Frankfurt University’s invitation to the exiled Institute avoided restoring its property or library

Evidence

In his reply, Felix Weil enquired whether the Society for Social Research had been automatically re-entered in the Register of Societies; whether ownership of the land on the site of the old Institute had been automatically restored to the Society; and whether the remnants of the Institute’s library would be returned to it. These were things it was natural to expect, and Weil would have had every right to add more to the list. After all, everything which had been done, from the striking of the Society’s name from the Register of Societies to the expatriation of Institute members, had all been illegal, and an automatic restoration of previous conditions, in so far as this lay in the power of the German administration and other institutions, would have been the normal thing to expect. But nothing of the sort had been done, even in the meantime. The university’s invitation, in any case, could hardly have been intended sincerely. Klingelhöfer, who signed it, was the very person who in 1938 had signed the decree in which the Ministry of Culture ordered the Institute’s books to be dispersed. The recommendation that the Institute should be asked to return had come from Professor Wilhelm Gerloff, mentioning the `very considerable resources’ which the Society for Social Research had at its disposal. In 1933 Gerloff, as rector, had signed the declaration dissociating the university from the Institute of Social Research. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1709

Categorization

• XREF: The return invitation was signed by the same Nazi officials who had destroyed the Institute - ties to the chapter on the 1933 Nazi purge of Frankfurt’s teachers. — connects to: Frankfurt University’s Senate eagerly severed ties with the Institute — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 521
• QUESTION: Why did Frankfurt University only invite the Institute back once Horkheimer personally pushed? The sequence suggests institutional self-exculpation rather than genuine restitution.