For a moment she thought she had to speak in the Paulskirche this morning, says Jutta Ebeling.

The brief mistake made by the former Frankfurt mayor is understandable: the most distinguished location for city ceremonies next to the Kaisersaal des Römers would have offered a worthy ambience to celebrate the centenary of the Institute for Social Research.

Sasha Zoske

Sheet maker in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The fact that Ebeling did not head for Paulsplatz, but for the institute's headquarters at the Senckenberganlage, was because the ceremony on Monday was planned as an event for a small group: The venue is the conference room in which the employees of the research center have been since the opening of their post-war domicile in the gather in 1951.

There is room for just 50 people, and all the chairs are occupied this morning.

A brand that the city and university like to advertise with

On the one hand, the modest setting suits the school of thought that is at home here: a grand ceremonial would not go well with the spirit of critical theory, which strives to disenchant every beautiful appearance.

The accompanying musical program is also consistent in this regard: the cellist Katharina Deserno plays contemporary music and a movement by the compositionally talented former host Theodor W. Adorno – brittle sounds that refuse the listener any kind of favours.

On the other hand, given such an important anniversary, it couldn't have been.

After all, the Frankfurt School, Adorno may forgive me, has become a brand that the city and university like to advertise with.

Even if this brand, measured by the maximum of its radiance in the 1960s, has lost some of its shine.

According to the director of the institute, Stephan Lessenich, the small celebration on Monday marks just the beginning of a series of events this year.

Whether the Paulskirche will still play a role remains to be seen.

The printed program shows a conference in May entitled “Unsustainable Conditions – Second Marxist Working Week”;

According to Lessenich, the first working week of this kind took place in 1923, the year the company was founded.

The Institute as a “Hold of Free Science”

The question of what future the combination of Marxism and psychoanalysis might have for the purpose of examining society was always an issue during the ceremony.

Lessenich knows that an "institution that has become a legend" always has a "legitimacy problem".

The greeting speakers do their part to refute doubts about the continuing relevance of the institute.

The chairman of the board of trustees, Ebeling, quotes from the "Dialectic of Enlightenment": Reason either tears itself apart or tears flora and fauna down with it - which, for the former Green Party politician, establishes a connection to the climate crisis.

Her party friend, Hesse's Science Minister Angela Dorn, sees the Institute for Social Research as a haven of "free science" on which a democracy depends, even if she doesn't always like the results of this science.

Frankfurt's Head of Cultural Affairs, Ina Hartwig (SPD), regrets that psychoanalysis as an instrument of social research has "taken a backseat" and thus implies that it can make a valuable contribution to understanding current developments.

Enrico Schleiff, President of the Goethe University, would like his cooperation professor Lessenich to make important contributions to the discussion: the dedication of the chair states that he should promote a "normatively substantial social theory".

No reservations about left-wing protest practice

The director himself does not draft a comprehensive future concept for his house on this day, but in the “highlights” that appear between the greetings it can be seen that he has fewer reservations about left-wing protest practices than some of his predecessors.

While Adorno called on the state to help when students occupied his institute in 1969, Lessenich welcomed participants in the most recent lecture hall occupation at the Goethe University that the police had broken up.

It was said that the institute was a "neutral place" for an exchange between climate activists and university representatives.

"But the neutrality of critical social science has its limits when conditions are as destructive as they are now."

Lessenich then gives an example of that misery: In the Fechenheim forest, the "state authority" had trees felled in order to close a ring road around the city in the face of the climate catastrophe.

"The fact that something is rotten in and on the late capitalist state has always been known in Frankfurt."

One would like to hear whether and how this uneasiness could be reconciled with the principles of the rule of law, which Lessenich certainly also values.

That would be exciting material for a speech on the occasion of the institute's anniversary.

May it be kept throughout the year.