WEBER, MAX. — Sociologist, born in Erfurt on 21 April 1864, died in Munich on 14 July 1920.
A pupil of Goldschmidt, he taught at the Universities of Berlin, Freiburg im Br. and Heidelberg. For reasons of health, he left university teaching and returned to it only in 1918, holding the chair of sociology in Vienna, though for a short time, and moving in 1919 to the same chair in Munich. He wrote several essays: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (3 vols., Tübingen 1920–22); Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (there 1922); Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (there 1924); Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (there 1924), published under the editorship of his wife Marianna W., who also edited his youthful letters (Jugendbriefe, there 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 characteristics of life and affirmed that capitalist ideals were connected with the Calvinist doctrine of work as dedication. In essence, this was a revolution in historical materialism, whereby the economic factor became the outward expression of an essentially spiritual phenomenon and was not the resultant of external factors and contingencies of various kinds. He conceived historical knowledge as being achieved through the concept of the ideal type (Idealtypus), which elaborates the data of empirical knowledge and represents an approximate reality. His sociology sets aside politics and naturalistic concepts, is founded on the rational, and leaves out actions understood as subjective realities.