Horkheimer’s own reluctance, not publisher resistance, blocked postwar German publication of the Institute’s works.

Evidence

Maus’s tireless efforts to have the works of the Horkheimer circle published in Germanhe translated a whole series of them himself, including the Eclipse of Reasonmet with only limited success. He succeeding in publishing only two short extracts from Dialectic of Enlightenment, Pollock’s essay on state capitalism, and Horkheimer’s Art and Mass Culture', in Umschau: Internationale Revue, a journal published between 1946 and 1948 on which he worked as one of the editors. This lack of success was clearly due not so much to publishers' resistance to critical texts as to the strange division of labour between Maus, acting as an enthusiastic literary agent, and a hesitant Horkheimer. The publisher C.B. Mohr, who had brought out Adorno's Kierkegaard in 1933, accepted his Philosophy of Modern Music for publication in 1950 without even having seen the manuscript. Horkheimer, by contrast, mentioned in a letter to Adorno at the beginning of 1949: Rütten & Loening keep writing me letters offering to republish the Institute’s publications series. I have not answered them yet, as I don’t want to get involved in anything.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1682

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader pattern of the exiled Frankfurt School’s postwar re-founding in Germany and Horkheimer’s hesitation about the return — a theme that runs across the whole Wiggershaus account of the American and post-war periods.