The Frankfurt School members were self-chosen exiles even before 1933 forced them abroad.

Evidence

The so-called Frankfurt School, composed of certain members of the Institut fur Sozialforschung (Institute of Social Research),’ can in fact be seen as presenting in quintessential form the dilemma of the left intellectual in our century. Few of their counterparts have been as sensitive to the absorbing power of both the dominant culture and its ostensible opponents. Throughout the Institut’s entire existence, and especially in the period from 1923 to i95o, the fear of cooptation and integration deeply troubled its members. Although the exigencies of history forced them into exile as part of the intellectual migration from Central Europe after 1933, they had been exiles in relation to the external world since the beginning of their collaboration. Far from being a source of regret, however, this status was accepted, even nurtured, as the sine qua non of their intellectual fertility. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 75

Categorization

• XREF: This elective-exile thesis directly orients the reader’s canonical history of the Institute; frames why their later empirical/reflective tensions took the shape they did. — connects to: The Frankfurt Institute’s own data told them to flee immediately in 1933 — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 441

Broader Connections

• The Frankfurt Institute’s own data told them to flee immediately in 1933 #corroborates (0.75) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 441