Following a non-fatal heart attack, Grünberg was succeeded in 1930 by Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer rapidly became the guiding spirit of the Frankfurt School, a group of thinkers that was born under his directorship at the Institute. Horkheimer edited the group's journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal for Social Research) and wrote essays defining a critical theory of society.
The growing influence of the Nazis led the founders to decide in September 1930 to prepare to move the Institute out of Germany, by establishing a branch in Geneva and moving the funds to the Netherlands.[2] In 1933, after the rise of Hitler, the Institute left Germany for Geneva and then in 1934 moved to New York City. In New York it became affiliated with Columbia University, and its journal Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung was renamed Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. It was there that much of the important work of the Frankfurt School thinkers began to emerge, and the Institute's residence in New York was likely partly accountable for its work's favorable reception in American and English academia.
The Institute re-opened in Frankfurt in 1951 under the direction of Pollock.
The Institute has been both a research enterprise and, during its Frankfurt periods, a provider of instruction in sociology at the university there. The current acting director is Ferdinand Sutterlüty, who has followed on from Axel Honneth's directorship of 2001 to 2018.
The University of Frankfurt am Main
References
^Gruber, Hans-Peter; Bergmann, Werner; Heil, Johannes (2022). "Aus der Art geschlagen": eine politische Biografie von Felix Weil (1898-1975). Frankfurt New York: Campus Verlag. ISBN978-3-593-51507-6.
^"The Origins of Critical Theory: An interview with Leo Lowenthal" by Helmut Dubiel [de] in Telos 49
