The Frankfurt School refers to a group of mid-twentiethcentury Marxist intellectuals (Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Otto Kirchheimer, Leo Loewenthal, Franz Neumann, and Friedrich Pollock) originally based at the Institute for Social Research. The Institute was initially affiliated with the University of Frankfurt before the rise of National Socialism. That development forced the Institute and its members, all socialists and Jews, to leave Germany, and they decided to relocate to New York City.

Following World War II, the Institute was reestablished in Frankfurt under Adorno and Horkheimer. Both in Germany and elsewhere, it has continued to exert significant influence, chiefly because of the ambitious endeavors of its most important “second-generation” representative, Jürgen Habermas, who has creatively reformulated many early Frankfurt School themes as ...

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