Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Germany. These papers have not been available in English thus far; they have remained scattered in various German publica tions. Their publication in the present collection of Mannheim’s writings serves the purpose of illuminating the genesis and forma tion of one of his most important contributions to sociology, the ‘sociology of Knowledge’. For reasons of space, two essays of the same period, dealing with the same kind of topic, will be included in a second volume of essays, otherwise devoted to writings published after Mannheim’s emigration from Germany in 1933. I have attempted to give a brief survey of the intellectual and political background of these writings, and of the stages through which Mannheim’ 5 ideas concerning the sociology of knowledge developed.