dialectics worthy of
the name cannot fetishize the moment of critique – the living spirit guiding (social)
philosophy, rather than a dogmatic truth – without falling into a patent contradiction
with critical thinking. Hypostasizing the critical attitude or critical person, who says
an abstract “no” to everything, would itself take the form of a Leitbild, which
Adorno was strongly against.
Without minimizing the radical nature of this critique, it is interesting to note
how much intellectual probity Adorno shows – at least, this is the possible
27
“Während es im klassischen Bildungsdenken – also jenem Bildungsdenken, das dieser Pädagoge
ablehnt – darum geht, daß der Mensch seine geistigen Kräfte an möglichst mannigfaltigen
Bildungsgehalten entfaltet, bedeutet Begegnung – und das ist das, was unser Pädagoge will –
etwas sehr viel Härteres, nämlich, daß eine Wirklichkeit schicksalhaft in sein Leben einbricht, die
ihn erbarmungslos aus seinen bisherigen Gewohnheiten herausreißt, die ihn zur Auseinandersetzung
zwingt und so in seinen Tiefer erschüttert.”
182 A. Peyrical
interpretation I find the most convincing.28 He takes care to do justice to the ele-
ments of truth contained in those educational discourses, while simultaneously mak-
ing them partly responsible for nothing less than direct complicity with Nazism and
the horrors of Auschwitz. The first moment of truth in Jargon pedagogy consists in
the fact that, compared to Humboldtian pedagogy, the pedagogues of Jargon, out of,
perhaps excessive, realism, have “de-idealized” and “de-fetishized” education.
They do not present education as an end in itself, contrary to a certain number of
(neo-)humanist discourses, but instead understand educational praxis as part of
social activity. But unlike Adorno’s (and Horkheimer’s) dialectical critical theory,
the pedagogues of Jargon also sacrifice the best ideals of education, namely, indi-
vidual and collective autonomy:
[They have criticized] a neutralized concept of education, which makes education an end in
itself, which absolutizes education without having any practical consequences, especially
any consequences for social-political practice. I would say that the moment of this ideology
of non-education which should be honored and saved is that it rebels against the fetishiza-
tion of the concept of education, which is not, as it was actually the case with Humboldt or
to a certain extent even with Goethe, the supreme and highest, but which itself only has its
place in the question of a proper institution of society. But the fact that this educational ideal
is simply liquidated by the absolutized principle of reality prevents precisely the social
practice, the social change, on which it would depend. (Paffrath 1992, p. 139; my
translation)29
This quotation indicates a fine distinction that Adorno makes between two similar,
but nevertheless distinct theoretical gestures. The first is fetishization of Bildung,
which consists in illegitimately abstracting an element – here education – from the
rest of society; the other, which Adorno here calls “absolutization”, elsewhere “neu-
tralization” or “mythologization” of the current organization of society, shows how
pedagogues operate by means of a metaphysical language.
A second, surprising element of truth that Adorno sees in these pedagogies is that
they somehow advocate the democratization of educational discourse. But they do
so in the problematical nationalist and demagogical form of Volksbildung. They do
this in opposition to Humboldt’s particularly elitist concept of the
28
For those who like to compare and put Heidegger and Adorno closer together than I think is
reasonable (even if we do not take Adorno’s own condemnation of German existentialism too seri-
ously), or who like to see Adorno entirely as an old bourgeois professor (which he also was), this
would, to the contrary, strengthen their view that his theory is not so revolutionary as it seems. I
would suggest seeing a fruitful and thought-provoking tension here in Adorno’s discourse, that
must be taken, as already stated, as a Kraftsfeld.
29
“[Sie haben] einem neutralisierten Bildungsbegriff [kritisiert], der die Bildung zum Selbstzweck
macht, die Bildung verabsolutiert, ohne daß sie irgendwelche praktische Konsequenz hätte, vor
allem irgendwelche Konsequenzen für gesellschaftlich-politische Praxis. Ich würde sagen, das
Moment an dieser Ideologie der Unbildung, das auch zu ehren und zu retten wäre, ist, daß sie
gegen die Fetischisierung des Bildungsbegriffs aufbegehrt, der ja nicht, wie es bei Humboldt also
tatsächlich der Fall war oder bis zu einem gewissen Grad sogar bei Goethe der Fall war, das
Oberste und Höchste ist, sondern der selbst nur seinen Stellenwert hat in der Frage nach einer
richtigen Einrichtung der Gesellschaft. Aber, daß nun dieses Bildungsideal einfach liquidiert wird
durch das verabsolutierte Realitätsprinzip, das verhindert gerade die gesellschaftliche Praxis, die
gesellschaftliche Veränderung, auf die es ankäme.”
educated personality. However, the pedagogues’ critique of personality is not only

questionable in terms of its motivations but is also contradictory because it leads to
an antidemocratic cult of strong leading figures. Adorno sees here the consequences
of a collectivist anti-individualism that goes hand in hand with the authoritarian ide-
als of adaptation, of “sich fügen” (to fit in) and “mitmachen” (participation, confor-
mity) which have no justification other than the simple acceptance of what is given.
All this leads Adorno to defend the unloved and misinterpreted Wilhelm von
Humboldt against those who blame him for all the ills of education in Germany. The
overly individualistic and subjectivist moment in Humboldt’s pedagogy is certainly
among its problematic aspects. However, if one understands Humboldt correctly, so
Adorno, one finds in his works – just as in Hegel’s – a strong emphasis upon the
dialectic between the subject (the individual, Einzelne) and the object (the world,
Wirklichkeit), a dialectic embodied in a concept we already mentioned, namely
Entäusserung (externalization/alienation). Adorno and Becker agree against simpli-
fying criticisms that reduce Humboldt to an idealist individualism because the
whole point of Entäusserung is that the individual subject develops their unique self
in a dynamic relationship with objectivity and society. For Adorno even more than
for Humboldt, however, this means that while developing themselves, the subject
also questions the justifications of the status quo, thus calling for social transforma-
tion of reality. Indeed, contrary to Humboldt, Adorno gives to reality, on which the
development of the individual depends, the sense of a historical social totality,
rather than an ahistorical world of ideas or culture detached from the material, eco-
nomic, and political production and reproduction of society.
There are traces of this critical reappraisal of Critical Theory’s relationship to
Humboldt as early as in Adorno’s sketches for Horkheimer’s opening lecture
given to their students in Frankfurt in 1952 (Horkheimer 1985 [1952]), wherein
Adorno writes about the duty of the singular individual to find a relationship to
society that allows them to both develop as a unique being and work “for the
whole” of society, instead of dispensing with it by fleeing into preserved domains
(Paffrath 1992, pp. 144–145). Society and the individual have a dialectical relation-
ship, even if in the end, for Adorno, society (whose only suffering constituents are
individuals) should be there for the individual more than the reverse. As we see in
1966, his defense and salvage of Humboldtian pedagogical ideals and ideas is fully
fleshed out and empowered by its situation within the broader scope of the philo-
sophical and political war against the Jargon der Eigentlichkeit.
5 1968 – Education and “Evaluation”: A Missing Piece

in Adorno’s Theory of Bildung
Adorno’s last unpublished interview with Becker dates from 1968 and deals with
Leistung. Before Adorno’s unexpected death, they would talk two more times, once
in the same year, about “Erziehung zur Entbarbarisierung” (Adorno and Becker
1971, pp. 120–132), and once in the summer of 1969, about “Erziehung zur
184 A. Peyrical
Mündigkeit” (Adorno and Becker, 1971, pp. 133–147). Leistung is a polysemous

term. It can be translated in the context of pedagogy as “evaluation” or “grading,”
but can also mean more broadly “performance,” “productivity,” and even sometimes
“merit.” The verb leisten means both to succeed, to get a good grade, and to produce
a certain expected effect. Despite our joint efforts with Michael Schwarz, it has not
yet been possible to find either a recording or a transcript of this last dialogue. I am
therefore sketching here what I think can be said on the basis of Adorno’s prepara-
tory notes, which have come down to us.
Three important elements that Adorno intended to develop in the discussion war-
rant mention. First is a direct critique of Leistung, addressed to the standardization
practices of evaluations in schools. Then there is a less developed, but equally
essential critique of a possible archaizing critique of these evaluations. Finally, it is
worth noting that Adorno outlines concrete proposals to guide the practice of teach-
ing toward overcoming, in the form of a negative dialectic, the antinomy between
the romantic and the scientistic relationships to knowledge.
Adorno formulates a sharp criticism of Leistung. His provocative thesis is that
the principle of school evaluation itself is barbaric. This thesis goes against the view
that school grading is a way of making the immeasurable commensurable, thus
helping students to know what they successfully learned and what they did not. This
does not mean that for the critical theorist students do not have to learn content; on
the contrary, they need to have not only superficially learned it, but must also be able
to reflect on it. To help them do so and to see if that has been the case, they must be
asked in a way that awakens their dialectical skills. Adorno takes the opposite view
of a low-cost meritocratic idea and suggests that the principle of such superficial
grading (the idea of which he does not completely oppose) is not so much a prag-
matic solution used to evaluate academic skills as an avatar of social constraint to
adapt younger generations to existing society. He sees education through grading as
a preamble to the social requirement to perform one function, and one function only.
Ultimately, it is a byproduct of the capitalist logic of exchange of equivalents:
“Behind the evaluation principle is that people are worth only as much as what they
are worth to others, their intrinsic nature is liquidated” (TWAA_Ge_215/1).30
Is Adorno exaggerating in formulating this shortcut? Even if he is, this exaggera-
tion shows something of the truth. Today, the importance of grades and the compari-
son of students on the basis of academic performance remain prevalent. It is also
difficult to deny that the principle of a universal exchange of equivalents structures
society, perhaps even more viciously than in the 1960s, because it is coupled with a
paradoxical and unilateral injunction toward individuals to be always more “origi-
nal,” to develop one’s so-called singularity (Reckwitz 2021). Here, as elsewhere,
Adorno deploys a dialectic of school and society: it would be illusory to believe that
transforming school (for example, reflecting with the students on how school is
organized, avoiding certain types of exams, etc.) would be sufficient to transform
“Hinter dem Leistungsprinzip steckt, daß die Menschen nur so viel wert sind wie das, was sie für
30
anderes wert sind, ihr An sich wird liquidiert” TWAA_Ge_215/1.

society; nevertheless, social transformation also requires reflection on schooling

and transformations in educational practices. As stated previously, Adorno’s cri-
tique is dialectical and negative according to the anti-absolutist “neither/nor”
dichotomy. Hence, we find under Adorno’s pen, although it perhaps occupies a
lesser place in his preparatory notes than the critique of grading, the outline of
another, parallel critique that could be characterized as “anti-anti-positivist.” This
critique points out the limits of a potential archaizing and anti-modern reaction to
the omnipresence of standardized evaluation:
Question of the Darmstadt Talk:31 Is man measurable? Wrongly asked, should be: What is
measurable about him?; otherwise reactionary, an archaic image of the whole man against
the fragmented one. But at the same time reflect the consequence of the evaluation princi-
ple. (TWAA_Ge_215/1)32
Adorno intends to criticize both the positivist drift of enlightenment and a one-sided
reaction to it: a non-dialectical attitude of anti-enlightenment. For Adorno, it is
therefore not a question of attacking reason because it is driven to measure, but of
calling into question its inflated idea of itself and hence the idea that standardized
measuring tools are the only ones valid for evaluating students’ abilities. In my
view, such a passage undeniably prohibits both tendentiously romantic and post-
modern readings of Adorno.
This double critique leads to Adorno’s almost pragmatic advice regarding the
modes of school testing. First, he proposes a distinction between subjects of knowl-
edge. In his opinion, it is right to evaluate certain subjects, such as mathematics, by
means of standard exercises and questionnaires. On the other hand, for subjects that
involve to some extend linguistic expression, what Adorno calls the continuity of
thought can only be taught and a fortiori assessed by tests that allow the individual
to make an experience (Erfahrung) and engage in an autonomous relationship both
to the teachers and to the subject:
Absolutely abolish the inhumanity of judging people’s future according to the abstract prin-
ciple of evaluation. Academic model for it: Examinations never as queries. The so-called
positive knowledge, which is always needed, shows itself in a conversation that is meant for
objective reflection. (TWAA_Ge_215/4; Adorno 1998, pp. 26–27)33
31
The Darmstädter Gespräche took place on March 23–24, 1958. Adorno did not present a paper
on this occasion (he took part in 1950, 1953, and 1955. He is referring here to the main question/
theme of the 1958 edition.
32
“Frage des Darmstädter Gesprächs: Ist der Mensch meßbar? Falsche gestellt, müßte sein: Was
ist an ihm meßbar?; sonst reaktionär, ein archaisches Bild des ganzen Menschen gegen den zer-
stückten. Wohl aber die Konsequenz des Leistungsprinzip zu reflektieren” (TWAA_Ge_215/1).
33
“Unbedingt die Inhumanität abschaffen, über die Zukunft von Menschen nach dem abstrakten
Leistungsprinzip zu urteilen. Akademisches Vorbild dafür: Prüfungen nie als Abfragen. Die soge-
nannten positiven Kenntnisse, deren es immer bedarf, zeigen sich von selbst in einem Gespräch,
das der sachlichen Reflexion gilt.”
186 A. Peyrical
The deconstruction of the principle of performance is transposed in the framework

of education into a negative yet pragmatic imperative: never evaluate the knowledge
and skills of students in the form of a yes-or-no interrogation. The implicit, and
maybe more ‘positive’ imperative here seems to be: teach them how to mobilize
“positive” knowledge, i.e., the contents of a subject (in history, the dates; in philoso-
phy, the elements of doctrine; in Latin, the declensions; in German, the vocabulary;
etc.) by constructing an argumentative reflection on a question or a theme.
6 Conclusion
This short presentation of the unpublished radio talks between Adorno and Becker
has allowed us to highlight not only a set of Adornian themes and theses about edu-
cation, but also to defend the negatively dialectical and critical method he deploys
to present and explore them. Adorno is inspired by and yet amending Kantism,
Hegelianism, and Marxism alike: he is, I would argue, doing exactly what he
preaches elsewhere, namely composing their confrontations. I would like to suggest
that one could speak of Adorno’s method of philosophical social criticism (or phi-
losophy as a critical social practice) as a non-standard logic of the negatively dialec-
tical corrective. Adorno’s negative dialectics of education aims to identify shortcuts
in all educational doctrines and practices, but also to stress and defend their truth
content in all of them. While doing so, the philosopher produces speculative con-
stellations whose regulative idea is a truly human society – without hypostasizing
any definition of what “human” means. Adorno develops his thoughts with and
within the real complex empirical social context of education, rather than by arbi-
trarily isolating single terms and by asking, for example, what is a student qua stu-
dent or what is learning per se. Theory understood as critical theory is conceived of
as theoretically yet critically interpreting, for the sake of practice, social and indi-
vidual discomforts and dissatisfactions towards education and culture.
This critical approach leads, however, neither to despair nor to relativism. Adorno
never gives up on the idea of an objectively right society and education within/for it.
Not only does he develop a determined criticism of past and contemporary Bildung
alike, he also, from this criticism, formulates the negatively regulative idea of
Mündigkeit (in relation to, but also in opposition with, Kant’s own concept). This is
where, however, his negativistic logic (centered on evils, in the plural, i.e., neither
on the singular good, which is but an abstraction, nor on goods that are, in his opin-
ion, not objective enough) shows itself to surprisingly mobilize not only immanent
critique but also a transcendent horizon. An occasionally overlooked tension within
Adorno’s work is the fact that his negativity is suffused with quasi-theological hope –
hope that humans possesses a potential to go beyond actual circumstances.
Regarding education, as with all other social aspects of human life, philosophers
have one task: to suggest that “a point of view of redemption” (vom Standpunkt der
Erlösung) (Adorno 1970–2020, vol. 4: p. 281) deserves to be not believed, but
thought. The ideas that pain must pass, that the capacity for critical reflection is
realized in effective discernment, that individuals and societies have certain poten-
tials, etc., are part of Adorno’s negative dialectics but are not strictly negative in
content. This, in my opinion, does not delegitimize Adornian negativism, but makes
it consequential as an anti-foundationalist and anti-absolutist negativism – even
negativity should not be hypostasized. To show how these two dimensions, negative
and positive, are articulated against the background of a refusal of the absolute, a
refusal which is itself not absolutized, would go far beyond the scope of this article.
Leaving these questions open, I would simply like to make the Adornian practice of
philosophy and the open and ambiguous dilemmas of education outlined here reso-
nate with the words of an existentialist philosopher Adorno would have liked prob-
ably better than Sartre – but whom he apparently never read – namely Simone de
Beauvoir, when she criticizes Hegel’s dialectics in The Ethics of Ambiguity:
In order for the return to the positive to be genuine it must involve negativity, it must not
conceal the antinomies between means and end, present and future; they must be lived in a
permanent tension. (De Beauvoir 1962, p. 133)
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Aurelia Peyrical studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris) and at Sorbonne University
where she passed the “agrégation de philosophie” in 2015. She is currently writing her PhD at
Paris-Nanterre University with Pr. Emmanuel Renault on “Critique and Utopia of “Personality”:
the Negative Dialectics of Individual and Society in T. W. Adorno’s social philosophy”. She is also
studying in Clinical Integrative Psychology and Psychotherapy at the University of Paris 8 (IED).
Part VII
Friedrich Pollock Archive
Symbiosis and Dispersion: The Friedrich
Pollock Papers
Philipp Lenhard
Friedrich Pollock had an unusual friendship with Max Horkheimer (Lenhard

2019a). From the moment the two first signed a friendship agreement as teenagers,
they were inseparable. They remained so until Pollock’s death in 1970. The two
associated friendship as a social form with utopian ideas of a better life and even
believed that they could anticipate the true life in the false, to some extent
(Wiggershaus 2009, pp. 228–239; Emery 2015).
Within the friendship, however, the two adopted different roles. While Pollock
was concerned with securing the material foundations of a life in friendship,
Horkheimer was more committed to working out its philosophical principles. When
Pollock occasionally referred to himself as the “foreign minister,” he meant the
safeguarding of friendship against the outside world. The “minister of the interior”
then, in this sense, was Horkheimer, insofar as he thought through and reflected on
the values that were to be essential to friendship: truth, loyalty, and courage.
With regard to the Institute for Social Research (IfS), this basic scheme was
adopted, although Horkheimer was undoubtedly the public representative of the
institute. Pollock took on the role of an organizer and administrator, while
Horkheimer was responsible for the basic orientation of the institute’s philosophical
program. Fundamentally, however, the utopian model of symbiotic friendship was
based on this principle: the interior (friendship) always precedes the exterior (insti-
tute; outside world).
P. Lenhard (*)
University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

Switzerland AG 2023
194 P. Lenhard
1 The Pollock Papers in Frankfurt
This structure of a common political and philosophical life is also reflected in the
archival legacy of the friends. Over decades, Pollock very carefully collected and
arranged letters and manuscripts, travel documents and notes, photographs, and
official documents. Although many documents were lost in the turmoil of war and
emigration – we do not know exactly how many – overall the estate is rich and very
large. When the University Library received all documents in 1974, it contained
over 250,000 pages of archival documents, approximately 1000 newspaper clip-
pings, about 800 photographs and 120 audiovisual media. In addition to this,
Horkheimer’s personal library contains almost 16,000 volumes (Leusch 2014). The
biggest gap with regard to sources covers the years of his childhood and youth, but
even for this period, several valuable letters and photos are preserved.
The greatest peculiarity of the Pollock estate is therefore that it was originally
part of the Horkheimer estate. The editors of Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften
(Complete Writings) note:
After Max Horkheimer’s death, the scientific estate passed by testamentary disposition to
the City and University Library of Frankfurt am Main. The estate includes Horkheimer’s
private and research library, the surviving correspondence, manuscripts, and other materi-
als, as well as the library, correspondence, manuscripts, and materials of his longtime
friend and collaborator, Friedrich Pollock. (Schmid Noerr and Schmidt 1996, p. 228; my
emphasis and translation)
In 1966, Horkheimer had already donated his estate to the city of Frankfurt.1 When
Horkheimer died in 1973, his last assistant, Alfred Schmidt, became the literary
executor of the estate. This is legally problematic in that it actually only applies to
Horkheimer’s papers, not to Pollock’s, which must be considered an orphan work
(see below) in the legal sense. In any case, the legal representative of the Horkheimer
Foundation gave the estate to the Frankfurt City and University Library, where it
was organized and processed first by the retired librarian Heinz Friesenhahn and
then by Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr and their staff with funding
from the German Research Foundation. In doing so, they were able to fall back on
the order that Pollock had already created. Since their storage at Horkheimer’s vari-
ous places of work and residence (New York, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Montagnola),
the archival records “had been mainly filed in folders, and in some cases also in
binders. During the indexing process, the folders created by Horkheimer himself or
his secretaries were preserved as far as possible” (Schmid Noerr and Schmidt 1996,
p. 229). Many documents show traces of handwritten categorizations and classifica-
tions made by Pollock. Thus, it can be assumed that he was responsible for the basic
arrangement of the materials. In this respect, it is only logical that Pollock’s estate
was given the library signature MHA XXIV: Max Horkheimer Archive, Section
XXIV. In the finding aid of the MHA, this signature is assigned the heading
1
See the article by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr in this volume.
Symbiosis and Dispersion: The Friedrich Pollock Papers 195
“Manuscripts and Materials of Friedrich Pollock.” It consists of four subcategories

(Schmid Noerr and Schmidt 1996, p. 234):
A. Publications, notes, excerpts, materials
B. Personalia
C. Offprints and periodicals
D. Audio tapes
However, it would be wrong to assume that the signature MHA XXIV contains the
entire Pollock Papers. Horkheimer’s and Pollock’s lives and work were so inter-
twined that documents from Pollock’s papers can also be found in other sections,
particularly but not exclusively in the preserved institute correspondence.
Consistently, the 19-volume Collected Writings of Horkheimer, which Schmidt and
Schmid Noerr edited in the 1980s and 1990s on the basis of the MHA order, also
contain numerous letters by Pollock (Horkheimer 1995, 1996a). In addition, there
are minutes of discussions (Horkheimer 1996b) and, most importantly, the so-called
Späne – aphorisms that Pollock recorded on the basis of conversations with
Horkheimer (Horkheimer 1988, pp. 172–541). They must be attributed to Pollock
as coauthor. A couple of years ago, the system was converted under the head of the
Archive Center, Mathias Jehn, and his colleague Oliver Kleppel. The old MHA
signatures are still used by many researchers but have been replaced officially by the
signature “Na,” an abbreviation for Nachlass (estate). Horkheimer was given the
signature Na 1 and Pollock Na 2 (Marcuse Na 3, Löwenthal Na 4, etc.).
In 2014, large parts of the Horkheimer Papers (including those of Pollock) were
fully digitized. Parts of it were made available to the public and can be easily
accessed online, externally. Unfortunately, this does not include those of the Pollock
Papers (MHA XXIV). Other parts of the corpus are only accessible from computers
in the library’s reading room. Digitization has the advantage that search tools can
also be used, as Mathias Jehn explains:
You have the option of doing so-called cloud searches, i.e., accessing keywords that are
used very frequently, and then compiling certain terms – such as entering “American Jewish
[Committee]”, for example – and then you are presented with the selection of pieces that are
included in this title. What’s also a very nice tool is that we have attached to each index
term – the classic index, namely person index, place index and subject index – that you also
have a redirect there to other search portals like Wikipedia for example, where you can then
get the essential information from others in addition to these search portals, that’s a very
networked software. (Leusch 2014)
However, the search function should be used with caution, as it is only partially reli-
able in practice. Of excellent help, on the other hand, is the detailed information
assigned to the digital copies. For example, the record Na 1, 1, 1-205 (old library
signature: MHA I, 1, 1-205) contains correspondence from the years 1935–1955.
Numerous headwords and keywords are then assigned. Even more relevant is the
detailed table of contents (see Fig. 1). There is also a link to the Arcinsys database,
where the complete digital finding aids are accessible.
Overall, then, Pollock’s estate is very accessible. In addition to the digital option,
the original documents can also be ordered to the reading room of the Archive Center.
It is forbidden to take pictures, but copies can be made upon request for a small fee.
196 P. Lenhard
Fig. 1 The digitized Horkheimer papers on the website of the University Library, Frankfurt am Main
2 The Fondo Pollock in Florence
For a long time, most scholars were unaware that there is a second Pollock estate,
which mainly preserves documents from the post-war period, as well as some older
archival material.2 The Fondo Friedrich Pollock in the library of the Department of
Philosophy at the University of Florence contains the material which the estate
trustee of Pollock’s second wife, Carlota, passed on to the philosopher Furio Cerutti
in 1983. The collection consists of three parts: (1) Pollock’s library, (2) Friedrich
Pollock’s private archive, and (3) the writings of Carlota Pollock.3 In addition to
many first editions of writings by members of the Institute for Social Research,
often personally dedicated to Pollock, the collection also includes a copy of the
mimeographed volume In Memoriam Walter Benjamin, published by the institute in
1942. Unfortunately, the library contains only a part of the original collection
because the trustee of the estate has auctioned off most of the valuable volumes.
The private archive consists of different sections created by Cerutti and his col-
laborator, Carlo Campani, on the basis of Pollock’s own categorization:
2.1. Writings and letters of Friedrich Pollock, as well as newspaper clippings and
other material concerning his life and work
2
The first to work with these materials was Cerutti’s research assistant at the time, Carlo Campani
(Campani 1992). Unfortunately, the book is only available in Italian and has therefore been largely
ignored in German- and English-language research. The Fondo Pollock was used again by (Emery
2015) and (Lenhard 2019a).
3
See the finding aid of the Fondo Friedrich Pollock, University of Florence, p. III.
2.2. Documents and writings concerning the Institute for Social Research and
its staff
2.3. Administrative material of GEFUSO (Gesellschaft für Sozialforschung e.V),
HEWEFO (Hermann Weil Memorial Foundation), SAFICO (Sociedad
Anónima Financiera y Comercial) and the IfS
2.4. Photographs and postcards
Certainly, among the most exciting documents of the second section is an exchange
of letters with Theodor Adorno, including Adorno’s last known (at the time of writ-
ing) postcard (see Fig. 2) before his death (Lenhard 2019b, pp. 567–570). In addi-
tion, the materials include Pollock’s private notes on his impressions of his first trip
to Europe after 1945, which included an extended stay in Frankfurt. Also among the
materials is an original manuscript of the Späne. The third section contains photo
albums and some of Carlota’s writings, including a diary.
The Pollock Papers are readily available by appointment and can be viewed in
the reading room.
Fig. 2 Theodor W. Adorno’s last postcard to Friedrich Pollock. “Su concessione dell’Università
degli Studi di Firenze, Biblioteca Umanistica.” With permission from the Theodor W. Adorno
Archive, Berlin
198 P. Lenhard
3 Other Archives
It can certainly be said that the holdings in Frankfurt and Florence form the core of
the Pollock estate. However, the life of an emigrant who lived between continents
also corresponds to a dispersion of his legacy. In various archives in the places
where he lived or worked (Freiburg; Stuttgart; Frankfurt; Rotterdam; Amsterdam;
Moscow; Geneva; Paris; London; New York; Washington, DC; Los Angeles;
Buenos Aires; and Montagnola, to name just a few), there are countless other letters
and documents, the extent of which is still inestimable.
In addition to his kinship ties, this is especially true of his activities as the insti-
tute’s administrative head, in which capacity he was in contact with dozens, if not
hundreds of intellectuals, politicians, artists, and administrators. Again and again,
researchers come across Pollock’s name in the most unusual places. In this respect,
it can be said that the Pollock estate is far from being fully uncovered.
4 Material Conditions
Many of Pollock’s documents are typewritten and legible. Pollock’s handwriting is

also easily decipherable and recognizable. This is not so for a considerable part of
his excerpts and notes, some of which are written entirely in Gabelsberger shorthand.
There are many drafts of texts by other members of the institute (especially
Horkheimer, Neumann, and Massing) that Pollock collaborated on, or revised and
commented on. Often, different layers of revision can be identified. Pollock’s
involvement is usually easy to determine by his very characteristic handwriting.
Many manuscripts are page-numbered or even keyworded.
5 Legal Issues of the Estate
As noted, the question of who has the rights to Pollock’s estate is not clear-cut.
Pollock had no children and his first wife, Andrée, died in 1939, followed by the
death of his second wife Carlota in 1983, so there are no direct descendants. His
brother Hans (Juan) Pollock, who fled to Buenos Aires via Amsterdam in 1941, had
adopted his wife’s daughter from her first marriage. Pollock’s niece, Liselotte
Sommer (née Stern, born in 1913), had a son, Peter Sommer, Friedrich Pollock’s
great-nephew, who studied in Switzerland in the 1960s.
The author of this article has made intensive efforts to locate family members in
Argentina and Switzerland. Unfortunately, these attempts have been unsuccessful.
In this respect, Pollock’s estate must be considered “orphaned” for the time being.
6 Further Research
With Pollock’s biography and the first volumes of his Gesammelte Schriften
(Collected Writings) (Pollock 2019–2023), a beginning has been made to further
research. In particular, the examination of Pollock’s contribution to Critical Theory
is far from complete. Much of the research ties back to Pollock’s studies on automa-
tion (Lüthje 2003, pp. 131–151; Heerich 2007, pp. 107–120). In addition to this,
many discussions revolve around the concept of state capitalism and how it relates
to the ideas of Franz Neumann, V. I. Lenin, or Rudolf Hilferding.4 Pollock’s work
on a renewal of Marxism has not yet been sufficiently appreciated. This includes his
reflections on central Marxian concepts such as “concrete labor” and “accumulation
of value,” but also more specific problems such as the so-called faux frais.
Finally, Pollock’s biography also makes it possible to revisit the question of the
significance of Jewishness for the Frankfurt School. Pollock stood for an assimi-
lated, bourgeois Judaism that had moved very far away from religious practice. Like
many others, he was made a Jew primarily through persecution. Therefore, his rela-
tionship to Judaism differs considerably from that of other institute members includ-
ing Fromm, Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, or Grossmann. This demonstrates the
importance of embracing the diversity of Jewish experience.
6.1 Transcription of the Postcard 5
Lieber Fred,
tausend Dank für die Sendung, deren heilige Frühe uns ganz besonders erfreute. Wir
sind gut installiert, leiden nur noch ein wenig unter der fast unerträglichen Hitze und einer
crowd, die damit nur allzugut sich reimt. Aber wir schalten alles ab, sogut es geht, und
beginnen uns treu zu erholen. Hoffentlich habt Ihr’s recht schön und Wald-Dunkel. Euch
allen das Herzlichste von Eurem getreuen Teddie [Alles Liebe Gretel]
References
Braunstein, Dirk. 2011. Adornos Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Campani, Carlo. 1992. Pianificazione e teoria critica: l’opera di Friedrich Pollock dal 1923 al
1943. Naples: Liguori.
Emery, Nicola. 2015. Per il non conformismo. Max Horkheimer e Friedrich Pollock:’ l’altra
Scuola di Francoforte. Rome: Castelvecchi.
4
The most important publications on this subject are (Campani 1992), (Gangl 1987), (Braunstein
2011), and (ten Brink 2015, pp. 333–340).
5
I want to thank Michael Schwarz of the Theodor W. Adorno Archive for his assistance
with the transcription.
200 P. Lenhard
Gangl, Manfred. 1987. Politische Ökonomie und Kritische Theorie. Ein Beitrag zur theoretischen
Entwicklung der Frankfurter Schule. Campus, Frankfurt am Main: Campus.
Heerich, Thomas. 2007. Autologische Spiegelung der Verwalteten Welt: Friedrich Pollock
(1894–1970). In Das Feld der Frankfurter Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften vor 1945, ed.
R. Faber and E.-M. Ziege, 107–120. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Horkheimer, Max. 1988. Späne. Notizen über Gespräche mit Max Horkheimer, in unverbindli-
cher Formulierung aufgeschrieben von Friedrich Pollock. In Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 14:
Nachgelassene Schriften 1949–1972, ed. Max Horkheimer, 172–541. Frankfurt am Main:
Fischer.
———. 1995. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 15–16. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.
———. 1996a. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols. 16–17. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.
———. 1996b. Diskussion aus einem Seminar über die Theorie der Bedürfnisse. Zu einem Referat
Friedrich Pollocks über die Möglichkeit, im kapitalistischen Staat allen Kindern ein ‘pint milk’
zu geben. In Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 19: Nachträge, Verzeichnisse und Register, ed. Max
Horkheimer, 21–27. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.
Lenhard, Philipp. 2019a. Friedrich Pollock – Die graue Eminenz der Frankfurter Schule. Berlin:
Suhrkamp.
———. 2019b. Adornos letzte Postkarte. Sinn und Form 4: 567–570.
Leusch, Peter. 2014. Horkheimer-Nachlass jetzt auch online. Interview mit Mathias Jehn.
Deutschlandfunk. https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/philosophie-horkheimer-nachlass-jetzt-
auch-online-100.html. Accessed 24 Jan 2023.
Lüthje, Boy. 2003. Fred Pollock in Silicon Valley. Automatisierung und Industriearbeit in der
vernetzten Massenproduktion. In Modelle kritischer Gesellschaftstheorie. Traditionen und
Perspektiven der Kritischen Theorie, ed. A. Demirović, 131–151. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler.
Pollock, Friedrich. 2019–2023. Gesammelte Schriften. Vols 1–3, Eds P. Lenhard and J. Gleixner.
Freiburg/Vienna: ça ira.
Schmid Noerr, G., and A. Schmidt. 1996. Übersicht über das Max-Horkheimer-Archiv. In
Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 19: Nachträge, Verzeichnisse und Register, ed. Max Horkheimer,
228–235. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.
Ten Brink, Tobias. 2015. Economic Analysis in Critical Theory: The Impact of Friedrich Pollock’s
State Capitalism Concept. Constellations. An International Journal of Critical and Democratic
Theory 22 (3): 333–340.
Wiggershaus, Rolf. 2009. Die Kompagnons Max Horkheimer und Friedrich Pollock, das Institut
für Sozialforschung und das Netzwerk der Frankfurter Schule. In Die Frankfurter Schule und
Frankfurt. Eine Rückkehr nach Deutschland, ed. M. Boll and R. Gross, 228–239. Göttingen:
Wallstein.
Philipp Lenhard is DAAD Associate Professor of History and German at the University of
California, Berkeley (US). He is the editor of Pollock’s Collected Writings and author of the biog-
raphy Friedrich Pollock – The Eminence Grise of the Frankfurt School (2019; English edition
forthcoming). Currently, Lenhard is working on a book about the history of the Institute for Social
Research, 1923–1973 (under contract with C. H. Beck, forthcoming in 2024).
Part VIII
Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal
Archive
Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse:
Analysis of the Enemy and Volumes
from the Marcuse Archive
Peter-Erwin Jansen and Inka Engel
Herbert Marcuse, born in 1898, and Leo Löwenthal, who was 2 years younger, met
for the first time in Frankfurt in 1932. Horkheimer had commissioned Löwenthal to
make contact with Herbert Marcuse through Kurt Riezler, the then rector of the
University of Frankfurt. Marcuse, who had wanted to habilitate under Martin
Heidegger in Freiburg in 1932, but was unable to do so, was looking for a new field
of academic activity. Heidegger had allowed himself to be appointed rector of
Freiburg University under the swastika of the Nazi system. This, and an exchange
of letters between Martin Heidegger and Herbert Marcuse from 1947 to 1948 led to
a final rift between the former “teacher” Heidegger and the Hegel-Marxist Marcuse.
Leo Löwenthal ensured that Marcuse, despite Adorno’s reservations, officially
joined the institute in January 1933. From Freiburg via Geneva, Marcuse then went
into exile in New York in 1934. The friendship of over 45 years between the beast
Löwenthal and the monster Marcuse is evident in their first letters, a selection of
which is now published in the volume Über Herbert den Greisen und Leo den
Weisen (On Herbert the Aged and Leo the Wise) (Jansen 2021). Figure 1 depicts
both together in mid-1970.
P.-E. Jansen (*)

Hochschule Koblenz, Koblenz, Germany
I. Engel
Universität Koblenz, Koblenz, Germany

Switzerland AG 2023
204 P.-E. Jansen and I. Engel
Fig. 1 Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal, mid-1970. (Photo: private, P.-E. J)
1 Marcuse’s Thematic Emphases in the Volumes

of His Estate
In Das Schicksal der bürgerlichen Demokratie (The Fate of Bourgeois Democracy)

(Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 1), Oskar Negt explains “Marcuse’s dialectical under-
standing of democracy” (Negt 1999, p. 12) against the background of a collapsing
US-American democracy. The deeper Marcuse scratches at the capitalist demo-
cratic surface, the clearer the veiling mechanisms of systems of domination become.
His analyses of the problem of subjectivity opened up the perspective of the solution
he addresses in Eros and Civilization (Marcuse 2015 [1955]). The approach of
breaking up the psychophysical correspondence between rulers and ruled, such as
ideological appropriation and mental exploitation (both predisposed in Freudian
drive theory), becomes the central theme of the theoretical-practical studies that
begun in 1941, which aim at an autonomy of the subject(s) in the context of a soci-
ety of free people free of domination.
Marcuse’s thinking was a penetration into microstructures that reveal the essen-
tial only after the veil of political, social, and societal structures has been lifted. The
method was generated from an idiosyncratic combination of Heidegger’s ontology
of existence, a left-wing Hegelian Marxism, Freudian drive theory, and the social
psychological analyses developed in Critical Theory (see also Marcuse 1999–2009,
vol. 3), which always excluded the oppositional side (Negt 1999).
In Kunst und Befreiung (Art and Liberation) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 2), all
essays (except “Art and Politics in the Totalitarian Age” [pp. 47–70]) are published
for the first time in German. They show the other Marcuse, a theorist who uses ide-
alistic, aesthetic, and classical values of beauty, to locate sensual liberation in
Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse: Analysis of the Enemy and Volumes… 205
recipients and artists alike. His idealistic understanding of art appears as a transcen-
dence of Schopenhauer’s aesthetic pleasure, which contains negation within itself:
“The artist lets us look at the world through his eyes” (Schopenhauer 1986,
pp. 231–232). Marcuse’s artistic gaze divorced beauty and negation from cultural
capitalism and the promise of happiness, as will be seen in his critique of Warhol’s
Pop Art sellout. He did not redefine art but positioned it within a social framework
devoid of domination: “Art refuses all stillness, it does not bow to the constraints of
politics” (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 2: p. 8). Philosophie und Psychoanalyse
(Philosophy and Psychoanalysis) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 3) comprises writings
and lectures on his interpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis and on his psychologi-
cal view of society, available for the first time in German. A detailed introductory
study on “Herbert Marcuses politische Dechiffrierung der Psychoanalyse”
(“Marcuse’s Political Deciphering of Psychoanalysis”) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol.
3: pp. 15–94) by Alfred Schmidt, connoisseur of Critical Theory, enables Marcuse
to be placed in philosophical-historical frameworks and provides insight into his
philosophy of history, which both emerges from Freud’s drive theory and is inspired
by Marx. Schmidt points to Marcuse’s concern with happiness and freedom in a
materialist – rather than transcendental – sense. It is, after all, a central aspect that
the latter, in contrast to Freud, envisages the ideal of a non-repressive culture (see
Schmidt. 2002. p. 55).
The papers collected in this volume discuss social conflicts from a philosophical
and sociopsychological perspective. For example, in “Freiheit: zu oder von”
(“Freedom: To or From”) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 3: pp. 131–146), a transcript of
a radio broadcast from 1964, Marcuse criticizes the highly developed industrial
society. It has the means to grant economic, political, and intellectual freedom, he
argues, but is incapable of realizing it. Its forms of rule organize a system in which
opposition and contradiction are included, but technical progress and growing pro-
ductivity are fatefully conditioned. In it, pluralism and democracy automatically
change from critical to consenting institutions.
The tangible liberation of the world from repression is described by Marcuse
elsewhere as the end of utopia. The central passages of the work “Jenseits des
Realitätsprinzips” (“Beyond the Reality Principle”) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 3:
pp. 147–170) and the “Politisches Vorwort” (“Political Preface”) (pp. 181–188) to
the paperback edition of Eros and Civilization (Marcuse 2015) also remain commit-
ted to this idea.
Die Studentenbewegung und ihre Folgen (The Student Movement and its
Aftermath) (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 4) seeks to demystify the myth of the 1968
movement, to adjust the supposedly absolute position of Critical Theory like
Marcuse’s apotheosis to the given, objective circumstances and to transparently
evaluate its impact on the student revolts.
For Marcuse at this time, the “liberation of consciousness and knowledge”
(Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 4: p. 16) was paramount. He denounced the United
States’s machinery of extermination in Vietnam, which did not recognize any his-
torical guilt for the mass destruction of the civilian population, which destroyed
food and nature, and which itself had no ethics or morality. Solidarity with the
Vietnamese people was directed at the occupation of defenseless people who were
supposed to survive as human beings and live their simple human existence.1
Marcuse’s advocacy for the hopeful is objectified in his legendary lecture, “das
Ende der Utopie” (“The End of Utopia”) (Marcuse 1980: pp. 3–20) at the Freie
Universität in Berlin. Marcuse’s utopian subversiveness made visible the trauma of
coming to terms with the past in post-war Germany, which seemed to be trapped in
a historical continuum. What put an abrupt end to Marcuse’s intentions and hopes
for a new utopian society in Europe and the United States were the violent excesses
of the RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion). Although he distanced himself from their coun-
terrevolution at an early stage, the militant agitations influenced the further course
of the 1968 movements. At the same time as the attacks, Angela Davis was accused
in the United States of cooperation with as well as militant support of the Black
Power movement. Marcuse demanded her immediate release; he was the keynote
speaker at the 1972 Frankfurt Solidarity Congress, organized for Angela Davis. In
1979, in his last speech, “Die Revolte der Lebenstriebe” (“The Revolt of the Life
Instincts”) as he called it (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 6: p. 162),2 he summarized the
central moments of his thinking: the bearers of the new philosophy of life are not
destructive capitalist interplays of productivity and repressiveness, nor leftist orga-
nizations or trade unions that cling to the reproduction of destructive progress, but
the fledgling forces of the women’s, student, and ecology movements that are mak-
ing the qualitative leap toward liberation. Marcuse’s hope for a qualitative change in
society is sustained by emancipatory social movements and the character of self-
organization – a revolutionary overthrow rejected out of a class consciousness.
Volume 5 is a new and expanded edition of Feindanalysen (Marcuse 1999–2009,
vol. 5), which was first published on Marcuse’s 100th birthday in 1998. These texts
were commissioned by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) between 1941 and
1947. The new German edition has been expanded to include “Staat und Individuum
im Nationalsozialismus” (“State and Individual under National Socialism”)
(pp. 140–164). This text analyzes the differences between National Socialist and
bourgeois society and the entanglements of the four main centers of power in the
Nazi system: industry, the army, the bureaucracy, and the National Socialist Party
(p. 7). Marcuse elaborated the study in an intellectual exchange with Franz
Neumann, who at the time referred him to the OSS.
Ökologie und Gesellschaftskritik (Ecology and Social Criticism) (Marcuse
1999–2009, vol. 6) is devoted to Marcuse’s works of the years 1932–1934 and
1965–1979. Marcuse’s theses on “Technology and Society” (“Kinder des
1
There are some problematic passages in the critiques of the American politics and brutal interven-
tions in Vietnam. In the “Political Preface” to his 1966 work Eros and Civilization, for example,
Marcuse related the Holocaust and the murder processes in the Vietnam War, the Auschwitz death
camp, and the massacre in My Lai. Marcuse mentions these war crimes in the same breath as the
Nazi crimes. See the shortly published article about Marcuse and the Holocaust: Jansen 2022,
pp. 62–75.
2
The speech was published under the title “Ökologie und Gesellschaftskritik” (“Ecology and
Social Criticism”) in Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 6: pp. 165–176.
Prometheus. Thesen zu Technik und Gesellschaft” [pp. 157–164]), presented at the

Frankfurt Römerberggespräche, follow on seamlessly from the work on the Third
Reich published in Volume 5. Marcuse’s dialectical investigations of technological
progress, against the background of the Third Reich as technocracy, were oriented
around the question, “to what extent has technical rationalization encompassed all
spheres of life, even moral consciousness been transformed into technology (sic.)?”
(p. 11). This last volume also shows effects of Heidegger’s Being and Time as well
as Marcuse’s attempt to work out a synthesis of phenomenological existentialism
with Hegelian Marxist dialectics and historical materialism. The intention was to
build a concrete philosophy that could explain social conflicts like the social exis-
tence of man (p. 8). Some of the texts explicitly illustrate the fruitfulness of this
concern, which in the European language area as “Existentialist Interpretation of
Marx” (p. 8) influenced Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as the
Yugoslavian Praxis philosophers. Marcuse recognized and identified the potential
of new revolutions in the humanistic detachment of revolting students and radical
emancipation and civil rights movements, all of which remained hopeful of a
New Utopia.
2 You Must Know Your Enemy: Lying Prophets

and Enemy Analysis
The social psychological study, The Authoritarian Character. Studies on Prejudice

(Adorno et al. 1950), conducted by the Institute for Social Research, is oriented
toward the manifestation of fascism that spread across Europe in the 1930s. Adorno
saw this as a petty-bourgeois mass movement and, based on this, hypothesized “that
the susceptibility to fascist propaganda is less to do with political, economic, and
social ideas, but that such opinions are to be understood as reactions to psychologi-
cal needs” (Adorno et al. 1950, pp. 10–11). As a result, the researchers involved in
the study were interested not only in uncovering authoritarian personality struc-
tures, but also in analyzing potentially fascist attitudes, which also survive under
nontotalitarian – i.e., democratic – societal conditions and can expose similar atti-
tudes again under certain changes in these societies.
What Adorno is addressing is a dynamic concept of personality structure that
changes under specific social conditions. For it is only in the constant interrelation
of social influences, biographical breaks, and group-specific orientations that indi-
vidual attitudes, opinions, attitudes, and values become established. The earlier
one’s own personality development is sealed, with images and prejudices firmly
established, the more likely one is to be steered down authoritarian paths.
Adorno writes: “The objective situation of the individual hardly comes into ques-
tion as the origin of such irrationality” (Adorno 1969, p. 12). Although a large part
of the study is occupied with the exploration of anti-Semitic stereotypes, under-
pinned by the initial findings of the Berkeley group’s anti-Semitism project, led by
Levinson and Nevitt Sanford, it is not limited to these investigations. It examined

anti-minority prejudices that “condense into ideological and characterological con-
figurations” (Adorno 1969, p. 209).
3 Die Lügenpropheten: Prophets of Deceit
Now what is needed are those political propagandists or demagogues who address
precisely these dispositions. How does this happen? What tricks do they use? What
elements of their followers’ dispositions do they encounter in real terms? Prophets
of Deceit (Löwenthal and Guterman 1949), the fifth volume in the Studies in
Prejudice series, addressed these questions (Fig. 2). The lying prophet, according to
the authors, personifies political and social grievances or social upheavals, reducing
Fig. 2 Front cover of

prophets of deceit by
Herbert Marcuse and
Norbert Guterman
them to ethnic groups. The political propagandist is not concerned with “rationally
defining the nature of said discontent. Rather, he seeks to reinforce any disorienta-
tion that exists among his audience by blurring all rational demarcations and pro-
posing spontaneous actions instead” (Löwenthal 2021, p. 26). The clearer the image
of the enemy, the more promising are these spontaneous actions. The agitator,
mantra-like, emphasizes a necessary elimination of people, but not a change in the
political structure. “The only way to deal with him [the enemy] is to exterminate
him” (Löwenthal 2021, p. 147). Personifying one’s discomfort with the prevailing
conditions thus detaches it from political criticism and rational argument, and any
thought about political and economic causes recedes completely into the back-
ground. “The charges [of the agitator] do refer to a social reality, but not in the form
of rational terms” (p. 26). The agitator knows how to use these emotional back-
grounds for his own purposes, especially in social crisis situations. He activates and
exploits individual feelings of fear, which have long been part of life in modern
capitalist societies. Löwenthal calls this human condition in contemporary exis-
tence, “the social malaise.” Anxieties caused by an insecure situation can become
hatred of the apparent perpetrators, who are supposedly to blame for this misery.
The agitator does not create the unease, but he reinforces and solidifies it, because
he blocks the way to overcoming its causes (Löwenthal 2021, p. 39). The authors
interpret that, in this context, contradictory social conditions are so consistently
reduced to individually experienced humiliation that only an authoritarian strike for
liberation can secure victory in the struggle for survival. This is what the agitator
promises, and he also knows who to target, hence why the description of the enemy
takes such a central place in political agitation.
4 Enemy Analysis
As Jews and critical intellectuals, Marcuse, Löwenthal, Adorno, Horkheimer, Franz

Neumann, and other staff members of the Institute for Social Research (founded in
Frankfurt in 1924 with the financial support of Felix Weil) were forced into exile by
the Nazis in 1933. Columbia University in New York was their first stop in the
United States. Their funds dwindling, the staff of the Institute for Social Research
in New York looked for new employment opportunities in the American profes-
sional context of the late 1930s. Horkheimer and Adorno left New York in 1940 for
Los Angeles. There they begin their collaborative work, Dialektik der Aufklärung
(Dialectic of Enlightenment) or, more precisely, work on “Elements of
Anti-Semitism.”
Disappointed that he could not stay close to Horkheimer and Adorno in California,
Marcuse went to Washington in the late 1930s, where Franz Neumann was already
working at the OSS. There Marcuse, mediated by Löwenthal, initially took a posi-
tion in the Office of War Information (OWI); he then joined the OSS a year later, in
1941. Together with Neumann, a constitutional lawyer, Marcuse wrote “Staat und
Individuum im Nationalsozialismus” (“State and Individual in National Socialism”)

(Fig. 3), which was printed in Marcuse’s volume Feindanalysen. Über die Deutschen
(Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5: pp. 140–164). The authors summarized, “National
Socialism had two things to offer: on the one hand, a new economic security and, on
the other, a new freedom of movement. [...] For the majority of the German popula-
tion, the individual freedom of the pre-fascist era was synonymous with constant
social insecurity. Since 1923 there had been no attempts to establish a truly demo-
cratic society. [...] National Socialism transformed the free into the economically
secure subject, and the dangerous ideal of freedom was replaced by the protective
Fig. 3 “State and Individual in National Socialism” by Herbert Marcuse

reality of secure existence” (p. 158). Feindanalysen brings together the texts written
by Marcuse between 1941 and 1950 in the context of his role at the OSS. The OSS
was a research community of exiled scholars, mostly from Europe, who studied
National Socialist Germany; its ideology – based on anti-Semitism, racism, and
Aryanism – its propaganda; the interconnectedness of politics, economics, the mili-
tary, and law (Neumann 1942); its rhetoric and military campaigns; and the prepara-
tion and then execution of the systematic mass murder of Jews, Sinti and Roma,
homosexuals, and members of the opposition.
In the center is the text: “Die neue deutsche Mentalität. Memorandum zu einer
Untersuchung über die psychologischen Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus und
die Möglichkeiten ihrer Zerstörung” (“The New German Mentality – Memorandum
on an Investigation into the Psychological Foundations of National Socialism”),
dated 1942. The subtitle goes on to say somewhat too optimistically “and the pos-
sibilities of its destruction” (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5, pp. 29–76). The initial
optimism for these possibilities of destruction turns realistically pessimistic very
early on in Marcuse’s work. On August 16, 1944, he wrote to Max Horkheimer: “If
we knew that with the collapse of Germany the ‘evil powers’ would be eliminated,
then it would indeed be a bright horizon that loomed before us. [...] What we can do
here (in the OSS) to get a reasonably sensible policy going, we are doing, and at
least some things seem to be penetrating the thinking and actions of the ‘some in
charge’” (Jansen 2021, p. 43).
In his dossiers, Marcuse first describes the mentality of the Germans as charac-
terized by unrestricted politicization. The National Socialists had torn down all
boundaries between private and public-political spheres in society. Any demarca-
tion between these spheres had been abolished. Education, privacy, sexuality, birth,
and family found their only meaning in the German Volksgemeinschaft (people’s
community). Along with this interweaving of the private and the political, norma-
tive justification had also disappeared, both in politics and in the actions of individu-
als; a psychological neutrality had settled over every humanistic mode of
behavior3 – so neutral that the suffering of those who did not fit into the healthy
body of the people was no longer perceived with empathy.
The Germans are at present proving themselves by entirely different values and standards,
and they speak a language which is fundamentally different from the expressions of Western
civilization as well as from those of the former German culture. In order to launch an effec-
tive psychological and ideological offensive against National Socialism, we must study the
new mentality and the new language in depth. (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5: p. 42)4
3
The Frankfurt philosopher and theorist of transcendental pragmatics Karl-Otto Apel, referring to
the Nazi era, called this the “destruction of moral self-consciousness.” Apel 1988, p. 91.
4
This is precisely what Marcuse, Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer in the OSS, and Leo
Löwenthal in the OWI were doing. Inspired by the publication of the Feindanalysen, the more
extensive and detailed publications by Tim B. Müller (2010) and Raffaele Laudani (Marcuse et al.
2013) examine further memoranda and texts of the Frankfurters in the OSS. These new documents
are in the OSS Records of the National Archives in the United States.
Furthermore, Marcuse attests to the Germans’ unrestricted disillusionment. The

propagandist barrage, as analyzed by Löwenthal and Guterman in 1950, would have
led them to distrust any normative justification of politics, hence, for Marcuse, their
cynical objectivity. The omnipresent terror of the Nazi regime, he argues, fostered
in people an attitude in which technical-rational standards such as speed, skill,
energy, organization, power, and efficiency exclusively were valid.
Marcuse identifies as an irrational rationality the actions of the National Socialist
system, which were necessary for technical success and logical in themselves and
which were intended to be efficient and effective, but which led to the genocidal
anti-Semitism of the Final Solution. “A rationality that measures everything by cri-
teria of efficiency, success, and usefulness” (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5: p. 32)
follows only one pragmatic path: to use all means successfully. Ultimately, Marcuse
capitulated to the refusal of American policy to adopt the denazification recommen-
dations. He left the OSS, which was then replaced by the CIA on September 18,
1947, with the passing of the Central Intelligence Act.
5 Individual and Terror
Marcuse’s friend Leo Löwenthal interviewed survivors of the concentration camps

as an American observer at this time. In 1946, fresh from this experience, he wrote
his article “Individual and Terror,”5 which can be understood in large parts against
the background of the anti-Semitism studies and Marcuse’s analyses from the sec-
ond half of the 1940s. As the gruesome details of the Nazi killing machine became
apparent, the world saw that Nazi terror had indeed objectified human beings –
people had become commodities, consumer goods. From the accounts of the survi-
vors Löwenthal interviewed on behalf of the OWI, he learned that unique individuals
had been degraded to anonymous numbers that then disappeared into the machinery
of extermination as “useful” and “useless” commodities. In his harrowing text,
Löwenthal writes, “those who were not given a number were rejects and were
destroyed” (Löwenthal 1982a, p. 168). In 1949, Löwenthal, in his new position at
the Voice of America, traveled to a ruined Europe for the first time after World War
II, where he visited the Dachau concentration camp (Dubiel and Löwenthal 1980,
pp. 134–141). With other State Department employees, he viewed the memorial
built near the camp’s former crematorium by Polish survivors, on the occasion of
the first Dachau trials in November 1945. While Löwenthal walked “completely
distraught” along the groups of ashes that had been turned into graves next to the
so-called new crematorium, one of his colleagues wanted to capture the scene on
camera. For Löwenthal, this crossed a line: “The thought that I, a Jew who had
5
Löwenthal 1946: pp. 1–8; see also Löwenthal 1982a: pp. 161–174.
survived without any merit, was standing in front of the tomb in Dachau and had my
picture taken for fun, so to speak, was more than I could bear.”6
Nazi propaganda planted the idea of a global Jewish conspiracy, of internal ene-
mies growing within the healthy German body of the people, and discredited prin-
ciples such as social justice, equality of opportunity, the right to vote, equality
before the law, guarantees of a fair legal process, freedom of the press, and thus
ideas of a democratically constituted society, such as had been found, to some
extent, in the Weimar Constitution. The propagandized threat of internal and exter-
nal enemies was the weld between what the Nazis offered the masses, both materi-
ally and psychologically, and the democratic deficits of the Weimar Constitution. In
Hitler’s words: “Today we very often talk about democratic ideals; that is, not in
Germany, but in the other world. When the rest of the world praises this ideal again
today, we can only reply that the German people had the opportunity to get to know
this ideal in its purest form for at least 15 years, and we ourselves have only inher-
ited this democracy” (Hitler 1940).
In democratic societies, many circumstances favor the emergence of a new terror
system: the social and economic void that tears apart masses of workers who no
longer see meaning in the standardized process of production and creation, the blind
faith in political ideologies that provide a binary and intellectually comfortable view
of the world, and the breakdown of the moral and individualistic principles of lib-
eral society in the face of mass crimes that cause helpless citizens to feel a heavy
sense of powerlessness and frustration. Some central aspects of Individual and
Terror, which can also in part be found in the analyses of Prophets of Deceit, make
it clear how terror systems succeed in amassing an aggressive following behind
them and establish a willingness to use violence against those who dissent or, from
the propaganda applied as described by Löwenthal and Guterman, who can never be
included in the society these followers envision. The Jew was emblematic of the
stranger who disturbs the apparently “normal” and seemingly “natural” rhythm of
life. The follower subordinates his individuality to the agitator’s mass project to cre-
ate a “pure” society. Personality and morality are destroyed, both in the victims and
in the perpetrators. The latter no longer feel guilt or remorse after having automati-
cally carried out barbaric acts. The constant struggle for survival is enforced by a
repressive system that reduces human beings to a collection of primary instincts.
The exit of humanity from world history, which, in Hitler’s words, becomes once
again a “pure and noble natural material” to be exploited and discarded by a “vio-
lent, domineering, fearless, cruel youth” that knows “neither weakness nor
tenderness.”
For Marcuse, the achievement of the National Socialists consisted precisely in
interlocking ideology and social reality in such a way that a kind of sober opportun-
ism solidified as an attitude in people’s behavior, borne by an apparently individual,
material self-interest and an irrational rationality that shaped society, but was veiled
and solidified in people’s minds as a mythology that brought salvation.
6
Dubiel and Löwenthal 1980, p. 139; p. 168. See also: Krüger 2022, pp. 52–62.
The extreme objectivity with which the Germans exchanged democratic freedoms for eco-
nomic security was not opposed by National Socialist mythology, but encouraged.
Paradoxically, it is the education in cynical objectivity that constitutes the spirit of the
mythology. In its leading concepts it replaces social relations with “natural” ones, appar-
ently more concrete and vivid. People and race are declared to be “facts”, for birth
determined by origin and place is a fact to which class and humanity are apparently only
abstract ideas. (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5: p. 42)
Herbert Marcuse, even in the midst of the catastrophe of 1940, never abandoned his
dreamy optimism. Written during those very dark times in “Is a Free Society
Currently Possible?” (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol 5: pp. 165–169), the article con-
cludes with the following, slightly optimistic quote, which can be seen as his politi-
cal imperative: to think emancipation.
Are these [...] not merely subjective value judgments? They are based on an assumption that
will never be proved, namely that people should be free. This “should”, though measured
by positivist criteria, is not a scientific assertion, but it is the presupposition of all thought
and the condition of science itself. (p. 169)
References
Adorno, Theodor W., E. Frenkel-Brunswick, D. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford. 1950. The
Authoritarian Personality (Studies in Prejudice). New York: Harper & Brothers.
Adorno, Theodor W. 1969. Der autoritäre Charakter. Studien über Autorität und Vorurteil. Vol. 2.
Amsterdam: De Munter.
Apel, Karl Otto, 1988. Zurück zur Neutralität? Oder können wir aus der nationalen Katastrophe
etwas Besonderes gelernt haben? Das Problem des (welt-) geschichtlichen Übergangs zur post-
konventionellen Moral in spezifisch deutscher Sicht. In Forum für Philosopphie (Ed.), 1988.
Zerstörung des moralischen Selbstbewußtseins: Chance oder Gefährdung, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp.
Hitler, Adolf. 1940. Speech at the Sportpalaste (1940, January 30th). Berlin. https://en.wikisource.
org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_Speech_at_the_Berlin_Sportpalast_(30_January_1940)
Jansen, Peter-Erwin. 2021. Über Herbert den Greisen und Leo den Weisen, Aufsätze. Springe: zu
Klampen.
———. 2022. Weises Schweigen? Stummes Schweigen? Herbert Marcuse und der Holocaust. In
Münchner Beiträge zur Jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur. 2022/2, 62–75.
Krüger, Maja. 2022. “...vor dem Grabmal in Dachau” Leo Löwenthals erster Besuch in der
Bundesrepublik. In Münchner Beiträge zur Jüdischen Geschichte und Kultur. 2022/2, 52–62.
Dubiel, Helmut, and Leo Löwenthal. 1980. Mitmachen wollte ich nie: ein autobiographisches
Gespräch mit Helmut Dubiel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Löwenthal, Leo. 1946. Terror’s Atomization of Man. Commentary, A Jewish Review 1 (1945/46),
Heft 2, 1–8.
———. 1982a. Individuum und Terror. In Zur politischen Psychologie des Autoritarismus,
Schriften 3, 161–174. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 1982b. Individuum und Terror, Merkur, n° 403, pp. 25-35.
———. 2021. Falsche Propheten: Studien zur faschistischen Agitation. Trans. Susanne Hoppmann-
Löwenthal. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Löwenthal, Leo, and Norbert Guterman. 1949. Prophets of Deceit. Studies in Prejudice. Vol. 5.
New York: Harper & Brothers.
Marcuse, Herbert. 2015 [1955]. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud.
London/New York: Routledge
———. 1980. Das Ende der Utopie. Vorträge und Diskussionen in Berlin 1967. Frankfurt am
Main: Neue Kritik.
———. 1999–2009. Nachgelassene Schriften. Vols. 1–6. Ed. P.-E. Jansen. Lüneburg: zu Klampen.
Marcuse, Herbert, Franz Neumann, and Otto Kirchheimer. 2013. Secret Reports on Nazi Germany:
The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort. Ed. Raffaele Laudani. Foreword by
Raymond Geuss. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Müller, Tim B. 2010. Krieger und Gelehrte: Herbert Marcuse und die Denksysteme im Kalten
Krieg. 1. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition.
Negt, Oskar. 1999. Einleitung. Marcuses dialektisches Verständnis von Demokratie. In H. Marcuse.
Das Schicksal der bürgerlichen Demokratie. Machgelassene Schriften, Vol. 1., Ed. P.-E. Jansen,
12–26. Springe: zu Klampen.
Neumann, Franz. 1942. Behemoth. Struktur und Praxis des Nationalsozialismus 1933-1944.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Schmidt, Alfred. 2002. Einleitende Studie. In Herbert Marcuse, Philosophie und Psychologie.
Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol. 3, 15–94. Springer/zu Klampen.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1986. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Peter-Erwin Jansen is the editor of the unpublished archive materials (6 volumes) of Herbert
Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal collected papers in Archivzentrum Frankfurt am Main. From the
Löwenthal Archive, he co-edited In steter Freundschaft. Briefwechsel 1921–1966 (zu Klampen,
2003). He is the editor of a new edition of Der eindimensionale Mensch with a new afterword (zu
Klampen, 2014) and Über Herbert den Greisen und Leo den Weisen. Aufsätze (2021). He is also a
coeditor of Transvaluation of Values and Radical Change: Five Lectures, 1966–1976 (zu Klampen
2017) and Ecology and the Critique of Society Today: Five Selected Papers for the Current Context
written by Herbert Marcuse (2019). He also studied at the Touro University Berlin / New York in
the MA program Holocaust Communication and Tolerance. Jansen is currently visiting professor
at the University of Applied Sciences in Koblenz.
Inka Engel holds a PhD. She works as a science manager at the University of Koblenz.
Publications: Die Geschichte der Lehrerausbildung in Neuwied: Eine chronologische Analyse der
Transformation des Bildungsgedankens der Lehrerausbildung (Südwestdeutscher Verlag 2016);
(with Voigt, Miriam) Auf der Suche nach neuen Kompetenzen: Quer- und SeiteneinsteigerInnen an
beruflichen Schulen. In: Bildung und Beruf. Bd. H. 5. 2021 pp. 179–184; Megatrend Konnektivität.
Eine Herausforderung, Journal für lehrerInnenbildung jlb 01. Digitalisierung (2020). She is also
coeditor of the forthcoming book about Leo Löwenthal’s unpublished papers on literature. She
finished her Master Thesis at the Touro Universtity Berlin / New York in the program “Holocaust
Communication and Tolerance”.
Archive Beyond Files: A Brief Note
on a Personal Experience in the Marcuse
Archive
Inara Luisa Marin
In this text, I will tell you about my experience with the Marcuse Archive. It may be
different from the experiences of the other authors in this volume because it is
marked by the short time I had to dwell on the archive texts: I spent only the month
of July, 2015, in the archive.
First, I want to tell you a bit about what I went looking for in Marcuse’s Archive
and why I did not find any references that answered my question. Second, I want to
summarize the work already done in the Marcuse Archive. Based on the same mate-
rial, two different collections of Marcuse’s posthumous writings, one edited in
English by Douglas Kellner and the other in German by Peter-Erwin Jansen, were
published a few years ago. Finally, in an annex, I will share the information I
received from Peter-Erwin Jansen in an interview.
Initially, I will share what happened to me, because I looked for answers in the
archive with a hypothesis in mind but found neither answers nor clues. As I am a
psychoanalyst, critical theorist, and researcher in philosophy by training, I went
looking for a relationship between Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization and the essays
“A History of the Doctrine of Social Change” (Marcuse and Neumann 1998a) and
“Theories of Social Change” (Marcuse and Neumann 1998b), jointly written with
Franz L. Neumann. I consider these two essays to be as important as Eros and
Civilization in establishing Marcuse’s diagnosis of the times. If letters and other
documents could prove a link between the book and the two essays, I hoped that this
would help me understand the almost inexplicable origins of Neumann’s Anxiety
and Politics. If my hypothesis proved true, there would be a relationship between
Marcuse and Neumann’s separate texts and their common theory of social change,
which would further clear the blockage of praxis, as described in the Dialectic of
Enlightenment.
I. L. Marin (*)
São Paulo, Brazil

Switzerland AG 2023
218 I. L. Marin
The idea was to find material that would properly explain the reasons for the
more open diagnosis present in Eros and Civilization and point to emancipatory
potentials. In addition, this would correct the recurring impression in academic
circles that Eros and Civilization contains no diagnosis of the present time, because
Marcuse’s time would prevent the recognition of such potentials present in Freudian
fantasy, especially in the relationship between the myths of Narcissus and Orpheus.
The materials I sought, and with which I hoped to demonstrate this hypothesis, were
not to be found in the available archives.
But I did receive an answer that went “beyond files.” Going to Frankfurt also
allowed me to get in touch with Michael Neumann, Franz Neumann’s son. When I
told him about my hypothetical interpretation of these texts, he told me something
that gave me the answer I was looking for, albeit in a distinctly different way than I
had expected: “Those who eat breakfast together every day don’t write letters.” It
was only then that I discovered that, at that time, Marcuse and Neumann lived in the
same house.
Second, I would like to talk a little about the differences between the English and
German published texts on Herbert Marcuse’s posthumously published letters,
archives, and speeches. The English Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse
(1998–2014) was edited by Douglas Kellner, while Marcuse’s Nachgelassene
Schriften (1999–2009), edited by Peter-Erwin Jansen, was published in German.
The differences between these two series can demonstrate how the organization of
archival material is an interesting tool for guiding further research. To understand
such distinctions, I would like to support the hypothesis that this is a result of the
intellectual profile of the editors. Kellner is a critical theorist with Marxist roots and
is more orthodox in this respect, so we could say that the relationships he seeks
among the Marcuse texts he has chosen and organized reflect the relationship
between theory and practice. What he tries to demonstrate, in the choice of the
author’s texts and in the long introductions he coauthored, is a movement in
Marcuse’s work that highlights a tension that runs through the relationship between
theory and practice. The editor never proposes such a clear separation between the-
ory and practice; on the contrary, he tries to demonstrate the impossibility of any
such thing in Marcusean thought.
Jansen, on the other hand, who can be considered a critical theorist and Marxist
but with other concerns, shows in his edition a clearer separation between theory
and practice and between philosophical texts and texts of direct political interven-
tion; this results in a different stance in the German edition. I believe that this kind
of difference expresses a very important aspect of archival research: how the editor,
or whoever is working with archival materials, has responsibility for the intellectual
legacy of the author and his image. Although the number of volumes is the same,
namely, six books of posthumous writings in each language, this is only a structural
similarity. The content of each book is very different.
The first volume of Peter-Erwin Jansen’s collection was published in 1999 and
the last in 2009. It contains six volumes of Marcuse’s posthumous writings orga-
nized by extensive archival work, distributed as follows:
Archive Beyond Files: A Brief Note on a Personal Experience in the Marcuse Archive 219
• Volume 1 focuses on the question of democracy, social movements, technology,

and values in Marcuse’s thought.
• Volume 2 is devoted to considerations of art and liberation, a topic that carries
much potential for further research in philosophy and aesthetics, especially in the
field of Critical Theory.
• In Volume 3, Prof. Jansen organizes Marcuse’s letters, texts, and interviews that
deal with the question of psychoanalysis, with emphasis on correspondence
between the author and Erich Fromm, which had not been previously explored.
• Volume 4 presents discourses and intervention texts by Marcuse on specific time
diagnoses and on protests that fizzled in the 1960s and 1970s. Interestingly, in
these texts, Marcuse opines on the geopolitical position of Cuba, the Vietnam
War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and student protest movements. This also
shows the close relationship between Marcuse and Angela Davis, evidenced by
letters exchanged in the early 1970s.
• Volume 5 presents a resumption of analysis and reflection on issues of signifi-
cance to the German people, notably the period of regression into National
Socialism culminating in the tragedies of World War II. In this volume, texts are
presented in which Marcuse delves into this theme, the individual and the state,
war, and the regression of German fascism.
• Finally, Volume 6 presents a philosophical review, in which Marcuse discusses
nineteenth- and twentieth-century German philosophy, socialist humanism, and
the relationship between science and philosophy and the thought of Karl Jaspers,
who later proved to be a fundamental author of contemporary philosophy. Due
emphasis is given to the question of negative metaphysics and the actuality of the
dialectic between Hegel and Marx, which are undoubtedly fundamental themes
for Critical Theory, especially for the first generation.
The collection in English is the result of archival research in the Marcuse Archive
conducted by Douglas Kellner from 1989, and it was published between 1998 and
2014, in six volumes:
• Volume 1 deals with issues that had great relevance for the reception and diffu-
sion of Marcusean thought, namely, technology, war, and fascism, and presents a
link between the advance of technology and war, particularly in World War II,
which was marked by fascist movements.
• Volume 2 focuses on the consolidation of Marcuse’s role as a critical theorist,
demonstrating aspects of the theory of social change, texts that on this aspect go
beyond One-Dimensional Man, including the political preface of Eros and
Civilization, as well as a sequence of letters between Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal,
Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Raya Dunayevskaya.
• Volume 3 presents a view of Marcuse’s politics and radicalism, highlighting the
critical dimensions of the author’s time diagnoses and the social movements of
the well-known New Left. In this framework, we see the interlocution between
Marcuse and Angela Davis and the issues of critique of capitalism via ecology
and feminism, which have come to guide much of the discussion in Critical
Theory and political theory to this day.
220 I. L. Marin
• Volume 4 deals with aesthetic issues in Marcuse’s work, from the 1937 essay
“The Affirmative Character of Culture” (Marcuse 2007) to The Aesthetic
Dimension (1978). In this volume, Kellner’s organization demonstrates how
Marcuse’s theory of art is rooted in social theory, in this case related to politics
and fundamental aspects of psychoanalysis, such as the reality principle and its
inability to express ought-being.
• Volume 5 addresses philosophical themes underlying the critique of science and
positivism. It also contains psychoanalytic discussions of Erich Fromm’s theory
and important texts on Marcuse’s utopia-based emancipatory model. In this vol-
ume, Kellner’s mode of organization links Marcuse’s own philosophical critique
of a certain scientific realism of late capitalist society with his utopian proposal,
which could be summarized by Marcuse’s reference to the phrase used by the
Parisian students at the Sorbonne: “Be realistic; demand the impossible!”
• Volume 6, which closes the collection, organizes Marcuse’s texts pertaining to
his reading and criticism of Karl Marx, especially his analysis of how the Soviet
Union appropriated Marxist concepts. It pays particular attention to dialectics
and the idea of the “development of productive forces.” In addition, this volume
also contains intervention texts, such as the one on Cuba, letters exchanged with
Horkheimer, and interviews and texts published in newspapers and magazines.
Its main purpose is to demonstrate a link between Marx’s idea of revolution and
Marcuse’s attention to the repressions of contemporary society and his emphasis
on utopia as a historical concept.
1 Interview with Peter-Erwin Jansen
Finally, I would like to share the information that Peter-Erwin Jansen kindly pro-
vided to me along with the Marcuse file. This part is intended to complement the
chapter by Peter-Erwin Jansen and Inka Engel in this volume.
Inara Luisa Marin: Where are the files located?
Peter-Erwin Jansen: The files of the Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal Archive
are located at the Archivzentrum, Library of the Goethe Universität, Frankfurt
am Main.
ILM: Approximately how many documents does the archive hold?
P-EJ: The Herbert Marcuse Archive is around 50,000 pages, the Leo Löwenthal
Archive around 40,000 pages.
ILM: How are documents stored?
P-EJ: Originals are stored in a special room in boxes in the library.
ILM: How are documents cataloged?
P-EJ: Partly digitized, to find in printed finding aids.
ILM: Who can access the catalog of documents in the archive, and how?
Archive Beyond Files: A Brief Note on a Personal Experience in the Marcuse Archive 221
P-EJ: For both archives: decisions are made by Oliver Kleppel and Mathias Jehn.
Herbert Marcuse Archive: Copyrights and special academic research for publica-
tion by Peter-Erwin Jansen and Prof. Dr. Harold Marcuse.
ILM: Is the physical space considered adequate for the files? (Would more or
better-structured space be needed for maintenance?)
P-EJ: Partly, but it is not ideal. The library will hopefully get a new building at
the Westend Campus of the University, maybe in 10 years.
ILM: Are there plans to improve the file structure?
P-EJ: Yes.
ILM: Are there plans to expand the files?
P-EJ: Yes. We are collecting more papers for both archives, but only originals.
ILM: Do papers and letters from the period when Marcuse worked at the Office
of Strategic Services (OSS) also appear in the archives?
P-EJ: He did analysis for the OSS between 1941 and 1947, 90 percent of which
are published in German by me, in English by Douglas Kellner, in Italian by Raffaele
Laudani.
ILM: What does this contribute to a better understanding of the type of work
Marcuse did in the US government?
P-EJ: The drafts and analyses of this period were not known in detail until my
first publication, Feindanalysen: Über die Deutschen (Marcuse 1999–2009, vol. 5).
These works finally provided information that Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal
(who worked for the Office of War Information from 1941 to 1942 and after the war
at the Voice of America from 1949 to 1956) were analyzing national socialist ideol-
ogy and politics. Based on the first German publication, other publications and
archival research in the US followed.
ILM: As we see Critical Theory, a diagnosis of the present time and the search
for an emancipatory power in the present moment, is always necessary. If we com-
pare two important texts by Marcuse, it is curious that he finds these potentials in
1955, with the help of Eros, at a time when Horkheimer and Adorno saw the ten-
dency toward the complete domination of instrumental reason. On the other hand,
almost ironically, when Marcuse writes about human one-dimensionality, the essen-
tial movements of May 1968 immediately break out. Does it seem to you that they
are apparently dissonant, or does it show something that other interpreters of Critical
Theory could not see?
P-EJ: Marcuse published One-Dimensional Man in 1964. The volume analyzes
the trends of capitalist society in the US and the integrated nature of traditional
oppositional movements, most of which manifested themselves in the labor move-
ment. So-called cooperative capitalism had made this opposition disappear. The
proletariat as an exploited class (according to Marx) had lost its resistant sting and
was, according to Marcuse, integrated into the existing system. Social spheres like
science, language, art, and sexuality were taken over by the system. According to
Marcuse, the forces that could resist capitalist exploitation tended to disappear. The
means of this one-dimensionality is consumption, which creates new and artificial
needs, and makes people believe in an ideal world. Ultimately, according to Marcuse,
the marginal groups in society are the only catalyst of possible upheaval. He quotes
222 I. L. Marin
Walter Benjamin at the end of the book “It is only for the sake of those without hope
that hope given to us” (Marcuse 2002 [1964]: p. 261). As a result, new social move-
ments were constituted beyond the workers’ movement.
ILM: If it is possible to choose, is there any discovery that you find most interest-
ing in working with the Marcuse Archive?
P-EJ: Yes, Marcuse’s draft and analysis from his time with the OSS,
Feindanalysen. Über die Deutschen. When I published the first edition in 1998 it
was, in Germany, top of the list of the most interesting books. More than 100 news-
papers, radio, and TV reviews were published. The expanded second edition, pub-
lished in 2007, again received great public attention. The correspondence between
Marcuse and Rudi Dutschke, “Herbert Marcuse und die Folgen der
Studentenbewegung,” published for the first time in my book, was another surprise.
Second, the letters between Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal gave a new perspective on
their very close friendship.
References
Marcuse, Herbert. 1998 [1955]. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud.
London: Routledge.
———. 2002 [1964]. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial
Society. London/New York: Routledge.
———. 1978. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Boston:
Beacon Press.
———. 1998–2014. Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse. Ed. Douglas Kellner. London/New
York: Routledge.
Marcuse, Herbert and Franz L. Neumann. 1998a. A History of the Doctrine of Social Change. In
Herbert Marcuse, Technology, War and Fascism: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, vol. 1.
Ed. Douglas Kellner, 12–33. London/New York: Routledge.
Marcuse, Herbert and Franz L. Neumann. 1998b. Theories of Social Change. In Herbert Marcuse,
Technology, War and Fascism: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, vol. 1. Ed. Douglas
Kellner, 34–51. London/New York: Routledge.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1999–2009. Nachgelassene Schriften. Vols. 1–6. Ed. P.-E. Jansen. Lüneburg:
zu Klampen.
———. 2007. The Affirmative Character of Culture. In Herbert Marcuse, Art and Liberation:
Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, vol. 4. Ed. Douglas Kellner, 82–112. London/New York:
Routledge.
Inara Luisa Marin is a psychoanalyst and a collaborating professor at the Department of

Philosophy of the University of Campinas (Brazil). She is also a researcher at the Brazilian Center
for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap), where she coordinates a research group on psychoanalysis in
contemporary Critical Theory. In 2022, she published the book Narcisism and Recognition: The
Paths of Psychoanalysis in Critical Theory.
Part IX
Between Archives
Critical Theory and Primary Source
Research: Subjective Reflections
on Working in the Herbert Marcuse
and Max Horkheimer Archives
John Abromeit
1 Introduction
The discipline of intellectual history sits somewhat uneasily between philosophy

and history. Too historical for most philosophers and too philosophical for most
historians, we ply our trade quietly where we are still tolerated at all in the rapidly
downsizing neoliberal university system, often forging alliances with colleagues in
other departments who are still committed to critical, interdisciplinary, liberal arts
education. As historians, we teach our students how to do primary source research.
Although intellectual historians often work with published texts, archival research
is more integral to our disciplinary identity than that of philosophers. One of my
aims in this essay is to demonstrate how and why such archival research is impor-
tant, especially for a materialist approach to intellectual history – such as that pio-
neered by Max Horkheimer and his colleagues at the Institute for Social Research
(IfS) – which views the formation and impact of “ideas” within the context of his-
torically specific social relations. For Marx, history – not philosophy, as it still was
for Kant – was the “Königin der Wissenschaften”1 (“queen of the sciences”), and it
proceeded through “Forschung” and “Darstellung,” that is, through empirical social
and historical research and the self-reflexive conceptual presentation of these
findings.2
1
In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels wrote, “Wir kennen nur eine einzige Wissenschaft, die
Wissenschaft der Geschichte” (“We know only one single science, the science of history”) (Marx
1962–1974, vol.3: p. 18). For Kant’s defense of the primacy of philosophy over other disciplines,
see (Kant 1992).
2
For Marx’s discussion of “Forschung” and “Darstellung” as the methodological foundation of his
mature work, see his “Nachwort zur zweiten Auflage” of volume one of Das Kapital (Marx
J. Abromeit (*)
State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA

Switzerland AG 2023
226 J. Abromeit
No attempt will be made here to present the fruits of my own archival research in
relation to a comprehensive critical theory of society, but hopefully my findings will
provide some clues about how Marcuse and Horkheimer developed such a theory of
modern capitalist society. In fact, my remarks here will be mainly subjective in
nature, reflecting as they do my own personal experiences working in the Marcuse
and Horkheimer Archives off and on for a decade (1992–2002). Rather than attempt-
ing to give a comprehensive overview of the materials in either of these archives, I
will highlight the most important discoveries I made in them and explain how these
materials shaped my own understanding of Marcuse and Horkheimer’s contribu-
tions to the development of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.
2 The Marcuse Archive
2.1 Searching for Traces of Marcuse’s Early Encounter

with Heidegger
My work in the archives of Critical Theory can be traced back to a conversation I

had in 1991 with my undergraduate adviser at Stanford University, Barry M. Kātz,
who had written one of the first – and still one of the best – intellectual biographies
of Herbert Marcuse (Kātz 1982). I had approached him to express my interest in
writing an honors thesis on Marcuse, and he told me that there might be some inter-
esting materials in the Marcuse Archive in Frankfurt, Germany, pertaining to the
young Marcuse’s studies with Martin Heidegger in the years before the Nazis
ascended to power. Having spent the previous year in work- and study-abroad pro-
grams in Germany, my language skills were adequate, and I was eager to visit the
mythical birthplace of the “Frankfurt School” in order to pursue my lively interest
in Marcuse and Critical Theory.
With the help of a Stanford undergraduate research grant, I was able to spend two
months in Frankfurt in the summer of 1992. I lived in a student dormitory in
Frankfurt Westend, a neighborhood that many key figures involved in the history of
Critical Theory had called home for varying periods of time. My room was just
down the street from Café Laumer, which had been a favorite meeting place for
intellectuals in the 1920s and again in the 1950s and 1960s when it became known
as “Café Marx.” After stopping in for a coffee there, I walked a few blocks down the
Bockenheimer Landstrasse to the Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek (City and
University Library) on the campus of Goethe University Frankfurt, where the
Marcuse Archive is located. At that time, the Marcuse Archive was still in the pro-
cess of being cataloged. There was a register with a list of many, although certainly
not all the manuscripts, letters, and other materials, which were gathered in boxes
and organized more or less chronologically. The person in charge of cataloging the
Marcuse Archive at that time was a lecturer in the sociology department, Dr. Barbara
1967–1974, vol. 23: pp. 27–28). For the English translation, see (Tucker 1978, pp. 301–2).
Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working… 227
Brick. She helped me to get my bearings in the archive and showed me how to use
the register and where to look for items that had not yet been cataloged.
Soon after I began my research, I also had the good fortune to meet a young
German scholar, Stephan Bundschuh, who had been working in the archives for
some time already.3 He also kindly took me under his wing and showed me how to
navigate the charted and uncharted territory of Marcuse’s papers. I quickly learned
that not much had been preserved from the period when Marcuse had studied with
Heidegger at the University of Freiburg (1928–1932). There were, in fact, only a
few short letters and postcards that Heidegger had written to Marcuse. Nonetheless,
one of these postcards seemed like it might be able to resolve a question that had
stymied scholars who had already examined the young Marcuse’s relationship to
Heidegger: did Heidegger ever read the Habilitationschrift4 on Hegel that Marcuse
had written under his direction? As any serious Heidegger scholar will tell you,
Heidegger’s handwriting is notoriously difficult to decipher. Fortunately, during the
spring of the previous year I had done an internship at the Herzog August Bibliothek
in Wolfenbüttel, where I took a course on reading German scripts from the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries. Even so, I had to struggle mightily with Heidegger’s
sloppy handling of the Sütterlin script. Stephan and I went back and forth for hours
on whether the crucial sentence in Heidegger’s postcard to Marcuse stated: I have
“leider niemals” (unfortunately never) or “bereits einmal” (already once) read your
manuscript. Ultimately, we decided it was undecipherable.
Apart from these few short letters, the only other unpublished document that I
found in the archive that shed light on the young Marcuse’s relationship to Heidegger
was an essay approximately 25 pages long on the main developments in German
Philosophy in the period 1871–1933 (Marcuse 2005b), which Marcuse had written
in French while living in Geneva, Switzerland, prior to his departure for the United
States in June 1934. This unpublished text represented Marcuse’s first settling of
accounts with Heidegger’s philosophy after his enthusiastic embrace of National
Socialism.5 Anticipating similar arguments that would appear in his first essay in the
Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Marcuse 1934, 1968a, b), Marcuse describes here
how, “Heidegger’s existential analytic is transformed into a politics of heroic, racist
realism” (Marcuse 2005b, p. 161). As the full story of Heidegger’s involvement
with the Nazis and his deep-seated anti-Semitism has become more widely known,
Marcuse’s critical assessment of the reactionary and authoritarian tendencies in
Heidegger’s person and his philosophy has been confirmed.6
3
Stephan’s research would culminate in one of the best studies in German of Marcuse (Bundschuh
1998). See also my review of Stephan’s book, “Reconsidering Marcuse” (Abromeit 2001).
4
A second dissertation required in order to gain the right to teach and become a professor at a
German university.
5
Marcuse decided to go to Freiburg to study with Heidegger after the publication in 1927 of Being
and Time. He believed initially that Heidegger’s “existential analytic of Dasein” could provide a
stronger subjective foundation for Marxist theory. But with the publication of Marx’s Paris
Manuscripts in 1932, Marcuse found in the early Marx what he had been searching for in
Heidegger’s philosophy (Abromeit 2004).
6
Victor Farias and – more compellingly – Hugo Ott were among the first to closely study
Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism in 1933 and 1934, when he served as the rector
228 J. Abromeit
Although the materials in the archive relating to that project did not live up to my
expectations, the Frankfurt University library contained a number of other impor-
tant published texts that Marcuse had written between 1927 and 1933, which made
it possible to answer some of my key research questions. Why was a young, Jewish
Marxist like Marcuse so interested in studying with a philosopher who would
opportunistically embrace the Nazi movement in 1933? What did Marcuse take
from Heidegger and how did he reassess Heidegger’s thought and its influence on
his own thought after 1933? The research I did in Frankfurt that summer enabled me
to write an undergraduate honors thesis that would serve later as the basis for a
conference paper, a published article (Abromeit 2004), and the inspiration for a
volume I coedited with Richard Wolin (Marcuse 2005a). This volume made avail-
able in English translation the most important of Marcuse’s writings during his
studies with Heidegger and also the unpublished text from 1934 on Germany phi-
losophy from 1871 to 1933.
2.2 Archival Discoveries from Marcuse’s Later Life
During this time, I also realized that there was a wealth of material in the archive
relating to Marcuse’s later life. For example, there were two substantial essays from
the early 1940s, in which Marcuse astutely analyzed the social psychology of Nazi
Germany as a form of resigned “psychological neutrality” that reflected the com-
plete subordination of the German citizenry to the technological rationality of the
productive apparatus and the ideological dictates of the fascist regime (Marcuse
1998–2014, vol.1: pp. 67–88; pp. 139–90).7 I found an essay on the French surreal-
ist author, Louis Aragon, that Marcuse had written shortly after the end of World
War II (pp. 199–214). The essay analyzes Aragon’s 1944 novel, Aurélien, as an
example of emancipatory politics fleeing to the seemingly apolitical refuge of artis-
tic form – in this case, the nineteenth-century social novel. Marcuse interprets the
decision of the militant leftist Aragon to avoid any direct discussion of politics in the
novel and to focus instead on the love story between the bourgeois protagonist and
of the University of Freiburg and played a key role in implementing new Nazi racial legislation,
such as the “Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service,” which eliminated all Jewish professors
from the university. The publication in 2014 of Heidegger’s “Black Notebooks” provided addi-
tional evidence that Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and conservative revolutionary political views
were deeply rooted in his thought and were not merely adopted opportunistically in 1933/1934
(Farias 1991; Ott 1993). Heidegger’s “Black Notebooks” between 1931 and 1941 have been pub-
lished in English translation (Heidegger 2016–2017). For a recent and comprehensive overview of
the scholarship on Heidegger’s conservative revolutionary politics and his anti-Semitism, see
(Wolin 2023).
7
A number of other unpublished studies of National Socialist Germany that Marcuse wrote or co-
wrote while he was doing intelligence work for the US government (in the Office of Strategic
Studies) in the 1940s can be found in the volume (Laudani, 2013). These are not texts from the
Marcuse Archive, but instead from the Civil Archives Division of the Legislative and Diplomatic
branch of the US National Archives.
his provincial love interest, as evidence that art must remain autonomous from polit-
ical imperatives in order to preserve its emancipatory potential.8 This text represents
the beginning of a shift away from Marcuse’s early focus on the “affirmative char-
acter of culture” toward his later critique of traditional Marxist aesthetics (Marcuse
1937, 1968a, 1968b, 1978).
In the archive there were also a number of substantial and fascinating unpub-
lished texts from the 1970s, including a polished 85-page manuscript on the topic of
“Cultural Revolution” (Marcuse 1998–2014, vol.2: pp. 121–162), which was writ-
ten after the heady Essay on Liberation (Marcuse 1969) but before the more pessi-
mistic Counter-Revolution and Revolt (Marcuse 1972). “Cultural Revolution”
provides important insights into the dominant themes of Marcuse’s thought during
this time, including his efforts to rehabilitate the sensuous elements in the Marxist
tradition, including the French Enlightenment materialists, Fourier, Feuerbach, and
the early Marx himself. Marcuse was one of the first to engage seriously with Marx’s
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 after it was excavated from the
archives of the German Social Democratic Party and finally published in 1932
(Marcuse 2005c).9 Some 40 years later, in “Cultural Revolution,” Marcuse calls for
a reexamination of this crucial early text by Marx and offers a new interpretation of
it, informed by his own critical engagement with psychoanalysis in the intervening
years. Another important text I discovered in the archive was an acerbic essay
Marcuse penned shortly after the reelection of Richard Nixon in 1972, in which he
raises concerns about the “self-transformation of bourgeois democracy into neo-
fascism” (Marcuse 1998–2014, vol.1: p. 170). Although bourgeois-liberal political
forms still exist, Marcuse argues that they “no longer present an effective barrier to
fascism” (p. 176). In response, he argues, the left must defend the progressive
aspects of bourgeois democracy, while at the same time retaining the long-term goal
of a “socialist democracy” (p. 178). He also describes the reactionary reassertion of
a repressed and repressive bourgeois character structure – as a backlash against the
protest movements of the 1960s – particularly among the white lower and lower-
middle classes. His analysis here was remarkably prescient, insofar as this same
personality type would become a decisive force in the rise of right-wing populist
movements and parties during the following decades. Drawing on the analysis of
the sadomasochistic character structure by his former institute colleague, Erich
Fromm, Marcuse argues that “the people’s identification with the system finds its
most striking expression among the (blue collar) working class,” which possesses “a
mental structure which responds to, and reflects the requirements of the system. In
this mental structure are the deep individual, instinctual roots of the identification of
the conformist majority with the institutionalized brutality and aggression” (p. 170).
The fact that many white working-class voters in urban and industrial areas sup-
ported Nixon because of his opposition to school busing, Marcuse sees as an
8
Incidentally, Marcuse sides here with André Breton – against “socialist realism” and Aragon’s
own position in the late 1920s and early 1930s – in his argument that art must be autonomous in
order to fully realize its emancipatory potential (Breton 1969).
9
On the history of the publication of Marx’s Manuscripts, see (Maidan 1990).
230 J. Abromeit
example of racist cultural attitudes triumphing over social solidarity (p. 180).10 He
also describes the trend toward “the replacement of hypocrisy with open lies and
deception” (p. 171). In the wake of Donald Trump’s successful mobilization of
blue- and white-collar workers to win the presidential election in 2016 and his
efforts to overturn the election results in the 2020 elections with “open lies and
deception,” Marcuse’s analysis seems prescient indeed.11
All the texts from the Marcuse Archive that I have mentioned so far have since
been published in the six-volume Collected Papers edition of Herbert Marcuse’s
work (Marcuse 1998–2014), which has been patiently and skillfully edited by
Douglas Kellner, a veteran scholar of Marcuse’s work.12 One will find in this edition
other fascinating unpublished texts by Marcuse, including some from other archives,
such as the “33 Theses” from 1947 (Marcuse 1998–2014, vol.1: pp. 215–228),
which is located in the Max Horkheimer Archive. In these “Theses,” written during
the early stages of the Cold War, Marcuse demonstrates his ongoing commitment to
Marx’s theory and his “ruthless critique” of all existing forms of political and social
domination. At this time, Marcuse was already concerned about the liquidation of
the remnants of the progressive aspects of liberal-democratic political traditions in
the Western capitalist countries and their transformation in a neofascist direction.
He was also critical of the “subordination of revolutionary strategy to Sovietism”
(p. 219).13 Anticipating later arguments in One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse argues
here that an analysis of what he calls “bourgeoisification” (Verbürgerlichung), that
is, “the economic and political integration of a large part of the working class into
the system of capital, as a change in the structure of exploitation” (p. 220) is perhaps
the most urgent task of contemporary Critical Theory. In addition to the Collected
Papers edition of Marcuse’s writings, various texts from the Marcuse Archive have
also been published in German, in a six-volume edition of his writings edited by
Peter-Erwin Jansen (Marcuse 1999–2009). I would like to mention one final exam-
ple of the skillful use of materials from the Marcuse Archive: the documentary film,
Herbert’s Hippopotamus (1997), which focuses mainly on Marcuse’s
10
For an examination of the historical development and social-psychological function of anti-
Black racism among the “white” working class in the United States, which draws not only upon
the work of Marcuse and his colleagues at the IfS, but also the American historian and critical race
theorist, David Roediger, see (Abromeit 2013).
11
To be sure, Trump supporters came from all socio-economic and even all different ethnic and
racial backgrounds, but studies revealed that the demographic group whose support for Trump was
the highest were white males with lower-than-average levels of educational attainment. Also,
Trump’s victory in 2016 resulted from his electoral college victories in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Pennsylvania – all states with sizeable white working-class populations that had, in the past
few decades, usually been won by democratic presidential candidates.
12
Kellner’s Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of the Marxism (1984) was – along with Barry Kātz’s
intellectual biography of Marcuse (1982) and Morton Schoolman’s The Imaginary Witness: The
Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse (1980) – one of the first comprehensive studies of Marcuse’s
work, and it remains one of the best. Since then, Kellner has published extensively on Marcuse,
including his lengthy introductions to the different volumes of the Collected Papers edition.
13
About a decade later, Marcuse would write a full-length study of the Soviet Union, in which he
would elaborate upon these criticisms (Marcuse 1958).
enthusiastic – but not infrequently critical – engagement with the protest move-
ments of the 1960s in the United States, Germany, and France. As a result of his
public support of radical students, workers, and Black political activists such as his
student, Angela Davis, Marcuse was labeled the “guru of the student movement” by
the mass media, which made him a target of virulent criticism from many different
quarters, from rigid defenders of Stalinist orthodoxy to the Vatican, and everything
in between. Perhaps the most disturbing of these criticisms, however, were the one
that emerged from the authoritarian underbelly of US society, which Marcuse’s col-
leagues at the institute had astutely analyzed already in the 1940s in Studies in
Prejudice (Löwenthal and Guterman 1949; Adorno et al. 1950).14 I came across a
large box in the Marcuse Archive that was almost completely full of letters and
postcards that had been sent to him in the late 1960s and early 1970s from hate-
filled individuals who threatened Marcuse in the most violent and vulgar possible
ways: “There’s no room in the USA for Communist-Jewish scum like you,” “It’s too
bad that Hitler didn’t finish the job,” and so on. At that time, this box had a label on
it, handwritten in German – “Pöbeleien” – which could be freely translated as “rav-
ings of the mob.”
The producer of Herbert’s Hippopotamus, Paul Alexander Juutilainen, weaves
together these archival documents with video and television footage to demonstrate
how Marcuse became a lightning rod for the most reactionary tendencies in
American society during this time. Such tendencies were particularly strong in San
Diego, where Marcuse had accepted a position in the Philosophy Department at the
University of California in 1965, because of the multiple military bases there and
the strong presence of military and defense contractors in Southern California more
generally. Fortunately for Marcuse, San Diego also had one of the best zoos in the
country and, as Juutilainen makes clear, there was a special place in Marcuse’s heart
for the resident hippos there.
3 The Horkheimer Archive
3.1 Back and Forth Between Frankfurt and Berkeley

in the 1990s
Working through the material in the Marcuse Archive gave me ideas for addi-
tional research projects and help set the course for my future life and work. While
completing my undergraduate thesis on Marcuse and Heidegger, I had decided
that I wanted to return to Frankfurt University to continue my research in the
archives and to study Critical Theory with the eminent representatives of that
tradition in the philosophy department: Alfred Schmidt and Jürgen Habermas. I
14
For an attempt to analyze the recent resurgence of authoritarianism and right-wing populism in
the United States that draws upon these studies, see (Abromeit 2018, 2022).
232 J. Abromeit
was introduced to Schmidt’s work through my friend Stephan Bundschuh, who

was his doctoral student at that time. Schmidt’s insightful essays on Marcuse’s
early engagement with Heidegger (Marcuse and Schmidt 1973, pp. 7–39;
pp. 111–42) were already an important point of reference for my undergraduate
thesis. I had also already learned that one of Habermas’s first encounters with
Critical Theory had been his reading of Marcuse’s early essays, which had helped
him overcome his own early fascination with Heidegger’s philosophy.15 I applied
for – and received – a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service
to return to Frankfurt in the fall of 1993 to continue my studies. Upon arriving, I
was excited to learn that Alfred Schmidt was offering courses on a variety of top-
ics relating directly and indirectly to Critical Theory, such as lectures on the
French, German, and English/Scottish Enlightenment, as well as seminars on
German Idealism, Marx, and Adorno. I was less excited to learn that Habermas’s
seminars were on topics from analytical philosophy, such as Saul Kripke’s Theory
of Reference.
I had fled from Stanford’s conservative philosophy department precisely
because it was dominated by analytic philosophy – the professor in my first
required course in the philosophy major had insisted that Frege was the most
important German philosopher of the nineteenth century – so I had no desire to
study what Marcuse had aptly called “one-dimensional philosophy” here.
Fortunately, Habermas’s lectures on the topic of “Concepts of Rationality” were
more interesting and proceeded historically, examining different conceptualiza-
tions of Vernunft (reason) and Verstand (understanding) in ancient, medieval,
modern, and even contemporary philosophy. But, during my next 2 years in
Frankfurt, I learned much more about the history of philosophy and Critical
Theory in the lectures and seminars of Alfred Schmidt. During this time, I would
occasionally visit the Marcuse Archives and I became aware of the Max Horkheimer
Archive, which was also located in the Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek. But,
because I was not yet working on another substantial writing project, I had no need
to conduct systematic archival research.
In the fall of 1995, I returned from Frankfurt to enroll in the MA/PhD program
in history at the University of California, Berkeley, where I planned to study with
Martin Jay, whose remarkable study of the history of the IfS (Jay 1973) initiated a
serious academic reception of the Frankfurt School in the English-speaking world
that continues to the present day. After finishing my course work, passing my quali-
fying examinations, and, in 1998, organizing an international conference on “The
Legacies of Herbert Marcuse,”16 I returned to Frankfurt in the fall of 1999 to
On Habermas’s discovery in 1956 of Marcuse’s early writings, see (Matuštík 2001, pp. 19–23).
15
I organized the conference together with Martin Jay and my friend and fellow Marcuse scholar,
16
Mark Cobb. I met Mark through the mediation of Angela Davis, who was teaching a course at UC,
Berkeley, at this time. When I approached her to see if she would be willing to give the keynote
conduct dissertation research in the Max Horkheimer Archive. My research on

Marcuse, and my admiration of Marcuse’s writings from the period 1934–1941,
when he was working together with Horkheimer at the institute, led me back to
Horkheimer’s early writings, in which the foundations for Frankfurt School of
Critical Theory had been laid.
Martin Jay and I agreed that it was an auspicious moment for a reconsideration
of Horkheimer’s intellectual development, since a wealth of new sources had
become available in the 1990s to which earlier researchers had not had access. This
included, above all, the materials in the Max Horkheimer Archive, which had been
fully cataloged and made publicly available in the 1990s. Also, the impressive
19-volume Gesammelte Schriften edition of Horkheimer’s writings, coedited by
Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, was completed in 1996 (Horkheimer
1985–1996). Thanks to the conscientious editorial work of Schmid Noerr in particu-
lar, many of the most important unpublished texts, lectures, discussion protocols,
letters, and other materials from the Horkheimer Archive were now readily avail-
able in this new edition of Horkheimer’s works. At the same time, the materials in
the Horkheimer Archive are vast and, even in a 19-volume edition of his works, only
a fraction could be included. For example, the four volumes of Horkheimer’s letters
published in the Gesammelte Schriften – comprising 1189 letters and around 3600
pages of printed text – represented only a small percentage of the total of
Horkheimer’s correspondence preserved in the archive.17
For my dissertation project I set myself the ambitious task of systematically
working through the materials in both the Gesammelte Schriften and the archive in
order to write a new intellectual biography of Horkheimer. Not surprisingly, I real-
ized quickly that this task was too ambitious and also that I was most interested in
the development of what I would call the “early model of Critical Theory,” which
guided the institute’s work circa 1940. So, I revised my plans, deciding to write a
book that would draw upon the new materials that had become available in the
1990s; it would be both an intellectual biography of the young Horkheimer and an
attempt to reconstruct this “early model of Critical Theory,” including the contribu-
tions to its development by other members of the Institute, such as Marcuse,
Friedrich Pollock, and Erich Fromm (Abromeit 2011).
address at our conference – which she generously did – she told me about Cobb, who was working
on a dissertation on Marcuse at UC, Santa Cruz, under her supervision. For Davis’s, Cobb’s, and
the other contributions to the conference, see (Abromeit and Cobb 2004).
17
As Gunzelin Schmid Noerr – the editor of these four volumes of Horkheimer’s correspondence –
points out, more than 50,000 letters from Horkheimer alone have been preserved in the Horkheimer
Archive. Including letters to Horkheimer, as well as other to and from third persons, the archive
contains nearly 100,000 letters (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol. 18: p. 824).
234 J. Abromeit
4 Discoveries in the Horkheimer Archive
4.1 Horkheimer Before, During, and After World War I
In what follows, I would like to discuss how the materials from the Horkheimer
Archive have made possible a richer and more nuanced understanding of his life and
thought and of the development of Critical Theory. But, because of space limitations
and since the archival materials from that period of his life were most important for
my own research, I will limit myself here to his early life, circa 1930. My approach
here will mirror the methodology of my book, which focuses more on biography in
the early chapters and more on Horkheimer’s thought and the development of
Critical Theory in the later chapters.18 Some of the archival materials I used had
recently been published in the Gesammelte Schriften, but others were still available
only in the Horkheimer Archive. I will discuss both together, while making clear
which is which.
When I first began working seriously in the Horkheimer Archive in the fall of
1999, I learned that two different persons – Ernst von Schenk and Matthias Becker –
had, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, intended to write comprehensive biographies
of Horkheimer. Toward this end, both had conducted a series of extensive interviews
with him, covering a wide range of topics from all different periods of his life.19 The
protocols of these interviews, which are preserved in the archive, provided me with
a rich source of information about Horkheimer’s early life.20 In these interviews,
Horkheimer discussed in more detail than anywhere else his own recollections of
his childhood, youth, and education, his experiences during World War I, his deci-
sion to move to Frankfurt after the war to study at the newly founded university
there, and many other topics. Of course, one must be cautious with the recollections
of an elderly man but, together with other primary sources from the period, they
made it possible to flesh out key experiences in his early life that shaped Horkheimer’s
personality and his view of the world.
The most important of these other sources include a selection of the short stories,
plays, and diary entries from the period 1914–1918 that were first published in
Germany in 1974 (Horkheimer 1974)21 and 35 letters written by or sent to
18
It was more important to focus on biographical details in the early chapters to understand
Horkheimer’s family background, his early friendships, education, etc. But, since the primary aim
of my book was to reconstruct Horkheimer’s thought, in later chapters I followed the general prin-
ciple of including biographical background only when it was necessary or helpful to explain the
developments of his thought.
19
Ernst von Schenk’s biographical interviews with Max Horkheimer (MHA X 132 b) and Matthias
Becker’s biographical interviews with Max Horkheimer (MHA X 183a).
20
In the case of Ernst von Schenk, he began writing but never finished his biography of Horkheimer.
This unfinished manuscript was also occasionally a valuable source for me (MHA XIII 112a).
21
These early documents were republished in the first volume of the Gesammelte Schriften in 1988.
But a few of his earliest writings were not included in either of these collections – probably because
they were too personal or embarrassing for Horkheimer. These documents from the Horkheimer
Archive were published later (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.11: pp. 289–342).
Horkheimer – mostly from or to Friedrich Pollock and his future wife, Rosa
Riekher – during the period 1913–1922 (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.15: pp. 9–88).
These primary sources, together with some additional ones I found in the Horkheimer
Archive and in other archives in Germany, made it possible for me not only to build
upon, but also in certain places to go beyond and correct the existing published
accounts of Horkheimer’s early life.22 For example, the origins and development of
Horkheimer’s very close and lifelong friendship with Friedrich Pollock came into
focus, as did his and Pollock’s travels together to Belgium and England before
World War I and their ménage à trois with a young woman from Paris.23 The com-
mon perception of Horkheimer as the stodgy and rather authoritarian boss of the
institute faded in my mind as I became better acquainted with this young radical,
who vehemently rejected World War I, understood himself as an artist, presented his
literary works in prominent bohemian milieus in Munich, actively supported the
Munich Council Republic, and became passionately devoted to socialism.
Horkheimer’s equally passionate devotion to his future wife, Rosa Riekher, also
came into focus in the many, lengthy love letters he sent. Horkheimer’s affair with
Riekher at this point in his life also expressed his open rebellion against his father,
Moritz Horkheimer, who owned a textile factory near Stuttgart where Horkheimer
worked during the war. Riekher was not only a Gentile and 6 years older than
Horkheimer, but she was also working as Moritz Horkheimer’s secretary at the time.
As I learned from one of Horkheimer’s interviews with Ernst Schenk, his passionate
devotion to “Maidon,” as he called her, wavered only once, when he forgot to pick
her up at the train station in Munich in the spring of 1919, because he was so
embroiled in artistic and political activities: “I was so bohemian and so preoccupied
that I forgot her” (MHA, X 132b, p. 36), as he put it.
Although Riekher and Pollock were undoubtedly Horkheimer’s most trusted and
intimate companions at this time,24 during the fascinating short chapter of his life in
Munich during the November Revolution and Munich Council Republic, he also
became good friends with the avant-garde photographer, Germaine Krull. In her
atelier in the bohemian Schwabing neighborhood of Munich, she hosted regular
meetings of leading artists and radical intellectuals, in which Horkheimer actively
participated. In an unpublished autobiographical manuscript –located in the
Germaine Krull papers in the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany – Krull
22
The pioneering histories of the institute by Martin Jay (1973) and Rolf Wiggershaus (1988), but
also other works on the early development of Critical Theory by Ulrike Migdal (1981) and
Wolfgang Schivelbusch (1998), provided a solid foundation for my own work.
23
One of the autobiographical short stories Horkheimer wrote at this time, which he refused to
include in the later, published edition of these documents, was called “L’isle heureuse” (“The
Island of Happiness”) (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.11: pp. 292–328.) This story, which is a
directly autobiographical description of his and Pollock’s erotic encounter with Suze Neumeier in
Paris, was one of the documents that was published later. See also pp. 25–27.
24
They would continue to play this important emotional role for Horkheimer until their deaths in
1969 and 1970, respectively. Horkheimer himself passed away shortly thereafter, in 1973.
236 J. Abromeit
remembers that “Max was in his element” at these meetings (Abromeit 2011,
p. 41).25 Through her, Horkheimer came into contact with prominent writers, such
as Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan Zweig, and Ernst Toller. The latter was also actively
involved in radical politics. After the assassination of Kurt Eisner –the leader of
Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in Bavaria and family friend of
Germaine Krull26 – Toller succeeded Eisner as leader of the USPD, and he also
participated in the first phase of the Munich Council Republic.
After the Republic was liquidated by the Freikorps27 and the Reichswehr,28 Toller
was forced to go underground. During this time, Horkheimer and Pollock were
helping some other participants in the Council Republic who were being sought by
the local police. As Horkheimer recalled in one of his later interviews with Matthias
Becker, he was arrested not once, but twice during this time in Munich by members
of one of the local right-wing militia groups, who believed that he was Toller.29 It
was at this time that he decided to leave Munich and his bohemian-artistic lifestyle
behind and to pursue university studies in Frankfurt instead.
Materials from the archive also make it possible to reconstruct Horkheimer’s
earliest intellectual development. For example, from the biographical interviews he
conducted near the end of his life, we know how important Pollock’s friendship was
in stimulating Horkheimer’s early interest in literature and philosophy. When they
met at the age of 16, Pollock was the better read of the two and he introduced
Horkheimer to many works of classical literature he had studied at the classical
humanistic Gymnasium. Horkheimer had not been exposed to these writings at the
more practically oriented high school – the Realgymnasium – he had attended.
During a trip to Brussels in May 1913, Pollock recommended Schopenhauer’s
Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit to Horkheimer – his first encounter with a philoso-
pher who would play a crucial role in the formation of his thought (Abromeit 2011,
p. 24).30
Horkheimer’s intellectual development during and after World War I can also be
fleshed out with the biographical interviews, as well as letters and diary entries from
this time. In a remarkable letter to Riekher in June 1918, Horkheimer reveals to her
his favorite novels, including Don Quixote, Candide, and Madame Bovary, all of
which Horkheimer admires for their merciless parody of naïve optimism.
Horkheimer’s praise of Voltaire not only resonates with his admiration of
Schopenhauer’s critical pessimism, it also anticipates his later criticisms of reduc-
tionist interpretations of the Enlightenment as naïvely optimistic. In that same letter,
25
On Krull’s autobiographical writings in the archives of the Museum Folkwang, see also (Sichel
1999, p. 301).
26
Krull also established a name for herself as a photographer with her portraits of Eisner (Sichel
1999, pp. 21–23).
27
Right-wing militia units that formed in Germany in the aftermath of World War I.
28
The German army.
29
Interview with Matthias Becker, pp. 49–50.
30
An older, yet frequently still reprinted English translation of Schopenhauer’s Aphorismen does
exist (Schopenhauer 1890a, b).
Horkheimer reveals his lively interest in literary expressionism at this time when he
praises Alfred Döblin’s 1916 novel, The Three Leaps of Wang Lun, as “by far the
best contemporary German novel” (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.15: p. 35). Archival
documents also reveal that, from 1914 onwards, Horkheimer was an avid reader of
Die Aktion, the leading journal of literary expressionism in Germany at the time.
Like Horkheimer himself, the publisher of the journal, Franz Pfemfert, condemned
the insanity of World War I from the very beginning. Near the end of the war and
during the revolutionary events that followed, Pfemfert took Die Aktion in an
increasingly explicit political direction; for example, he published a special issue in
May 1918, commemorating Marx’s 100th birthday. The February 1919 issue of the
journal was entirely dedicated to the memory of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg, who had been murdered by right-wing militias in Berlin the month
before. In a letter to Riekher on February 27, 1919, Horkheimer encourages her to
read this issue of Die Aktion “from beginning to end, without leaving out a single
line, because it gives an outline of our political position” (p. 54). In later interviews,
Horkheimer claimed that he did not start reading Marx systematically until after his
move from Munich to Frankfurt (Abromeit 2011, p. 59), but he was clearly exposed
to Marx’s ideas earlier, in Die Aktion. In her autobiographical manuscript, Germaine
Krull also confirms that Horkheimer defended Rosa Luxemburg’s position during
the animated political debates that took place in her atelier in the period before, dur-
ing, and after the November Revolution (p. 41).
Horkheimer’s admiration of Pfemfert was also on display in the period after the
Munich Council Republic, when he and Krull traveled first to Berlin and then to a
small village in the Harz Mountains to meet with Pfemfert in hopes that he could
draw attention to the plight of Tobias Axelrod, a Russian-Jewish revolutionary who
had played a leading role in the Council Republic and was a friend of Germaine
Krull. Fleeing the counterrevolutionary terror in Bavaria, Axelrod had been arrested
after crossing the border into Austria with Krull and then sentenced to 15 years in
prison. But Pfemfert had himself also been arrested recently – this was the reason
he had fled from Berlin – so he was unwilling or unable to support Horkheimer’s
efforts to help Axelrod (Abromeit 2011, p. 45).
At this point Horkheimer and Krull’s paths also began to diverge. While visiting
Pfemfert, Krull met another revolutionary, Samuel Levit, who was staying with
Pfemfert at the time.31 They fell in love and eventually decided to move to the Soviet
Union to pursue their passionate political convictions there. According to Krull’s
later recollections, by the summer of 1919, Horkheimer had come to the conclusion
that “the revolution in the streets was over […] all of the great leaders are dead –
Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Kurt Eisner, etc. The reaction is strong now,
associated with a socialist government. The reaction is always well-organized,
because it has money and weapons” (Abromeit 2011, p. 50). So, for Horkheimer,
another path had to be found. The path he chose led to the newly founded Goethe
31
Levit’s parents were Russian Jews who owned a pharmacy in Berlin. He was active – also under
the name Karl Adler – in the German Communist Party. On Krull’s relationship to Levit, see
(Sichel 1999, pp. 25–26).
238 J. Abromeit
University Frankfurt, where he hoped to gain a rigorous theoretical understanding

of modern capitalist societies.
4.2 Horkheimer’s Studies in Frankfurt, 1919–1925
Documents from the Horkheimer Archive also cast new light on the next chapter in
Horkheimer’s life and the development of his thought, namely, the period of his
academic studies in Frankfurt from 1919 to 1925. The two most important new
relationships that Horkheimer formed during this time were with Felix Weil and
Hans Cornelius. In his later biographical interviews, Horkheimer tells the story of
his first fortuitous encounter with Weil in November or December 1919 (Abromeit
2011, p. 55). Weil was walking down a street in Frankfurt Westend late one evening
with Konstantin Zetkin – the son of the famous German socialist leader, Clara
Zetkin – when he and Pollock spotted them from the window of their apartment.
Horkheimer already knew Zetkin, so they waved and were soon introduced to Weil.
Documents from the Horkheimer Archive, and in the particular case of Weil, from
the archives of the Frankfurt Institut für Stadtgeschichte (Institute for the History of
the City of Frankfurt),32 helped me to reconstruct the subsequent development of
this key friendship that led to the creation of the IfS in 1922/1923.
Horkheimer recalled that Weil was drawn to him and Pollock “because we had
the reputation of knowing a lot about Marx and because we defended Marxist the-
ory in our seminars” (MHA X 132b, p. 57). The three of them quickly became close
friends. In his unpublished autobiographical reflections, Weil refers to Horkheimer
and Pollock as his “two closest friends” during this time (Weil n.d., p. 85). Weil
liked them so much, in fact, that he soon provided them with the money to build a
spacious house in Kronberg im Taunus, a wealthy suburb of Frankfurt, where the
three of them would hammer out in discussions their plans for a new research insti-
tute dedicated to the study of Marxist theory and the history of the European labor
movement (MHA X 183a, p. 134). These discussions took place in late 1921 and
1922, after Horkheimer had returned from two semesters of study with Edmund
Husserl at the University of Freiburg, and Weil had returned from a 1-year stay in
Argentina, where he failed miserably – and probably purposefully – at running the
massive grain import business of his wealthy father, Hermann Weil (Weil n.d.,
pp. 87–88).
In letters and, later, interviews, Horkheimer’s complex and evolving relationship
to Hans Cornelius in the 1920s comes into focus. Cornelius was not only
Horkheimer’s first and only academic mentor; he was also a valuable friend to
Horkheimer at this time. Initially, however, Horkheimer’s attitude toward Cornelius
was no different from his attitude toward the university as a whole: a lively interest
I am referring here to Felix Weil’s unfinished and unpublished autobiographical manuscript

32
(Weil n.d.).
in science and philosophy, coupled with a deep skepticism of the institutions and
persons currently entrusted to practicing them.33 Ironically, Horkheimer’s irreverent
attitude helped him win the respect of Cornelius. During one of Cornelius’s lectures,
Horkheimer cited Schopenhauer to challenge Cornelius’s interpretation of Kant’s
transcendental aesthetic. Cornelius responded by telling Horkheimer, “Yes, I think
we will need to discuss this in more detail. Please come to my office afterwards.” As
Horkheimer recalled later, “I did, and that point marked the beginning of my aca-
demic path, for I had won his lasting affection” (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.7:
pp. 448–49). For his part, Horkheimer was slower to reciprocate Cornelius’s recog-
nition. In letters to Riekher in October 1921, the audacious young Horkheimer left
no doubt about his criticisms of both Cornelius’s politics – “In principle he is as far
as possible from our own political and moral views” (Vol. 15: p. 68) – and his phi-
losophy – “My own work is better. His thoughts are for the most part extremely
vulnerable” (p. 73). Horkheimer’s attitude changed, however, after he completed a
dissertation under Cornelius’ supervision in January 1923. Horkheimer’s analysis
of Kant’s concept of teleological judgment earned him summa cum laude34 and an
offer from Cornelius to become his assistant, which he accepted. From that point on
they called each by the familiar “du.”
In the following years, Horkheimer would not only write a second dissertation
(that is, a Habilitationschrift) on Kant’s “third critique”;35 under Cornelius’ supervi-
sion, they would become increasingly close friends. Horkheimer particularly appre-
ciated Cornelius’ acceptance of Riekher at a time when his parents still refused to
welcome her into their family. As a result of these tensions, Horkheimer turned on
several occasions to Cornelius, rather than his father, for financial support (MHA X
132b, p. 26). In addition, Cornelius took Horkheimer and Riekher on several trips to
Italy to instruct them in the history of art and architecture. Over time, Horkheimer
also developed a greater appreciation for Cornelius’ politics. After he retired in
1929, the pro-European and anti-nationalist Cornelius moved to Sweden to prevent
his children from being infected by National Socialism in the schools. Horkheimer
recalled later, “Already at that time he, like myself, saw National Socialism com-
ing” (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol. 7: p. 451). Even though Horkheimer would
make a clean theoretical break with Cornelius after 1925, their friendship is an
excellent example of the crucial role that personal relationships can play in what
used to be called the “history of ideas.” Cornelius’ unfortunate lack of recognition
of the philosophical gifts of both Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin would
33
Horkheimer’s skeptical attitude toward the university system was certainly also influenced by
Schopenhauer, who was largely ignored by the academic establishment of his day and got revenge
by writing a series of polemics and invectives against university professors. See, for example,
(Schopenhauer 1891).
34
Horkheimer was the first at the still young University of Frankfurt to be awarded this distinction
in philosophy.
35
That is, his Critique of Judgment.
240 J. Abromeit
prove a serious barrier to their efforts to gain a foothold in the conservative univer-
sity system of 1920s Germany.36
Archival documents also shed light on the development of Horkheimer’s thought
in the period 1919–1925. For example, the first concrete evidence of a systematic
study of Marx’s work comes from several notebooks from the spring of 1921, which
have been preserved in the Horkheimer Archive (MHA, VII.2). They contain
Horkheimer’s extensive reading notes from a number of primary and secondary
works on Marxist theory, including Friedrich Engels’s Ludwig Feuerbach und der
Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie, Karl Kautsky’s Ethik und materi-
alistische Geschichtsauffassung, and Marx’s own 1859 work, Zur Kritik der poli-
tischen Ökonomie (Engels 1903; Kautsky 1913; Marx 1904).37 The notes make it
clear that Horkheimer had read all these works in their entirety. Horkheimer and
Pollock were in Freiburg at this time, as Cornelius had encouraged Horkheimer to
spend two semesters there to attend lectures by Edmund Husserl and Martin
Heidegger. Horkheimer would recall later that, “I did go to Heidegger’s lectures for
a year, but I was more impressed by Husserl” (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol. 7:
p. 429).38 In another, later interview he told the amusing story of how, after the third
week of a lecture course on “Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion,”
Heidegger was still talking about the concept of “introduction,” so he and Pollock
left a derogatory note on the lectern after class to express their dissatisfaction (MHA
X 183a, p. 51). Unlike so many other promising young scholars and intellectuals in
the 1920s – including many Jews, such as his future friend and colleague at the
institute, Herbert Marcuse39 – Horkheimer was immune to Heidegger’s legendary
charisma and the anti-rationalist pathos of his “existential-ontological” philosophy.
Here, one also finds an example of archival documents helping to correct interpreta-
tions that miss the mark in the secondary literature on Horkheimer. In the introduc-
tion to a 1993 collection of essays on Horkheimer, the editors argue that his
encounter with Heidegger provided the impetus for his break with Cornelius
(Benhabib et al. 1993, p. 4). But, as we have just seen, Horkheimer was notably
unimpressed with Heidegger, and his estimation of Cornelius was waxing, not wan-
ing at this time. It would not be until a few years later, after he completed his
Habilitationschrift in 1925, that Horkheimer would break with Cornelius – and with
contemporary German academic philosophy as a whole.
36
On Adorno and Benjamin’s relationship to Cornelius, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 350–51).
37
The other works were Landauer’s Aufruf zum Sozialismus (1919), A.W. Cohn’s Kann das Geld
abgeschafft warden? (1920), Karl Vorländer’s Marx, Engels und Lasalle als Philosophen (1926),
and L.B. Boudin’s Das theoretische System von Karl Marx. English translations of Landauer and
Boudin’s works are available (Landauer 1978; Boudin 1907). As far as I know, the works by Cohn
and Vorländer have never been translated into English.
38
In fact, Horkheimer was not particularly impressed by Husserl either. For Horkheimer’s assess-
ment of Husserl’s philosophy during the 1920s, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 57–58).
39
For a comparative examination of Horkheimer’s more critical and Marcuse’s more enthusiastic
reception of vitalism and phenomenology in the 1920s and early 1930s, see (Abromeit 2019). On
Heidegger’s Jewish students in the 1920s and early 1930s, see (Wolin 2001).
4.3 Horkheimer as Lecturer in Frankfurt, 1925–1931
Finally, I would like to say a few words about how archival documents illuminate
Horkheimer’s intellectual development during the next crucial phase in his life,
between 1925, when he began working as a Privatdozent40 in the philosophy depart-
ment at the Goethe University Frankfurt, and 1931, when he became the director of
the IfS. It was during this period that he laid the foundations for an interdisciplinary
critical theory of modern capitalist societies, which he would then put into action
and continue to develop at the institute in the 1930s. Unfortunately, many of the
documents from this period of Horkheimer’s life were lost when the National
Socialists seized control of the IfS on March 13, 1933. Among the documents con-
fiscated and destroyed by the Nazis were almost all the letters that Horkheimer
wrote and received during this time.41 That said, a number of important documents
from this period have been preserved and the later biographical interviews also pro-
vide key insights into this period. For example, Horkheimer maintained a philo-
sophical diary during the years 1925–1928. It was not very extensive, but some of
the entries shed light on key moments in the formation of Horkheimer’s critical
theory, such as the long entry from September 16, 1925, which documents clearly
his break with Cornelius’ philosophy and with German academic consciousness
philosophy as a whole.
Here, again, an archival document can play a key role in correcting inaccurate
interpretations of Horkheimer’s critical theory; in this case, the interpretation is
from none other than Jürgen Habermas. One of his central objections to early
Critical Theory was that it remained trapped in the exhausted paradigm of “con-
sciousness philosophy.” But this document – along with Horkheimer’s subsequent
intellectual development – leaves no doubt that his early critical theory took shape
precisely as a critique and an attempt to move beyond “consciousness philosophy.”
Horkheimer notes in his diary that:
An analysis of consciousness, or any type of phenomenology will always remain within the
limits of the discipline of psychology. It will, at best, teach us something about the composi-
tion of a minuscule portion of the world, namely of a part of our psyche, and cannot, in
particular, determine anything about the existence, the meaning or the content of reality.
(Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.11: p. 242)
In short, Horkheimer simply pursued a different – and, some would argue, more
theoretically compelling – path beyond consciousness philosophy than Habermas.
Instead of taking a linguistic turn and shifting from the “subject-object” to the
“subject-subject” paradigm à la Habermas, Horkheimer followed in the footsteps of
A university lecturer or assistant professor.

40
The four volumes of Horkheimer’s correspondence in the Gesammelte Schriften edition of his
41
writings do not contain a single letter between the years 1923 and 1930.
242 J. Abromeit
Hegel and Marx in locating subjective consciousness within the dynamic and con-
tradictory development of bourgeois society in the modern historical epoch.42
The path Horkheimer followed beyond consciousness philosophy into history
and society can be retraced in a number of other archival documents, including
perhaps most importantly a series of lectures he gave on the history of modern phi-
losophy, from the Renaissance all the way through to contemporary schools of
thought.43 True to his break with consciousness philosophy, Horkheimer takes a
materialist approach to the history of modern European philosophy by interpreting
the different authors and ideas he discusses in relation to the uneven development of
modern bourgeois society. Remarkably, Horkheimer succeeds in providing nuanced
explanations of the ideas of the many different thinkers he treats, while at the same
time demonstrating how their ideas were a mediated expression of deeper social
transformations. Horkheimer explained his methodology to his students in the fol-
lowing way:
The scholarly [wissenschaftlichen] task we have before us here is not to discuss different
doctrines on the basis of esoteric, lofty, philosophical concepts, and thus in a certain sense
to engage in a genuinely idealist history of philosophy. Instead, we must demonstrate on the
basis of a rigorous investigation of the history of the social life process [des gesellschaftli-
chen Lebensprozesses] […] how the dominant philosophical views […] emerged from this
process. […] A desire to understand this relationship [between history and ideas] in particu-
lar cases is what would motivate you to conduct your own research and, first of all, to study
the history of human society. (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.9: p. 18)
Horkheimer clearly expresses his conviction here – again, following in the footsteps
of Hegel and Marx – that modern philosophy cannot be understood in isolation from
history and society, by which he does not mean that ideas are mere reflections of the
“economic base.” Philosophy and Critical Theory are “relatively autonomous”
(Vol.11: pp. 263–285); they play an active role in the reproduction of human society
and thus also have the potential to change society for the better, as was the case, for
example, in France in the eighteenth century. Horkheimer’s treatment of ideas in his
lectures is by no means reductionist. In terms of the rigor and clarity with which
Horkheimer presents philosophical concepts and arguments, his lectures surpass
most traditional treatments of the subject. At the same time, he succeeds remarkably
well in demonstrating how they express, but also actively advance or hinder, specific
social tendencies.44
42
For a more detailed overview of Horkheimer’s break with consciousness philosophy around
1925 and the development of a new model of Critical Theory in his thought in the following years,
see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 85–90).
43
These lectures were published in 1987 and 1990, respectively, as volume 9 (“Vorlesungen über
die Geschichte der neueren Philosophie”) and volume 10 (“Vorlesung über die deutschen idealist-
ischen Philosophie” and “Einführung in die Philosophie der Gegenwart”) of the Gesammelte
Schriften edition of his writings. Both volumes were edited by Alfred Schmidt.
44
It is truly unfortunate that the lectures by Horkheimer on the history of modern philosophy –
published in volumes 9 and 10 of the Gesammelte Schriften – have not yet been translated into
English. One can hope that someone undertakes this worthwhile project soon.
Whereas these lectures provide the best insight into the historical foundations of
Horkheimer’s nascent critical theory, other archival documents shed light on how
his critical theory of contemporary society took shape during the period 1925–1931.
Most important in this regard was, first, Horkheimer’s ongoing engagement with
Marxist theory and his efforts to update and apply it to contemporary German and
European societies and, second, the integration of psychoanalysis into his critical
theory. The most important published source on Horkheimer’s analysis of contem-
porary society during this time is Dämmerung: Notizen in Deutschland, which he
wrote between the years 1926 and 1931 (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol. 2:
pp. 312–452), but did not publish until 1934 and then only under the pseudonym
Heinrich Regius.45 The Horkheimer Archive contains about 20 aphorisms that were
originally written as part of Dämmerung (Vol.11: pp. 263–85). Even though
Horkheimer chose not to publish these notes,46 they flesh out his passionate, tren-
chant, and nearly completely forgotten47 critique of both the brutal and the more
subtle and quotidian manifestations of social domination under the monopoly capi-
talism of his day.
In addition to Pollock’s notes from the first seminar on Marx that Horkheimer
offered at the university in Frankfurt in 1928 (MHA VIII, 10), another important
archival document that illuminates the young Horkheimer’s interpretation of his-
torical materialism is a critique he penned in 1928 or 1929 (Horkheimer 1985–1996,
vol. 11: pp. 171–88), of Lenin’s principal philosophical work, Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism. Horkheimer takes particular issue with Lenin’s claim that
“objective reality is copied, photographed and reflected by our sense impressions,”
and he characterizes it as “the reflection theory of knowledge in its most naïve
form” (p. 183). In so doing, Horkheimer demonstrated not only his distance from
the interpretation of historical materialism that was being canonized in the Soviet
Union in the 1920s, but also his determination to develop a materialist theory of
epistemology, which would not fall behind the high level of reflection attained
already by Marx. Such reflections on materialist epistemology would remain central
to Horkheimer’s concerns in some of his most important essays from the 1930s,
such as “On the Problem of Truth” (Horkheimer 1993, pp. 177–216) and “Traditional
and Critical Theory” (Horkheimer 1992, pp. 188–243).
Although other socialist intellectuals in the 1920s were interested in what his-
torical materialism could learn from psychoanalysis,48 one of Horkheimer’s lasting
45
An incomplete and rather poorly translated English edition does exist (Horkheimer 1978).
46
See Gunzelin Schmid Noerr’s editorial comments on them (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.11:
p. 262).
47
Compared, for example, to Adorno’s later collection of aphorisms, Minima Moralia, which was
modeled upon and dedicated to Horkheimer and which is still widely read and discussed, one
rarely finds references to Dämmerung, even among scholars of Critical Theory. A new English
translation of Dämmerung, which should include all of the aphorisms published in the original, as
well as the unpublished aphorisms in volume 11 of the Gesammelte Schriften – is long overdue.
48
Most importantly, at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, whose members included Fromm and
other theorists working on a synthesis of Marx and Freud, such as Wilhelm Reich. On the Berlin
244 J. Abromeit
contributions to twentieth-century Critical Theory was certainly the unique synthe-

sis of the thought of Marx and Freud that he developed – with the help of Erich
Fromm – in the 1930s. Archival documents shed light on how the foundations for
this theoretical synthesis were laid between 1925 and 1931. Horkheimer had been
interested in psychology from the beginning of his university studies in Frankfurt.
In fact, he had initially chosen psychology as his major and had begun a dissertation
on a technical topic in the field of Gestalt psychology, which was well represented
at the Goethe University Frankfurt at that time. But, even at this new and innovative
university, psychoanalysis was not yet taken seriously. Horkheimer recognized right
away that psychoanalysis went far beyond Gestalt and other forms of “scientific”
psychology and also that it had far-reaching political implications (MHA132a,
p. 5). So, Horkheimer had no choice but to pursue his burgeoning interest in psycho-
analysis outside the university.
His first serious encounter with it came through the analyst, Karl Landauer, who
had been trained by Freud himself in Vienna. In 1927, Horkheimer approached
Landauer, who had opened a psychoanalytic practice in Frankfurt in 1923, to
undergo analysis. Landauer told him that he must have a symptom that needed to be
cured before they could begin, so Horkheimer said that he was unable to lecture
without reading directly from prepared notes. Landauer now agreed, and he met
with Horkheimer for an hour every day, six days a week, for the next year. According
to Horkheimer’s later recollections, both men viewed the analysis primarily as a
learning process. Horkheimer stated, “My analysis never really became psycho-
analysis in the strict sense. […] Afterwards he knew a lot about philosophy, but in
reality it never developed into a proper analysis” (MHA132a, p. 5).
There is no way of knowing if Horkheimer’s later recollections were completely
correct or honest. In any case, Horkheimer was cured of his symptom; he overcame
his fear of lecturing without detailed notes, which also explains why far fewer
detailed lecture notes – such as the ones from his lectures on the history of modern
philosophy – are to be found in the archives after 1928. After the analysis, Landauer
and Kracauer also worked closely together and developed a warm friendship that
lasted until Landauer was captured by the Gestapo in Amsterdam and deported to
Bergen-Belsen, where he died in January 1945.49
The other key figure in Horkheimer’s integration of psychoanalysis into Critical
Theory in the late 1920s was Erich Fromm. As a result of Fromm’s acrimonious
departure from the institute approximately a decade later and subsequent polemics
between Fromm and other members of the institute, Fromm’s key role in the forma-
tion of Critical Theory has often been overlooked. But in later interviews,
Horkheimer conveys clearly just how excited he was at that time to work with
Fromm and to welcome him as a new – indeed, a lifetime – member of the
Institute, see (Sokolowsky 2022) and (Fuechtner 2011).

49
See Horkheimer’s extensive correspondence with Landauer in the Gesammelte Schriften, vol-
umes 15 and 16.
institute.50 Horkheimer recalled, “Fromm became a part of our group when I said
that it is also very important for us now to tend to psychoanalysis, which is neglected
in an irresponsible way in German universities. […] At that time I got along very
well with Fromm, because he also had an understanding of social theory” (MHA
132a, p131). Horkheimer alludes here to the fact that Fromm was not only a fully
trained psychoanalyst but had also earned a PhD in sociology at the University of
Heidelberg in 1922,51 which put him in an excellent position to work with
Horkheimer on a synthesis of Marx and Freud’s ideas. Fromm was raised in the
Frankfurt Westend neighborhood, but in his youth was more drawn to religion than
socialist theory or practice. While he met other future Institute colleagues from
Frankfurt, such as Felix Weil, Leo Löwenthal, and Theodor W. Adorno, in the early
1920s, he did not meet Fromm until later – most likely through Landauer. But by
1928 at the latest, when he gave a lecture at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute on
“Psychoanalysis of the Petty Bourgeois,” Fromm had also developed an interest in
socialist theory and politics that would remain with him for the rest of his life. He
and Horkheimer would work together with Landauer to found the Frankfurt
Psychoanalytic Institute, which opened its doors on February 16, 1929. It was the
first time, as Freud himself noted in an appreciative letter to Horkheimer,52 that
psychoanalysis was officially associated with a German university. Horkheimer also
worked closely with Fromm to develop the first large-scale, psychoanalytically
informed empirical research project – on the political attitudes of blue- and white-
collar workers in Weimar Germany – that the institute would carry out under
Horkheimer’s new leadership.53 Finally, Horkheimer also appreciated Fromm’s
awareness of the rising threat of fascism in Germany during this time. As Horkheimer
recalled later,
Fromm really shared with me, and this is crucial, my views on the developments in Germany
[…] we were among the few who actually knew what was happening. […] Fromm sensed,
just as I did, that we would not be able to stay in Europe. Contrary to the views of others,
Fromm went to America upon my request and looked around a bit […] When he returned
he spoke very positively about America and that [was what made me decide] to leave with
my wife for America. (MHA132a, pp. 131–2)
On May 3, 1934, Horkheimer and Riekher arrived in New York City aboard the SS
George Washington (Wiggershaus 1988, p. 165).
50
Horkheimer’s enthusiasm about Fromm at this time was expressed by his offering to make
Fromm a lifetime member of the institute, but this membership became a source of an intense legal
dispute between Fromm and the institute in later years, when Fromm’s move away from
Horkheimer and Adorno’s interpretation of psychoanalysis led to his departure from the institute
(Abromeit, pp. 336–48).
51
His dissertation – completed under the supervision of Max Weber’s brother, Alfred Weber – was
on “The Jewish Law: A Contribution to the Sociology of the Jewish Diaspora.”
52
Like so many of the letters to and from Horkheimer during this time, the correspondence between
Horkheimer and Freud – of which Horkheimer was particularly proud – are not to be found in the
Horkheimer Archive. On the fate of this correspondence, see (Schmid Noerr 1996).
53
For a discussion of this project and Fromm’s role in it, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 211–26).
246 J. Abromeit
5 Conclusion
After the first few chapters of my book, as I shifted away from extensive biographi-
cal research on Horkheimer’s life to a detailed reconstruction of the development of
his critical theory, archival documents became less important for me. I did continue
to rely upon Horkheimer’s correspondence in the 1930s, especially his letters to and
from Adorno, which are extremely rich theoretically and shed much light on their
most important works from this time.54 A lengthy theoretical text that Erich Fromm
had written in the fall and winter of 1936/1937 (Fromm 1999, pp. 129–175), but
which was not published until 1992, provided me with crucial insights into his cri-
tique of Freudian drive theory, which led to his theoretical break with Horkheimer
and his departure from the institute.55 Overall, however, my reconstruction of
Horkheimer’s critical theory in the 1930s relied primarily on published texts. I hope,
nonetheless, to have made clear here how much my knowledge of Critical Theory has
been enriched by the extensive research I conducted in the Marcuse and Horkheimer
archives. As mentioned, many (although by no means all) of the archival documents
I have discussed here have been published: in the Gesammelte Schriften edition of
Horkheimer’s writings, the Collected Papers and the Nachgelassene Schriften edi-
tions of Marcuse writings, and elsewhere. Furthermore, many of the materials in the
Horkheimer Archive have, in the meantime, been digitized and made available
online to researchers everywhere.56 One can hope that something similar will hap-
pen with the materials in the Marcuse Archive that have not yet been published.
I have described here how my own research in both the Marcuse and Horkheimer
Archives has shaped my own interpretation of the lives and work of both men, espe-
cially during their early phases, including Marcuse’s critical engagement with
Heidegger and Horkheimer’s path to Critical Theory in the 1910s and 1920s. The
discovery of new archival sources has played an important role in the development
of Critical Theory in the past; one thinks, for example, of the impact of Marx’s Paris
Manuscripts on Herbert Marcuse in the early 1930s (Marcuse, 2005c; Maidan
1990). There is no doubt that new sources will be discovered in the future, as has
recently happened with the discovery of extensive notes from some of Hegel’s lec-
tures (Tor 2022). The discovery and scholarly assessment of archival sources is one
of the main ways in which our knowledge is augmented. Thus, we can and should
look forward to the assessment of primary sources that will shed further light on the
development of individual members of the “Frankfurt School” and Critical Theory as
a whole. At the same, we should not forget Horkheimer’s fundamental conviction
54
The Suhrkamp edition of the correspondence between Horkheimer and Adorno during this time
is the best, insofar as it contains some letters and other materials that were left out of Horkheimer’s
Gesammelte Schriften (Adorno and Horkheimer 2003–2004).
55
For my own discussion of this text, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 336–48).
56
For information on the materials from the Horkheimer Archive that have been digitalized and
made available online, see the following website: https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/archive/hork-
heimer.html.
that knowledge is not an end in itself; its aim is not to establish “timeless truths,” but
instead to improve the finite lives of human beings.
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250 J. Abromeit
John Abromeit is a professor in the Department of History and Social Studies Education at the
State University of New York, Buffalo State, where he teaches courses on modern European his-
tory, intellectual history and critical social theory. He is the author of Max Horkheimer and the
Foundations of the Frankfurt School (Cambridge UP, 2011). He is the coeditor of Herbert Marcuse:
A Critical Reader (Routledge, 2004), Herbert Marcuse: Heideggerian Marxism (University of
Nebraska Press, 2005), Transformations of Populism in Europe and the Americas: History and
Recent Tendencies (Bloomsbury, 2016) and Siegfried Kracauer: Selected Writings on Media,
Propaganda, and Political Communication (Columbia University Press, 2022).
Part X
Jürgen Habermas Archive
The Habermas Papers: An Interview
with Roman Yos
Pedro Zan and Rafael Palazi
Roman Yos is research associate at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of

Potsdam, where he is primarily working on a research project on the problem of
language in post-war German philosophy. In 2019, he published the book Der junge
Habermas (Yos 2019), in which, with the help of documents found in the Habermas’s
papers at the Archive Center of the Goethe University Frankfurt, he analyzes the
origins of Habermas’s thought between the 1950s and the publishing of
Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere) in 1962 (Habermas 1992).
Interviewers: Let’s get started with a more general question. While writing your
book, Der junge Habermas, you had access to the papers in Frankfurt. What can
you say about the documents and their organization in the archive? How can one
visit the Archive Center in Frankfurt and view the materials available?
Roman Yos: Before I answer your questions in detail, I would like to take the
opportunity to give some information in advance, which seems important to me for
the classification of and research into the Jürgen Habermas Papers. I must confess
that, at first, I had a somewhat queasy feeling about providing information about a
collection with which I had relatively little to do, at least as far as the duration of my
P. Zan ∙ R. Palazi (*)

São Paulo, Brazil

Switzerland AG 2023
254 P. Zan and R. Palazi
actual work with it is concerned. Also, I do not want to raise exaggerated expecta-
tions concerning the “organization and research in Jürgen Habermas’s archive.”1
For my book, which you mentioned at the beginning, I discovered many places
outside of Frankfurt where Habermasiana can be found, for example, in the estate
of Erich Rothacker in Bonn, as well as in the university archive there, and in the
editorial archive of the journal Merkur in Marbach, to name a few. Some of it can
now also be viewed in Frankfurt. It is important to mention that the early correspon-
dence, up to 1962, is not completely preserved in Frankfurt. As far as I know,
Habermas was able to use the services of a typist (office assistant) only from his
time in Heidelberg onward, so one can assume that some of his letters from the time
before are still (or only) in other archives or estates of his early interlocutors. Carbon
copies of the letters written by him in the period 1963–1994 should at least be avail-
able in the holdings of the Archive Center.
In the introduction to my book, I pointed out that I consulted Habermas’s pre-
liminary estate (Vorlass) in Frankfurt. This applies both to the correspondence and
to other materials, with a view to contextualizing the published written material
from the early creative period. From the beginning, I had not planned to base my
account heavily on the Vorlass because I had already been working on the book for
some time when I began to pay attention to it. Since 2014, when Habermas first
allowed me a glimpse, I have spent little more than a month (spread over several
stays) at the Archive Center, where I have also partially researched the estates of
other people who are important when dealing with Habermas. In this context, Max
Horkheimer and Karl-Otto Apel should be mentioned, as well as Friedrich Pollock,
Herbert Marcuse, and Leo Löwenthal.
In addition, the Archive Center also houses the preliminary estates of Habermas’s
former assistants Albrecht Wellmer, Ulrich Oevermann, and Oskar Negt. If I am
informed correctly, these estates have only recently become part of the holdings
there. If one is interested, for example, in the connections and tensions that have
become known in part as the “dispute over the legacy of Critical Theory” (according
to Helmut Dubiel (1994)), the estates of Alfred Schmidt, Karl-Heinz Haag, and
Hermann Schweppenhäuser, who were primarily Adorno students, should certainly
also be considered, as they are now kept in the same building complex.
One can already guess from the inventory overview how interesting the entire
ensemble in the Archive Center is from the point of view of Critical Theory.2 For the
historical-intellectual processing of the tradition of thought, there are still some
tasks waiting, which can probably only be resolved when the documents from the
second half of the twentieth century can be seen without restriction – not all the
estates or preliminary estates located there yet have the degree of order and indexing
1
Between 2013 and 2021, there have been approximately 80 inquiries from users who have used
the papers or directed questions about them to the Archive Center. I owe this information to Oliver
Kleppel and Dr. Mathias Jehn, who are responsible for the archive holdings on site.
2
For an overview: https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/archive/bestaende.html
The Habermas Papers: An Interview with Roman Yos 255
required for more detailed research projects.3 Unfortunately, one cannot yet find
estates of women involved in the field of Critical Theory in the search for holdings,
although some of them could be considered.4 There is also a lack of on-site scholarly
support for the collection, which, if one disregards the estates of Adorno and
Benjamin that are accessible at the Berlin Academy of Arts and the Institute for
Social Research’s own archive, houses probably the most important representatives
of Frankfurt’s Critical Theory. If you are therefore considering a visit to the Archive
Center, which is located – somewhat hidden – in the main building of the university
library on the Bockenheim campus, you need to know in advance exactly what you
are looking for. Appropriate preparation in the use of the navigation system
Arcinsys,5 as well as a general overview of the known secondary literature on the
Frankfurt School, is essential.
I: Regarding the current research developments on other Critical Theory archives,
as in the cases of Walter Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Adorno, are there any speci-
ficities for this kind of work in Habermas’s case, considering that we are talking
about research using the archives of a living author?
RY: Habermas’s papers contain materials from 1950 to 1994 (further materials
from more recent times are undoubtedly still in the Starnberg house). What can so
far be viewed with permission mainly consists of correspondence, drafts, and manu-
scripts from this period. Specifically, we are dealing with documents from
Habermas’s Bonn study period (1950–1954/55); his assistance at the Institute for
Social Research (1956–1959); his Habilitation in Marburg and the Heidelberg pro-
fessorship at the beginning of the 1960s, the second Frankfurt period (1963–1969);
his time at the Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung der Lebensbedingungen der
wissenschaftlich- technischen Welt in Starnberg (1970–1981); and the third
Frankfurt period, which, with Habermas’s retirement in 1994, concludes a period of
his life, at least in biographical terms. Of course, there is also a considerable quan-
tity of unpublished text and lecture manuscripts, sketches, excerpts, etc., which, like
the correspondence, requires permission to view. It is mandatory to prepare a brief
description of the research project in advance, for approval.
A special feature of “Na 60” (i.e., the estate no. 60) is the correspondence, which
is arranged according to when it originated, and is spread over numerous boxes.
This chronological order may be useful for a biographical perspective or for the
investigation of events that can be well defined in time (Stefan Müller-Doohm cer-
tainly benefited from it in the context of his biography of Habermas (2016)). For the
coherent research of certain correspondence, however, this also has the disadvan-
tage that one must browse and search thoroughly in the special collections reading
room (Spezialsammlungen) where the materials can be viewed. Sometimes,
3
In addition, specific terms of use must be observed. See therefore https://landesarchiv.hessen.de/
hessisches-archivgesetz.
4
Regina Becker-Schmidt, who herself could be seen as a good example, has written about some
women at the IfS (Becker-Schmidt 2009).
5
For Habermas at Arcinsys, see https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/detailAction?detailid=b7099.
however, one comes across letters that one would not have discovered if one had
presented separate correspondence.6
However, there are also a few boxes or folders sorted according to processes,
such as certain correspondence with Suhrkamp Verlag, or letters for birthdays and
anniversaries. Another obvious peculiarity of “Na 60” is, as you rightly pointed out,
the fact that the person who created the inventory is still with us and is also still
productive. It is clear that, especially with the research from the later phase of his
life (i.e., the period beginning in 1994), not much has become known beyond what
has been published. In any case, to date one must still rely on what Habermas him-
self has published or otherwise revealed (for example, in public speeches and
interviews).
I: In Der junge Habermas, you claim that there is no proper diagnosis of the gen-
esis of Habermas’s thought. You aim to fill this gap in the secondary literature with
a historical-theoretical contribution of Habermas’s work and person, always relating
the correspondences available in the archive to the problems posed by the author in
his later work. Could you comment on these gaps and archival research into the
origins of Habermasian thought contributes to the enriching the understanding of
his work?
RY: In the book, I have tried to untangle the thread presented by the context of
the early texts. And you are absolutely right; one of my results was: “there is no
proper genesis of Habermas’s thought.” An important aspect of this was the ques-
tioning of so-called continuity and discontinuity representations, which in the view
of Critical Theory have always become the pivot of the discussion. If one follows
the continuity representations, this means, conversely, that one must make sense of
discontinuities or competing influences.
When I had the opportunity to ask Habermas personally about certain first
encounters – say, with people like Adorno, Gadamer, or Plessner, who appreciated
Habermas’s work very much – he always drew my attention to the easily underesti-
mated degree of contingency. This is something that we later-born researchers
sometimes do not sufficiently clarify to ourselves, because we have already read
much (and repeatedly) about individual incidents in a life story. Every historiciza-
tion must balance contingency and determination. There is a limit to each side, even
if it concerns the explanation of the origin of individual texts. That is why it is dif-
ficult to come up with any “proper diagnosis.”
I: In the book, you also show the many changes in Habermas’s thought. There is a
focus on his relationship with philosophy, from which he departs due to his increas-
ing interest in social research, but that always seems to be present in his intellectual
journey. This relationship is indicated by the publication of his text on the idealism
of Jewish philosophers only 1 year before The Structural Transformation of the
6
For example: One single letter that stands out from other correspondence is from the former sec-
retary for foreign affairs Hans-Dietrich Genscher. It was recently published in the 2021 issue XV/3
(p: 39) of Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte that was dedicated to Habermas.
Public Sphere (Habermas 1992). How do the materials available in the archive,
especially the ones related to the formative phase of Habermasian thought, present
this ambiguous relationship between Habermas and philosophy and help us to
understand these “comings and goings” in his work?
RY: My impression is that Habermas’s departure for Heidelberg at the end of 1961
marks the beginning of a phase that has not yet been sufficiently studied in terms of
the history of his work. With regard to the texts, this concerns the collected essays
of Theorie und Praxis (Theory and Practice) (Habermas 1974) published in 1963
and extends at least to 1968s Erkenntnis und Interesse (Knowledge and Human
Interests) (Habermas 2002), possibly even as far as the new approach to a language-
based sociology represented by the 1971 Gauss Seminars. From this point on, there
were several retrospective efforts and explanations, such as the introduction to the
1971 edition of Theory and Practice and the epilogue to the 1973 paperback edition
of Knowledge and Human Interests, which shed some light on theory development.
But the discussion of Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode (Truth and Method)
(Gadamer 1960) is a weighty matter which should be classified as philosophy, even
though Habermas’s 1967 literature review Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (On
the Logic of the Social Sciences) (Habermas 1988) has a breadth of reading, includ-
ing nonphilosophical texts, which was not expected from someone who is consid-
ered a philosopher at the time.
The way in which Popper and Gadamer, Weber and Parsons, Husserl and Schütz,
Wittgenstein and Chomsky, etc. are treated here in terms of social philosophy must
have been quite a novelty. I only mention this because the “comings and goings”
throughout this phase of his work seem to me to be particularly rich. This can be
seen, for example, in the correspondence with Apel, which, however, has been
incompletely preserved in the archive. As I have done some more intensive research
in this regard since the publication of my book, I can say that one can easily see how
enormous the reading amount of the young professors (Apel was in Kiel at the time)
must have been: hermeneutics, phenomenology, analytic philosophy of science,
pragmatism, etc.
I: Your book ends on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas
1992), Habermas’s Habilitationschrift, and his first big publication. Some commen-
tators consider this work one of his first attempts to criticize Adorno’s and
Horkheimer’s work, pointing to a democratic deficit in their thought. That can fore-
shadow a more substantial break between Habermas and the so-called first genera-
tion of Critical Theory that would come years later. Is it possible to identify the
genesis of these critiques from Habermas of Adorno and Horkheimer in the docu-
ments that are available in the archive? Is it already possible to identify those dis-
agreements exploited by the author in his later work?
RY: I would not say that there is any evidence of such criticism of the “first gen-
eration of Critical Theory” in the archive correspondence. Nor have I been able to
find anything meaningful to that effect so far, and I believe that the later published
statements from The Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas 1984, 1987), The
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Habermas 2004), etc. are a result of a more
long-term engagement and speak for themselves. Even Habermas’s remark about a
“democratic deficit” in Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s thinking does not have to be
interpreted in the sense of such a “break,” as some critiques suggest. This presup-
poses a common starting point. But what this should have constituted between 1956
and 1961 is not easy to say, even if one admits that Habermas shared Adorno’s
cultural critique and his justified criticism of the well-known tendencies to repress
the Germans’ National Socialist past. One must also keep in mind here that the criti-
cal passages repeatedly alluded to with regard to Habermas were written after
Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s deaths. I cannot identify anything of the kind in The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas 1992). Meanwhile,
some of Adorno’s published lectures clearly mention this book in an appreciative
way. Habermas, in my opinion, has tried from the beginning to follow his own theo-
retical intentions instead of fixing himself into Critical Theory in the mold of Adorno
and Horkheimer at a particular level of their work. Admittedly, there are some meth-
odological convictions – a certain way of dealing with Kant, Marx, and Hegel in
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – which are quite close to the
radically democratically minded pre-1844 Marx. Perhaps, accepting some rough-
ness, this can be called Hegelian Marxism or even Western Marxism. Beyond that,
however, I think that it would be better to pay less attention to these kinds of ques-
tions, which usually start at the generational sequence of Critical Theory. Otherwise,
one must always deal with two kinds of lamenters: on the one hand, those who
complain that the “pure doctrine” or some orthodoxy has been watered down by
Habermas; on the other hand, those who run under the banner of Critical Theory but
in fact already cast their nets far from the fundamental intentions of the elder
Frankfurts.
In the long run, it will be impossible to please either faction with the scheme of
generational succession. That is why I also plead for treating Habermas as an inde-
pendent thinker. This does not necessarily mean that links between Adorno and
Habermas are nonexistent. From a philosophical-systematic point of view, Habermas
has the greatest intersections with Albrecht Wellmer or Karl-Otto Apel, and the lat-
ter – although he also taught in Frankfurt – is not considered to be part of Critical
Theory. You can see from this that the question of generational succession inevita-
bly leads to arguments about individual personalities. I think this is a wasted effort.
I: Also regarding the topic of the public sphere, Habermas had shown interest in
this theme before publishing The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
(Habermas 1992). In Habermas’s book, the press has a central role in forming the
phenomenon of the public sphere in bourgeois society. As discovered through some
research on the early academic development of Habermas, including your work, he
authored some relevant texts as a young journalist. Could you comment on how
these works appear in your research and how this work could influence his more
mature thought?
RY: The public sphere is indeed one topic that occupies Habermas to this day.7
And if one had to assess (somewhat prematurely) his life’s work, one would have to
note, among other things, that critical journalism, as Habermas understood it in the
context of the political-cultural development of the Federal Republic and a reunified
Germany central to the European Union, has remained a kind of modus vivendi for
him. In this respect, a certain understanding of critical journalism also influences
“his more mature thought.” For Habermas as a critical intellectual, this is a kind of
link to his work, which sees in the critical public sphere normative resources that
must be fed repeatedly into circulation in liberal world society. It is this kind of criti-
cal intellectuality that drives the “freedom of reason” in Habermas’s eyes, and it has
been a continuous thread from his early work.
I: We know that from the 1970s onward, Habermas came closer to pragmatics,
notoriously to the “transcendental pragmatics” of Karl-Otto Apel (Apel 1982). In
this regard, even though he always paid attention to communication, it is at this
moment that there is a great emphasis on the break from Habermas with the “phi-
losophy of consciousness,” considering the setting of his action theory and the
grounding of his pragmatics. From archival research, is it possible to extract new
elements about this crucial change in Habermas’s position during this period, in
which he was close to Apel?
RY: The exchange between Habermas and Apel can only be traced through the
archive materials to a limited extent. Between 1962 and 1968, this exchange is rela-
tively active (also due to the work on the theory series at Suhrkamp Verlag, for
which Apel edited two volumes on Peirce), and then it tapers off again at the begin-
ning of the 1970s when Apel goes to Frankfurt and Habermas to Starnberg. As
already mentioned, not everything has been preserved and, in any case, as we are
only talking about the period up to 1994, it may well be that some things will turn
up that have not yet been found or released.
As I answered to one of your previous questions, one can see clearly from the
available letters in the Habermas estate how closely Habermas’s and Apel’s research
interests and ways of thinking were connected over long distances. However, as you
are asking so directly about Habermas’s relationship to transcendental pragmatics,
I would prefer to draw on the numerous publications by Apel and his followers,
which Habermas, to my knowledge, also addressed. I say this not only because there
is little evidence for it in the existing materials, but mainly because in the case of
correspondence, one is usually dealing with geneses of thought and not with fin-
ished results.
In my experience (which also draws from other correspondence), the natural
asymmetry between published and nascent thoughts is also recognized by most
people. The awareness that one is also writing letters for posterity is rarely found in
one’s younger years, when fame does not yet assume further proportions. On the
other hand, Heidegger, as we now know, took writing for posterity to the extreme,
7
See, for example, his new publication on digital transformation (Habermas 2022).
more so than anyone else. He obviously knew very well how to guarantee remaining
in the conversation, even posthumously.
I: Last year, the Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte published an issue on Habermas
(Hacke and Schlak 2021), partially dedicated to papers available both in Frankfurt
and in other collections. You contributed with a piece (Hacke and Schlak 2021:
pp. 13–15) on a document available in Bonn, namely, Rothacker’s opinion about
Habermas’s doctorate work, “Das Absolute und die Geschichte” (Habermas 1954).
In it, you mention a somehow “conflictual” relationship between Habermas and his
professors from the early 1950s, especially after his critique of Heidegger in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Habermas 1953). How does the relationship
between Habermas and his predecessors during his academic formation appear in
the correspondence available in the archive, and how would it be relevant for his
later works?
RY: First of all, I would speak more cautiously of “predecessors” only in genera-
tional terms. Assuming a precession (but also succession) with regard to a school of
thought does not make sense in Rothacker’s case, because the movement of detach-
ment is too strong. The basic philosophical intention is, all in all, too different.
Indeed, Rothacker and Heidegger are two thinkers who made a certain impression
on the young Habermas, and in Rothacker’s case the intervening closeness via
Habermas’s study time is even institutionally given. However, Habermas soon
gained clarity about the entanglements of these two national socialist co-thinkers.
The result of this movement of demarcation can be seen, for example, in Habermas’s
published articles from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,8 whereby the context
surrounding the published (and often edited) text is always interesting. What addi-
tional information one can get here can, in my opinion, be seen clearly in the
recently published letter from Karl Korn to Habermas, which is printed in the issue
of Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte you have mentioned (Hacke and Schlak 2021:
p. 12). However, with such “finds” one must always bear in mind that many things
were, of course, arranged only face to face or by telephone. With this I only want to
say that the striking exhibition of single archival documents can lend disproportion-
ate importance to certain influences, such as events. This quickly leads to imbal-
ances in the assessment of the actors and events. During my research, as mentioned
earlier, I had the good fortune to ask Jürgen Habermas about some of his early
contacts with his academic teachers, patrons, and intellectual opponents. This addi-
tional benefit to researching archival documents is, of course, a special feature that
you do not have with the estates of the deceased. In this respect, working with an
estate of living person is something from which a connection to oral history may
eventually arise, if the opportunity presents itself.
8
Jürgen Habermas has been regularly writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung since 1952.
References
Apel, K.O. 1982. Sprachpragmatik und Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Becker-Schmidt, Regina. 2009. Nicht zu vergessen – Frauen am Frankfurter Institut für
Sozialforschung. Gretel Adorno, Monika Plessner und Helge Pross. In Die Frankfurter Schule
und Frankfurt. Eine Rückkehr nach Deutschland, ed. Monika Boll and Raphael Gross, 65–69.
Göttingen/Frankfurt: Wallstein/Jüdisches Museum.
Dubiel, Helmut. 1994. Der Streit um die Erbschaft der Kritischen Theorie. In Ungewißheit und
Politik, ed. Helmut Dubiel, 230–247. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Gadamer, H.-G., ed. 1960. Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik.
Tübingen: JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
Habermas, Jürgen. 1953. Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken: zur Veröffentlichung von
Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 1935. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 170, July 25, 1953.
———. 1954. Das Absolute und die Geschichte. Von der Zwiespältigkeit in Schellings Denken.
Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät der
Universität Bonn. doi https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.41402#0007.
———. 1974. Theory and Practice. Trans. J. Viertel. Boston: Beacon Press.
———. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action: Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of
Society. Trans. T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press.
———. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action: Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique
of Functionalist Reason. Trans. T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press.
———. 1988. On the Logic of the Social Sciences. Trans. S. W. Nicholson and J Stark. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
———. 1992. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of
Bourgeois Society. Trans. T. Burger. Cambridge: Polity Press.
———. 2002. Knowledge and Human Interests. Trans. J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press.
———. 2004. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Trans. F. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
———. 2022. Ein neuer Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit und die deliberative Politik. Berlin:
Suhrkamp.
Hacke, Jens, and Stephan Schlak, eds. 2021. H wie Habermas. Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte,
vol.15 (3) (Autumn 2021). München: C.H. Beck.
Müller-Doohm, Stefan. 2016. Habermas: A Biography. Cambridge/Malden, MA: Polity.
Yos, Roman. 2019. Der Junge Habermas: Eine Ideengeschichtliche Untersuchung Seines Frühen
Denkens, 1952-1962. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Pedro Zan graduated in Philosophy at the University of Campinas (Brazil) and is currently a
Master’s student at the same university, with a research entitled “Two Conceptions of the Public
Sphere in Jürgen Habermas’s Work”.
Rafael Palazi is a Philosophy PhD candidate at the University of Campinas (Brazil) and a
researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap). He is interested in Critical
Theory and, specifically, in Jürgen Habermas’s works. His main research focuses on the theory of
communicative action and its applications.
Two Letters Between Jürgen Habermas
and Karl-Otto Apel, Dated 1965:
Comments on the Exchange
Roman Yos
1 Introduction
Jürgen Habermas’s letter to Karl-Otto Apel, dated March 25, 1965, invited him to
participate in a new “series of philosophical texts” introducing Charles Sanders
Peirce as a “methodologist [...] between Young Hegelianism and the newer pragma-
tism in the sense of Morris” (see Fig. 1). In his (undated) reply, sent from Kiel, Apel
laconically admits that he had already become used to the fact that “the decisive
impulses” of his “public existence” came from Habermas (see Fig. 2). Roman Yos
wrote the comments on this exchange.
2 Comment on the Letter from Jürgen Habermas

to Karl-Otto Apel (March 25, 1965)
Jürgen Habermas’s letter to Karl-Otto Apel, dated March 25, 1965, invited him to
participate in a new “series of philosophical texts” introducing Charles Sanders
Peirce as a “methodologist [...] between Young Hegelianism and the newer pragma-
tism in the sense of Morris.” The series, which a short time later was published by
Suhrkamp Verlag under the simple title Theorie, appeared between 1966 and 1986,
with Hans Blumenberg, Jürgen Habermas, Dieter Henrich, Niklas Luhmann, and
Jacob Taubes as editors. As a result of the letters between Apel and Habermas repro-
duced here, two volumes of selected texts by Peirce were produced (Schriften I. Zur
Entstehung des Pragmatismus, 1967, and Schriften II. Pragmatismus zum
Pragmatizismus, 1970, translated by Gert Wartenberg). Apel provided
R. Yos (*)
Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

Switzerland AG 2023
264 R. Yos
Fig. 1 Letter 1: Jürgen Habermas’s letter to Karl-Otto Apel, March 25, 1965
Two Letters Between Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, Dated 1965: Comments… 265
Fig. 2 Letter 2: Karl-Otto Apel’s reply to Habermas (undated)

266 R. Yos
comprehensive introductions for each volume, which were transferred in 1975 to

the famous “stw” (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft) series as a separate study
from Apel, entitled Der Denkweg von Charles Sanders Peirce (published in English
as Charles S. Peirce. From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism in 1981). Thus, one of the
first books on Peirce published in German can be seen as an outcome of the research-
related community of interests that linked the two corresponders since their early
years in Bonn. The correspondence contained in Na 60 (Habermas papers) and Na
67 (Apel papers) is only incompletely preserved. The first letter from Apel is dated
December 18, 1962, and suggests a renewed contact. The late part of the correspon-
dence, which began after 1994, has not yet been indexed.
3 Comment on Karl-Otto Apel’s Response

to Jürgen Habermas
In his (undated) reply, sent from Kiel, Apel laconically admits that he had already
become used to the fact that “the decisive impulses” of his “public existence” came
from Habermas. The subject of an “introduction of Peirce, as the actual founder of
an original American philosophy, into the German discussion” was one he had him-
self “posed for a long time.” As Apel wrote to his Frankfurt colleague, he saw the
presentation of Peirce in the context of a “response to Hegel.” The Theorie series,
which later included a 20-volume edition of Hegel’s works, was in line with a grow-
ing interest in social science and humanities texts in paperback format. See there-
fore Felsch (2021) and Paul (2022).
References
Apel, Karl-Otto. 1975. Der Denkweg von Charles Sanders. Eine Einführung in den amerikanischen
Pragmatismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
———. 1981. Charles S. Peirce. From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism. Amherst: University of
Massachussetts Press.
Felsch, Philipp. 2021. The Summer of Theory. History of a Rebellion, 1960-1990. Trans.
T. Crawford. Cambridge/Medford, MA: Wiley.
Paul, Morten. 2022. Suhrkamp ‘Theorie’. Eine Buchreihe im philosophischen Nachkrieg. Leipzig:
Spector Books.
Peirce, Charles. 1967. Schriften I. Zur Entstehung des Pragmatismus. Trans. Gert Wartenberg.
———. 1970. Schriften II. Pragmatismus zum Pragmatizismus. Trans. Gert Wartenberg. Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp.
Roman Yos is an associate researcher of Philosophy at the University of Potsdam. He is the

author of Der junge Habermas. Eine ideengeschichtliche Untersuchung seines frühen Denkens
1952–1962 (Suhrkamp, 2019).
Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert
Marcuse, July 10, 1978: Translation
of the Letter and Comment
Isabelle Aubert
1 Introduction
Marcuse was considered a symbol of the New Left and the philosopher of the stu-
dent revolt in France or Italy in 1968 (two countries where One-Dimensional Man
[Marcuse 2002 (1964)] was a bestseller), but Habermas had perceived the full scope
of his thought by the mid-1950s. For this reason, Habermas calls himself an
Einzelfall (an individual case). In the following letter (see Fig. 1), Habermas con-
gratulates Marcuse for his 80th birthday and expresses his gratitude toward the phi-
losopher who so significantly influenced his own philosophical reflections. Isabelle
Aubert translated and commented this letter, whose manuscript is reproduced here.
2 Translation of Jürgen Habermas’s Letter

to Herbert Marcuse1
July 10 [1978].
Dear Herbert –
I don’t know if you are aware of the role you played in my philosophical biogra-
phy. Please let me take the occasion of your birthday to thank you for it.
1
I thank warmly Laurent Dupont for his helpful advice.
I. Aubert (*)
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Institut universitaire de France, Paris, France

Switzerland AG 2023
268 I. Aubert
Fig. 1 Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse, July 10, 1978
Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert Marcuse, July 10, 1978: Translation of… 269
Fig. 1 (continued)
270 I. Aubert
Fig. 1 (continued)
Fig. 1 (continued)
272 I. Aubert
The first time I heard a talk by you was in 1956, during the Freud lectures – two
presentations that contained the substance of Eros and Civilization. You cannot
imagine what image of Freud’s “depth psychology” we came away with after study-
ing at a traditional university like Bonn: The Freud lectures led me to the discovery
of a new continent. I remember very well my deep astonishment in seeing that there
were people who treated Freud systematically, that Freud could be taken seriously!
A year later you were back in Frankfurt; this time I was lucky enough to talk to
you, to get to know you. At that point I had not been in Frankfurt long, I was skepti-
cal about Horkheimer and admired Adorno, but two bridges were missing for me to
penetrate Adorno’s dialectical exercises not only with my head, but also with my
heart: the bridge connecting contemporary philosophy (Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre,
etc.) to the work of the Frankfurters, and the bridge from these to the questions of
political practice, to our demonstrations against atomic weaponry, the military,
against the war in Algeria, etc. Then I read you, met you, and found both: the entire
context of philosophy since Bergson (where Adorno sort of “stopped”, despite
Husserl’s book) and, despite pessimism, a wonderfully grounded political engage-
ment. I coined the expression “Heideggerian Marxist” for you at that time. Naturally,
this implied some distancing from your own philosophical trajectory. But more than
that, it expressed enthusiasm about both: That one of the “old” Frankfurters embod-
ied continuity with what I had grown philosophically (Heidegger) as well as a break
with a cowardly unpolitical mindset. You were a Marxist, and you proclaimed it.
One only needs to recall the horizon of the Eisenhower-Dulles-Adenauer era to
understand what liberation could come from a man like you at that time for a young
German who, in the midst of total restoration, felt he was suffocating.
Your real impact was felt 10 years later on another generation. In my generation,
I feel more like an outlier when it comes to your influence – that is why I just wanted
to tell you this.
Enjoy the celebration with Ricky, Lettau and friends. You have received our little
yellow book from Busch.
– We are thinking of you.
Warm congratulations from.
Ute + Jürgen Habermas.
3 Comment on the Letter from Jürgen Habermas to Herbert

Marcuse (July 10, 1978)
In 1978, Herbert Marcuse celebrated his 80th birthday. In his letter of congratula-
tions, Jürgen Habermas expressed how grateful he was to the philosopher who so
significantly influenced his own philosophical reflections. It is remarkable to read
that Marcuse was a true source of inspiration for Habermas and how Marcuse’s
writings helped him to build a bridge between the theoretical aspect of Critical
Theory and social practice. This influence is visible in some of the young Habermas’s
essays, for example, “Technology and Science as Ideology” (Habermas 1971),

which he dedicated to Marcuse for his 70th birthday. While Horkheimer and Adorno
cautiously displayed their adherence to Marxism, Marcuse always affirmed his
Marxist position. “Heideggerian Marxist” is a felicitous expression coined by
Habermas which synthesizes the very particular way in which Marcuse integrated
certain elements of Heidegger, his thesis adviser, to a Marxist theoretical frame-
work. Marcuse (along with Hannah Arendt) is one of the few German refugee phi-
losophers who had occasional exchanges with Heidegger during their exile. For his
part, after a classical university education in post-war Bonn, Habermas changed his
mind about Heidegger’s philosophy. He rejected it strongly in an article entitled
“Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken” (“To Think with Heidegger against
Heidegger”) (Habermas 1953) when Heidegger republished his 1935 lectures
(Heidegger 1953) unaltered.
Marcuse was considered a symbol of the New Left and the philosopher of the
student revolt in France or Italy in 1968 (two countries where One-Dimensional
Man (Marcuse 2002 (1964)) was a bestseller), but Habermas had perceived the full
scope of his thought by the mid-1950s. For this reason, Habermas calls himself an
“Einzelfall” (an individual case or “outlier”).
The end of the letter mentions a “little yellow book”: this is the volume Gespräche
mit Herbert Marcuse (Habermas et al. 1978), which had recently been published by
the editor Günther Busch (whose name is recalled by Habermas) at Suhrkamp
Verlag. It consists of a series of interviews with Herbert Marcuse conducted in
honor of his 80th birthday. The different interlocutors, which include Jürgen
Habermas, but also Erica Sherover, Silvia Bovenschen, Karl Popper, Ralph
Dahrendorf, and Rudi Dutschke, question him on his political philosophy, aesthet-
ics, women’s emancipation and protest movements, the relationship between psy-
choanalysis and Critical Theory, and the evolution of the Left in Europe.
Let us finish by identifying Ricky as Erica Sherover, the author of Emancipation
and Consciousness (Sherover 1986) and Marcuse’s wife at the time of his death, and
Lettau as Reinhard Lettau, the professor of literature and good friend of Marcuse.
References
Habermas, Jürgen. 1953, July 25. Mit Heidegger gegen Heidegger denken: zur Veröffentlichung
von Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 1935. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 170.
———. 1971. Technology and science as ideology. In Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest,
Science and Politics, ed. Jürgen Habermas, 81–122. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, Jürgen, Silvia Bovenschen, et al., eds. 1978. Gespräche mit Herbert Marcuse. Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp.
Heidegger, Martin. 1953. Einführung in die Metaphysik. Tübingen: Niemayer.
Marcuse, Herbert. 2002 [1964]. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced
Industrial Society. London/New York: Routledge.
Sherover, Erica. 1986. Emancipation and Consciousness. Oxford: Blackwell.
274 I. Aubert
Isabelle Aubert is an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-

Sorbonne, and a member of the Institut universitaire de France. She is the author of Habermas.
Une théorie critique de la société (CNRS, 2015). She is the coeditor of Dialogues avec Habermas
(CNRS, 2018), Niklas Luhmann: Une théorie générale de la société (Editions de la Sorbonne,
2023) and Adorno: Dialectique et négativité (Vrin, 2023).
ppendix: Practical Information
A
on the Archives
Marx-Engels Archives
IISG – Amsterdam
Site: https://iisg.amsterdam/en
Telephone, fax, and e-mails:
T: + 31 20 6685866
F: + 31 20 6654181
E: [email protected] (enquiries on collections)
E: [email protected] (information on IISH)
Address:
Cruquiusweg 31
1019 AT Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Opening hours:
The Reading Room is open
Monday–Thursday: 9am–5pm
Rules for visiting and consulting the archive:
https://iisg.amsterdam/en/collections/using
https://search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/ARCH00860
RGASPI
http://www.rgaspi.su/
The material has not been digitalized/publicized until this day.
Address: Moscow, St. Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 15, 5th floor
Phone: +7 (495) 694-40-34
E-mail: [email protected]
Opening hours:
Monday: 12pm–8pm.
Tuesday: 11am–5pm.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to 275
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276 Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives
Wednesday: 10am–5pm.
Thursday: 11am–5pm.
Friday: 9.30am–4.30pm.
alter Benjamin Archiv (WBA) and Theodor W. Adorno

W
Archiv (TWAA)
Akademie der Künste – Berlin

Address and contact:
Luisenstraße 60
10117 Berlin
Tel: +49(0)30-200 57-40 56
Fax: +49(0)30-200 57-40 48
Email: [email protected]
Opening hours:
Monday–Friday: 10am–5pm
It is recommended to reserve a place in the Reading Room in advance by phone
or email.
Contact:
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Research Associate (WBA)
Tel: +49(0)30-200 57-40 56
Michael Schwarz
Head of the Theodor W. Adorno Archiv (TWAA)
Tel: +49(0)30-200 57-40 61
Prof. Dr. Erdmut Wizisla
Head of department
Tel: +49(0)30-200 57-40 60
For further information:
Akademie der Künste, Berlin: https://www.adk.de/en/archives/archives-
departments/walter-benjamin-archiv/index.htm
Archiv Datenbank (AdK):https://archiv.adk.de/BildsucheFrames?easydb=89fjdb2c
fo1l6i5msha15vdl36&ls=2&ts=1673200078
TWAA at the Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt am Main: https://www.ifs.uni-
frankfurt.de/adorno-archive.html
Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives 277
Archiv des Instituts für Sozialforschung
Institut für Sozialforschung an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

Adress and contact:
Senckenberganlage 26
60325 Frankfurt am Main
Tel.: +49 (0)69 75 61 83 – 0
Email: [email protected]frankfurt.de
Opening hours:
Tuesdays: 2pm–6pm
Prescheduled visits only
Contact:
Dr. Dirk Braunstein
Head of the IfS-Archive
Tel.: +49 (0)69 75 61 83 80
Maischa Gelhard
Research associate
Tel.: +49 (0)69 75 61 83 21
For further information:
https://www.ifs.uni-frankfurt.de/archiv.html
https://arcinsys.hessen.de
Max Horkheimer Archiv (MHA)

Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt a.M.
Bockenheimer Landstr. 134-138
Tel.: +49 (0)69 79839205
[email protected]frankfurt.de
Opening Hours:
Reading Room Special Collections and Manuscripts
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Email: ls-[email protected]frankfurt.de
Email: ls-[email protected]frankfurt.de
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Tel.: +49 (0)69 79839007
Oliver Kleppel
Tel.: +49 (0)69 79839254
Further information:
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https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/
https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/detailAction?detailid=b7040
Friedrich Pollock Papers
Archivzentrum der Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main

Universitätsbibliothek J. C. Senckenberg Frankfurt am Main
Archivzentrum
Bockenheimer Landstr. 134–138
Germany
Opening hours:
Monday–Friday: 10 am–8 pm
It is recommended to reserve a place in the Reading Room « Special Collections »
in advance by phone or email.
Contact:
Dr. Mathias Jehn
Tel.: +49 (0)69-798-39007
Oliver Kleppel
Tel.: +49 (0)69 79839254
https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/archive/so.html
Fondo Friedrich Pollock – Università degli Studi Firenze, Biblioteca Umanistica
Università degli Studi Firenze
Archivi della Biblioteca Umanistica
Piazza Brunelleschi, 4
50121 Firenze
Italy
Opening hours:
Monday–Friday: 9 am-1:30 pm
Tuesday and Thursday: 2 pm–5pm
It is recommended to reserve a place in the Reading Room in advance by email.
Contact:
Laura Vannucci
Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives 279
[email protected]
https://www.sba.unifi.it/p1338.html
erbert Marcuse Archiv (HMA) / Leo Löwenthal

H
Archiv (LLA)
Archivzentrum der Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main

Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt a.M.
Bockenheimer Landstr. 134-138
Tel.: +49 (0)69 79839205
Email: information[at]ub.uni-frankfurt.de
Opening hours:
Reading Room Special Collections
Monday–Friday: 10am–8pm
It is recommended to reserve a place in the Reading Room in advance by phone
or email.
Contact:
Dr. Mathias Jehn
Head of the Archives
Tel.: +49(0)69 79839007
Email: m.jehn[at]ub.uni-frankfurt.de
Oliver Kleppel (HMA/LLA)
Research Associate (WBA)
Tel.: +49(0)69 79839254
Email: o.kleppel[at]ub.uni-frankfurt.de
Stephen Roeper
Information
E-Mail: s.roeper[at]ub.uni-frankfurt.de
Tel.: +49(0)69 79822364
Peter-Erwin Jansen, M.A. Philosophie
Permission for Copyrights and Support
Herbert Marcuse/Leo Löwenthal
E-Mail : [email protected]
Tel.: +49(0) 1792034255
https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/archive/so.html
https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/start.action
https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/start.action?oldNodeid=
Habermas’s Bequest (Na 60)
Special Collections Reading Room at the Archivzentrum in the Johann Christian

Senckenberg Universitätsbibliothek – Goethe University – Campus Bockenheim
Address: Bockenheimer Landstrasse 134-138, 60325, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Website: https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/archive/habermas.html.
Phone number: +49 (0)69 798 39062.
The Reading Rooms are open Monday–Friday: 10.30am–4.30pm.
Website for booking a seat at the Reading Room: https://buchung.ub.uni-frankfurt.
de/zeit/zb3/.
Or via the responsible for the state:
Oliver Kleppel
In order to book a seat, it is necessary to send Mr. Kleppel a selection of the corre-
spondence to be investigated, so it can be forwarded to Jürgen Habermas him-
self. The list of available contents of the bequest can be found at the following
website: https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/list.action?nodeid=g156869&page=
1&sorting=41&reload=true
See also Karl-Otto Apel Archive (Na 67) in the same building.
Index
A E
Aesthetics, 49, 64, 143, 147, 151, 152, Education, 11, 83–93, 98, 148, 165–187, 211,
159–162, 167, 204, 205, 219, 220, 229, 214, 225, 234, 273
239, 273 Engels, F., 5, 6, 8, 11, 17–30, 225, 240
Apel, K.-O., 211, 254, 257–259, 263, 266
Aragon, L., 228, 229
Arendt, H., 39, 40, 42, 273 F
Avant-garde music, 152, 156 Favez, J., 10, 12, 105–124
“Frankfurt School”, 4, 5, 9, 12, 71, 116, 132,
135, 137, 165, 166, 169, 199, 226, 232,
B 233, 246, 255
Baudelaire, C., 42–44, 48, 52, 63 Freud, S., 4, 205, 243–245, 272
Becker, H., 11, 88, 90, 165–187 Freund, G., 7, 38, 42
Benjamin, D., 42, 52 Fromm, E., 4, 8, 13, 70, 99, 107, 109, 111,
Benjamin, W., 4–8, 10–13, 37–49, 51–65, 99, 114, 115, 130, 137, 199, 219, 220, 229,
114, 130, 132, 133, 144, 145, 199, 222, 233, 243–246
239, 255
Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences
(BBAW), 23 G
Blumenberg, H., 263 Gadamer, H.-G., 144, 256, 257
Bovenschen, S., 273 Gretel Karplus-Adorno, 60, 165
Brecht, B., 41, 42 Group Experiment, 75–78, 85
C H
Cultural memory, 97–103 Habermas, J., 5, 6, 83, 88, 123, 124, 134–136,
144, 166, 231, 241, 253–260,
263–273, 280
D Hegel, G.W.F., 4, 57, 87, 111, 151, 183, 219,
Dahrendorf, R., 273 227, 242, 246, 258, 266
Democracy, 75, 77, 83–93, 102, 138, 168, 173, Heidegger, M., 9, 180–182, 203, 204,
204, 205, 213, 219, 229 207, 226, 227, 232, 240, 246, 259,
Derrida, J., 54–57, 61, 65 272, 273
Dutschke, R., 222, 273 Henrich, D., 263
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to 281
Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
282 Index
I P
Institute for Social Research (IfS), 3, 4, 6, 9, Peirce, C.S., 263
12, 37, 39, 42, 43, 83–93, 99, 108, 129, Philosophy, 3, 4, 22, 84, 105, 106, 108–112,
135, 143, 144, 165, 166, 171, 193, 196, 116, 130, 131, 133–138, 153,
197, 207, 209, 225, 255 155, 165, 167, 168, 170, 172, 175,
Instrumental Reason, 135, 137, 221 181, 186, 187, 196, 205–207, 217,
International Institute of Social History (IISG), 219, 225, 227, 228, 231, 232, 236,
19–21, 23, 24, 275 239–242, 244, 253, 256, 257, 259,
International Marx-Engels Foundation 266, 272, 273
(IMES), 23 Plessner, H., 256
Pollock, C., 196
Pollock, F., 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 69, 75, 77, 85, 98,
K 99, 106–108, 111, 112, 115, 124, 130,
Kluge, A., 42, 145, 146 131, 193–199, 233, 235, 236, 238, 240,
243, 254
Popper, K., 74, 257, 273
L Post-War West Germany, 168, 171–175
Lettau, R., 272, 273 Pragmatism, 257, 263, 266
Löwenthal, L., 6, 8, 11, 12, 38, 42, 99, 107, Psychoanalysis, 4, 109, 205, 219, 220, 229,
108, 112, 130, 145, 195, 203–214, 243–245, 273
219–222, 231, 245, 254 Psychology, 3, 111, 131, 137, 228, 241,
Luhmann, N., 263 244, 272
Public sphere, 9, 56, 57, 59, 60, 85, 87, 151,
167, 258, 259
M
Marcuse, H., 4–6, 8–12, 99, 108, 111, 112,
130–133, 135, 145, 203–214, 217–222, R
225–247, 254, 267–273 Rang, F.C., 7, 38, 41
Marx-Engels Collected Works Russian State Archives of Socio-Political
(MECW), 17, 18 History (RGASPI), 19, 23, 24, 275
Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA-2), 17,
18, 22, 23, 25–30
Marx-Engels Historisch-Kritische S
Gesamtausgabe (MEGA-1), 17, 25, 28 Sartre, J.-P., 100, 207
Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch, 25 Schmidt, A., 12, 97, 98, 112, 134, 135, 194,
Marx-Engels-Nachlass, 18–30 195, 205, 232, 233, 242, 254
Marx-Engels-Werke (MEW), 17, 18, Scholem, G., 5, 7, 12, 37, 39, 42–44, 51,
23–25, 27 53–56, 58–60, 62, 63, 145
Marxism, 3, 4, 6, 17, 18, 24, 27, 29, 30, 111, Schopenhauer, A., 100, 134, 205,
131, 132, 186, 199, 258, 273 236, 239
Marx, K., 3–6, 8, 11, 17–30, 40, 111, 205, Second Viennese School, 153
207, 219, 220, 225–227, 229, 232, 237, Sherover, E., 273
238, 240, 242–246, 258 Social Psychology, 111, 228
Modernism, 152, 158, 161, 162 Stockhausen, K., 152–156
N T
National Socialism, 75, 79, 91, 106, 134, 167, Taubes, J., 263
180, 206, 210, 211, 219, 227, 239
National Socialist Germany, 211, 228
Neumann, F., 8, 12, 13, 99, 198, 206, 209, W
211, 217, 218, 228 Weil, F., 3, 73, 131, 209, 238, 245

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Isabelle Aubert

Marcos Nobre Editors

The Archives of Critical

ISBN 978-3-031-36584-3 ISBN 978-3-031-36585-0 (eBook)

Paper in this product is recyclable.

This book is a book of memory, history, and living theory.

Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Isabelle Aubert

appreciated the diligence of Oliver Kleppel from the ArchivZentrum of Frankfurt

Part II Marx and Engels Archive

Part III Walter Benjamin Archive

Part IV The Institute for Social Research Archive

Part V Max Horkheimer Archive

Part VI Theodor W. Adorno Archive

Part VII Friedrich Pollock Archive

Part VIII Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal Archive

Part IX Between Archives

Part X Jürgen Habermas Archive

Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives���������������������������������������� 275

Fig. 1 The path of Marx-Engels-Nachlass (simplified exposition)����������������� 21

Fig. 1 Letter 1: Jürgen Habermas’s letter to Karl-Otto Apel,

Isabelle Aubert and Marcos Nobre

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

existence of archives containing the manuscripts, recordings, and other documents

Grossmann’s phrasing of “the most important countries of the world” demonstrates

progressively repatriated after World War II and centralized in Germany: in Frankfurt

surprising, then, that Adorno associates such an “impotently sentimental consola-

Isabelle Aubert is an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-­

Marcos Nobre is a professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Campinas (Unicamp),

Marxist scholarship is becoming gradually more philologically oriented, to the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 17

To answer in detail the question of what remains to be found in the Marx-Engels-­

Laura/ Jenny/ Eleanor

Russian State Archive of

Fig. 1 The path of Marx-Engels-Nachlass (simplified exposition)

“The German Ideology” and Researching the Nachlass:

It is theoretically possible to independently decipher and even edit manuscripts

Meanwhile, two different events occurred that demonstrate the importance of

2.2 Reading Marx Today: The Nachlass

There is still a potentially rich field of exploration in the Marx-Engels-Nachlass as

well-known exceptions, e.g., their newspaper contributions – given the extent of

Sperl, R. 2005. Marx-Engels-Editionen. In Editionen Zu Deutschsprachigen Autoren Als Spiegel

In the 1960s, Theodor W. Adorno had already spoken of a “Benjamin Archive.” He

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 37

Fig. 1 The reading room in the Walter Benjamin Archive

These effects on the publication and reception of an author’s writings show us

2 Interview with Ursula Marx

FB How does your history with the Benjamin Archive begin?

FB How is the archive structured? Who visits it?

UM In addition to Benjamin’s estate, the Benjamin Archive preserves the archives

with precise instructions and adequately insured, to selected friends. It is thanks to

UM As early as November 1940, barely 6 weeks after Benjamin’s death, Gershom

Fig. 2 The boxes in the Walter Benjamin Archive

Fig. 3 Papers with Walter Benjamin’s handwriting

ments. As soon as a reliable text corpus is available, work on the commentary

There are perhaps only two manners, or rather two greatnesses,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 51

We understand that the suggestion to publish a volume of collected writings

arrangement, according to some internal or intimate principle of the collected

Henceforth fragmented, the anarchive escapes the archontic command of con-

The anarchival economy draws in its loop a movement of conservation, but it is

Part II Marx and Engels Archive

Part III Walter Benjamin Archive

Part IV The Institute for Social Research Archive

Part V Max Horkheimer Archive

Part VI Theodor W. Adorno Archive

Part VII Friedrich Pollock Archive

Part VIII Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal Archive

Part IX Between Archives

Part X Jürgen Habermas Archive

Appendix: Practical Information on the Archives�� 275

Fig. 1 The path of Marx-Engels-Nachlass (simplified exposition)�� 21

Isabelle Aubert is an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-

To answer in detail the question of what remains to be found in the Marx-Engels-

2.2 Reading Marx Today: The Nachlass

2 Interview with Ursula Marx

1 History of the Archive

2 Tasks of the Archive

2.4 Research out of the Archive

3 Examples of the Archive Material

3.2 The Contest on the German People and Antisemitism

1 The Research on Democracy and Education

1.1 Research on Democracy in West Germany

1.2 Education and Democracy Among the Students

2 Education, Democracy, and Resistance in Theodor

Adorno, Theodor. 1969. Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie. Neuwied/Berlin: Hermann-

1 The First Exile of the IfS

1.1 The Political Context of an Exile

1.2 Social Research and Social Philosophy

2 The Correspondence Between Max Horkheimer

2.1 The Content of the Exchanges

2.2 The Juliette Favez Enigma

2.5 The Materiality of Thinking

3 The Archive of Reconstruction

1 The Director, the Methodologist, the Partner:

2 After the Collected Writings and the Max Horkheimer

2 The Darmstadt Music Debates and the Origins

3 Modern Art and Its Developments: The Verfransung

1 Introduction: Adorno’s Writings on Pedagogy1