The Jews and Europe was the Institute’s first and only general fascism statement.

Evidence

The impact of Horkheimer’s `The Jews and Europe’ must be seen against this background. It was his first essay on the topic of fascism, and the first on fascism by anyone in the Horkheimer circle since the articles by Pollock and Marcuse in 1933 and 1934. In addition, it represented a general political statement which was unique in the Institute’s Horkheimer period. Horkheimer had hesitated even longer than usual before publishing it. The text was finished at the end of 1938 but was not sent to the printer until the beginning of September 1939, shortly after the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact and the German invasion of Poland which followed a week later. The essay was published in the final issue of the ZfS, the last German-language number of the Institute’s journal. For the first time, Horkheimer did not publish one of his longer articles at the front of the issue. The text had been repeatedly subjected to particularly careful review by his closest colleagues. The passages about Russia, for example, had been softened several times, and a reference to legacy-hunters in relation to Russia was finally omitted completely. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1069

Categorization

• XREF: The censorship/silencing of passages about Russia resonates with earlier notes on Horkheimer suppressing Soviet criticism in 1936 (ch24).