Frankfurt School

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

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“Frankfurt School” is the name of an influential philosophical tradition that is now more than seventy-five years old. This movement began its evolution after World War I at the Institut für Sozialforschnung (Institute for Social Research) in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. The Institute was founded as part of the University of Frankfurt on 22 June 1924 by the wealthy leftist industrialist Felix J. Weil. Carl Grünberg, director of the Institute from 1924-29, made Marxism the paradigm of the Institute’s research. Grünberg’s goal was a social critique that acknowledged its own “only relative, historically-conditioned meaning”. After 1930, under Max Horkheimer’s leadership, this nondogmatic neo-Marxist orientation was …

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Citation: Wood, Kelsey. "Frankfurt School". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 April 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=440, accessed 28 March 2024.]

440 Frankfurt School 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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