Frankfurt School scholarship rests substantially on archival collections

Evidence

The present work has been able to build not only on Jay’s work but also on a series of historical or historically informative works on the Frankfurt School which have been published since Jayfor example, by Dubiel, Erd, Lowenthal, Migdal and Söllnerand on a series of new publications of Frankfurt School textsincluding Fromm’s inquiries on the working class on the eve of the Third Reich (edited and introduced by Wolfgang Bonss), Benjamin’s Collected Works (edited with a generous commentary by Rolf Tiedemann), and the publication of posthumous writings by Horkheimer in his Collected Works (which have been appearing since 1985 under the editorship of Alfred Schmidt and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr). The present work is based in addition on discussions with former and current associates of the Institute of Social Research and with contemporaries who were observers of it. Above all, it is based on archive material. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 22

Categorization

• SEED: The roll-call of primary archives (Horkheimer Archive, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Bodleian, Frankfurt Stadtarchiv) that constitute Frankfurt School scholarship is itself a map of where serious research must go.
• XREF: connects to: New archival material has complicated the Frankfurt School’s historical narrative — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 31; Historians and theorists treat the archive as distinct analytic objects that are nonetheless blurring — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 288

Broader Connections

• New archival material has complicated the Frankfurt School’s historical narrative #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 31
• Historians and theorists treat the archive as distinct analytic objects that are nonetheless blurring #expands (0.75) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 288