Postwar Institute directors avoided recruiting prominent figures for fear of neo-Nazi retaliation

Evidence

Collaboration with a psychoanalyst would have fitted in with their tradition and with the Institute’s claims to be interdisciplinary and to be particularly competent in social psychology, which were renewed at its reopening. But apart from his old reluctance to give regular employment to more or less established academics who would in principle have to be treated as equals, Horkheimer was also discouraged by the fear that letting Mitscherlich join the Institute would probably trigger the open attacks which we have so far avoided. The vindictiveness of the Nationalists' (die Rachsucht der Völkischen, i.e. of supporters of Nazism) is truly Old Testament, unto the third and fourth generation.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1974

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Institute’s interdisciplinary claims and engagement with psychoanalysis (Fromm, psychoanalytic social psychology) established in earlier chapters.