Die Goldene Bulle, Frankfurt am Main, © Uwe Dettmar
In addition to renowned jurisprudence, the Max-Planck-Institut for Legal History (the legal historian Michael Stolleis was awarded the Balzan Prize in the year 2000) and economics, which naturally have a keynote in Frankfurt, the city can also look back on interesting history in the field of social research. In this connection a “think tank” was founded and the outcome was the so-called Frankfurt School.
Max Horkheimer and the Institute for Social Research, which he managed from 1931, were the pillars of the Frankfurt School. At the Institute approaches to the philosophy of history and the theory of culture were deliberated by a number of thinkers including Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse and others. Max Horkheimer’s practical essay on “traditional and critical theory” defined the Institute’s “Critical Theory”. The considerations formulated therein on the culture industry, politics, society and aesthetics experienced a renaissance during the sixties. As director of the Institute for Social Research, Adorno, who from 1949 lectured for 20 years at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, set decisive accents for the critical assessment of the artistic media music, literature, theatre and film.
An overview of addresses of foundations, companies, societies and institutions from the fields of jurisprudence, economics and social sciences can be seen under the corresponding branches.