The Institute once employed a Soviet spy as its librarian

Evidence

At the same time, the Institut began to assemble a group of young assistants with a variety of backgrounds and interests. The least important in terms of the Institut’s later development, but one of the most fascinating individuals to be associated with it at any time, was Richard “Ika” Sorge. The remarkable story of his espionage for the Russians in the Far East prior to and during the Second World War is too well known to require recapitulation here. Independent Socialist and then Communist after 1918, Sorge was also a doctoral student of Gerlach’s at Aachen. He combined his academic activities with such work for the Party as illegal organizing of Ruhr mine workers. … It was a job he did not relish, and when the Party told him to come to Moscow in 1924, his obedience was uncomplicated by a reluctance to leave Frankfurt. In any case, his connection with the Institut, according to Deakin and Storry, “must have been nominal and a cover” 32 for his work for the Party. It was not until his public exposure as a spy in the 1940’s that the others learned of his remarkable undercover career.” — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 115

Categorization

• SHARE: A surprising bit of arcana for someone interested in either espionage history or Frankfurt School lore — the legendary Soviet spy Richard Sorge briefly organized the Institute’s library.
• CANDY: Fun cocktail fact: the Frankfurt School’s first librarian was secretly the famous Soviet spy Richard Sorge.