Joseph Freeman and the Frankfurt School

Much has been written about Joseph Freeman, but one aspect of his life has curiously gone unnoticed by intellectual and political historians, including his biographers. During the mid-1940s, the giant of the literary left, editor of New Masses, and cofounder of Partisan Review was a paid research and editorial assistant for the Institute of Social Research (the Frankfurt School). Though Freeman's formal involvement with the Institute lasted only a couple of years, off and on, his informal relationships with various Institute members stretched back for a decade. Freeman helped to integrate the Institute into the antifascist Popular Front; was an eyewitness to post-Front political dynamics and tensions within the Institute; translated and edited reports and articles; and, perhaps most interestingly, played a minor role in assembling the infamous Massing espionage “Redhead Group.”