Horkheimer enforced strict abstention from political commentary under exile conditions

Evidence

Horkheimer, following a course of strict normalization' (Lowenthal's phrase), wrote from Geneva on 18 March to the university rector, Gerloff, and to the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Lommatzsch, referring to newspaper reports on the search and closure of the Institute. In the duplicate letters, he stated: … There seemed to me to be no doubt as to the reasons for the search. My predecessor as director of the Institute had collected the Library of the History of the Labour Movement, which is renowned throughout the world. . . In the nature of things, the library contained a large quantity of socialist literature. To some distant observers, this might have given the impression of political bias. In the earlier years in particular, rather more students who were attracted to various strands of socialism than right-wing ones concerned themselves with the problems of the labour movement, although this situation may have changed more recently. When I took over as director of the Institute, I was aware that its previous history would make it the director's duty to ensure that there could be no doubt about its political neutrality. — <cite>Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 525</cite> (#expands`, via linked claim)

For his own part, he was also travelling to Germany in the knowledge that the main task was to have left nothing undone in the effort to create ideal conditions for their philosophical work, to avoid the feeling that there was anything he had missed out. It was the old game: at the same time as he was holding out to himself the image of being able to work in isolation in a humble scholarly existence without an institute, without any contact with students, an audience or the system, he was trying to achieve as much institutional and establishment status and as much security, influence and recognition as possible. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1706 (#expands, via linked claim)

During their student days together in Munich in 1919, Horkheimer and Pollock were nonparticipatory witnesses of the short-lived revolutionary activities of the Bavarian literati. Although helping to hide left-wing victims of the white terror that followed, they did not themselves join in the revolution, which they considered premature and inevitably doomed by the lack of objective conditions favoring true social change. Horkheimer’s earliest political sympathies were with Rosa Luxemburg, especially because of her critique of Bolshevik centralism. After her murder in 1919, he never found another socialist leader to follow. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 117 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer simultaneously pursued disengaged isolation and maximum institutional establishment status — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1706; Horkheimer attempted to portray the Institute as politically neutral after the Nazi seizure — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 525; The failed Bavarian revolution shaped Horkheimer’s lifelong abstention from activism — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 117

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer simultaneously pursued disengaged isolation and maximum institutional establishment status #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1706
• Horkheimer attempted to portray the Institute as politically neutral after the Nazi seizure #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 525
• The failed Bavarian revolution shaped Horkheimer’s lifelong abstention from activism #expands (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 117