The City of Frankfurt and its University 75Horkheimer and his friend Friedrich Pollock, ‘both highly unusual
people who received me with the greatest kindness and who drilled
me strictly according to the principles of Schumannesque psychology.
Both, incidentally, are communists and we had lengthy and passionate
exchanges about materialist views of history in which we each made
concessions to the other.’^24 We may presume that Horkheimer was rarely
of one mind with Adorno’s intellectual restlessness and his habit of
referring constantly to music and composition.
At the forefront of their discussions was the problem of what was the
right philosophy for the modern sciences. What answer does philosophy
have to the growing evils of society? The fact that they both asked such
questions formed the foundation for the collaboration between them
on philosophical issues. This steadily grew over time in the seminars
that Horkheimer gave on such topics as the phenomenology of con-
sciousness, historical materialism or the history of metaphysics. Although
he could not compete with Adorno’s musical expertise, his knowledge
and experience in dealing with academic philosophy enabled him to
hold his own.
Philosophy was anything but a natural inheritance to Horkheimer,
whose family background was that of conservative Jewish businessmen.
He grew up in Stuttgart, the capital of Württemberg, the son of Moritz
Horkheimer, a textile manufacturer who had been given the title of
Kommerzienrat [commercial councillor] by the king of Bavaria after
the First World War for his services to his country. His father presided
over a strict, patriarchal regime in the family that led to sharp conflicts
with Max as he grew up. These were mitigated by his mother, who
provided security and loving affection. As an only son, Max was ex-
pected to take over the business once he had completed his commercial
training. With this in mind, he left the Gymnasium in the fifth form to
acquire practical experience for his future career. Travels to Belgium
and Britain as well as service in the First World War led him to doubt
whether a primarily commercial career was morally defensible. Together
with his boyhood friend Friedrich Pollock, who shared his intellectual
ambitions and political views, he went to Munich after the collapse of
the German Empire in order to catch up on his education and take the
Abitur examination. He began to study in Munich, where he came into
contact with the revolutionary socialism of men such as Erich Mühsam,
Ernst Toller and Gustav Landauer. After a brief interlude in Freiburg,
where he encountered Husserl and Heidegger, he went on to the newly
established university in Frankfurt and took his doctorate under Hans
Cornelius’s supervision. He had almost completed a dissertation in the
field of cognitive and gestalt psychology – psychology was formally his
major subject in Frankfurt – when it had to be scrapped because a
Danish colleague had conducted a similar study just before him and had
at once published his results internationally. This precarious situation
now led to one of the most important events of his life, as he himself