Horkheimer, Max (1895–1973)

Max Horkheimer was a founding member and lifelong participant in the Frankfurt School of critical theory, where he collaborated with Friedrich Pollock, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and others. Born to a wealthy Jewish family, as a young student he disagreed with his father's wish that he follow in the family business. After attending the universities of Munich and Frankfurt, he wrote his Habilitationschrift in 1925, further developing his dissertation research on Kant's Critique of Judgment. In 1930, after teaching as a privatdozent (lecturer) at Frankfurt University he became director of the Frankfurt School for Social Research, which had been newly established by Felix Weil and Carl Grunberg in 1923. He oversaw the emergency move of the institute into exile in New York and then Los Angeles in the wake of Hitler's victory in 1933. In 1949 he returned to Frankfurt and assumed a full professorship, which he held until his retirement in 1958. Keywords: critical theory; Frankfurt School; Marxism; philosophy; political sociology; reason