Marcuse was ready to leave American intelligence work and return to Germany.

Evidence

Then, in the spring of 1953, Horkheimer asked Marcuse whether he was ready to come to Frankfurt, as if it was really serious. Marcuse was more decided than ever about giving up his job in the State Department altogether. After a year with a fellowship at the Russian Institute at Columbia University, he did not have much enthusiasm for a similar offer from the Russian Research Center at Harvard, since this would mean `spending another year working on Russian matters, and I’m sick and tired of it.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1982

Categorization

• XREF: Marcuse’s State Department and Russian Institute work is a lesser-known phase of his career that this chapter documents.