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Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working in the Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer Archives

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Abstract

Historians, including intellectual historians such as myself, rely more on primary source research than philosophers. During the period 1992–2001, I conducted extensive research on both the Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer Archives in Frankfurt, Germany. This essay describes my experiences working in these archives. I highlight, in particular, some of the most important discoveries I made in the archives and how the primary source documents shaped my understanding of Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer’s crucial contributions to the development of Critical Theory. The essay also emphasizes the value of primary source research, especially for those working in the materialist tradition of the early Frankfurt School, which emphasizes the Zeitkern der Wahrheit, that is, the impossibility of separating ideas from a historically specific social context.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels wrote, “Wir kennen nur eine einzige Wissenschaft, die Wissenschaft der Geschichte” (“We know only one single science, the science of history”) (Marx 1962–1974, vol.3: p. 18). For Kant’s defense of the primacy of philosophy over other disciplines, see (Kant 1992).

  2. 2.

    For Marx’s discussion of “Forschung” and “Darstellung” as the methodological foundation of his mature work, see his “Nachwort zur zweiten Auflage” of volume one of Das Kapital (Marx 1967–1974, vol. 23: pp. 27–28). For the English translation, see (Tucker 1978, pp. 301–2).

  3. 3.

    Stephan’s research would culminate in one of the best studies in German of Marcuse (Bundschuh 1998). See also my review of Stephan’s book, “Reconsidering Marcuse” (Abromeit 2001).

  4. 4.

    A second dissertation required in order to gain the right to teach and become a professor at a German university.

  5. 5.

    Marcuse decided to go to Freiburg to study with Heidegger after the publication in 1927 of Being and Time. He believed initially that Heidegger’s “existential analytic of Dasein” could provide a stronger subjective foundation for Marxist theory. But with the publication of Marx’s Paris Manuscripts in 1932, Marcuse found in the early Marx what he had been searching for in Heidegger’s philosophy (Abromeit 2004).

  6. 6.

    Victor Farias and – more compellingly – Hugo Ott were among the first to closely study Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism in 1933 and 1934, when he served as the rector of the University of Freiburg and played a key role in implementing new Nazi racial legislation, such as the “Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service,” which eliminated all Jewish professors from the university. The publication in 2014 of Heidegger’s “Black Notebooks” provided additional evidence that Heidegger’s anti-Semitism and conservative revolutionary political views were deeply rooted in his thought and were not merely adopted opportunistically in 1933/1934 (Farias 1991; Ott 1993). Heidegger’s “Black Notebooks” between 1931 and 1941 have been published in English translation (Heidegger 2016–2017). For a recent and comprehensive overview of the scholarship on Heidegger’s conservative revolutionary politics and his anti-Semitism, see (Wolin 2023).

  7. 7.

    A number of other unpublished studies of National Socialist Germany that Marcuse wrote or co-wrote while he was doing intelligence work for the US government (in the Office of Strategic Studies) in the 1940s can be found in the volume (Laudani, 2013). These are not texts from the Marcuse Archive, but instead from the Civil Archives Division of the Legislative and Diplomatic branch of the US National Archives.

  8. 8.

    Incidentally, Marcuse sides here with André Breton – against “socialist realism” and Aragon’s own position in the late 1920s and early 1930s – in his argument that art must be autonomous in order to fully realize its emancipatory potential (Breton 1969).

  9. 9.

    On the history of the publication of Marx’s Manuscripts, see (Maidan 1990).

  10. 10.

    For an examination of the historical development and social-psychological function of anti-Black racism among the “white” working class in the United States, which draws not only upon the work of Marcuse and his colleagues at the IfS, but also the American historian and critical race theorist, David Roediger, see (Abromeit 2013).

  11. 11.

    To be sure, Trump supporters came from all socio-economic and even all different ethnic and racial backgrounds, but studies revealed that the demographic group whose support for Trump was the highest were white males with lower-than-average levels of educational attainment. Also, Trump’s victory in 2016 resulted from his electoral college victories in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – all states with sizeable white working-class populations that had, in the past few decades, usually been won by democratic presidential candidates.

  12. 12.

    Kellner’s Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of the Marxism (1984) was – along with Barry Kātz’s intellectual biography of Marcuse (1982) and Morton Schoolman’s The Imaginary Witness: The Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse (1980) – one of the first comprehensive studies of Marcuse’s work, and it remains one of the best. Since then, Kellner has published extensively on Marcuse, including his lengthy introductions to the different volumes of the Collected Papers edition.

  13. 13.

    About a decade later, Marcuse would write a full-length study of the Soviet Union, in which he would elaborate upon these criticisms (Marcuse 1958).

  14. 14.

    For an attempt to analyze the recent resurgence of authoritarianism and right-wing populism in the United States that draws upon these studies, see (Abromeit 2018, 2022).

  15. 15.

    On Habermas’s discovery in 1956 of Marcuse’s early writings, see (Matuštík 2001, pp. 19–23).

  16. 16.

    I organized the conference together with Martin Jay and my friend and fellow Marcuse scholar, Mark Cobb. I met Mark through the mediation of Angela Davis, who was teaching a course at UC, Berkeley, at this time. When I approached her to see if she would be willing to give the keynote address at our conference – which she generously did – she told me about Cobb, who was working on a dissertation on Marcuse at UC, Santa Cruz, under her supervision. For Davis’s, Cobb’s, and the other contributions to the conference, see (Abromeit and Cobb 2004).

  17. 17.

    As Gunzelin Schmid Noerr – the editor of these four volumes of Horkheimer’s correspondence – points out, more than 50,000 letters from Horkheimer alone have been preserved in the Horkheimer Archive. Including letters to Horkheimer, as well as other to and from third persons, the archive contains nearly 100,000 letters (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol. 18: p. 824).

  18. 18.

    It was more important to focus on biographical details in the early chapters to understand Horkheimer’s family background, his early friendships, education, etc. But, since the primary aim of my book was to reconstruct Horkheimer’s thought, in later chapters I followed the general principle of including biographical background only when it was necessary or helpful to explain the developments of his thought.

  19. 19.

    Ernst von Schenk’s biographical interviews with Max Horkheimer (MHA X 132 b) and Matthias Becker’s biographical interviews with Max Horkheimer (MHA X 183a).

  20. 20.

    In the case of Ernst von Schenk, he began writing but never finished his biography of Horkheimer. This unfinished manuscript was also occasionally a valuable source for me (MHA XIII 112a).

  21. 21.

    These early documents were republished in the first volume of the Gesammelte Schriften in 1988. But a few of his earliest writings were not included in either of these collections – probably because they were too personal or embarrassing for Horkheimer. These documents from the Horkheimer Archive were published later (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.11: pp. 289–342).

  22. 22.

    The pioneering histories of the institute by Martin Jay (1973) and Rolf Wiggershaus (1988), but also other works on the early development of Critical Theory by Ulrike Migdal (1981) and Wolfgang Schivelbusch (1998), provided a solid foundation for my own work.

  23. 23.

    One of the autobiographical short stories Horkheimer wrote at this time, which he refused to include in the later, published edition of these documents, was called “L’isle heureuse” (“The Island of Happiness”) (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.11: pp. 292–328.) This story, which is a directly autobiographical description of his and Pollock’s erotic encounter with Suze Neumeier in Paris, was one of the documents that was published later. See also pp. 25–27.

  24. 24.

    They would continue to play this important emotional role for Horkheimer until their deaths in 1969 and 1970, respectively. Horkheimer himself passed away shortly thereafter, in 1973.

  25. 25.

    On Krull’s autobiographical writings in the archives of the Museum Folkwang, see also (Sichel 1999, p. 301).

  26. 26.

    Krull also established a name for herself as a photographer with her portraits of Eisner (Sichel 1999, pp. 21–23).

  27. 27.

    Right-wing militia units that formed in Germany in the aftermath of World War I.

  28. 28.

    The German army.

  29. 29.

    Interview with Matthias Becker, pp. 49–50.

  30. 30.

    An older, yet frequently still reprinted English translation of Schopenhauer’s Aphorismen does exist (Schopenhauer 1890a, b).

  31. 31.

    Levit’s parents were Russian Jews who owned a pharmacy in Berlin. He was active – also under the name Karl Adler – in the German Communist Party. On Krull’s relationship to Levit, see (Sichel 1999, pp. 25–26).

  32. 32.

    I am referring here to Felix Weil’s unfinished and unpublished autobiographical manuscript (Weil n.d.).

  33. 33.

    Horkheimer’s skeptical attitude toward the university system was certainly also influenced by Schopenhauer, who was largely ignored by the academic establishment of his day and got revenge by writing a series of polemics and invectives against university professors. See, for example, (Schopenhauer 1891).

  34. 34.

    Horkheimer was the first at the still young University of Frankfurt to be awarded this distinction in philosophy.

  35. 35.

    That is, his Critique of Judgment.

  36. 36.

    On Adorno and Benjamin’s relationship to Cornelius, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 350–51).

  37. 37.

    The other works were Landauer’s Aufruf zum Sozialismus (1919), A.W. Cohn’s Kann das Geld abgeschafft warden? (1920), Karl Vorländer’s Marx, Engels und Lasalle als Philosophen (1926), and L.B. Boudin’s Das theoretische System von Karl Marx. English translations of Landauer and Boudin’s works are available (Landauer 1978; Boudin 1907). As far as I know, the works by Cohn and Vorländer have never been translated into English.

  38. 38.

    In fact, Horkheimer was not particularly impressed by Husserl either. For Horkheimer’s assessment of Husserl’s philosophy during the 1920s, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 57–58).

  39. 39.

    For a comparative examination of Horkheimer’s more critical and Marcuse’s more enthusiastic reception of vitalism and phenomenology in the 1920s and early 1930s, see (Abromeit 2019). On Heidegger’s Jewish students in the 1920s and early 1930s, see (Wolin 2001).

  40. 40.

    A university lecturer or assistant professor.

  41. 41.

    The four volumes of Horkheimer’s correspondence in the Gesammelte Schriften edition of his writings do not contain a single letter between the years 1923 and 1930.

  42. 42.

    For a more detailed overview of Horkheimer’s break with consciousness philosophy around 1925 and the development of a new model of Critical Theory in his thought in the following years, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 85–90).

  43. 43.

    These lectures were published in 1987 and 1990, respectively, as volume 9 (“Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der neueren Philosophie”) and volume 10 (“Vorlesung über die deutschen idealistischen Philosophie” and “Einführung in die Philosophie der Gegenwart”) of the Gesammelte Schriften edition of his writings. Both volumes were edited by Alfred Schmidt.

  44. 44.

    It is truly unfortunate that the lectures by Horkheimer on the history of modern philosophy – published in volumes 9 and 10 of the Gesammelte Schriften – have not yet been translated into English. One can hope that someone undertakes this worthwhile project soon.

  45. 45.

    An incomplete and rather poorly translated English edition does exist (Horkheimer 1978).

  46. 46.

    See Gunzelin Schmid Noerr’s editorial comments on them (Horkheimer 1985–1996, vol.11: p. 262).

  47. 47.

    Compared, for example, to Adorno’s later collection of aphorisms, Minima Moralia, which was modeled upon and dedicated to Horkheimer and which is still widely read and discussed, one rarely finds references to Dämmerung, even among scholars of Critical Theory. A new English translation of Dämmerung, which should include all of the aphorisms published in the original, as well as the unpublished aphorisms in volume 11 of the Gesammelte Schriften – is long overdue.

  48. 48.

    Most importantly, at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, whose members included Fromm and other theorists working on a synthesis of Marx and Freud, such as Wilhelm Reich. On the Berlin Institute, see (Sokolowsky 2022) and (Fuechtner 2011).

  49. 49.

    See Horkheimer’s extensive correspondence with Landauer in the Gesammelte Schriften, volumes 15 and 16.

  50. 50.

    Horkheimer’s enthusiasm about Fromm at this time was expressed by his offering to make Fromm a lifetime member of the institute, but this membership became a source of an intense legal dispute between Fromm and the institute in later years, when Fromm’s move away from Horkheimer and Adorno’s interpretation of psychoanalysis led to his departure from the institute (Abromeit, pp. 336–48).

  51. 51.

    His dissertation – completed under the supervision of Max Weber’s brother, Alfred Weber – was on “The Jewish Law: A Contribution to the Sociology of the Jewish Diaspora.”

  52. 52.

    Like so many of the letters to and from Horkheimer during this time, the correspondence between Horkheimer and Freud – of which Horkheimer was particularly proud – are not to be found in the Horkheimer Archive. On the fate of this correspondence, see (Schmid Noerr 1996).

  53. 53.

    For a discussion of this project and Fromm’s role in it, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 211–26).

  54. 54.

    The Suhrkamp edition of the correspondence between Horkheimer and Adorno during this time is the best, insofar as it contains some letters and other materials that were left out of Horkheimer’s Gesammelte Schriften (Adorno and Horkheimer 2003–2004).

  55. 55.

    For my own discussion of this text, see (Abromeit 2011, pp. 336–48).

  56. 56.

    For information on the materials from the Horkheimer Archive that have been digitalized and made available online, see the following website: https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/archive/horkheimer.html.

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Abromeit, J. (2023). Critical Theory and Primary Source Research: Subjective Reflections on Working in the Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer Archives. In: Aubert, I., Nobre, M. (eds) The Archives of Critical Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36585-0_16

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