Félix José Weil (; 8 February 1898 18 September 1975) was a German-Argentine Marxist, who provided the funds to found the

Institute for Social Research The Institute for Social Research (german: Institut für Sozialforschung, IfS) is a research organization for sociology and continental philosophy, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School and critical theory. Currently a pa ...

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Biography

Weil was born in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

and was the son of the wealthy grain merchant Hermann Weil and his wife Rosa Weil, both of whom were of Jewish origin. At the age of 9 he was sent to attend school in Germany at the Goethe-Gymnasium, Frankfurt. He attended the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-W� ...

and the University of Frankfurt, where he graduated with a doctoral degree in

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

. While at these universities he became increasingly interested in

socialism Socialism is a left-wing Economic ideology, economic philosophy and Political movement, movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to Private prop ...

and

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

. His thesis topic was "

Socialization In sociology, socialization or socialisation (see spelling differences) is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and cul ...

: An Attempt at a Conceptual Foundation, with a Critique of the Plans for Socialization". He did his doctorate in Frankfurt am Main on the concept of socialization. Like

Theodor W. Adorno Theodor W. Adorno ( , ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer. He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of criti ...

, he belonged "to the generation of intellectuals born around the turn of the century and from bourgeois, mostly Jewish families, who were attracted in the 1920s to a philosophical Marxism beyond the workers' parties". He met Karl Korsch and studied Marxist economic theory.Jörg Später: ''Zuerst kommt die Geldanlage, dann die Theorie. Das Kapital der Kapitalismuskritik: Jeanette Erazo Heufelders ökonomische Geschichte des Frankfurter Instituts für Sozialforschung rückt den Mäzen Felix Weil ins Zentrum''. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung vom 7. März 2017, S. 10. Felix Weil married Käthe Badiert and moved to Argentina, his country of birth, for a year. The two were married from 1921 to 1929. In 1923 he financed the ''Erste Marxistische Arbeitswoche'' (" First Marxist Workweek"), a conference in the German town of Ilmenau. The event was attended by various leftist figures such as

Georg Lukács Georg may refer to: * ''Georg'' (film), 1997 * Georg (musical), Estonian musical * Georg (given name) * Georg (surname) * , a Kriegsmarine coastal tanker See also * George (disambiguation) {{disambiguation ...

, Karl Korsch,

Richard Sorge Richard Sorge (russian: Рихард Густавович Зорге, Rikhard Gustavovich Zorge; 4 October 1895 – 7 November 1944) was a German-Azerbaijani journalist and Soviet military intelligence officer who was active before and during Wo ...

Friedrich Pollock Friedrich Pollock (; ; 22 May 1894 – 16 December 1970) was a German social scientist and philosopher. He was one of the founders of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, and a member of the Frankfurt School of neo-Marxist th ...

, and

Karl August Wittfogel Karl August Wittfogel (6 September 1896 – 25 May 1988) was a German-American playwright, historian, and sinologist. He was originally a Marxist and an active member of the Communist Party of Germany, but after the Second World War, he was an e ...

. The success of this event led him and his friend Friedrich Pollock to, with the help of an endowment from his father, found the

in 1923.

Works

* ''Argentine Riddle'' (1944)

References

Sources

* * * Helmuth Robert Eisenbach: Millionär, Agitator und Doktorand. Die Tübinger Studienzeit des Felix Weil (1919). In: Bausteine zur Tübinger Universitätsgeschichte, Band 3, Tübingen 1987, S. 179–216.

External links

History of the Institute of Social Research from the Institute for Social Research

The Frankfurt School at Marxists.org
1898 births 1975 deaths Frankfurt School People from Buenos Aires Argentine Jews Argentine people of German-Jewish descent {{Germany-academic-bio-stub