Deliberate Search and Unexpected Discoveries Archival research on Max Weber's Milieu

Abstract

[MWS 14.2 (2014) 233-243] ISSN 1470-8078 Deliberate Search and Unexpected Discoveries Archival research on Max Weber's Milieu Guenther Roth The complete edition of Max Weber's oeuvre (Max Weber Gesamt Ausgabe, MWG) elucidates his writings and letters in introductions, editorial reports and a huge footnote apparatus. It treats the spe cific historical contexts and the work histories, but without being able to include the wider 19th century context, an era of rapid glo balization but also increasing nationalism. The extended family his tory was also left out. 'Work and person'—'Werk und Person' to cite Eduard Baumgarten's well-known 1964 compendium—are, how ever, embedded in the history of the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie, which after decades of great influence was increasingly weakened by the growth of bourgeois nationalism. I decided to study their complex relations in what became my book on Max Weber's Anglo German Family History 1800-1950 and a series of subsequent studies.1 This required my getting into the kind of archival research which in the optimal case combines informed search with unexpected find ings. I was lucky enough to discover, beyond the public archives, previously unknown or unused family holdings. They illuminate in manifold ways the social and economic context of Weber's oeuvre. This makes visible a world in which cosmopolitanism and national ism, world economy and national economy, German-Jewish assimi lation and antisemitism, peaceful and militarily enforced national unification were interwoven and overlaid in complex ways. In recent years, studies of 19th century globalization and of inter national family history have proliferated. In this context, my own research was motivated in part by seemingly small queries from edi tors and collaborators of the MWG, which had unexpected ramifica tions. I shall deal with them here in autobiographical and anecdotal 1. Guenther Roth, Max Webers deutsch-englische Familiengeschichte 1800-1950 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001); for subsequent studies see notes 14 and 16.© Max Weber Studies 2014, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. 234 Max Weber Studies form. My decades-long preoccupation with Weber's oeuvre par alleled the progress of the MWG, on which I also wrote a dozen reviews, especially for anglophone readers. My edition, with Claus Wittich, of the complete English translation of Weber's Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in 1968 led to an early and intensive cooperation with Johannes Winckelmann (1900-1985), its German editor, who was also a major initiator of the MWG.2 Over time my own interests moved from sociological theory, especially of modernization and development, and after 2000 even from Weber's historical generalizations and typologies, in the direc tion of family history and social milieu. I was influenced by the personal experience that decades of dealing with the same subject matter can leave one in danger of losing innovativeness, flexibility and intensity. Toward the end of the nineteen eighties I began to turn to bio graphical aspects, when Irving Louis Horowitz (1929-2012) asked me for an introduction to his re-issue of the English translation of Marianne Weber's famous Lebensbild of her husband. During a sab batical at the Getty Center in Santa Monica, I had the time to write 'Marianne Weber and her Circle'.3 Georg Siebeck, owner of Weber's old publishing house and publisher of the MWG, sent my essay to Max Weber-Schäfer (1908-1998), when the Munich Piperverlag decided to publish a paperback edition of the Lebensbild and also requested an introduction. Siebeck proposed a German version of my essay. Max Weber-Schäfer, who was very interested in a biogra phy of his adopted mother, welcomed the proposal.4 This resulted in 2. Max Weber, Economy and Society (ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich; Totowa: Bedminster Press, 1968; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978; reissue 2013, with a new foreword by Guenther Roth, XXIX-XXXVÜ). In the nineteen seventies I participated in the preparation of the MWG in the Werner-Reimers-Stiftung in Bad Homburg and later was co-organizer of the conferences there on the Economic Ethics of the World Religions. See Edith Hanke, Gangolf Htibinger and Wolfgang Schwent ker, 'Die Entstehung der Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe und der Beitrag...