Max Weber (1864-1920) is recognized throughout the world as the
most important classic thinker in the social sciences – there
is simply no one in the history of the social sciences who has been
more influential. The affinity between capitalism and
protestantism, the religious origins of the Western world, the
force of charisma in religion as well as in politics, the
all-embracing process of rationalization and the bureaucratic price
of progress, the role of legitimacy and of violence as offsprings
of leadership, the ‘disenchantment’ of the modern world
together with the never-ending power of religion, the antagonistic
relation between intellectualism and eroticism: all these are key
concepts which attest to the enduring fascination of Weber’s
thinking.
The tremendous influence exerted by Max Weber was due not only to
the power of his ideas but also to the fact that behind his
theories one perceived a man with a marked character and a tragic
destiny. However, for nearly 80 years, our understanding of the
life of Max Weber was dominated by the biography published in 1926
by his widow, Marianne Weber. The lack of a great Weber biography
was one of the strangest and most glaring gaps in the literature of
the social sciences. For various reasons the task was difficult;
time and again, attempts to write a new biography of Max Weber
ended in failure.
When Joachim Radkau’s biography appeared in Germany in 2005
it caused a sensation. Based on an abundance of previously unknown
sources and richly embedded in the German history of the time, this
is the first fully comprehensive biography of Max Weber ever to
appear. Radkau brings out, in a way that no one has ever done
before, the intimate interrelations between Weber’s thought
and his life experience. He presents detailed revelations about the
great enigmas of Weber’s life: his suffering and erotic
experiences, his fears and his desires, his creative power and his
methods of work as well as his religious experience and his
relation to nature and to death. By understanding the great drama
of his life, we discover a new Max Weber, until now unknown in many
respects, and, at the same time, we gain a new appreciation of his
work.
Joachim Radkau, born in 1943, is Professor of Modern History at
the Bielefeld University, Germany. His interest in Max Weber dates
back nearly forty years when he worked together with the
German-American historian George W. F. Hallgarten (Washington), a
refugee who left Germany in 1933 and who, as a student, listened to
Weber’s last lecture in summer 1920. Radkau’s main
works include Die deutsche Emigration in den USA (1971); Deutsche
Industrie und Politik (together with G. W. F. Hallgarten, 1974),
Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Atomwirtschaft (1983), Technik in
Deutschland (1989), Das Zeitalter der Nervosität (1998), Natur
und Macht: Eine Weltgeschichte der Umwelt (2000).
Table of Content
Acknowledgements xii
Preface to the English Edition xiii
Abbreviations xviii
At the Den of the Sick Lion 1
Part I The Violation of Nature
1 Great Mother and Harsh Nature: A Precocious Youth on the
Margins of Berlin 7
2 Max and Minimax: Blood Brothers and Drinking Companions
– Surly Fraternity as a Primary Social Experience 25
3 From Father’s Boy to Mother’s Boy: A Comradely
Marriage and the Day of Judgement for the Father 39
4 Antaeus, Antiquity and Agrarians: The Unshackling of
Creativity through the Earthing of Culture 70
5 Eruptions from the Ice: Creativity as Natural Catastrophe
96
6 A ‘Gospel of Struggle’ and Old German Corpulence:
From Lifestyle Crisis through Creativity Crisis to Existential
Crisis 117
Part II Nature’s Revenge
7 The Demons: The Wildness of Nature and the Riddle of Sexuality
145
8 ‘A Sort of Spiritualistic Construction of the Modern
Economy’: The Protestant Ethic and the Vain Quest for
Redemption through the Spirit 179
9 South – North – West – East: Changing
Attempts at Spiritual Conquest of the World 208
10 From the ‘Essay of Sighs’ to
‘Psychophysics’: the Seven-Year Fight with Naturalism
against Naturalism 250
11 From the Eranos Circle to the ‘Erotic Movement’:
New Roots and New Milieux 275
12 Max Weber’s Love-Hate for the Germans 316
Part III Salvation and Illumination
13 Value-Free Science, Love and Music 345
14 Charisma 390
15 The Naturalness of Community – The Disguised Naturalism
in Economy and Society 405
16 From Deborah’s Song of Triumph to the ‘Titans of
the Holy Curse’: Pacifist Herdsmen, Prophets and Pariahs
– the Israelites 427
17 World War and Flight from the World 450
18 Great Speeches, the Great Love and Death 481
19 Epilogue: Powerplay and the Wrangling over Max Weber’s
Spirit 551
Notes 572
Index 667
About the author
Joachim Radkau, born in 1943, is Professor of Modern History at the
Bielefeld University, Germany. His interest in Max Weber dates back
nearly forty years when he worked together with the German-American
historian George W. F. Hallgarten (Washington), a refugee who left
Germany in 1933 and who, as a student, listened to Weber’s
last lecture in summer 1920. Radkau’s main works include Die
deutsche Emigration in den USA (1971); Deutsche Industrie und
Politik (together with G. W. F. Hallgarten, 1974), Aufstieg und
Krise der deutschen Atomwirtschaft (1983), Technik in Deutschland
(1989), Das Zeitalter der Nervosität (1998), Natur und Macht:
Eine Weltgeschichte der Umwelt (2000).
Joachim Radkau, born in 1943, is Professor of Modern History at
the Bielefeld University, Germany. He has published numerous books
on social history, cultural history and the history of technology,
including Nature and Power: A Global History of the
Environment.
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