The collective name for the group of scholars and the body of work associated directly and indirectly with the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research), an independent research centre affiliated with Frankfurt University. In 1937, Horkheimer, Max defined the Institute’s approach to social and cultural analysis as critical theory, a label that has become virtually synonymous with the Frankfurt School. Today, for many people, particularly in Anglo-American Cultural Studies, the Frankfurt School means a dour, elitist outlook and a hostile attitude to popular culture. Such gross underestimations of the real achievements of the school suggest not only ignorance of the work, but also ideological prejudice. The Frankfurt School regarded capitalist society with suspicion and was not taken in by its glossier blandishments as some versions of Cultural Studies have been. Established in 1923 with the financial backing of Felix Weil, the son of wealthy grain-merchant Herman Weil, the Institute for Social Research was intended to be a place for the development of and experimentation with Marxism ideas broadly construed. Private funding gave the Institute the luxury of real autonomy. It was not obliged to take on students or do any research except that which coincided with its goals. The first director was Carl Grünberg, an Austrian, Marxist professor of law and politics, but the younger members of the Institute found him lacking in imagination, and it wasn’t until the appointment of his replacement Horkheimer, Max that the Institute took on the quality we are familiar with today. Under Grünberg’s direction, the Institute maintained close links with the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow and imported samizdat copies of unpublished manuscripts by Marx and Engels, which in the political climate of the times was courageous and provocative. Indicative of this pro-communist stance, which would be toned down dramatically in later years, among the Institute’s early appointees was Richard Sorge, the spy who famously told a disbelieving Stalin that Germany was going to invade the USSR. Other early appointees included Karl Wittfogel, a specialist in the now mostly discredited notion of the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ and a playwright whose works were staged by Piscator and others. The better known names associated with the Frankfurt School---e.g. Adorno, Theodor, Löwenthal, Leo, Fromm, Erich, and Marcuse, Herbert---joined the Institute a few years later. Grünberg suffered a stroke in 1927 from which he never fully recovered, and stepped down from the role as director in 1929. His successor was Max Horkheimer and it was under his direction that the Institute’s reputation was made. Horkheimer brought new fellows to the Institute and with them new ideas and in this way transformed it into one of the most influential intellectual movements of the twentieth century. In contrast to his predecessor, Horkheimer encouraged the questioning of the basic premises of Marxism and encouraged a philosophical approach to issues of Marxist doctrine. He also encouraged the use of psychoanalysis, then still a relatively new and radical methodology, for the purposes of social analysis. He also established, under the editorship of Löwenthal, Leo, a sociologist of literature interested in mass market fiction, the Institute’s journal, Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (Journal for Social Research). Contributors to the journal included figures like Benjamin, Walter who was never part of the school’s inner core, but is nevertheless crucial to its reputation. In the 1930s, Horkheimer mapped out an ambitious programme of social research inquiring into the nature of political character that took over a decade to complete. Watchful of the rise of Nazism in Germany, Horkheimer had the presence of mind to transfer the Institute to Geneva in 1931 to protect its largely Jewish membership from the newly implemented race laws. In 1934 the Institute relocated to New York, where it was attached to Columbia University, and not (as might have been expected given its Marxist leanings) to the USSR. Using his new position as a base, Horkheimer was able to employ the Institute’s influence and resources to assist a number of intellectuals in their bid to get visas so as to escape the Nazis. However, in 1939, following some bad investments, the Institute found itself in financial difficulty, and was no longer able to fund as many researchers or projects as it had been accustomed to doing. Some of its key members, like psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, were obliged to leave and take work elsewhere, and this caused a great deal of internal friction and disruption. But the Institute survived and relocated again in 1941, this time to Los Angeles, were it remained in much looser form for the duration of the war. After the war, at the invitation of the West German government (in recognition of, and as partial compensation for, the injustices of the Nazi period) the Institute and several of its key members returned to Frankfurt. It is really only in this period that the label ‘Frankfurt School’ actually begins to be used. Horkheimer stepped down as director of the Institute in favour of Adorno in 1958. Adorno’s tenure though brilliant was marred by his poorly judged decision to call in the police to restore order following student protests in 1969. He nonetheless drew some important students to the centre, including future luminaries like Habermas, Jürgen. The Institute continues to do research today, continuing the tradition of its creators. It is impossible to measure the influence the Frankfurt School has had on the development of research in the humanities and social sciences in the past century. But probably its most important contribution has been its promotion and legitimating of interdisciplinary research. Recognizing that the split between disciplines is an artefact of modernity and that in any case no one discipline is equipped to deal with the complexity of the modern world, the Frankfurt School happily combined philosophy, psychoanalysis, Marxist theory, sociology, and economics. Further Reading: S. Bronner Of Critical Theory and its Theorists (1994). D. Held Introduction to Critical Theory (1980). M. Jay The Dialectical Imagination (1973). R. Wiggershaus The Frankfurt School (1994).