The Institute’s wartime staff in government service could not return afterward

Evidence

During the war, the Institute had been glad to point to the fact that its staff members Neumann, Marcuse and Kirchheimer were in government serviceevidence of the Institute’s participation in the USA’s war effort. The three were still in touch with the Institute at the end of the war. The Washington delegates' sent Horkheimer a telegram on his fiftieth birthday saying they regretted not being able to come to New York. All three would certainly have been delighted to become members of staff at the Institute again, as before. For Neumann and Marcuse, parting from it had been painful enough. The parting had been less noticeable in Kirchheimer's case because he had never achieved the same status on the staff as Marcuse and Neumann, and it had been possible to ask him to accept part-time employment. But the deterrent effect was obviously a lasting one. The three former associates could not know that in the spring of 1945 Felix Weil had pledged to endow the Institute with a further $100,000. For their part, the directors of the Institute were careful not to take the initiative and ask any of the three to work with them again. The anti-Semitism project had a time-limit; the new endowment, according to Horkheimer, had been arranged with a view to allowing the Institute not to involve itself in future in largescale operations, so that it can concentrate on the crucial tasks’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1634

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on the Frankfurt School’s American exile and its political compromises during and after WWII. — connects to: Former Institut members scattered into American universities and government rather than returning together — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 855

Broader Connections

• Former Institut members scattered into American universities and government rather than returning together #corroborates (0.88) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 855