Felix Weil

Félix José Weil (German: [vaɪl]; 8 February 1898, Buenos Aires, Argentina – 18 September 1975, Dover, Delaware) was a Jewish German-Argentine Marxist, who provided the funds to found the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Biography

Weil was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and was the son of the wealthy grain merchant Hermann Weil and his wife Rosa Weil. At the age of 9 he was sent to attend school in Germany at the Goethe-Gymnasium, Frankfurt.

He attended the University of Tübingen and the University of Frankfurt, where he graduated with a doctoral degree in political science. While at these universities he became increasingly interested in socialism and Marxism. His thesis topic was "Socialization: An Attempt at a Conceptual Foundation, with a Critique of the Plans for Socialization".

In 1923 he financed the Erste Marxistische Arbeitswoche ("First Marxist Work Week"), a conference in the German town of Ilmenau. The event was attended by various leftist figures such as Georg Lukács, Karl Korsch, Richard Sorge, Friedrich Pollock, and Karl August Wittfogel. The success of this event led him and his friend Friedrich Pollock to, with the help of an endowment from his father, founded the Institute for Social Research in 1924.

Works

Argentine Riddle (1944)