History of Critical Theory: Grand Hotel Critical Theory

It is now a given in the history of ideas that historical genesis is an important part of understanding theories. The fact that this story is not only the story of brilliant minds, but (also) a story of “physical and symbolic spaces” is often pushed into the background despite the spatial turn and new materialism. The historian Philipp Lenhard, who teaches at Berkeley, pursues such a contact with space in his comprehensive work “Café Marx – The Institute for Social Research from the Beginnings to the Frankfurt School”, which, according to the author, is in a series with previous works like these by Martin Jay, Rolf Wiggershaus and Helmut Dubiel.

In view of these (already interdisciplinary) standard works, the monograph published on the 100th anniversary of the institute’s inauguration may not seem like a desideratum. With “Grand Hotel Abgrund,” the journalist Stuart Jeffries even published a work with a similar name in 2019. While Jeffries, despite his title – borrowed from a polemic by Georg Lukács – is interested in the hotel residents, namely the big representatives, not the hotel, Lenhard’s title is the program. He tells the story of the institute, which has four meanings for him: as a physical place in the form of a building with an address and materiality, a meeting space not only for different people but also for different groups of people, a research institution integrated into the scientific landscape and »a( r) an idea that constantly changes over the period of its existence.

Ember of the Frankfurt School

While it increasingly seems to be in keeping with the zeitgeist to understand content in the context of its creation, in “Café Marx” the context becomes the content. However, this does not create an alternative view of the people, ideas and developments, but rather a sharp look at the core of the “Frankfurt School” in its changing and constant facets – including the big names that have moved out of the center.

Starting with the life experiences of the patron and father of Felix Weil, who later founded the institute, Lenhard covers a wide range. From local political interests to intimate relationships to the constraints of exile, the author does not “spare” the reader any detail, so that the contingency of what we today understand as critical theory becomes painfully clear, as does its social necessity. How far Lenhard ventures into the periphery of the history of ideas is illustrated by a look at the personal register, which contains over 800 entries. In addition to philosophers such as Hegel and Kant, you can also find the names of every privy councilor, mayor or affidavit author who played a role in the working, living and creation conditions.

The fact that the project does not fray, but rather creates a dense network of philosophy, political and economic reality and interpersonal relationships, in which these factors complement each other to bring knowledge, is also due to the author’s narrative skills, which obviously follow the all-too-German dictates of dry academic writing escaped. The remarkably good readability is not a given, especially given the expertise and the amount of archive material included, and does not come at the expense of the quality of the content. This claim is to tell the story of a project that began with the intention of “creating Marxism an academic home free from any extra-scientific interference.”

After some persuasion and organizational work, these plans resulted in the opening of the institute under the first director of the institute, Carl Grünberg, who was headhunted from Vienna. The convinced Marxist was not ideologically alone; for large parts of the employees, the interest in Marxism as a science was also accompanied by practical communist activism, as almost everyone involved in the first generation had been radicalized by the “highly industrialized death machine” of the First World War. However, people found themselves in opposition not only to the status quo, but also to party communism. The revolution had failed, and instead of planning the overthrow, it was necessary to reflect.

Expulsion in the Nazi era

From 1931 onwards, the philosopher Max Horkheimer took over the direction of the institute and established the interplay between social theory and social research, which is still perceived as the core of critical theory, and opened up to psychoanalysis. With the Journal for Social Research, people who shaped the future path of the institute entered the program.

Only two years later, in March 1933, the institute, which had been branded “corrosive,” was closed and sealed by the criminal police. Now almost all of the most important employees were not only Marxists, but also Jews. By 1933 at the latest they were in acute danger. Thanks to Max Horkheimer’s forward-looking planning, the institute was able to be relocated to Geneva, some employees emigrated to Paris and Felix Weil brought the foundation’s assets abroad in good time. Horkheimer moved the institute’s headquarters again, this time to New York, where he entered into a collaboration with Columbia University. Most of his employees followed him to the USA in the coming years.

Here the scientific character of the institute began to take the form we know today. Central texts and research papers emerged; Horkheimer and Adorno wrote “The Dialectic of Enlightenment,” a key work in which the essence of critical theory is written down, as Lenhard notes in his introduction. At the same time, work emerged in the field of social sciences, particularly research into fascism and anti-Semitism, which set completely new scientific standards by combining empiricism and analysis. Critical theory had become a philosophically, sociologically and psychoanalytically based ideological criticism of the prevailing conditions.

Challenge ’68

In 1946, the mayor of Frankfurt and the rector of Frankfurt University formally invited the institute to be re-established in Frankfurt, whereupon Horkheimer traveled to Frankfurt one and a half years later. In 1951 a new institute building was built and the returned institute began work. Horkheimer remained director of the institute for another fifteen years and was replaced by Theodor W. Adorno after his retirement in 1964.

The so-called ’68s were a challenge for the institute, which, on the one hand, conducted science based on the Marxist tradition and, on the other hand, was faced with accusations that the institution was outdated by students critical of the government. The institute’s employees positioned themselves differently towards the student movement, and the fronts were hardened. In August 1969, Adorno died unexpectedly. “Student leader” Hans-Jürgen Krahl threatened his comrades with violence if they disrupted the funeral by protesting.

When the institute celebrated its birthday with a series of lectures in the summer of 1974, the two main speakers – Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal – flew in from the USA. Other speakers also travel; Frankfurt is no longer the center of critical theory. Today the Marxist theoretical approach has lost further weight. Names like Habermas and Honneth are associated with their own social-philosophical approaches, and at various universities (not only in Germany) students from the “Frankfurt School” continue their approaches.

With the historical and intellectual narrative, which Philipp Lenhard expands to include an unprecedented number of supporting characters and settings, he has established a positioning of critical theory that, even without much focus on today’s excesses, represents an inspiring read with a forward-looking view. Lenhard could, in good conscience, have added his own work to the justifiably brief outlook into the scattered afterlife of the theoretical movement: in his approach to constellations, anecdotes and places, he approaches his subject exactly in their spirit.

Philipp Lenhard: Café Marx. The Institute for Social Research from its beginnings to the Frankfurt School. C. H. Beck, 624 pages, hardcover, €34.