Grand Hotel Abyss

Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School by Stuart Jeffries, Verso, 2016.

1923 Symposium

The idea for the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany (informally called the Frankfurt School) originated in a Symposium in 1923 of Marxist intellectuals in Ilmenao in Thuringia. It was organized by Félix José Weil, whose father, German-Argentine businessman Hermann Weil, provided much of the endowment for the Frankfurt School. Attendees for the symposium included Karl Korsch and György Lukács. Spy Richard Sorge was at the Ilmenao symposium and for a while worked in the library of the Frankfurt School.

Sons of Jewish Businessmen

The Frankfurt school opened in 1924. The members of the Frankfurt School were mostly the sons of prosperous, Jewish businessmen. For some reason, they turned against capitalism, which had provided them with comfortable childhoods.

Failure of Economic Marxism

One of the problems the Frankfurt School addressed is why the socialist revolution in Russia did not extended westward into Europe. During the 1930s, the Frankfurt School moved away from economic Marxism and focussed instead on cultural studies. Freudian ideas were introduced into the Frankfurt School by Erich Fromm and Theodor Reik.

Some Members of the Frankfurt School

• Theodor W.  Adorno

• Walter Benjamin

• Ernst Block

• Erich Fromm

• Henryk Grossman (Marxist economist)

• Carl Grünberg

• Max Horkheimer

• Siegfried Kracauer

• Leo Löwenthal

• Friedrich Pollock

• Wilhelm Reich

• Theodor Reik

Some People Associated with the Frankfurt School

• Herbert Marcuse

• Jurgen Habermas