Amid a turbulent historical-political context in Germany and the world, the embryo of an intellectual movement emerged whose consolidation was later called Critical Theory. Germany, after the political stratagem of a right - concentrated in the National Socialist Party - marked by failure and popular demerit, gave the victory over Hitler in direct elections, opening the way for the persecution and destruction of workers' organizations and their parties representative. the rise of the Nazism, the Second World War, the post-war “Economic Miracle” and the Stalinism were the factors that marked the critical theory society as it developed from the early 1920s to the mid-1970s.
Under the initiative of Felix J. Weil, the son of a cereal merchant who had made his fortune in Argentina, there was the “First Marxist Work Week” whose prerogative was to launch the notion of a true and pure Marxism. This event gave rise to the idea of creating a permanent institute as an independent research body. This institute was established with a donation from Herman Weil (Father of Felix) and a contract with the Ministry of Education, which stressed the requirement that the director of the institute should hold a chair in the University. The Institute for Social Research (as it was called) and which should have been called the Institute for Marxism, was created officially by an ordinance of the Ministry of Education in 1923, with director Kurt Albert Gerlach, who died in October of 1923. It was Carl Grünberg who held the position until 1930. In 1931, a branch of the institute was created in Geneva, at the suggestion of Albert Thomas (director of the International Labor Organization). In 1933, an office of twenty-one individuals was set up in Geneva, which became the administrative center of the institute, which was closed by the Nazis. From September 1933, the Frankfurt School left the city of Frankfurt and formed departments in France and Switzerland. It should be noted here that without the consolidation of the institute it would not have been possible for the School of Frankfurt - and this development took place only after the (mandatory) departure of the institute of Frankfurt; although the term “Frankfurt School” was instituted only after the institute's return to Germany in 1950.
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As for terminology, there is a traditional problem, as "school" notifies an intellectual body whose members focus on the same line of thought, in the case of the critical theory, from the same social critical evaluation of the current policy, which cannot be truly determined when observing the theories of its members. THE critical theory became legitimate as such after the publication of the work "Traditional Theory and Critical Theory" by Max Horkheimer, in the Journal of Social Research between 1932 and 1942. It is known that Horkheimer was the main responsible for the consolidation of the school, not only for his intellectual position and policy within the scope of the University of Frankfurt, but, above all, because of its financial situation that guaranteed it great achievements.
In this line, a community of critical thinkers of society was formed, from its condition subordinated to a process of domination, using heterodox Marxism to base their criticisms. The Social Research Institute had as members Pollock, Wittfogel, Fromm, Gumperz, Adorno, Marcuse and others who started to contribute articles, essays and reviews to the magazine. Many of the essayists, such as Walter Benjamim, Marcuse and Adorno, only joined the institute during their emigration to the United States.
Finally, from 1931 on, under Horkheimer's direction, there was an important change in the journal: the hegemony of economic studies was given, at this time, to philosophy. It was, therefore, along this line that the understanding of the identity of the Frankfurt School project was guided, since when dealing with problems on history, politics, or sociology, the authors constantly turned to Plato, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Bergson, Heidegger, and others.
By João Francisco P. Cabral
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Philosophy from the Federal University of Uberlândia - UFU
Master's student in Philosophy at the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP
