A pioneering biography of an overlooked but integral figure in the history of the Frankfurt School. 

Friedrich Pollock was many things. The son of an industrialist who wanted to abolish private property. A Jew who didn’t want anything to do with Judaism. A professor who published little. An economist who squandered his wealth on the stock market. A communist who thought Marxism was anachronistic. And finally: a critical intellectual. 

When dealing with the political culture of the Weimar Republic, the development of Critical Theory and German-Jewish emigration to the USA, there is no way around Pollock. Max Horkheimer’s companion and the founder of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt plays an important part in German-Jewish intellectual history as one of the most prominent representatives of Critical Theory.