WEBER, MAX. - Sociologist, b. at Erfurt on 21 Apr. 1864, d. at Munich on 14 July 1920.
A pupil of Goldschmidt, he taught at the Universities of Berlin, Freiburg in Br. and Heidelberg. He left university teaching for reasons of health and only returned in 1918, holding the chair of sociology at Vienna for a short time and moving in 1919 to the same chair at Munich. He wrote several essays: *Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie* (3 vols., Tübingen 1920-22); *Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre* (ibid. 1922); *Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik* (ibid. 1924); *Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte* (ibid. 1924), published under the care of his wife Marianne W., to whom is also due the edition of his youthful letters (*Jugendbriefe*, ibid. 1937), while S. Helmann and M. Palyi edited his *Wirtschaftsgeschichte* (Munich 1923), consisting of a course of lectures.
W. studied the relations between the economic and ethical-religious characters of life and maintained that capitalist ideals were linked to the Calvinist doctrine of work as dedication. It was in substance a revolution of historical materialism, in which the economic factor became the outward expression of a phenomenon essentially spiritual and not the result of external factors and contingencies of various kinds. He conceived historical knowledge as achieved through the concept of the ideal type (*Idealtypus*), which elaborated the data of empirical knowledge, representing an approximate reality. His sociology disregards politics and naturalistic concepts, is based on the rational and omits actions intended as subjective realities.