Max Weber: A Biography

A founder of contemporary social science, Max Weber was born in 1864 in Erfurt, Germany. At his death 56 years later, his place in the history of social thought was secure. His writings on the role of Protestant asceticism in shaping modern capitalism and on the connection of rational science to social action have had clear impact not only on today's sociology, but on the study of religion, economics, and political science as well. What is less clear, perhaps, is the man himself, his relation to his work. Max Weber: A Biography helps elucidate this. Sociologist Robert Nisbet called it a moving and deeply felt biographical memoir. Gerhard Masur cites it as the foundation of all further inquiries into Max Weber's life and influence. For Professor Harry Zohn, translator and editor, the book represents years of research, travel, study, and writing. With the help of informants in Germany and elsewhere he has clarified many of Marianne's obscure or incomplete references, providing as well a genealogical table and a chronology of Max Weber's life. He thus gives us the only translation into English, an authoritative one, and one that reflects closely the style of the original German language edition. Beginning with Max's ancestry and early years, Marianne moves to his life as student, soldier, young lawyer, and university professor, quoting liberally from his voluminous correspondence. Her account of Weber's nervous breakdown in 1897, which curtailed his academic career and depleted his energy, provides insight into many of the personal disputes and problems that troubled him to the end. Then, to her unique outlook on his life, Marianne adds her own statement of Weber's main ideas and theories. From this and from perceptive descriptions of the scholars, social reformers, politicians, and poets with whom he associated comes a well-delineated view of European intellectual life in Weber's time, and renewed appreciation of the extraordinary contribution he made to our own.