Horkheimer, Adorno, and the Significance of Anti-Semitism: The Exile Years

Abstract

When, in 1934, Max Horkheimer, Director of the Institute of Social Research, went into exile in the United States, he was a Marxist.¹ By the time that he returned to Frankfurt am Main, in 1949, Horkheimer had distanced himself considerably from Marxism of any kind.² This general tendency in Horkheimer’s work was particularly evident in Horkheimer’s writings on anti-Semitism.³ It was, moreover, also clear in the work on that subject done during the exile years by many of Horkheimer’s closest collaborators in the Institute of Social Research. The reassessment of the nature and significance of anti-Semitism made by the Critical Theorists while in exile may have contributed to the overarching alteration of Critical Theory itself. The changes in Horkheimer’s approach to anti-Semitism, however, were linked not so much to his American experiences as an exile as to the growing influence of Adorno and to the Institute’s recognition of events in Europe.