The Institute’s theory-empirical synthesis peaked with the Studies on Authority

Evidence

As later developments showed, the climax of interdisciplinary work combining theory and empirical research had in reality already been passed in the Studies on Authority and the Family. Empirical research continued, but not even a loose-knit collective work like the Studies was ever produced again. Empirical research was left to run its natural course, as it were, without any further attempt being made to `fuse constructive and empirical procedures’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 625

Categorization

• XREF: This paragraph directly answers the reader’s stated institutional-history interest: here is a turn back toward empirical research and away from the fusion ideal, relevant to later Adorno-Horkheimer splits. — connects to: The Institute’s flagship study juxtaposed vast empirical material with theory that never engaged it — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 605