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PRUSSIAN FAUST OR UNIVERSALIST PURITAN?

Review products

PeterGhosh, Max Weber and the Protestant Ethic: Twin Histories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)
DirkKaesler, Max Weber: Preuße, Denker, Muttersohn (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2014)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2016

DAMIAN VALDEZ
DAMIAN VALDEZ*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University E-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

At the end of May 1917, Max Weber attended a “cultural congress” at the picturesque castle of Lauenstein in Thuringia. The congress had been organized by the publicist Eugen Diederichs of Jena and by the Patriotic Society for Thuringia 1914. The moment was a particularly tense one in the life of the embattled German Reich. Against the advice of many cooler heads within the country, Germany had declared unrestricted submarine warfare in January, which together with other antagonistic moves on its part, had led to the entry of the United States into the war in April. By this point it was clear to all but the most indefatigable optimists that Germany would lose the war. In this atmosphere of dread and of new hope that a phoenix-like new Germany or a new humanity would arise out of the ashes of the war, the participants outlined their visions of the future. The eccentric former Social Democrat-turned-nationalist Max Maurenbrecher denounced capitalist mechanization but called for a revival of the traditional Prussian concept of the state, for an “idealistic state” and for workers to be educated towards national consciousness by means of the German literary and philosophical classics (Kaesler, 747–52).

Type
Review Essays
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , August 2017 , pp. 585 - 596
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 See Tooze, Adam, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 1916–1931 (London, 2014)Google Scholar.

2 The most extensive history of the Verein für Sozialpolitik remains Lindenlaub, Dieter, Richtungskämpfe im Verein für Sozialpolitik (Wiesbaden, 1967)Google Scholar. For the history of the Protestant Social Congress see Kretschmar, Gottfried, Der Evangelisch-Soziale Kongress: Der deutsche Protestantismus und die soziale Frage (Stuttgart, 1972)Google Scholar. On Weber's relationship with the congress see Aldenhoff, Rita, “Max Weber und der Evangelisch-soziale Kongreß,” in Mommsen, Wolfgang and Schwenkter, Wolfgang, eds., Max Weber und seine Zeitgenossen (Göttingen, 1988), 285–95Google Scholar.

3 This is particularly true at moments of acute strain in industrial as well as colonial relations, such as the Hamburg dock strike of 1896, the Ruhr strikes of 1905 and the suppression of the Hottentot revolt in 1907.

4 See Schmoller, Gustav, Grundriß der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre: Zweiter Teil, Verkehr, Handel und Geldwesen; Wert und Preis, Einkommen; Krisen, Klassenkämpfe, Handelspolitik, Historische Gesamtentwicklung (Leipzig, 1904)Google Scholar.

5 See von Schulze-Gävernitz, Gerhart, “Noch einmal Marx oder Kant?”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 30 (1910), 514–31, 825–47Google Scholar.

6 Sombart, Werner, “Ideale der Sozialpolitik,” Archiv für soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik, 10 (1897), 1–48 Google Scholar, at 41.

7 See in particular the important essays by Lepsius, M. Rainer in his Demokratie in Deutschland. Soziologisch-historische Konstellationsanalysen: Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Göttingen, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hübinger, Gangolf, “‘Sozialmoralisches Milieu’: Ein Grundbegriff der deutschen Geschichte,” in Steffen Sigmund, Gert Albert, Agathe Bienfait and Mateusz Stachura, eds., Soziale Konstellation und historische Perspektive. Festschrift für M. Rainer Lepsius, ed. (Wiesbaden, 2008), 207–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See Lindenlaub, Richtungskämpfe, 385–92.

9 See Hübinger, Gangolf, “Politische Wissenschaft um 1900 und Max Webers soziologischer Grundbegriff des ‘Kampfes’,” in Hanke, Edith and Mommsen, Wolfgang, eds., Max Webers Herrschaftssoziologie: Studien zu Entstehung und Wirkung (Tübingen, 2001), 101–20Google Scholar. See also Hennis, Wilhelm, Max Webers Wissenschaft vom Menschen: Neue Studien zur Biographie des Werks (Tübingen, 1996)Google Scholar.

10 See Kreuzer, Marcus, “Parliamentarisation and the Question of German Exceptionalism: 1867–1918,” Central European History, 36 (2003), 327–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 A text that analyses some aspects of this problem for Europe more broadly but without, however, investigating its roots is Hughes, H. Stuart, Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought 1890–1930 (San Diego, 1979)Google Scholar. Important ideas related to this problem are also discussed in Sternhell, Zeev, The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution (Princeton, 1995)Google Scholar.

12 Important treatments of the problem of Germany's complex democratization include Nipperdey, Thomas, Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918: Machtstaat vor der Demokratie (Munich, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Anderson, Margaret L., Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton, 2000)Google Scholar.

13 See David Frisby, “Die Ambiguität der Moderne: Max Weber und Georg Simmel,” in Mommsen and Schwenkter, Max Weber und seine Zeitgenossen, 580–94.

14 Simmel, Georg, “Der Streit,” in Simmel, Soziologie: Unterschungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (Frankfurt am Main, 1992), 284–382 Google Scholar.

15 For a good collection of essays on some of these themes see vom Bruch, Rüdiger, Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm and Hübinger, Gangolf, eds. Kultur und Kulturwissenschaften um 1900: Krise der Moderne und Glaube an die Wissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1989)Google Scholar.

16 See Tribe, Keith, “Prussian Agriculture—German Politics: Max Weber 1892–7,” Economy and Society, 12 (1983), 181–226 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 See Weber, Max, Political Writings, ed. Lassman, Peter and Speirs, Ronald (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar.

18 See Valdez, Damian, German Philhellenism: The Pathos of the Historical Imagination from Winckelmann to Goethe (New York, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Kaube, Jürgen, Max Weber: Ein Leben zwischen den Epochen (Berlin, 2014), 134–44Google Scholar.

20 For a selection of recent assessments of the Protestant Ethic see Swatos, William and Kaelber, Lutz, eds., The Protestant Ethic Turns 100: Essays on the Centenary of the Weber Thesis (Boulder, 2005)Google Scholar; and Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm and Schluchter, Wolfgang, eds., Asketischer Protestantismus und Der “Geist” des Modernen Kapitalismus: Max Weber und Ernst Troeltsch (Tübingen, 2005)Google Scholar.

21 See Mommsen, Wolfgang J., Max Weber und die deutsche Politik 1890–1920 (Tübingen, 1974)Google Scholar.

22 Kaube, Max Weber, 395–416.

23 On Naumann see Theiner, Peter, Sozialer Liberalismus und deutsche Weltpolitik: Friedrich Naumann im Wilhelminischen Deutschland 1860–1919 (Baden-Baden, 1983)Google Scholar.

24 On the National Social Union see Düding, Dieter, Der Nationalsoziale Verein 1896–1903: Der gescheiterte Versuch einer parteipolitischen Synthese von Nationalismus, Sozialismus und Liberalismus (Munich, 1972)Google Scholar.

25 See Ottmann, Henning, Philosophie und Politik bei Nietzsche (Berlin, 1987)Google Scholar.

26 On Weber and Michels see Scaff, Lawrence, “Max Weber and Robert Michels,” American Journal of Sociology, 86 (1981), 1269–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Breuer, Stefan, Bürokratie und Charisma: Zur politischen Soziologie Max Webers (Darmstadt, 1994), 144 Google Scholar.

28 See Sieg, Ulrich, Geist und Gewalt: Deutsche Philosophen zwischen Kaiserreich und Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 2013)Google Scholar.