Nazi persecution compelled Frankfurt School members to adopt pseudonyms and claimed some lives

Evidence

Not surprisingly, the trauma of the Nazi take-over served to reinforce the Institut’s alienated status. Symbolically, at one time or another many of its members were compelled to use pseudonyms: Horkheimer was “Heinrich Regius”; Adorno, “Hektor Rottweiler”; Benjamin, “Detlef Holz” and “C. Conrad”; Wittfogel, “Klaus Hinrichs,” or “Carl Peterson”; Kirchheimer, “Heinrich Seitz”; Massing, “Karl Billinger”; Borkenau, “Fritz Jungmann”; and Kurt Mandelbaum, “Kurt Baumann.” More seriously, the lives of men connected in various ways with the Institut were snuffed out by the Nazis. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 869

Categorization

• XREF: The pseudonym list is a concrete factual record useful when writing about any of these individual theorists.