Blackwell Reference Online

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Herbert Marcuse was a political philosopher, member of the Frankfurt School , whose works were very influential during the period of New Left activism. He was born in Berlin to an assimilated Jewish family. He served briefly in the German army during World War I. At the same time he began his doctoral studies at the University of Berlin. His early political experiences date from these years. He was a member of the majority faction of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) between 1917 and 1919. He resigned to protest the SPD's complicity in the deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht . After the war he participated in the Berlin Revolutionary Soldiers' Council, but quit when he detected Russian influence in it. With his resignation from the SPD and departure from the Council, Marcuse ended his only organized political affiliations. In 1919 Marcuse resumed his studies in German literature, philosophy, and political economy at the University of Freiburg, earning his doctorate with a dissertation on “Der deutsche Künstlerroman” (the German artist-novel). After a period of working in a Berlin publishing company, he returned to Freiburg in 1928 to work as a philosophical assistant to Martin Heidegger. The Nazi accession to power blocked his promotion to a German university professorship. In 1933 he became a member of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research at the Institute's ... log in or subscribe to read full text