Thinkers Timeline

Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German sociologist who wrote about religion, politics, economics, and the nature of modern society. He was born in Erfurt, in central Germany, into a prosperous middle-class Protestant family. His father was a lawyer and National Liberal politician who enjoyed public life. His mother was a devout Calvinist with strong moral convictions. The clash between his father's worldly ambition and his mother's religious seriousness shaped Weber from childhood. He was an extraordinarily serious student who read law, economics, philosophy, and history at the universities of Heidelberg, Berlin, and Göttingen. He completed his doctorate in 1889 on medieval trading companies and his second doctorate in 1891 on Roman agrarian history. In 1893 he married his cousin Marianne Schnitger, who became a notable sociologist and feminist in her own right and would later edit and promote his work. In his early thirties he seemed set for a great academic career. He became a professor at Freiburg in 1894 and at Heidelberg in 1896. But in 1897, after a violent argument with his authoritarian father — who died shortly afterwards — Weber suffered a severe mental breakdown. For several years he could not read or teach. He took leave from his professorship and spent long periods travelling to recover. Though he regained his capacity for work, he never returned to regular teaching. Instead he wrote intensively from private life for nearly two decades. His major works come mostly from this period. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-1905) is his most famous book. Economy and Society, an enormous unfinished work on the structure of social life, was edited and published by Marianne after his death. He also wrote major studies on the religions of China and India, on ancient Judaism, on the city, and on politics. He briefly returned to teaching at the end of his life — at Vienna in 1918 and Munich in 1919. He died in Munich in 1920 at the age of fifty-six, probably from the Spanish flu pandemic. His influence has grown continuously since his death. His work is now studied worldwide as foundational for sociology, political science, and the study of religion.