Maximilian Carl Emil Weber ( VAY-ber; German: [ˈveːbɐ] ; 21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sciences more generally. His ideas continue to influence social theory and research.
Born in Erfurt in 1864, Weber studied law and history in Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg. After earning his doctorate in law in 1889 and habilitation in 1891, he taught in Berlin, Freiburg, and Heidelberg. He married his cousin Marianne Schnitger two years later. In 1897, he had a breakdown after his father died following an argument. Weber ceased teaching and travelled until the early 1900s. He recovered and wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. During the First World War, he initially supported Germany's war effort but became critical of it and supported democratisation. He also gave the lectures "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation". After the war, Weber co-founded the German Democratic Party, unsuccessfully ran for office, and advised the drafting of the Weimar Constitution. Meanwhile, he resumed teaching in Vienna and Munich. He died of pneumonia in 1920 at the age of 56, possibly as a result of the Spanish flu. A book, Economy and Society, was left unfinished.
One of Weber's main intellectual concerns was in understanding the processes of rationalisation and disenchantment. He formulated a thesis arguing that such processes were associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity. Weber also argued that the Protestant work ethic influenced the creation of modern capitalism in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It was followed by The Economic Ethics of the World Religions, where he examined the religions of China, India, and ancient Judaism. In terms of government, Weber argued that states were defined by their monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a given area and categorised social authority into three distinct forms: charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. He was also a key proponent of methodological antipositivism, arguing for the study of social action through interpretive rather than purely empiricist methods. Weber made a variety of other contributions to economic sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of religion.
After his death, the rise of Weberian scholarship was slowed by the Weimar Republic's political instability and the rise of Nazi Germany. In the post-war era, organised scholarship began to appear, led by Talcott Parsons. Other American and British scholars were also involved in its development. Over the course of the twentieth century, Weber's reputation grew as translations of his works became widely available and scholars increasingly engaged with his life and ideas. As a result of these works, he began to be regarded as a founding father of sociology, alongside Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim, and one of the central figures in the development of the social sciences more generally.
Maximilian Carl Emil Weber was born on 21 April 1864 in Erfurt, Province of Saxony, Kingdom of Prussia. He was raised in Charlottenburg after his family moved there in 1869. He was the oldest of Max Weber Sr. and Helene Fallenstein's eight children. Over the course of his life, Weber Sr. held posts as a lawyer, civil servant, and parliamentarian for the National Liberal Party in the Prussian Landtag and German Reichstag. This immersed his home in both politics and academia, as his salon welcomed scholars and public figures such as the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey, the jurist Levin Goldschmidt, and the historian Theodor Mommsen. The young Weber and his brother Alfred, who also became a sociologist, spent their formative years in this intellectual atmosphere. Meanwhile, Fallenstein was partly descended from the French Huguenot Souchay family, which had obtained wealth through international commerce and the textile industry. Over time, Weber was affected by the marital and personality tensions between his father, who enjoyed material pleasures while overlooking religious and philanthropic causes, and his mother, a devout Calvinist and philanthropist.
Weber entered the Doebbelinsche Privatschule in Charlottenburg in 1870, before attending the Kaiserin-Augusta-Gymnasium between 1872 and 1882. While in class, bored and unimpressed with his teachers, Weber secretly read all forty of Johann Friedrich Cotta's volumes of the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's works. Before graduating, he read many other classical works, including those by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. For Christmas in 1877, a thirteen-year-old Weber gifted his parents two historical essays, entitled "About the Course of German History, with Special Reference to the Positions of the Emperor and the Pope" and "About the Roman Imperial Period from Constantine to the Migration Period". Two years later, also during Christmastime, he wrote another historical essay, "Observations on the Ethnic Character, Development, and History of the Indo-European Nations". These three essays were non-derivative contributions to the philosophy of history and resulted from Weber's reading of many sources.
In 1882, Weber enrolled in Heidelberg University as a law student, later studying at the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin and the University of Göttingen. Weber's university years were dotted with periods of military service, the longest lasted between October 1883 and September 1884. During it, he attended classes that his uncle, the historian Hermann Baumgarten, taught at the University of Strasbourg. Weber befriended Baumgarten, who influenced Weber's growing liberalism and criticism of Otto von Bismarck's domination of German politics. Weber was a member of the Burschenschaft Allemannia Heidelberg, a Studentenverbindung (student association), and heavily drank beer and engaged in academic fencing during his first few university years. The latter resulted in him obtaining several duelling scars on the left side of his face. His mother was displeased by his behaviour and slapped him after he came home when his third semester ended in 1883. However, Weber matured, increasingly supported his mother in family arguments, and grew estranged from his father.
On 15 May 1886, Weber passed the Referendar legal training examination. He practiced law and lectured simultaneously with his studies. Under the tutelage of Levin Goldschmidt and Rudolf von Gneist, Weber wrote a legal history dissertation titled Development of the Principle of Joint Liability and a Separate Fund of the General Partnership out of the Household Communities and Commercial Associations in Italian Cities in 1889. It was part of a longer work, The History of Commercial Partnerships in the Middle Ages, Based on Southern European Documents, which he published later that year. In the same year, Weber began working on his habilitation, a post-doctoral thesis, with the statistician August Meitzen and completed it two years later. His habilitation, titled Roman Agrarian History and Its Significance for Public and Private Law, focused on Roman surveying and Roman agrarian law's relationship. Theodor Mommsen was present and debated with him during his defence, later indicating that he wanted Weber to succeed him. Having thus become a Privatdozent, Weber joined the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin's faculty, lecturing, conducting research, and engaging in government consulting.
Marriage, early work, and breakdown
From 1887 until her declining mental health caused him to end it five years later, Weber had a semi-engagement with Emmy Baumgarten, Hermann Baumgarten's daughter. Afterwards, he began a relationship with his second cousin Marianne Schnitger in 1893 and married her on 20 September of that year in Oerlinghausen. The marriage gave Weber financial independence, allowing him to leave his parents' household. They had no children. Marianne was a feminist activist and an author in her own right. Academically, between completing his dissertation and habilitation, Weber became interested in contemporary social policy and joined the Verein für Socialpolitik (Association for Social Policy) in 1888. The Verein was an organisation of reformist thinkers who were generally members of the historical school of economics. Weber also became politically involved, participating in the founding of the left-leaning Evangelical Social Congress in 1890. It applied a Protestant perspective to the social question debate. In the same year, the Verein established a research program examining the Ostflucht, which was the western migration of ethnically German East Elbian agricultural labourers and the corresponding influx of Polish farm workers. Weber was given control of the study and wrote part of the final report, generating attention and political controversy.