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Revolution and the National Assembly in Frankfurt am Main 1848/1849

The March revolution of 1848: street battle in Berlin on 18 and 19 March 1848 (picture-alliance / akg-images)

From the start of the 1840s, economic crises, mass poverty and general political discontent destabilised the social and political order in numerous European countries, culminating in a wave of revolutions that swept through the whole of Europe in 1848. In Germany too, demands were made at public gatherings and demonstrations for fundamental rights and freedoms and national unification. Shaken by the revolutionary momentum, the forces of the Restoration finally gave way and made major concessions to the movement, which was backed by broad sections of the population: censorship was lifted, political activities were permitted, and reform-friendly governments were appointed. The rulers in the individual German states also consented to the convening of a National Assembly, which was intended to pave the way for the creation of a German nation state.

The German National Assembly in Frankfurt am Main

At the end of March 1848, the Vorparlament or preliminary parliament, comprising members of state assemblies and leading representatives of the liberal and democratic opposition, decided that the members of the German National Assembly were to be chosen by adult ‘independent’ males in a general election based on the principle of one man, one vote. The conduct of the elections was the responsibility of the individual states and varied extremely widely between states. The statutory number of members of the assembly in St Paul’s Church was to have been 649, but because of election boycotts there were only 587 regular members. Including all those who deputised for or replaced the original members in the period up to the final dissolution of the rump parliament in  Stuttgart , a total of 809 members took part in the proceedings of Germany’s first national parliament.

On 18 May 1848, the members of the first German parliament assembled in St Paul’s Church to deliberate on a liberal constitution and the formation of a German nation state. For its first President (Speaker), the National Assembly elected Heinrich von Gagern , a highly respected liberal politician. The parliament adopted its rules of procedure and appointed committees and commissions for the preparatory discussion of new proposals. Foremost among these was the Committee on the Constitution, which drafted the bulk of the constitution that was subsequently adopted by the Assembly in St Paul’s Church.

Creation of parliamentary groups

Members with similar political objectives and interests formed clubs, in which they gathered to prepare for their work in the plenary chamber and the committees, to discuss matters on the agenda and to coordinate their line of approach. These clubs, each of which bore the name of the hostelry where its members met, are regarded as the forerunners of parliamentary groups; although they were not yet as cohesive and politically disciplined as later parliamentary groups, their role in the organisation and structuring of debates and decisions nevertheless proved to be indispensable. The parliamentary clubs of the National Assembly represented the main political currents of the day. The monarchist Right ( Steinernes Haus and Café Milani) stood for the preservation of the privileges enjoyed by the individual states and their monarchs. The various liberal groups to the right and left of centre (Casino, Augsburger Hof, Landsberg, Pariser Hof and Württemberger Hof ) advocated a federally structured constitutional monarchy with a parliament and a hereditary emperor as head of state. The clubs of the democratic Left ( Deutscher Hof, Donnersberg, Nürnberger Hof and Westendhall ), for their part, sought the establishment of a republic based on parliamentary democracy and sovereignty of the people.

Fundamental rights and the Imperial Constitution

Among the foremost historic achievements of the Frankfurt National Assembly was the Imperial Act concerning the Basic Rights of the German People ( Reichsgesetz betreffend die Grundrechte des deutschen Volkes ), which was adopted on 21 December 1848 and through which human and civil rights became legally binding in Germany for the first time. The core elements of the catalogue of fundamental rights, which would also have a formative influence on the Weima r Constitution and the Basic Law of the Federal Republic, were the equality of everyone before the law, the abolition of all class privileges, guaranteed personal and political liberties, such as freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom to practise a trade or profession and freedom of movement, and the abolition of the death penalty.

The Imperial Constitution that was adopted on 27 March 1849 was intended to establish a unified federal German state to which all the states of the German Confederation belonged except the Austrian Empire (the kleindeutsche or ‘Little German’ solution). It provided for a hereditary emperor as head of state, who was also empowered to appoint the government. The main responsibilities of the  Reichstag , which was to comprise a House of States and a democratically elected House of the People, were legislation, enactment of the budget and scrutiny of the executive. The key question of the government’s accountability to Parliament, however, remained unanswered and was to be resolved at a later date.

Collapse of the revolution

In April 1849, Frederick William IV, King of Prussia, having been elected ‘Emperor of the Germans’ by the National Assembly, declined the honour bestowed upon him, invoking the grace of God as the sole source of monarchical legitimacy. This meant that the efforts made in St Paul’s Church to draw up a constitution and establish a German nation state had effectively come to naught. In view of the reinvigoration of the monarchist forces of the Restoration in the individual German states, the Assembly, which was rapidly losing popular support, bowed to the inevitable and dissolved itself at the end of May. Neither the rump parliament which reconvened in Stuttgart , consisting mainly of left-wing members of the Assembly in St Paul’s Church, nor the campaign to defend the imperial constitution that was waged, sometimes violently, in the south-west of Germany could stem the counter-revolutionary tide. With the dissolution of the rump parliament in Stuttgart and the capture of the fortress of Rastatt in Baden in the summer of 1849, the final resistance of the revolutionaries was broken, and the high hopes with which the liberal and democratic movement for unity and freedom of 1848/49 had set out were finally shattered.

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For a Century, the Frankfurt School Has Studied How Domination Works in Modern Societies

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The year 2023 marks a century since the founding of the Institute for Social Research, better known as the Frankfurt School. Its story is that of a long challenge to the status quo — and a refusal to accept that capitalism is the only possible reality.

Theodor Adorno speaking at an event in Frankfurt am Main on on May 28, 1968. (Manfred Rehm / picture alliance via Getty Images)

By 1923, in most of Europe at least, the gunfire had ceased. Yet in Germany, a group of young academics felt that the social upheaval following World War I still had the potential to produce catastrophe — and believed that an institute for social research was a necessary step to meet this challenge.

Already in the early part of the decade, Felix Weil, Max Horkheimer, and Friedrich Pollock had conceived the idea of establishing such a body in Frankfurt. These friends envisioned an institution that would undertake both theoretical and empirical research on society, with the aim of finding a more humane and just model for the future — while also reflecting on why the November Revolution and other recent attempts at revolution in Germany had failed. The idea was supported by Weil’s father, who was a benefactor of the University of Frankfurt.

Carl Grünberg, the institute’s first director, officially gave it a Marxist orientation. During his inaugural lecture, he passionately pledged his commitment to Marxism and declared his intention to use historical-materialistic research methods in his scientific tasks. Since the approval of various actors and administrations had to be obtained for the institute to be founded, Weil originally concealed the Marxist orientation by using “Aesopian language” in the founding document in 1922.

The unambiguous naming of the research program by Grünberg in 1923, which referred to Marx, therefore surprised and shocked many conservatives present who worked in and around the University of Frankfurt. Grünberg had in 1911 founded the journal Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung ( Archive for the History of Socialism and the Labor Movement ), which became the most important publication of the institute’s early years.

The institute began its public activities at Whitsun 1923 with the “Erste Marxistische Arbeitswoche” (“First Marxist Work Week”), in which many young socialist intellectuals from across the continent participated, such as György Lukács, Karl Korsch, and Karl August Wittfogel. During this period, the institute also took part in other forms of international exchange resulting from Grünberg’s collaboration with David Ryazanov, a well-known editor. Ryazanov and the Austro-Marxists around Grünberg had agreed in 1911 on publishing a complete edition of the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. With the decision of the Fifth Congress of the Communist International, Ryazanov, the director of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, came to Frankfurt in 1924 to begin work on the complete edition in cooperation with the institute.

For years, the staff worked on sifting, archiving, and documenting the writings of Marx and Engels, culminating in the first part of the complete edition in 1927. However, this cooperation was anything but free of conflict — the institute, always striving for an objective edition and a scholarly tone, increasingly resisted the political instrumentalization of this project, which led to the joint dissolution of the cooperation in 1928. Moscow had too often taken a commanding tone. Editors in Frankfurt resisted encroaching Stalinization, as Weil wrote in 1928: “You cannot ask me to persuade people who ask me for information to go to Moscow under these conditions, by which I do not mean the material conditions, but the others…”

Grünberg’s tenure as the institute’s first director also came to an end that same year, as after suffering a stroke, he was no longer able to fulfill his duties. Max Horkheimer took over as the next director and shifted the emphasis from orthodox Marxism to an interdisciplinary approach: under his leadership, socio-philosophical, sociological, economical, literary, and psychoanalytical disciplines were combined, and staff from these different disciplines were employed. With the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung ( Journal for Social Research ), a publication was founded that led academic debates throughout the 1930s, with prominent authors such as Leo Löwenthal, Friedrich Pollock, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Walter Benjamin.

A Journal for Social Research

Max Horkheimer’s stated aim for the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung was to bring together a wide variety of studies and approaches to the elaboration of the social. Hence, he gave the journal the purpose of exploring contemporary “society as a whole,” as he mentioned in the first preface. It should not distance itself from empirical work or lose itself in pure theoretical debates but link them. This meant that the journal should be a compilation of the different ways of looking at the world, always finding concrete reference points for them within contemporary debates.

Different experts from their disciplines contributed to this, such as Fromm from psychoanalysis or Löwenthal from literature. The aim was to formulate a critique of the prevailing conditions through interdisciplinary empirical work that would also stand out from the positivist scientific establishment.

The journal also stands as an example of the institute’s history. While the first issue in 1932 was still published in Germany and dealt with National Socialism as a possible coming regime, the next issues were published in Paris and the last two in New York City. With the development of National Socialism and the location of the institute in Switzerland and later in the United States, the viewpoints on social developments also changed. However, the journal was never just a study of political contexts, but also combined aesthetic reflections, such as the one by Adorno on Richard Wagner.

Critical Theory and Exile

In the early years before the Nazis came to power, Horkheimer and his colleagues conducted research to understand why the socialist revolution did not happen as Marx had predicted. Through their studies on family, personality, and authority, they discovered that a significant portion of the working class did not identify with the idea of a socialist revolution, but rather with conservative political views. As a result, the institute and its environment became increasingly cautious, as they anticipated an authoritarian takeover in Germany.

In 1932, Horkheimer founded a branch office of the institute in Geneva, attached to the “Internationales Arbeitsamt” (“international labor office”) with the official purpose of conducting research, but also as a preparatory measure for a possible exile. Under his direction, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung was moved to Paris, and the foundation’s funds were transferred to the Netherlands. Horkheimer himself started living in different hotels to avoid being captured.

However, their plans were met with the harsh realities of social upheaval. The first Frankfurt phase ended 1933 with the confiscation of the institute and its archive by the Gestapo (secret state police), leading to their closure. Horkheimer led the institute through the years of exile, first from Geneva, then from the United States, and tried to continue their work while taking staff members with him into exile. This sad chapter of history is particularly evident in critical theory thinkers who became victims of the Nazi regime, such as Benjamin.

Theories, Traditional and Critical

Other members of the institute, including Horkheimer, Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, continued their work in exile in the United States. During this time, they developed critical theory, which was a Marxist-inspired approach to studying society and culture that aimed to reveal and challenge the underlying power structures that shape social life.

Telling of this approach was “Traditional and Critical Theory,” a seminal essay by Max Horkheimer that compares and contrasts what he calls the two forms of social theory. Horkheimer argues that traditional theory, which focuses on social order and stability, is limited in its ability to understand and change society. It locates social problems on the side of individuals and thereby reproduces social contradictions.

In contrast, critical theory, which focuses on power and domination in society, seeks to challenge the status quo and promote social change. Horkheimer emphasizes the importance of the critical stance, which consists of always starting over and recognizing the relationship between intellectual positions and their social location. He believed that the future of humanity depended on the existence of critical theory and its ability to promote social justice and equality.

Despite all the challenges faced, the years in exile were also marked by enormous productivity. Groundbreaking work was produced in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung — always in the conviction that it was necessary to intervene, even without being able to participate. “But,” Horkheimer insisted “the idea of the Institute was not to submit so easily to this reality. Maybe it will happen, but at least it won’t be without resistance.”

During their years in exile, the institute not only kept a watchful eye on Europe, engulfed in the flames of war, but also scrutinized the developments in the United States. The institute analyzed speeches by fascist agitators, explored the emergence of radio and light theater as mass media, and observed the rise of Hollywood. Divided into two regional groups, with one in New York and the other in Los Angeles, Horkheimer and Adorno, alongside other exiles like Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, had the opportunity to closely study the emergence of Hollywood’s shining stars in Los Angeles. It was during this period that they produced one their most significant works, the Dialektik der Aufklärung ( Dialectic of Enlightenment ), which was completed in the United States and published in 1949 after the end of their exile.

Like other works by the Frankfurt School scholars, it posed the question of how, after the developments of modernity in the Enlightenment, it was possible to reach the sheer horror of the concentration camps of National Socialism. Was this not impossible, the end of all reason, or had reason actually played a role in it? Written by Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment explores the relationship between the Enlightenment and modernity and the emergence of totalitarianism in Western societies. The main point of the book is the Enlightenment project, which aimed to liberate humanity from ignorance and superstition, had paradoxically led to the emergence of new forms of domination and oppression in modern societies.

After the War

After the end of the war, the institute had to make a far-reaching decision: should it stay in the United States or return to Frankfurt? In the letters between the protagonists, long-standing disputes can be traced, which nevertheless led to the decision to return and to the construction of the present-day institute. After the destruction of the previous building during the war, the old institute moved into the current premises and developed an unprecedented closeness to the students in the 1950s. In this new phase, which was about the formulated goal of strengthening individuals, Horkheimer and Adorno showed themselves with a joy in teaching and a hidden radicalism — a radicalism in the seminars behind closed doors.

As the internal protocols of those days show, there was also talk at the institute with students and staff about a formulation of theory that would remain faithful to “Marx, Engels and Lenin” (as Adorno put it) and be directed against the then chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Christian Democrat Konrad Adenauer.

Among the staff and students are quite a few who were to decisively shape the German research landscape in the following decades, such as Jürgen Habermas and his continuation of critical theory, Elisabeth Lenk and her research in literary studies, Regina Becker-Schmidt and the extension of critical theory to feminist issues, or Friedrich Weltz and his pioneering work in qualitative social research.

Even though their paths led away from the institute, they continued the history of the institute as a teaching institution. This list should of course also include the connections to Habermas, as was the case with Axel Honneth, a later director of the institute, or the Marxist connections in the form of Alfred Schmidt, Hans-Georg Backhaus, or Jürgen Ritsert.

However, this closeness became more fragile in the 1960s. During the student revolt of this period, demands were made that the directors did not want to meet in the desired sense. Hans-Jürgen Krahl, a student of Adorno’s who died young, formulated this rupture as a swan song from the revolution to his former teacher, who had decided to call the police on the student protesters. Many voices assume that without Krahl’s tragic death, the history of the West German left would have been different.

In any case, this break in the close relationship between teacher and student can be taken as exemplary of the break between critical theory and the student movement. Further breaks also occurred with Habermas’s departure from Frankfurt and the separation of the joint path of the institute and critical theory. While critical theory and references to its basic positions were now continued elsewhere, the institute critically dealt with its legacy.

An example of this is the seventy-fifth anniversary celebration in 1999 and the criticism associated with it. The history of the institute, it seemed to the critics, was reduced to Horkheimer and Adorno; meanwhile the dismantling of staff members’ rights of democratic codetermination, which had existed in the 1970s, went ignored. In 1999, it appeared that the Institute for Social Research and critical theory had finally separated; Honneth, a later director of the institute, even asserted that for him the tradition of critical theory at the institute no longer existed.

Back to the Future

As the institute’s new director, Stephan Lessenich wants to accentuate references to the oldiInstitute and critical theory more sharply. For him, the anniversary is a unique opportunity to reform the institute and, in its present constitution, to link it to the old critical theory. The anniversary will give the work at the institute a broad public and develop a new research program in the coming years. This will also deal critically with the history of the institute and should leave behind the “self-chosen provinciality.”

While voices — from Breitbart News to Steve Bannon — in the alt-right and far-right media are spinning conspiracies about theIinstitute’s great influence having a firm grip on American society and politics and that critical theory is a true brainchild of Satanism, the current situation in Frankfurt is quite different. Lessenich wants to contribute to a globalization of critical theory in the basic position of not easily submitting to this reality. Lessenich says:

In terms of referring back to the tradition of critical theory, we aim at developing a critical sociology of domination that keeps pace with the times, with the current mode of domination. And we try to contribute to a thinking in alternatives, in alternative forms of organizing society, by way of the negation of the current state of affairs — just as critical theory always did.

This approach, which Lessenich talks about and mentions as the present goal of the institute, can be exemplified by the work of one of its current members, Alexandra Schauer.

Her monograph Mensch ohne Welt ( Man Without World ) can be understood as a fresh reference to the early basic attitudes of the institute. As a member of the institute’s staff, she investigates the (perceived) loss of creative possibilities in late modernity. Using the axes of time, the public sphere and the city, she meticulously traces socialization into and out of modernity.

These and similar works in today’s institute represent the history of resistance of the institute and formulate the “back to the future — putting contradictions back into the center of critical social analysis and empirical social research,” that Lessenich is striving for. Or to put it in Schauer’s words ahead of the institute’s centenary: “Let’s try what seems impossible, let’s save what is possible!”

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The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory, in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory pp 255–278 Cite as

Theories of Culture in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory

• Christoph Henning 3  
• First Online: 21 January 2017

3116 Accesses

2 Citations

39 Altmetric

Part of the book series: Political Philosophy and Public Purpose ((POPHPUPU))

The main difference between critical theory and others, as famously outlined by Horkheimer, is its critical aim: as opposed to “traditional” theories that mainly try to understand or even explain society, critical theory wants to overcome the current state of society and help erect a more “reasonable” society without exploitation, alienation and unnecessary suffering. However, culture has not always been the central interest of critical theory. The initial approach of Karl Marx rather stressed economic structures and political struggles, whereas later thinkers such as Habermas and Honneth almost exclusively focused on social norms. The focus shifted from political economy to psychoanalysis and culture in the first generation of the Frankfurt School, and further on to moral and legal philosophy in the second generation. This chapter mainly focuses on these theories, in particular on the works of Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno. In order to frame these approaches, the chapter starts with an overview of Marxian critical theory and ends with an outlook on the normativist stance of later theories.

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“The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness” (Marx, MEW 13, 8).

“Eine echt erklaerende Literaturgeschichte aber muss materialistisch sein. Das heisst, sie muss die oekonomischen Grundstrukturen, wie sie sich in der Dichtung darstellen, und die Wirkungen untersuchen, die innerhalb der durch die Ökonomie bedingte Gesellschaft das materialistisch interpretierte Kunstwerk ausuebt” (Loewenthal 1932 , 318).

“Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking” (Marx/Engels, MEW 3, 26f.).

He is interested in “signs” that allow to group cultural artifacts to historical periods: “ Both the pragmatic reactions and contrivances of men and the so-called spiritual expressions of the life of peoples and classes show characteristic traits according as they belong to one or other of the great historical complexes which we call periods or stages of development of mankind. By such signs … the genuine student of history recognizes the historical location of a particular event or work” (Horkheimer 1936 , 8, engl. 52).

Today, “the disruptive element in the culture is making itself more strongly felt than the unitive” (Horkheimer 1936 , 75, engl. 128). “In the face of this will to preserve, cultural forces themselves will come more and more to seem like counterforces which need regulation” ( 1936 , 76, engl. 128). The original contradiction in Marx was between “forces” and “relations” of production. Note that the first edition of the Zeitschrift fuer Sozialforschung from 1932 pictured culture in general as a “force of production” (Wiggershaus 1993 , 137f.).

“[N]aked coercion cannot by itself explain why the subject classes have borne the yoke so long in times of cultural decline, when property relationships, like existing ways of life in general, had obviously reduced social forces to immobility and the economic apparatus was ready to yield a better method of production. The historian must here study the whole culture, although knowledge of material conditions is, of course, the basis of understanding” (Horkheimer 1936 , 13, engl. 57f.). “[T]he periods of restoration last a long time, and during them the outmoded cultural apparatus as well as the psychic make-up of men and the body of interconnected institutions acquire new power. Then there is need to investigate the culture thoroughly” ( 1936 , 15, engl 59f.).

“The bureaucracy which operates the State’s coercive apparatus has its own interests and power, but so does the staff of any cultural institution in the strict sense” (Horkheimer 1936 , 14, engl. 59).

For example, “romantic love … is a social phenomenon which can drive the individual into opposition or even a break with society” (Horkheimer 1936 , 14, engl. 58). “Within the family, however, unlike public life, relationships were not regulated through the market” (Horkheimer 1936 , 63, engl. 114). This was even more “humanistic” than Fromm’s approach at the time: for Fromm, the family directly imprinted society’s imperatives on the child’s character.

“Durch Philosophie und durch Kunst wird der große Abstand zwischen dem, was ist, und dem, was sein soll, an dem je Seienden selber offenbar” (Horkheimer 1960 , 93).

Heinz Steinert argued that Adorno never bothered to show how the exceptional modern works of art he relied upon (by Beckett, Kafka, Schönberg and Alban Berg) were possible socially or economically. It seems that a hint to the “talent” of the artists already was an answer for Adorno (Steinert 1993 , 115, 181f.). However, if it was possible for them to overcome the imperatives of the cultural industry artistically, why was it not possible for others as well?

Note that this was written long before Andy Warhol became famous. In recent decades, the demarcation between design and fine art has indeed become artificial in many cases—it is rather the context that defines how we define certain artifacts.

In comparison, see Marcuse’s description of the classical ideal of personality: “The highest point which man can attain is a community of free and rational persons in which each has the same opportunity to unfold and fulfil all how his powers” (Marcuse 1937 , 70, engl. 91, paraphrasing Herder). This is an egalitarian perfectionism.

“Kultur in menschlichen Beziehungen bedeutet, nicht anders als in Speisen und Getränken, veredelte Natur. Sprache und Bild, Freundschaft, Liebe, alle Sitten sind aus dem Zusammenhang der bedingenden Situation gelöste Arten des Ausdrucks, die einst von den Oberen bewahrt und gepflegt, von den Unteren angenommen worden sind” (Horkheimer 1960 , 105; cf. Horkheimer 1937 , 180, engl. 232).

“The traditional images of artistic alienation are indeed romantic in as much as they are in aesthetic incompatibility with the developing society. This incompatibility is the token of their truth. What they recall and preserve in memory pertains to the future: images of a gratification that would dissolve the society which suppresses it” (Marcuse 1964 , 80, engl. 53).

“Das überschwengliche Lebensgefühl des Künstlers strebt immer wieder nach Entfaltung, Erfüllung in der Wirklichkeit, nach Abfindung mit der Umwelt, nach einer [ihm] gemäßen Lebensform, und immer wieder findet es in der Wirklichkeit keinen Raum und drängt nach anderen Welten der Erfüllung” (Marcuse 1922 , 25). Goethe is the role model per se in this book ( 1922 , 72).

Whether they had their own cultures was not a question Marcuse considered worthwile enough to pursue. In the few occassion where he cites artworks of lower cultures, he acknowledges their integration into practical life, but criticizes their lack of “form” (their “antiform”) which makes them an easy prey for commodification (he mentions Jazz 1972 , 111, but also the language and music of “black people” in the USA, 96, 134—a few years earlier Marcuse was much more optimistic, see Marcuse 1969 , 74f., engl. 47).

The beautification (or, with Benjamin: “aesthetization”) of social reality that once was a radical idea has now become realized by the cultural industry—but in the wrong way (“cultural images” are incorpated “into the kitchen, the office, the shop”, Marcuse 1964 , 61). Here, Marcuse preceedes the analysis of Boltanski and Chiapello 2005, who also mention a “realization” of the “articistic criticism” of earlier days.

“Form … is essential to art” (Marcuse 1967 , 120). “Jede unsublimierte, unmittelbare Darstellung ist zur Unwahrheit verurteilt” (Marcuse 1972 , 133), denn sie “verliert mit der ästhetischen Form den politischen Inhalt” (136). One of Marcuse’s examples for revolutionary, but formless art, is the music of Jefferson Airplane ( 1972 , 135, fn.). If one listens to their albums of the 1960s again, one may have second thoughts—today, these are classical works.

“Aber die affirmative Kraft der Kunst ist gleichzeitig die Macht, die diese Affirmation negiert” (Marcuse 1972 , 115).

Benjamin cites accusations of a “littérature industrielle” or a “Fabrique de Romans” (GS I.2, 529 fn. and 531 fn.) and also describes how the administrative net of social control tightened already (549, from 1939 ).

“Einzig die letzte dialektische Konsequenz aus jenem Prozeß, wie Schönberg und seine Nächsten ihn zogen: nämlich alle Brücken der Verständlichkeit hinter der monologischen Musik abzubrechen, damit sie vom bürgerlichen Geltungsraum zu emanzipieren, indem das Prinzip des bürgerlichen Individualismus bis zu seinem Umschlag getrieben wird, und damit Raum zu schaffen für die Konstruktion aus Phantasie in Freiheit – einzig diese letzte, in ihrer Tiefe und Gewalt kaum nur geahnte Konsequenz trägt das Bild einer zukünftigen Gesellschaft in sich und ist vom Diktat der bestehenden im Entscheidenden unabhängig” (Adorno GS 18, 723, from 1928 ). Adorno ( 1961 ) still praises Schoenberg. For immanence and transcendenz in Adorno see Klein 2004 .

“Ist aber das Material nichts Statisches, heißt materialgerecht verfahren mehr als die handwerkliche Bescheidung, die gegebene Möglichkeiten geschickt ausschöpft, so impliziert das auch, daß das Material seinerseits durch die Komposition verändert wird. Aus jeder gelungenen, in die es einging, tritt es als Neues frisch hervor. Das Geheimnis der Komposition ist die Kraft, welche das Material im Prozeß fortschreitender Adäquanz umformt” (Adorno 1961 , 504f.).

Even though the much-cherished Hegel left three large volumes on Aesthetics. The only exeception I am aware of in Honneths work are 13pages on Bob Dylan (Honneth 2006 ). It is interesting to see that in his Dissertation, Honneth ( 1985 , 35) already reduces the term “culture”, as used by the early Horkheimer, to a producer of “norms”.

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Henning, C. (2017). Theories of Culture in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. In: Thompson, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_12

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