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In the Twilight of the Liberal Era: Max Weber and the Crisis of German Liberalism, 1914–20

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Larry Eugene Jones
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Type
Review Article
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Central European History , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 89 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1989

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References

1. In this respect, see Jaspers, Karl, Max Weber: Deutsches Wesen im politischen Denken, im Forschen und Philosophieren (Oldenburg, 1932), 57–78Google Scholar. For a discussion of the relationship between Weber and Jaspers, see Henrich, Dieter, “Karl Jaspers: Thinking with Max Weber in Mind,” in Mommsen, Wolfgang J. and Osterhammel, jürgen, eds., Max Weber and His Contemporaries (London, 1987), 528–44.Google Scholar

2. Löwith, Karl, Max Weber and Karl Marx, edited and with an introduction by Bottomore, Tom and Outhwaite, William and translated by Fantel, Hans, Controversies in Sociology, no. 12 (London, 1982)Google Scholar. For more recent explorations of the relationship between Marx and Weber, see Kocka, Jürgen, “Karl Marx und Max Weber: Ein methodologischer Vergleich,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 122 (1966): 329–57Google Scholar, and Ashcraft, Richard, “Marx and Weber on Liberalism as Bourgeois Ideology,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 14 (1972): 130–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Mommsen, Wolfgang J., The Age of Bureaucracy: Perspectives on the Political Sociology of Max Weber (Oxford, 1974), 94–115.Google Scholar

4. Mitzman, Arthur, The Iron Cage: An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber (New York, 1970), 299–306.Google Scholar

5. Scaff, Lawrence A., Fleeing the Iron Cage: Culture, Politics, and Modernity in the Thought of Max Weber (Berkeley, 1989), 223–41.Google Scholar

6. This is most persuasively argued in Mommsen, Age of Bureaucracy, 22–46.

7. In this respect, see the impressive analysis by Mommsen, Wolfgang J., “Universalge-schichtliches und politisches Denken bei Max Weber,” Historische Zeitschrift 20 (1965): 557–612Google Scholar. For an abbreviated English version of this essay, see, “Max Weber's Political Sociology and His Philosophy of World History,” International Social Science Journal 17 (1965): 25–45Google Scholar. See also Schluchter, Wolfgang, “The Paradox of Rationalization: On the Relation of Ethics and World,” in Roth, Guenther and Schluchter, Wolfgang, Max Weber's Vision of History: Ethics and Methods (Berkeley, 1979), 11–64.Google Scholar

8. For the most detailed and persuasive treatment of Weber's political development, see Mommsen, Wolfgang J., Max Weber and German Politics, 1890–1920, trans. Steinberg, Michael (Chicago, 1984).Google Scholar

9. Ibid., 69–71, 123–36. On the relationship between Weber and Naumann, see also Theiner, Peter, “Friedrich Naumann and Max Weber: Aspects of a Political Partnership,” in Mommsen, and Osterhammel, , eds., Max Weber and His Contemporaries, 528–44Google Scholar. On Naumann's early political career, see Heuss, Theodor, Friedrich Naumann: Der Mann, das Werk, die Zeit (Berlin, 1937), 57–63, 119–251Google Scholar, and Conze, Werner, “Friedrich Naumann: Grundlagen und Ansatz seiner Politik in der nationalsozialen Zeit (1895–1903),” in Hubatsch, Walther, ed., Schicksalswege deutscher Vergangenheit; Beiträge zur geschichtlichen Deutung der letzten hundertfünfzig Jahre (Düsseldorf, 1952), 355–86Google Scholar. For the most authoritative study of Naumann's political career, see Theiner, Peter, Sozialer Liberalismus und deutsche Weltpolitik: Friedrich Naumann im wilhelminische Deutschland (1860–1919) (Baden-Baden, 1983).Google Scholar

10. On Weber's wartime activities, see Mommsen, Weber and German Politics, esp. 211–66.

11. Ibid., 283–311.

12. Ibid., 322–89. See also Albertin, Lothar, Liberalismus und Demokratie am Anfang der Weimarer Republik: Eine vergleichende Analyse der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei und der Deutschen Volkspartei (Düsseldorf, 1972), 250–56.Google Scholar

13. Weber, Max, “Politics as a Vocation,” in Gerth, Hans and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Oxford, 1948), 128.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., 115–16.

15. Ibid., 118–27.

16. Ibid., 78.

17. Mommsen, Weber and German Politics, 311–31.

18. Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 128.

19. The true extent of Weber's debt to Nietzsche is difficult to assess. Still, it seems reasonably certain that with the obvious exception of Karl Marx no thinker exerted as profound an influence upon Weber's intellectual development as Nietzsche. In this respect, see Weber's possibly apocryphal comment from February 1920 in which he states his intellectual debt to these two thinkers, as quoted by Baumgarten, Eduard, Max Weber: Werk und Person (Tübingen, 1964), 554–55Google Scholar. For a suggestive analysis of Nietzsche's influence on Weber, see Mommsen, “Universalgeschichtliches und politisches Denken,” 596–603.

20. In the introduction to his comparative study on the economic ethic of the world religions, Weber wrote: “Not ideas but material and ideal interests directly govern men's conduct. Yet very frequently the‘world images’ that have been created by ‘ideas’ have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest.” See Weber, “The Social Psychology of the World Religions,” in Gerth and Mills, eds., From Max Weber, 268. On the implications which this passage held for an understanding of the role that charisma might play in the process of historical change, see Mommsen, Age of Bureaucracy, 93–94, 105–7.

21. Mommsen, Weber and German Politics, 309–10.

22. In this respect, see Mommsen, Age of Bureaucracy, 41–71. For Weber's most elaborate statement on socialism, see the text of his lecture on the topic before a contingent of Austro-Hungarian officers in June 1918, published in English translation in Eldridge, J.E.T., ed., Max Weber: The Interpretation of Social Reality (London, 1970), 191–219.Google Scholar

23. The German text of this letter, dated 14 April 1920, has been published along with a somewhat problematic English translation by Frye, Bruce B., “A Letter from Max Weber,” Journal of Modern History 39 (1967): 119–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. For further details, see Jones, Larry Eugene, German Liberalism and the Dissolution of the Weimar Party System, 1918–1933 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988).Google Scholar

25. On the disposition and contents of the Max Weber Nachlass, see Mommsen, Weber and German Politics, xviii, n. 2.

26. Weber, Max, Jugendbriefe, ed. Weber, Marianne (Tübingen, n.d. [1936]).Google Scholar

27. Weber, Max, Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Munich, 1921).Google Scholar

28. Weber, Max, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (Tübingen, 1924).Google Scholar

29. Weber, Marianne, Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild (Tübingen, 1926).Google Scholar

30. The full bibliographical citation for Baumgarten's work is to be found above, n. 19. An example of Baumgarten's methodological sloppiness can be seen in his uncritical inclusion of Weber's apocryphal remark from February 1920 on his intellectual debt to Marx and Nietzsche. See Mommsen, Age of Bureaucracy, 104, n. 19.

31. In addition to the collection edited by Marianne Weber in 1921 (see above, n. 26), three subsequent editions of Weber's political writings have been published with the same title under the editorial supervision of Johannes Winckelmann. For the most recent edition, see Weber, Max, Gesammelte Potitische Schriften, ed. Winckelmann, Johannes, 4th ed. (Tübingen, 1980)Google Scholar

32. Weber, , “Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland: Zur politischen Kritik des Beamtentums und Parteiwesens,” MWS, 1/15: 202–302Google Scholar. In accordance with the preference of the editors, the hardcover scholarly edition of the Max Weber–Gesamtausgabe is cited as MWG, and the Studienausgabe (see below) as MWS, in both cases with section and volume number.

33. Weber, , “Wahlrecht und Demokratie in Deutschland,” MWS, 1/15: 155–89.Google Scholar

34. Weber, , “Deutschlands künftige Staatsform,” MWG, 1/16: 98–146.Google Scholar

35. Of particular interest in this connection are the reports of the speeches that Weber delivered on behalf of the DDP in the campaign for the January 1919 elections to the Weimar National Assembly, MWG, 1/16: 370–474Google Scholar, as well as the report of his speech on “Die gegenwärtige Lage der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei” in Heidelberg on 15 02 1919, MWG, 1/16: 475–81.Google Scholar

36. MWG, 1/16: 499–544.Google Scholar

37. ‘Beiträge zur Verfassungsfrage anlässlich der Verhandlungen im Reichsamt des Innern vom 9. bis 12. Dezember 1918,” MWG, 1/16: 56–90.Google Scholar

38. ‘Bemerkungen zum Bericht der Kommission der allierten und assozüerten Regierungen über die Verantwortlichkeiten der Urheber des Krieges,” 27 05 1919, MWG, 1/16: 324–51.Google Scholar

39. MWS, 1/15: 49–50, 331.Google Scholar