In 1946, Kolb encouraged the intellectuals Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno and Friedrich Pollock, who had been living in exile in the USA, to return to Frankfurt. After they returned, they re-established the Frankfurt School at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1951. In 1946 Kolb instructed the Frankfurt City Archives to collect files relating to the persecution of Jews during the Nazi era, which gave rise to the Commission for Research into the History of Frankfurt's Jews on 17 May 1961.
