Frankfurt School, a group of researchers associated with the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute of Social Research), founded in 1923 as an autonomous division of the Univ. of Frankfurt. The institute's first director, Carl Grünberg, set it up as a center for research in philosophy and the social sciences from a Marxist perspective. After Max Horkheimer Horkheimer, Max (hôrk`hī'mər, hôr`kī'–), 1895–1973, German philosopher and sociologist.
..... Click the link for more information. took over as director in 1930, the focus widened. Leading members, such as Theodor Adorno Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (tāədôr' vē`zəngr
..... Click the link for more information. , Walter Benjamin Benjamin, Walter, 1892–1940, German essayist and critic. He is known for his synthesis of eccentric Marxist theory and Jewish messianism. In particular, his essays on Charles Baudelaire and Franz Kafka as well as his speculation on symbolism, allegory, and the
..... Click the link for more information. , and Herbert Marcuse Marcuse, Herbert (märk

`zə), 1898–1979, U.S.
..... Click the link for more information. , influenced by aspects of psychoanalysis and existentialism, developed a version of Marxism known as "critical theory." They formulated influential aesthetic theories and critiques of capitalist culture. After a period of exile in the United States because of the Nazis, the institute returned in 1949 to Frankfurt, where Jürgen Habermas Habermas, Jürgen (yûr`gən hä`bûrmäs), 1929–, German philosopher. He is a professor at the Univ.
..... Click the link for more information. became its most prominent figure.

Bibliography

See M. Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923–1950 (1973); R. Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (1981).

Frankfurt school

Group of thinkers associated with the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research), founded in Frankfurt in 1923 by Felix J. Weil, Carl Grünberg, Max Horkheimer, and Friedrich Pollock. Other important members of the school are Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Horkheimer moved the institute to Columbia University in New York City, where it functioned until 1941; it was reestablished in Frankfurt in 1950. Though the institute was originally conceived as a centre for neo-Marxian social research, there is no doctrine common to all members of the Frankfurt school. Intellectually, the school is most indebted to the writings of G.W.F. Hegel and the Young Hegelians (see Hegelianism), Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Wilhelm Dilthey, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. See also critical theory.