Emigration and the Rescue of the Legacy
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The expulsion of the German intelligentsia after 1933 had paradoxical consequences. German philosophers, artists, and scientists carried their ideas out into the world—to Paris, London, New York. “German philosophy” became international precisely because Germany had expelled it.
The Frankfurt School emigrated to New York. Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Löwenthal continued their work at the Institute for Social Research in Morningside Heights. Dialectic of Enlightenment was written in Californian exile—a German book, written in America, about the European catastrophe.
The Bauhaus became the “New Bauhaus” in Chicago (later the Institute of Design). Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Moholy-Nagy shaped American architecture and design. Bauhaus aesthetics became the global standard—ironically, precisely because it had been banned in Germany.
The twelve-tone technique was further developed in America. Schoenberg lived in Los Angeles from 1933 onward, teaching at UCLA. His students—especially Milton Babbitt—radicalized the technique into “serialism.” The European avant-garde became the American academy.