Max Weber and His Contempories

by Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Jürgen Osterhammel

Max Weber and His Contemporaries provides an unrivalled tour d'horizon of European intellectual life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and an assessment of the pivotal position within it occupied by Max Weber. Weber's many interests in and contributions to, such diverse fields as epistemology, political sociology, the sociology of religion and economic history are compared with and connected to those of his friends, pupils and antagonists and also of those contemporaries with whom he had neither a personal relationship nor any kind of scholoarly exchange. Several contributors also explore Weber's attitudes towards the most important political positions of his time (socialism, conservatism and anarchism) and his own involvement in German politics.This volume contributes not only to a better understanding of one of the most eminent modern thinkers and social scientists, but also provides an intellectual biography of a remarkable generation.This book was first published in 1987.

608 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Wolfgang Justin Mommsen was a German historian best known for his influential work on Max Weber and his studies of modern German and British history. Educated in Marburg, Cologne, and Leeds, he taught at the University of Cologne before holding a professorship at the University of Düsseldorf, where he remained for nearly three decades, and also directed the German Historical Institute in London. His early biography of Weber and subsequent dissertation challenged prevailing interpretations, situating Weber as a liberal nationalist and imperialist and reshaping understanding of his political thought. Mommsen was a central figure in editing the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe, the comprehensive edition of Weber’s works. His scholarship explored the “Sonderweg” thesis, arguing that Germany’s incomplete modernization and the persistence of authoritarian elites shaped the country’s trajectory toward the First World War and the rise of Nazism. Widely respected for his comparative perspective, he was also active in the Historikerstreit, affirming the Holocaust’s singularity.