Horkheimer’s assimilated businessman father refused to flee Nazi Germany until 1939

Evidence

His father, Moses (called Moritz) Horkheimer, was a businessman, as his grandfather had been as well. Moritz Horkheimer had worked his way up to become the owner of several textile factories in Zuffenhausen, near Stuttgart. Stuttgart was at that time the capital of the Kingdom of Württemberg. Both parents were firm believers in the Jewish religion and, at least during their son’s childhood, lived in a certain strictI wouldn't say orthodox, but at least conservative, Jewish manner'. His father had achieved social recognition not merely through his commercial success but also through his patronage of the arts, gifts … In 1917 the King of Bavaria conferred on him the title of Kommerzienrat, an award honouring distinguished businessmen, for his charitable activities in every possible field of social welfare’, and in 1918 he was given the freedom of the town of Zuffenhausen. Horkheimer’s father saw himself as a normal German to the extent that, even though he was forced to sell his `Jewish business’ in 1933, and later to give up his villa, he refused to leave Germany until the summer of 1939. His family, after all, had lived there longer than that of Mr Hitler, he wrote to his son in the USA. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 162

Categorization

• XREF: The wealthy German-Jewish family that stayed too long out of rootedness connects to the Family Rothschild histories as well as to Horkheimer’s own later analyses of bourgeois self-interest.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 162