Marcuse, noted member of the Frankfurt School and known as "the father of the New Left," contributed much to cultural criticism, Marxist aesthetics, political philosophy, and psychoanalytic theory. Together with Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, he was a major proponent of what became known as the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. He was perhaps the most discussed philosopher of the 1960s and an essential impetus for the counterculture in the U.S. and France during the late 1960s. Although his influence waned in the 1990s, he nonetheless had a profound influence on the evolution of literary and cultural criticism, and much of his work continues to be relevant.
The eldest of three children, Marcuse was born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Berlin on 19 July 1898. His father, Carl Marcuse, was a successful businessman who began in the textile trade, then moved into real estate. His mother, Gertrud Kreslawsky, was the daughter of a well-off German factory owner. The family was close and supportive and valued education greatly, in part because Carl himself had only a Gymnasium (high school) education and intended that his son take his place in society. Marcuse attended an expensive private school, and the classical education he received there left him with both an enduring love for culture and a thorough grounding in the humanities. Like many of their class, the members of the Marcuse family were well assimilated into mainstream German society. Their first identification was with Germany, and their religious practice involved only the Jewish High Holidays, much to their grandparents' displeasure. Marcuse studied at the Mommsen Gymnasium in Berlin until the outbreak of World War I, when he was drafted in 1916 into the German army.
Army service opened another world, though for a soldier he led a relatively sheltered life. Poor eyesight prevented him from being sent out of the country, and he eventually secured permission to take courses at Berlin University. During his stay in Berlin, Marcuse saw food riots, strikes, profiteering, and general unrest. That the government under Kaiser Wilhelm II continued to hold power impressed him deeply. This experience helped to sow the seeds of a more informed social and political conscience. In 1917 Marcuse joined the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD; Social Democratic Party). There was considerable discussion at the time of exactly how Socialists ought to respond to events, and these discussions marked the start of his political education.
While in Berlin, Marcuse became disillusioned with the inability of the various Marxist political groups to adapt to changing circumstances. He initially became interested in the political activities of the Spartakusbund (Spartacus League), an extreme faction of the Socialist movement founded by Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht that became the Communist Party of Germany in December 1918. Finding the Spartakusbund to be too dogmatic and too far removed from existing social problems, he joined the more centrist Independent Social Democratic Party founded by Karl Kautsky. When Luxembourg and Liebknecht were kidnapped and murdered in 1919, Marcuse resigned all...