The Institute suppressed Fromm’s Weimar worker study for ideological reasons

Evidence

As a historical documentation of the situation and mentality of manual and white-collar workers on the eve of the Third Reich, and as a piece of pioneering empirical research in analytical social psychology, the study was certainly of great interest, and right into the 1940s the Institute repeatedly announced the projected publication of Erich Fromm (ed.), The German Worker under the Weimar Republic'. The failure to publish this particular study was astonishing, since (1) the analysis had to a large extent been completed; (2) none of the later questionnaires attempted to meet the demands Fromm set in the ZfS for an analytical social psychology to the same extent as this first one did; (3) qualified scholars such as Fromm and Lazarsfeld had worked on it intensively; and (4) concrete results from empirical research were important for the Institute's image. It is likely that the study, which was to be published in English, did really seem to Horkheimer to be too Marxist, as Fromm later declared to Wolfgang Bonss. For a Marxist study, on the other hand, it was not polished’ enough. In addition, the change in Horkheimer’s source of intellectual stimulation from Fromm to Adorno increased his reluctance to publish a work in which Fromm’s methodological achievements in the field of empirical social research were at their clearest and most impressive. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 716

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general pattern of the Frankfurt School suppressing inconvenient empirical work in favor of philosophical critique. — connects to: The workers’ inquiry findings were suppressed partly for their politically damaging implications — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 475; Horkheimer suppressed Fromm’s worker study as both too Marxist and not Marxist enough — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 195; The labor anti-Semitism study was never published like the Weimar workers’ inquiry (+6 more)
• QUESTION: The full story of why The German Worker under the Weimar Republic was never published in the Institute’s lifetime remains partly speculative — worth chasing the Bonss interview and later scholarship.
• SHARE: For someone interested in the Frankfurt School’s empirical legacy or the Horkheimer-Fromm-Adorno rivalry — a definitive instance of ideological suppression of completed research.

Broader Connections

• The Frankfurt Institute suppressed its labor study over methodological disagreements with Lazarsfeld #qualifies (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1563