‘The Institute in America was ‘in high class enclaves of the well-to-do. the lifestyle was formal, with servants. Children visiting were expected to be (when they were brought along at all) quiet and inconspicuous. . Members “siezt” each other, addressed each other with the formal “you” although they had been working together for over ten years. The affairs of the Institute were not at all run democratically: Horkheimer with Pollock’s advice, made all the administrative (including financial decisions). Both my mother and the Neumanns were desperate to escape from the dependence on the Institute. Franz Neumann aggressively sought a position in Washington, not because of the money for him at the Institute ran out, but because he wanted out.’
There are letters in this volume and you can read elsewhere how Horkheimer and Adorno bullied and tried to isolate intellectual rivals, most pointedly Franz Neumann, whose analysis of Fascism was much more profound and supported than their Heideggerian derivation of fascism from technology. They also froze out that most excellent (and scholarly) of all marxists, Henryk Grossmann. There is also a truly depressing account of life with the Marcuse-Neumanns by Osho Neumann (called Up Against the Wall MotherF***ers) Grossmann called the Institute the ‘seat of capitalist reaction’ and pointed out that Pollock’s theory that organised capitalism would overcome crisis was sadly disproved by the Institute’s financial difficulties in 1938 (in Rick Kuhn’s book on Grossmann, pp 184, 185, 187, 195). It was Lukacs who called the Institute the Hotel Grand Abyss.
I don’t have them to hand but Meszaros’ book Power of Ideology, and one by Jacoby are very good.