The Institute’s 1938-39 fundraising was half-hearted and destabilized staff morale

Evidence

From the winter of 1938-9 onward, the Institute tried (very half-heartedly) to get official foundations and private citizens interested in its activities as a whole and in specific research projects (as briefly sketched out in the Institute’s impressive-looking prospectus of 1938), in the hope of receiving grant money. (Horkheimer wrote to Benjamin, `As you can imagine, this activity, in view of the special nature of our work, which is seen here even more than elsewhere as a luxury, at the very least, and in the medium of this language, is not easy for me.’) Many of the staff were left confused and insecure by more or less secretive hints dropped about the Institute’s impending financial collapse, and by obscure reductions in their salaries. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1043

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the patronage-luxury ambivalence of intellectual work seen in the communications/media theorists’ treatment of culture as autonomous — links to Frankfurt School’s self-understanding as luxury in America. — connects to: Institute funding insecurity reached every staff member including Benjamin and Fromm by 1939