Else Frenkel-Brunswik (1908–1958) may be known to some as one of the co-authors of the famous study The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno/Frenkel-Brunswik/Levinson/Sanford 1950). As was the case with other Austrian sociologists such as Käthe Leichter, Marie Jahoda or Maria Hertz Levinson, Frenkel-Brunswik’s role in empirical research for the exiled Frankfurt Institute for Social Research remained seldom discussed in further reception. With their names, a specific influence was forgotten that had significantly shaped The Authoritarian Personality – a specific combination of empirical sociology, (social) psychology and psychoanalysis, as it has emerged in Vienna in the period before World War II and as it has been treated with hostility by academically established social scientists as feminist, Marxist and Jewish, bluntly being labeled as »odd« (»ungerade«) (cf. Kranebitter/Reinprecht 2019). After their forced displacement and flight from Vienna, this form of social research »transatlantically enriched« the US social sciences (Fleck 2007).

On July 1st and 2nd, 2021, we organize a symposium in Vienna dedicated to the life and works of Else Frenkel-Brunswik, followed by the publication of a special issue of the open access journal »Serendipities. Journal for the History and Sociology of the Social Sciences«. The symposium invites international experts to deal with the work of Else Frenkel-Brunswik, especially her research on authoritarianism during and after her essential contribution to The Authoritarian Personality. Following Jennifer Platt, Frenkel-Brunswik was one of those »strategically positioned individuals«, whose work enables us to »throw light on the larger systems to which they belonged« (Platt 2015b: 2). Both the symposium and the special issue thus also address the social field of the social sciences behind The Authoritarian Personality. Bringing German and English-speaking experts from a wide variety of the humanities and social science together, the different influences are viewed from different perspectives.

Some of the guiding questions for the symposium are: How did Else-Frenkel-Brunswik combine psychoanalysis, the psychology of Karl and Charlotte Bühler in Vienna and social research in the USA? How did she deal with the rupture in her own biography caused by flight and exile, both personally and professionally? How did she carry out her empirical research in praxis since the 1940s, how did she conduct her interviews? What role did she play in organizing The Authoritarian Personality study? What methodological and conceptual continuities and ruptures can be identified in her exploration of authoritarianism? And what role do the concepts she developed, above all the concept an intolerance of ambiguity, play in today’s research on authoritarianism and right-wing extremism?

In preparation for the symposium and the special issue, the Else Frenkel-Brunswik papers at the Archive for the History of Sociology in Austria (AGSO) are to be digitized and made available for research. The digital copies as well as the »Serendipities« special issue’s articles are to be presented to a broad readership without access restrictions on a separate project website of the AGSO.

_{Further reading:
Adorno, Theodor W./Frenkel-Brunswik, Else/Levinson, Daniel J./Sanford, R. Nevitt. (1950). The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Fleck, Christian (2007). Transatlantische Bereicherungen. Zur Erfindung der empirischen Sozialforschung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Kranebitter, Andreas/Reinprecht, Christoph (Hg.) (2019): Die Soziologie und der Nationalsozialismus in Österreich. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Platt Jennifer (2015b). »(Auto)biographies as Data for the History of Sociology«. In: Moebius Stefan/Ploder, Andrea (eds.). Handbuch Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Soziologie, Band 2 Wiesbaden: Springer VS, pp. 155–164.}