Max Weber's Apprenticeship and Journeyman Years

[MWS 21.2 (2021) 213-243] ISSN 1470-8078 doi: 10.15543/maxweberstudies.21.2.213© Max Weber Studies 2021, Global Policy Institute, University House, Coventry University London, 109 Middlesex Street, London E1 7JF. Review Essay Max Weber’s Apprenticeship and Journeyman Years: Letters 1875–94 Álvaro Morcillo Laiz Max Weber, Briefe 1875–1886, edited by Gangolf Hübinger in cooperation with Thomas Gerhards and Uta Hinz (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe II/1; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), xxii + 759pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-3-16-1541537 . €314.00. Max Weber, Briefe 1887–1894, edited by Rita Aldenhoff-Hübinger in cooperation with Thomas Gerhards and Sybille Oßwald-Bargende (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe II/2; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), xx + 683pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-3-16-154927-4. €289.00. ...I saw myself as a bachelor journeyman Max to Marianne Weber, 25.4.1894 These two volumes, containing almost a thousand pages of letters, cover a wide range of important issues for a full understanding of Max Weber’s intellectual biography, including his family and other institutions that shaped not only his character but also his education in politics and scholarship.1 This thematic variety is not only a consequence of the volumes’ length; the variety is also very pronounced because during the period covered by the letters (1875–94), their author moved from spending his teens living with his parents to studying at several major universities, serving in the military, turning into an up-and-coming legal scholar, marrying, and eventually obtaining a professorship in political economy. This passage from childhood to a tenured job also has a spatial dimension. Accordingly, many missives are travel letters, even trip reports, that illuminate his excursions with Max Weber Sr. during his—and his brother Alfred’s—school holidays; his two semesters at the University of Heidelberg (1882–83) and one at Göttingen (1885); his stints with the army in Straßburg, Posen, and other West Prussian 1. All translations are mine; when available, bibliographical references to a translation are offered for the reader’s convenience. 214 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2021. towns; and September 1894’s ‘just married’ trip with Marianne to the United Kingdom. Whenever Weber is not physically separated from his parents or from Marianne and not in touch with the Baumgarten branch of the family in Straßburg, the thread breaks and lacunae arise in the biographic report that the letters otherwise offer. As the places and life stages change, so do Weber’s addressees and the individuals about whom he reports. Relatives and family friends populate the letters of his early years. With time, other groups become increasingly important: his cousin and one-time fiancée Emmy Baumgarten and her father, friends from his Heidelberg fraternity, Berlin’s young professionals who met at the ‘Thursday’s circle’ (Donnerstag Abende) and later other faculty members from the Kaiser-Wilhelm-University in Berlin. Finally, Marianne takes center stage. In sum, the letters discuss a wide range of issues related to the latter half of Weber’s youth and to his education within his family and at a number of Wilhelmine Germany’s institutions. Seasoned Weber readers may question what differentiates these letters from Weber’s hitherto available Jugendbriefe (1936). The question is not pointless because this collection encompasses a similar period of time (1876–93). Actually, all the letters contained in II/1 have been previously published, while II/2 includes eighty-six previously unpublished letters. The bulk of these new missives are Max’s love letters to Marianne. Thus, his ‘presentation of self’ to her is among the major additions made by these two volumes to the corpus of Weber’s published works. Other significant novelties are fourteen previously unpublished letters to scholars like Gustav Schmoller and Theodor Mommsen (Aldenhoff-Hübinger 2017: 33-34). These new letters shed light on the young Weber’s predicament as a Privatdozent at Berlin’s Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität. In addition to the new letters, a major difference between these two volumes and Marianne’s edition of the Jugendbriefe is one of intent. Marianne selected the letters included in the Jugendbriefe to highlight the development of the avid young

Apprenticeship · Art · Art history · Bachelor · Biography · Management · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory

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  Open Access•Keith Tribe•HISTORICKÁ SOCIOLOGIE•2025

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