Establishing Lives in Exile –
Herbert Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal in America
by Peter-Erwin Jansen
Keynote Conference Address
It is a great honor for me to have been invited here as keynote speaker. I want to thank the organizers very warmly and very much: especially Arnold Farr, Andrew Lamas, and Chris Holman. Charles Reitz has also been very supportive in this regard. York University I thank in particular.
Please allow me a brief political preface before I relate the historical remarks which will constitute the core of my address today:
Are any of you here aware that Herbert Marcuse was invited to speak in Toronto – back in 1976? As I was researching for my presentation today, I came across the hitherto unpublished manuscript for the talk he gave. I would like to preface my own report of research findings today by quoting some elements of that lecture. You will quickly recognize the politically radical tone – a quality which I have earlier termed Marcuse’s categorical imperative to Think Liberation![1] Emancipatory action must always accompany our criticism of established injustice.
The threat [to society today is -- P.E.J.]: not (radical) change, but continuity: that it goes on and on functioning, producing and consuming; bigger and better, while at the same time the gap between the rich and the poor, the happy and the miserable increases, the scope and intensity of mental and physical destruction is constantly enlarged; although this society possesses all mental and natural resources to create a free society…(rejection of the notion Utopia!). Reasons for this apparently indefinite postponement of change?
the concentration of force in the hands of the ruling powers,
totalization of controls and the
introjection (internalization) of “social” needs and values by the steered
and managed individuals, who thus reproduce their own
repression.
And (perhaps most effective):
the improved standards of living for the privileged majority;
the lack of a better (visible!) alternative, demonstrated by the failure of the
revolutions to rid themselves from the model of progress set by the
advanced industrial countries = progress in domination and
bureaucratization.
This model implies technical, quantitative progress at the expense of human liberation; - it implies better exploitation of society and nature. Such quantitative progress does not “automatically” turn into qualitative progress as the result of new social institutions. [2]
Despite the past year’s global economic debacle given the tendencies toward self-destruction in the U.S. financial system, the underlying conditions of social irrationality and repression that confront us today have the same structural dynamics that Marcuse described here in Toronto 33 years ago:
Increase of unproductive production; enlarged production of waste and luxuries; planned obsolescence; destruction. These tendencies show clearly enough the extent to which capitalism now sustains itself and expands by “unproductive” labor, “unnecessary”
- inasmuch as this labor does not serve to alleviate and improve life, but is necessary to perpetuate the system and thus submission to the technical and political power structure.[3]
Do these quotations still have something to say to a “New Generation?” Or must we identify something “new” about the current generation in order to come to know what constitute the tendencies currently operative in our divisive, destructive, unjust capitalist world? How may we succeed in the struggle for a better future society?
These are issues which this conference will take up and discuss.
What is it that remains fascinating still today in Marcuse’s social analysis? Who can still bring about the social changes that are necessary? Are there elements of his critical theory that can afford us the leverage we need when confronted by the challenges contemporary social transformation requires?
During the 1968 revolts, Marcuse’s philosophy was very highly regarded because his social theory reflected the issues of the rebellious youth within his own analytical incisiveness and critical solidarity. In addition, Marcuse avoided a narrowly party-oriented and dogmatic communism. The obtuse belief in the “objective movement of history” toward an apparently liberated world, in whatever form this is supposed to take, was not for him. Instead, the “subjective factor,” the capacity for change to be found within humanity itself, was what he focused on. The concrete experiences that individuals have with capitalist institutions bring them into contact with the labor and production processes, with environmental devastation, with repressive education, with the destruction of human life caused by globalization, all of which stand in opposition to the possibilities of another and better world. Little has changed about all this since Marcuse’s death.
In general, one finds in Marcuse’s thought (and in the method of analysis in critical theory) a substantive critique of the destructive social consequences of the structural features of profit-oriented forms of economic activity, and the evisceration of participatory democracy when this becomes an empty formalization.
If the time for Marcuse’s “Great Refusal” is thought to be over, might there nonetheless be social groups today who can carry out “smaller refusals.” Is this the opportunity that awaits a critical new generation?
We do experience everyday however that the social problems have not diminished in size: impoverishment, unregulated technological development, racist attacks, the increasing readiness of youth to engage in violence, systems of health care and education that have been sorely neglected. In addition, the immiseration of poor nations proceeds apace. Divisive attitudes are intensifying not only between the global North and South, but within the industrialized nations themselves. International problems have entered into a new phase with globalization. Not only the markets have been internationalized, but also poverty, and this also includes the poverty within the wealthy Western countries.
The social challenge remains unchanged: in addition to the establishment of a democratic communal life, the principles of economic equality and justice must prevail. Given his own political experiences, Marcuse perhaps underestimated democratic possibilities. Yet if today we measure democratic societies by their own potentials and by the degree of freedom not yet actualized within them, we will recognize anew the enduring substance of Marcuse’s philosophy. No apologies are needed if we keep or toss particular elements of critical theory, since it has always been one of its principles that critique is, at its core, conditioned by historical change. On the one hand this means that today new problems can not be solved by old methods. On the other hand it means that many a new method is incapable of grasping the older, more persistent problems of society, either intellectually or politically.
New organizational forms will emerge out of familiar political structures, whether these be parties or other institutions currently assimilated into the established society. It is certainly conceivable that in the next few years a hitherto unarticulated moral indignation will find a radical new voice and a new form of political practice that can successfully negate the “obscene”[4] social realities we continue to face today.
Now Let’s take a Look Back.
Marcuse’s life was an odyssey in which the tumult came not from the gods or powers of nature, but rather from human society. Instead of the social order serving the goals of human development, maturation, and education, – which Kant had classically defined as our enlightenment – our liberation through learning from our selbstverschuldene Unmündigkeit [our complicity in our own disempowerment] – the social system became destructive of humanitas itself. This indicated the collapse of a civilization due to tendencies immanent to that society’s own ostensibly progressive principles.
Despite the life-shattering tendencies experienced during the first five decades of his life [WW I, the Weimar-era depression, the rise of Nazism], Marcuse continually sharpened his critical theorizing. He did this while establishing a life in exile in the United States, as did other members of the Frankfurt School. I will refer in this connection also to the experiences he shared especially with Leo Löwenthal.
Leo Löwenthal to Siegfried Kracauer: “At last a clear answer to your question: ‘Would you want to live back there again?’ The answer is: ‘No.’”[5]
Ulrich Wickert: “Prof. Marcuse, why in fact did you never return to Germany?”
Herbert Marcuse: “I remained here, because I could not imagine a life for me in Germany any longer.”[6]
Herbert Marcuse was born in 1898 in Berlin into an assimilated Jewish family. He concluded his doctoral studies in German literature at the University of Freiburg in 1922 with a dissertation on The German Artist-Novel.[7] Six years afterwards, in 1928, he once again left Berlin for Freiburg, this time with Sophie Wertheim, his wife, and his son, Peter, born that November.
The key factor in this return to Freiburg for post-doctoral studies, and his decision to shift from philosophy as a “minor” area of study to a philosophy as his “major” intellectual interest, was the publication of Heidegger’s Being and Time. In an interview with Frederick Olafson, Marcuse noted “I read Sein und Zeit when it appeared in 1927 and after having read it, I decided to return to Freiburg . . . in order to work with Heidegger.”[8]
The next five years in Freiburg proved also to be the start of Marcuse’s work with the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, as well as the real beginning of his eventual emigration to the United States, from which no re-migration to Germany ever would occur. Given his own hesitations, and despite many half-hearted offers, particularly from Max Horkheimer, re-migration was never seriously considered.
Like many Jewish scholars who had been forced into exile by the National Socialists, Marcuse and Leo Löwenthal (born in 1900 in Frankfurt) found that their academic careers were thus massively obstructed. This was also of consequence with regard to a possible return to Germany after the fall of the National Socialist regime. Securing a position as a professor in the German system of higher education then was quite unlikely for re-migrating candidates unless they had been expelled from a former professorship or, at minimum, had had their post-doctoral book-length theses (Habilitationsschriften) sponsored by the chair of an academic department prior to the war. Neither of these conditions applied to Löwenthal or Marcuse. Instead, in order to qualify for restitution of damages at the beginning of the 1960s, they each had to wage a veritable campaign (involving much detection work) to prove in fact that the takeover of power by the National Socialists made it impossible for them to gain any type of academic employment as Jewish professors.
Heidegger’s Being and Time presented philosophical insights that many intellectuals thought particularly helpful in concretely conceptualizing the changes occurring in an expanding capitalistic Germany during the Weimar Period. Like other “pupils” of Heidegger, Marcuse interpreted these concepts as a philosophical explication of current conditions: “We saw in Heidegger what we had first seen in Husserl, a new beginning, the first radical attempt to put philosophy on really concrete foundations – philosophy concerned with human existence, the human condition, and not with merely abstract ideas and principles.”[9] Marcuse had decided early in his post-doctoral studies to write his Habilitationsschrift under Heidegger. This was a fateful decision, as would become clear during the next few years.
We can establish from several documents in the Marcuse Archive at the University of Frankfurt that Marcuse had completed his Habilitationsschrift and submitted it to Heidegger in 1930. Heidegger postponed a discussion of this work again and again, and thus blocked the procedure certifying the Habilitation. Looking back Marcuse remarked that by 1932 it had become abundantly clear that he “would never be able to receive my Habilitation under the Nazi regime.”[10]
By March, 1931, Marcuse was seeking alternative paths to his Habilitation, first in Freiburg with Edmund Husserl, then in Frankfurt with support from Kurt Riezler, at that time curator of the university. Anti-Semitic hostilities at the German universities were mounting during the thirties and becoming more and more aggressive. Still, a debate remains about whether it was actually due to anti-Semitic attitudes that Herbert Marcuse did not receive his Habilitation. Marcuse, himself, was never really certain in this regard. It was only through Karl Löwith that he heard allegations that Heidegger had made an anti-Semitic remark about Marcuse’s Jewish background. Marcuse wrote of this in a letter to Horkheimer.[11]
A folder in the Marcuse Archive also shows just how keenly Marcuse kept track of Heidegger’s partisanship for the National Socialists. It contains news articles about Heidegger, speeches, and also the slender, slightly publicized book by Guido Schneeberger, Ergänzungen zu einer Heidegger Biografie [Supplements to a Heidegger Biography] (Bern, 1960). Marcuse quoted a passage from Heidegger’s November 1933 Rektoratsrede [Inaugural Lecture as Rector of Freiburg University] in his 1977 interview with Olafson: “Let not principles and ideas rule your being. Today, and in the future, only the Führer himself is German reality and its law.”[12]
It was Leo Löwenthal who sought out contact with Marcuse at the direction of Max Horkheimer and offered to support him in Geneva as a member of the Institute for Social Research working on the project, Studies in Authority and the Family (1936). Rolf Wiggershaus comments about this: “Leo Löwenthal conducted the first conversation with Herbert Marcuse, which led to his membership in the Institute – this, after Horkheimer initially showed very little enthusiasm for bringing a student of Heidegger, recommended by Riezler, into the Institute.”[13] Marcuse officially joined the Institute on the 30th of January, 1933, on the day of Hitler’s official ascent to power.
The initial skepticism against Marcuse as a “disciple of Heidegger” was also conveyed by Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno. Adorno indicates in a letter to Horkheimer that the Geneva position might well have been offered to him instead of Marcuse. With undeservedly harsh language he writes: “…you won’t be surprised to know that I am saddened that you are doing philosophical work so closely with a man whom I consider to be hindered only by his Jewishness from being a fascist; according to the forward of his Hegel book, he owes everything to Heidegger, of whom he could have had no illusions . . . .”[14]
In spite of all the skepticism Marcuse remained within the inner circle of the Institute. He directed the branch office in Geneva until his emigration to the USA in July 1934, and became a close friend there with Leo Löwenthal. This friendship deepened as both men came to teach in California, and was sustained right up until the death of Marcuse on July 29, 1979.
From his hotel in New York City Marcuse wrote to Löwenthal, who was whiling his time in Geneva: “You big lug: because I expect to see you soon, in the full greatness of your swollen body, standing here in front of my own slender form, let this short note express my delight that we will be seeing one another soon. . . . If you have departed without leaving both our wives and children in perfect condition and well-protected, I will have you tortured to death by a gangster whom I have already rented. I think fondly of you as I manicure my nails with your birthday present. English is a horrible language. Whenever I don’t understand anything I say ‘All right.’ . . .”[15]
Leo Löwenthal did then likewise arrive in New York City on the 8th of August, 1934. Of the request that he bring along Marcuse’s old typewriter, Löwenthal wrote: “First of all, the stupid thing makes a gawd awful racket, and second, Löwenthal is marching home on foot with this machine. You just wait old man!”[16] He closed his letter: “Marcuse, you warthog, you scuttlebug – it will nevertheless be nice that to see you again, and relatively sooner than we first thought. Festoon the city and the countryside with streamers for me!”[17]
A short time later Löwenthal’s wife Golde Ginsburg and son Daniel arrived, as did Marcuse’s wife Sophie Wertheim and son Peter. Both families faced significant challenges; not only the difficult working conditions, but especially the everyday problems. For example, schools had to be found for the sixteen-year-old sons Daniel Löwenthal and Peter Marcuse.
For the first years of exile the members of the Institute stayed in New York City working in facilities provided by Columbia University. But only a few years later, toward the end of 1940, the close affinities among them, both academically and personally, began to fall away. First Horkheimer and Adorno moved to California, followed by Marcuse’s family in May of 1941. Leo Löwenthal and Franz Neumann stayed in New York City and Washington.
Marcuse wrote to his younger friend “Leo the Wise” about his enthusiasm for the move to California. “Overall you know I really have to say it’s picture perfect here.”[18] He also optimistically tied the move to a desire for working closely with Max Horkheimer once again. This hope evaporated quickly, however, and he had to re-orient his thinking toward the east coast, though California remained a key factor during Marcuse’s post-war years and influenced him to abjure re-migration. The Institute’s shortage of funds and the inability to find other work in Los Angeles compelled him to accept a position arranged through Franz Neumann: first for a brief time with the Office of War Information (OWI), where Löwenthal was also employed, and later in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Washington, where he remained for several years. Marcuse was determined politically to combat Nazi Germany from the United States. Both organizations were at the time independent entities under the General Staff; after 1945, under the State Department. Alongside the exiles, who like Franz Neumann and Hans Meyerhoff occupied key positions in these research centers, numerous renowned American scholars like the cultural historian, Carl Schorske, and the political scientist, Barrington Moore,[19] analyzed information about Nazi Germany there. One may surmise that the contacts made here by Marcuse and Löwenthal eased their entry into American social science circles after the OSS closed down in 1945.[20]
This network in the social scientific community led from initially tenuous placement into various research projects to steady employment as regular, tenure track faculty in American universities. Marcuse received a professorship in political science in 1954 at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, and in 1965 a position in philosophy at the University of California, San Diego.
Leo Löwenthal, who shifted to the “Voice of America” as director of its research division from 1949 to 1955, indicated in a conversation with Helmut Dubiel not only that he held this partnership in high esteem, but that this was also of immense significance for his “academic integration.” “I became a visiting professor at Berkeley in 1955, then received a regular professorship there1956. Circumstances compelled me, more than other Institute members, to analyze American social science, which I had already become thoroughly familiar with during my government service.”[21] This was similar to Marcuse’s work with the OSS.
There has been much speculation about just what matters were worked-upon and worked-out there, what the assignments were for these European partners during their service in U.S. governmental agencies. Marcuse’s projects during these years have been published by myself in German and by Douglas Kellner in English.[22] [23] In his memorandum, “The New German Mentality,” Marcuse examines how “irrational” ideas of folk, race, blood and soil, were generally understood and expressed with an extreme matter-of-factness in the logic and language of National Socialism. “The National Socialist mythology fostered rather than counteracted the extreme matter-of-factness with which the German people accepted this compensation for renouncing the democratic liberties. Paradoxically enough, education to cynical matter-of-factness is the spirit of this mythology. Note that its chief concepts substitute ‘natural’ for social relationships (folk for society, race for class, blood and soil for property rights, Reich for the state). The former seem to be more palpable and concrete than the latter. Folk and race are propagated as “facts,” for birth by certain parents at a certain place is a fact, whereas class and humanity are abstract ideas.”[24]
Herbert Marcuse was the first among the inner circle of the Institute to visit Germany’s post-war devastation between March and June 1947 in his function within the U.S. State Department. This visit left a discouraging and permanent impression on him with regard to the attitudes of many German intellectuals and the reactions of the German public to the inhuman politics of the Nazi regime. Everyone could have known the truth about the murderous function of the concentration camps. This may well have contributed to Marcuse’s comment in a 1978 interview, as a white-haired American professor, that he simply could not imagine returning to work in Germany. When he was asked about his feelings as he traveled back then through a defeated and destroyed Germany, he responded: “It is difficult to say what I sensed at the time. I would have to say sadness. Yet nonetheless mixed with a feeling that this devastation was the recompense that the Hitler regime had earned.”[25]
Marcuse utilized this trip to Germany also to meet with his former teacher, Martin Heidegger, in Todtnauberg. As Marcuse remembers it, their conversation proceeded neither very positively nor in a very friendly manner. Quite the opposite. It left Marcuse with a deeply disturbing impression that he explicitly described in a letter to Heidegger, August 28th, 1947: “You have never publicly stated that you ever came to conclusions other than those you uttered in 1933-34 and which you then put into practice.”[26] It was not only the lack of self-criticism that Marcuse found lacking. He believed that he met in Heidegger a German who eradicated the reality of Nazi crimes. He wrote to Heidegger: “A philosopher can be deceived in political affairs, in which case he would openly acknowledge his fault. But he can not be deceived about a regime that has caused the deaths of millions of Jews, merely on account of their Jewishness; that made terror the normal state of affairs; that perverted everything which was ever genuinely connected to the concepts of spirit, freedom, and truth into their bloody opposites.”[27]
Heidegger answered Marcuse on January 20th, 1948. He attempted to respond by addressing six points. Concerning his speeches during the period he was Rector in Freiburg, 1933-34, he wrote: “Some of the statements in them today I see as blunders. Nothing more.”[28] With regard to his conduct after 1945 he comments: “You are perfectly right that I did not make a public renunciation that would be understood by all. That would have led to violent threats against me and my family. Jaspers has this to say about it: We are alive, and they blame us for it.”[29]
A key component of this Heidegger letter reads like a preview to the German historians’ controversies of the 1980s, and has an astonishingly contemporary ring, especially if one is aware of the debates surrounding the “Center for the Vertriebene [persons of German ethnicity driven from their homes in Eastern Europe after WW II].”[30] Heidegger’s words: “With regard to the severe and legitimate accusations that you have directed against ‘a regime that has caused the deaths of millions of Jews, merely on account of their Jewishness; that made terror the normal state of affairs; that perverted everything which was ever genuinely connected to the concepts of spirit, freedom, and truth into their opposites,’ I can only add that if you were to replace “Jews” with “Eastern Germans” then the same thing would hold true for the Allied powers, except that what they did since 1945 has been open for the whole world to see, while the bloody terrorism of the Nazis was in fact kept a secret from the German people.”[31]
Marcuse’s expresses not only his profound dismay at this response, but he also stresses the complete absurdity and inhumanity that undergirds the attempt to settle accounts through such a parallel: “You write that everything I have said about the destruction of the Jews holds in like measure for the Allies, if we replace ‘Jews’ with ‘Eastern Germans.’ Doesn’t such a statement situate you outside of the very limits which make possible human conversation – outside of Logos? To explain or relativize or ‘understand’ one crime, by saying that other persons have ostensibly done the same thing, is to depart completely from the terrain of logic.”[32]
Commenting further, Marcuse points to a cornerstone of ethical philosophy and behavior which he believes has been omitted entirely from the business-like, industrial-style rationality of extermination: this is the difference between humaneness and inhumaneness. He picks up Heidegger’s account once again and writes: “On the basis of your argument the Allies should then have continued the operations of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, with all that went on there, for these ‘Eastern Germans’ and for the Nazis; then the accounts would have been settled! Because the difference between humaneness and inhumaneness is reduced to nothing, this reduction becomes the world-historical shame of the Nazi system, which after two thousand years of human existence [Dasein], has modeled for the entire world to see: man’s inhumanity to man.”[33]
This confrontational exchange of letters occurred during the period when Marcuse sought again and again to tighten his old work contacts with the Institute. He also thought about re-migration, as had been suggested by Horkheimer. Politically, his antipathies against Germany, closer ties to the West, and the growing confrontation between the blocs, were much more pronounced than was the case with Horkheimer and Adorno.
At this time the re-publication of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung in Germany was also discussed. This excited Marcuse particularly after his return from his European travels which had taken him to London and Paris in the summer of 1946. In a letter to Horkheimer of October 18th 1946 he remarked that the re-publication of the Zeitschrift was a topic often raised with him in Europe, e.g. by Karl Mannheim in London, and in Paris by Raymond Aron who had been its first publisher. Marcuse summed up: “Given my experiences in Europe I see that you clearly have the responsibility to speak and to continue the tradition of the Zeitschrift.”[34] Marcuse’s first outline of his thoughts in this regard encompassed a wide-ranging analysis of “the various political, economic, and cultural programs and ‘Richtlinien’ now being circulated in Germany by the major German parties.”[35]
Horkheimer’s positive response led Marcuse to think that he might be included in this “new” Zeitschrift project, and that meant locally, in Germany. He hurriedly completed certain of the essays and research projects he was working on with the thought that they could furnish material for the first editions. For example, he completed “33 Theses,” a piece which openly utilized “orthodox Marxist theory”[36] both in terms of its language and substance. Horkheimer and Adorno were doubtless appalled by this, and saw such an emphasis as jeopardizing any new beginning of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Marcuse’s third thesis stated: “Under these circumstances [increasing confrontation between blocs –P.E.J.] there is only one alternative for revolutionary theory: to ruthlessly and openly criticize both systems [the neo-fascist and the Soviet—P.E.J.] and to uphold without compromise orthodox Marxist theory.” [37]
A second document, as yet unpublished, was also presented by Marcuse for discussion in terms of a new edition of the Zeitschrift. This took a critical position against a proposed research memorandum that was to investigate the problems that might stand in the way of the possibilities for democratic development of Germany. “The memorandum about the recent German developments starts with a premise that is, itself, false and ‘dangerous, particularly as this concerns neo-Nazism and chauvinism.”[38] Marcuse is extremely skeptical about the newer political tendencies in Germany; he sees as threats a chauvinist mentality and revanchist desires that could spread even more quickly than after WW I. His own memo consciously replaced the “re-education program” of the U.S. government with a broadly-based “democratization program,” and stressed the necessity of identifying relatively autonomous social groups that might be included within a democratic movement.[39] Marcuse did not shy away from recommending even communist formations, although only those were considered trustworthy that had a critical perspective on Soviet ideology.
Marcuse’s OSS proposals for a new political beginning in Germany after 1945 were never adopted in practice, yet they clearly formed the background to the above-mentioned memoranda. For example, a research project that included Marcuse, Neumann, and Löwenthal centered on the development of a “Denazification Guide.” This was to ascertain and describe, as concretely and completely as possible, the structures of the Nazi system as well as the groups and individuals associated with it. Its purpose was to ensure that Nazi war criminals could be brought to justice after the military defeat of Germany and that no Nazi groups would be permitted participation in the reconstruction of German society. The hopes for a democracy, the establishment of an “other” Germany that would cooperate with socialist and even communist groups, were shared by many intellectuals among the New Deal liberals. Even at the highest levels of government during this period independent socialists were considered to be partners in the struggle against Stalin. Still these hopes were quickly dashed. The U.S. government wanted “strong” economic partners and a politically stable Germany that would stand at the side of the U.S. as a “bulwark against the USSR” (Marcuse 1948).
Horkheimer, who after February 1950 was finally moving forward with the re-building of the Institute in Frankfurt, made very vague offers to Marcuse, and Marcuse’s feelings about leaving the U.S. for Germany oscillated back and forth. In addition to the thought of working again with Institute partners on the Zeitschrift, there was another bright prospect on the horizon – Horkheimer informed Marcuse that the position of Hans-Georg Gadamer was available at the University of Frankfurt and that he (Horkheimer) would press decisively to have him selected and appointed to it. Marcuse indicated his interest to Horkheimer, yet found out two months later, in July 1950, from Horkheimer that he (Horkheimer) had “ in the meanwhile succeeded in getting ‘Teddy’ on the short list.”[40]
This was a setback for Marcuse, whose uncertain work status and unsatisfactory work experience at the State Department further intensified his ambivalence with regard to a return to Germany. At the start of the 50s he did secure a research project at the Russian Institute of Columbia University on Soviet Marxism.[41] This study was completed at Harvard University with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, but a permanent position was yet to be attained.
Over and above all this he was deeply troubled by the severe illness of his wife, Sophie Wertheim, who died of cancer in 1951. His son Peter had just married and transferred universities. This extremely difficult personal situation, and the very vague prospects of a position in Germany, make it more and more dubious to consider Marcuse’s declared intentions to return to Germany a viable option.
Still, after all was said and done, Marcuse’s Reason and Revolution (1941) and Eros and Civilization (1955) earned him a secure academic reputation in the U.S. When, at the age of fifty-five, he finally obtained a regular professorship in political science at Brandeis University, all of the plans to reconnect to Horkheimer and Germany came to an end.
Both Marcuse and Löwenthal as critical theorists remained nonetheless in ongoing communication with Horkheimer and Adorno via numerous meetings, discussions, and conversations that actually represented quite a close collaboration. While their discourse was never entirely unproblematic, this important German-American scholarly exchange was continually deepened and renewed in Europe during the years that followed.
Acknowledgements
Much obliged to Tim B. Müller for sharing key insights.
Translated from the German by Charles Reitz
[1] See my Befreiung Denken: ein politischer Imperativ. A Materialienband zu einer Politischen Arbeitstagung über Herbert Marcuse am 13. u. 14. Oktober 1989 in Frankfurt [Think Liberation: a Political Imperative. A Collection of Materials for a Political Symposium on Herbert Marcuse, October 13 and 14, 1989] (Offenbach, Germany: Verlag 2000, 1989/1990.
[2] Herbert Marcuse, Toronto lecture 1976, unpublished manuscript, Marcuse Archiv, Universität Frankfurt am Main, p. 1.
[3] Ibid. pp. 1-2.
[4] “This society is obscene in producing and indecently exposing a stifling abundance of wares while depriving its victims abroad of the necessities of life; obscene in stuffing itself and its garbage cans while poisoning and burning the scarce foodstuffs in the fields of its aggression; obscene in the words and smiles of its politicians and entertainers; its prayers, in its ignorance, and in the wisdom of its kept intellectuals.” Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon, 1969) p. 176.
[5] Leo Löwenthal / Siegfried Kracauer, In steter Freundschaft. Briefwechsel [In Constant Friendship: Letters] Peter-Erwin Jansen [ed.] (Springe, Germany: zu Klampen Verlag, 2003) p. 262.
[6] Herbert Marcuse / Ulrich Wickert, “Kämpfer für eine andere Gesellschaft” [Fighters for a Different Society] television interview Westdeutscher Rundfunk, 2003.
[7] Herbert Marcuse, Schriften. Bd. 1 [Works. Vol. 1] Der deutsche Künstlerroman [The German Artist-Novel] (Springe, Germany: zu Klampen Verlag, 2004).
[8] Herbert Marcuse, “Heidegger’s Politics: An Interview” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, V. 6, N. 1, Winter 1977, p. 28. German translation of this interview by Peter-Erwin Jansen (ed.) published in his Befreiung Denken: ein politischer Imperativ. Op. cit.
[9] Marcuse, “Heidegger’s Politics,” ibid.
[10] Herbert Marcuse, Gespräche mit Herbert Marcuse [Conversations with Herbert Marcuse] Günter Busch [ed.] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981) p. 12.
[11] Herbert Marcuse, unpublished letter to Max Horkheimer, April 13, 1953, from Max Horkheimer Archive, Library of the University and City of Frankfurt.
[12] Marcuse, “Heidegger’s Politics,” op. cit., p. 33.
[13] Rolf Wiggershaus, Die Frankfurter Schule [The Frankfurt School] (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1988) p. 55.
[14] Theodore W. Adorno, letter of May 13, 1935, in Arno Widmann, (ed.) Doktrinäre im Dialog: Theodor W. Adorno und Max Horkheimer im Briefwechsel der Jahre 1927 bis 1937[Doctriaires in Dialogue: Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer Letters Exchanged between 1927 and 1937] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003).
[15] Herbert Marcuse, unpublished letter to Löwenthal, May 28, 1941, Löwenthal Archive Frankfurt.
[16] Leo Löwenthal, letter to Herbert Marcuse in Frankfurt University Löwenthal Archive, published by Peter-Erwin Jansen, “Leo Löwenthal: Ein optimistischer Pessimist [An Optimistic Pessimist],” in Zeitschrift für Kritische Theorie 8 (2000) Heft 15 pp. 26-28.
[17] Leo Löwenthal, ibid.
[18] Herbert Marcuse, unpublished letter to Löwenthal, May 28, 1941, op. cit.
[19] Moore and Marcuse developed a friendship that lasted many years. This led also to cooperation in scholarship, for example in the edited collection A Critique of Pure Tolerance, Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse [Eds] (Boston: Beacon, 1969). It is here that Marcuse published his controversial and much discussed essay, “Repressive Tolerance.”
[20] See especially Tim B. Miller, Radikale, Krieger, und Gelehrte: Linksintellectuelle, amerikanische Geheimdienste und philanthropische Stiftungen im Kalten Krieg [Radicals, Warriors, and Scholars: Left Intellectuals, U.S. Intelligence Services and Philanthropic Agencies in the Cold War] (Berlin: 2009).
[21] Leo Löwenthal and Helmut Dubiel, Mitmachen Wollte Ich Nie: Ein Autobiographisches Gespräch mit Helmut Dubiel [I Never Wanted to Join In: An Autobiographical Conversation with Helmut Dubiel] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980) p. 203.
[22] Herbert Marcuse, Nachgelassene Schriften. Bd. 5. Feindanalysen: Über die Deutschen [Posthumous Writings: Vol. 5 The Analysis of the Enemy: On the Germans] 2nd revised edition with a Forward by Peter-Erwin Jansen and Introduction by Detlev Classen. (Springe, Germany: zu Klampen Verlag, 2006).
[23] Herbert Marcuse, Technology, War, and Fascism; Volume I, Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse edited by Douglas Kellner (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).
[24] Marcuse in Kellner ibid., p. 151.
[25] Herbert Marcuse, in Wiltrud Manfeld, “Fragen an Herbert Marcuse zu seiner Biographie [Questions to Herbert Marcuse about his Biography]” in Peter-Erwin Jansen, (ed.) Befreiung Denken op. cit., p. 24
[26] Herbert Marcuse, letter to Heidegger, August 28, 1947, published in 1989 by Jansen, (ed.) Befreiung Denken, op. cit., p. 111.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Martin Heidegger, letter to Marcuse January 20, 1948 published in Jansen, (ed.) Befreiung Denken, op. cit., p. 113.
[29] Ibid.
[30] After WW II, ethnic Germans were cleansed or evicted from areas of Eastern Europe where they had often lived for generations before the war. German conservatives, especially, often took up this issue as a cause célèbre, claiming it to constitute a type of racial discrimination and therefore a gross injustice against the persons evicted because of their German heritage.
[31] Heidegger in Jansen, (ed.) Befreiung Denken, op. cit., p. 113.
[32] Marcuse, letter to Heidegger of May 13, 1948, published in Jansen, (ed.) Befreiung Denken, op. cit. p. 115.
[33] Marcuse, ibid.
[34] Marcuse, letter to Horkheimer of October 18, 1946, mentioned in Andraes Bernhard and Ulrich Raulff (eds.) Briefe aus dem 20. Jahrhundert [Letters of the 20th Century] (Frankfurt: 2005) p. 167-72. Letter in English original, Marcuse Archive University of Frankfurt.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Herbert Marcuse, “33 Theses” [John Abromeit, translator] in Herbert Marcuse: Technology, War, and Fascism; Vol. 1 Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, edited by Douglas Kellner, op cit. p. 217. Also in Peter-Erwin Jansen, Feindanalysen, op. cit., p. 130.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Herbert Marcuse, unpublished manuscript dated October 19, 1948 in the Marcuse Archive of the University of Frankfurt.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Wiggershaus, op. cit., p. 515. Adorno did not get the position, however.
[41] Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis [1957] (New York: Vintage, 1961).