Biographical developments in the 1920s

After his near escape in May 1919 from the Munich police, who had mistaken him for Ernst Toller, and his parting of ways with Germaine Krull at the end of the summer, Horkheimer was ready to move to Frankfurt with Friedrich Pollock, where the two of them would continue their university studies. During the spring and summer of 1919, Horkheimer and Pollock attended lectures sporadically at the university in Munich, but they were too preoccupied with the volatile political situation and with preparations for their Abitur to take their studies seriously at this time. No longer enamored of the life of a bohemian artist and convinced that the “the revolution in the streets is over,” Horkheimer had decided that the best way to pursue his political ideals was to gain a rigorous understanding of the social, psychological, and economic factors that had made a catastrophe like World War I possible. The experience of the war was central to Horkheimer’s decision to attend the university. As he put it in a later interview,

Horkheimer stresses repeatedly in his later recollections that he was not interested in an academic career at this point. He simply wanted to familiarize himself with the most advanced research in the social and human sciences in order to gain the best possible understanding of the chaotic world around him. Although he never gives any explicit reasons for his decision to attend the university in Frankfurt as opposed to another German university, after Horkheimer’s harrowing experiences in Munich, the relative political calm of Frankfurt certainly played a role. The innovative character of the university, the liberal tradition of the city, and its large Jewish community may have also played a role in Horkheimer’s decision.