ABSTRACT
The beginnings of the institutional matrix of the Frankfurt School date back to 1923, when the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), affiliated with the University of Frankfurt, was founded. Felix J. Weil first proposed the idea of an institute of social research along Marxist lines. Among the first members of the institute were such young intellectuals as Max Horkheimer, Friedrich Pollock, Henryk Grossman, Richard Sorge, and the Sinologist Karl Wittfogel. A real understanding of Critical Theory would require a close scrutiny of the men, their works, and their socio-historical matrix in order to show the existential determination of the Frankfurt theorists, that is, to shed light on the correlation between biographical data and theoretical achievements. At the time at which young Horkheimer entered the academic scene in the 1920s, a revival of Marxian theory took place in Central and Western Europe.
