Briefe 1903–1905 Open Access

There are approximately a dozen biographies of Max Weber, including the recent volumes by Jürgen Kaube and Dirk Kaesler. What we now have is a more complete and a more objective picture of Weber's life than when Marianne Weber published her rather selective and subjective Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild in 1926. What we did not have was a good sense of how Weber's lengthy illness affected his life nor a good idea of how his recovery affected his work. We now have more information on both topics, thanks to the publication of Weber's letters from 1903 to 1905.

Weber's health was still precarious throughout most of 1903, and he undertook a number of trips in order to seek some relief. This included several visits to the Netherlands and to other parts of Germany; these trips tended to last several weeks. In contrast, his trip to the USA lasted from the end of August until the end of November 1904. During this journey, he was accompanied most of the time by Marianne, in contrast to his trips during 1903, when he travelled alone.

The first letter is dated 1 January and Weber sent it from Nervi, Italy. He did not include the customary New Year's greetings but wrote about the weather and his visits to museums. He notes that he could work ‘a little bit’, but that it still causes him ‘a little bit of pain’ (pp. 29–30). Weber apparently did not intend these to be working trips; rather, he used these stays in order to recuperate. He wrote frequently about looking at the water, whether from a terrace in Italy or on a beach in the Netherlands (pp. 37, 77, 81 90, 92, 109, 124). He described his visits to museums – he seemed most impressed by Rembrandt (pp. 79, 81–82, 85–88, 103). He described the weather and his lodgings. He also wrote about his daily regimen, a half an hour reading newspapers, followed by breakfast. Then he walked to the beach, where he seemed to have sat for hours interrupted only by lunch. He often noted what he ate and how much it cost (pp. 77, 104, 124). He frequently complained about not sleeping well and being tired. He wrote of being bored and frequently began with ‘nothing new’. He occasionally complained that he had not received any letter from Marianne and that seemed to upset him. Apparently, he was still unwell and he reiterated his pressing need for ‘rest’ (pp. 110, 249, 251).

By the middle of 1904 Weber's health had improved sufficiently that he felt able to make the arduous voyage to the USA.¹ Indeed, he had always wanted to see that country and he looked forward to spending considerable time there. Lawrence Scaff has provided a rich account of Weber's trip in his Max Weber in America so there is no need to go into detail here. However, Weber's letters to his family contain detailed descriptions and evaluations of American life. Unlike his friend and colleague Ernst Troeltsch, Weber found much of American life fascinating and he understood, if he did not accept, the high human costs of modern capitalism (pp. 292–293, 311–314, 319). Marianne was not quite as impressed as Weber, and she did not accompany him to the South because she could not tolerate the weather. She seemed even more concerned about social questions and she raised them in her lengthy letters to Weber's mother. (Whether or not one approves of the inclusion of these letters, they do offer an interesting picture of Marianne, and one that is not always very flattering: pp. 332–334, 347–350, 356–360, 368–369). During these three months, Weber travelled through the Northeast, the Midwest and much of the South; he estimated that he had spent a total of 180 hours on the train (p. 376). His correspondence indicates that he had made a number of connections with scholars, but those who seemed to have impressed him the most were Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Weber was very interested in having Du Bois write something for the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik and he really wanted Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk to be translated into German. He arranged to have Else Jaffé do the translation, and the work was to be published by the Mohr-Siebeck publishing company. He also was very interested in having Du Bois visit Germany again, and Weber was convinced that he would return to the USA either in 1907 or 1908 (pp. 391–392, 395, 437, 467, 481).²

These letters reveal what Weber thought about some of his colleagues and show that he valued and advised a number of younger scholars. Emil Lask had studied philosophy under Heinrich Rickert and Wilhelm Windelband, but he was also interested in the philosophy of law. Because of Lask's methodological and legal interests, Weber had high expectations for him. When Lask wrote a rather critical review of a book, Weber supported him and advised him on how to deal with the negative responses. He also consoled Lask regarding his father's illness and subsequent death and advised him about teaching at Heidelberg (pp. 513–514, 613). Weber took an even more positive view of Willy Hellpach. Hellpach had studied psychology under Wilhelm Wundt and then Emil Kraepelin. He submitted his ‘Sozialpathologie als Wissenschaft’ to the Archiv, which prompted Werner Sombart to suggest that Weber get in touch with Hellpach. In his first letter to Hellpach, Weber repeated Sombart's request that Hellpach join them on the editorial board, but he also warned him not to rely on the work of Karl Lamprecht. Weber totally rejected Lamprecht's writings as a historian, and in this letter as well as the next, Weber cautioned Hellpach against Lamprecht's dilettantism and referred to him as a ‘swindler and charlatan of the worse sort’ (pp. 443–444, 450454). In contrast, Weber thought highly of Hellpach's ‘Sozialpsychologie als Wissenschaft’ and hoped that it could be included in the Archiv as soon as possible. Hellpach wanted his ‘Psychologie auf naturwissenschaftlicher Grundlage’ to be his ‘Habilitationsschrift’ but he knew that his main examiner, Windelband, would be likely to have objections to it. He wrote to Weber for advice; Weber replied that he stood ready to help Hellpach in any way possible and wanted some time to think out how best to win over Windelband (pp. 503, 507). Weber was no longer a regular Heidelberg faculty member so he did not have voting rights there; however, he suggested that Hellpach might consider habilitating in psychiatry at Heidelberg and teaching psychology there. He suggested that this might be agreeable to Windelband (p. 506). Weber admitted that Hellpach's work was of ‘uncommon interest’ to him and that he had learned much from him (pp. 507, 526, 550).

Weber's correspondence from these years also reveals how much he valued some of his older colleagues. There are only three letters to his close friend and former colleague at Freiburg, Heinrich Rickert, but they indicate that he was often in agreement with him. Nonetheless, Weber was not reluctant to point out issues where he had reservations about Rickert's philosophy, such as Rickert's notion of causality (pp. 230–231, 445–447, 477–478). He defended him against the charge that his philosophy was no different than that of Wilhelm Dilthey and suggested that it was a significant development of that by Wilhelm Windelband (pp. 443, 521). Weber wrote several letters to Georg Jellinek and conveyed that he really appreciated several works that Jellinek published during this time (pp. 234, 555). But, in two letters to Rickert, he indicated that his ideal type differed from Jellinek's in that his version was not equivalent to a value judgement, and that Rickert's apparent confusion on this question disturbed Weber's ‘fatherly vanity’ (pp. 447, 477). There are no letters from Weber to Ernst Troeltsch; however, Weber's friend and colleague at Heidelberg plays a prominent role during these years. Troeltsch and his wife Marta travelled to the USA along with Weber and Marianne, and it is interesting to contrast Weber's appreciation of the country with Troeltsch's rather negative estimation (pp. 267, 269, 284). In a letter to Georg von Below, Weber noted that he had learned much about theological issues from Troeltsch and expressed considerable gratitude for Troeltsch's theological expertise. However, he suggested that Troeltsch had learned some things from Weber – perhaps more than Troeltsch realized (pp. 535–536). And, in a letter to his brother Alfred, Max wrote that he did not always agree with everything that Troeltsch wrote (256).

Perhaps what is the most revealing about Weber's contemporaries comes in the protracted exchange with Lujo Brentano. Brentano was one of the important members of the Verein für Sozialpolitik and a well-respected economist at Munich. In September 1903, Weber and Brentano were together with Sombart on the island of Helgoland when Weber broached the subject of Brentano reviewing Sombart's Der moderne Kapitalismus. Apparently, Brentano reluctantly agreed, and Weber wrote a number of times to encourage him to follow through. Sombart's two-volume work had appeared the previous year and had been reviewed by a number of scholars. However, Weber kept asking Brentano to write the review because he would be the first economist, rather than an historian, to review it (pp. 151, 158–159, 163, 198–199, 206, 225 – see especially the lengthy editorial explanation on p. 157).³ In another letter to von Below, Weber recognized that von Below had provided a good review of Der moderne Kapitalismus but insisted that ‘It is and remains a scandal’ to the discipline of economics that no economist had reviewed the book (p. 243).

Weber never explained why he did not review Sombart's book but it was likely because he did not want to publicly critique his fellow editor's book. It may also have been because he had his own work to do. Weber complained about how difficult it was to write his early methodological essays and even more about the time it took to go through page proofs. He often wrote to Paul Siebeck, his editor, to complain about how time-consuming it was to correct the proofs. The Protestant Ethic was particularly problematic, partially because the printer that Siebeck used seemed not to know any English (pp. 212–213, 217, 246–247, 258, 440, 516; see also the editorial introduction, p. 515). Siebeck occasionally asked Weber's advice; he specifically asked him how best to proceed with a new edition of the Handbuch der Politischen Ökonomie. Weber was willing to suggest scholars to write new entries, but he was reluctant to take on a more central role (pp. 462–463, 468–469).⁴ Weber's reluctance seemed based upon his still-precarious health and because of the demands of his own writings.

From these letters, we still do not gain a complete picture of Weber's work and we still have little understanding about his illness. While we can rely on Weber's writings to understand his thinking about scholarly topics, we shall probably never know what triggered his years-long malady and what caused him to resign from teaching at Heidelberg. But what we have gained from this collection is a much more complete picture of Weber as a man, a colleague and a scholar. And that is what makes this volume a very welcome complement to the biographies of Max Weber.