The Institute’s first empirical project was also an early hedge against exile

Evidence

In concluding his remarks, Horkheimer outlined the first task of the Institut under his leadership: a study of workers’ and employees’ attitudes towards a variety of issues in Germany and the rest of developed Europe. Its methods were to include the use of public statistics and questionnaires backed up by sociological, psychological, and economic interpretation of the data. … The decision to act on Thomas’s offer was influenced by more than the desire to collect data, for the ominous political scene in Germany gave indications that exile might he a future necessity. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 149