Editorial: The Coming of Age of the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe

Abstract

[MWS 12.1 (2012) 7-12] ISSN 1470-8078 Editorial The Coming of Age of the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe Sam Whimster How do we know when something has arrived? This is a peculiar question to pose for the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works of Max Weber) whose output to date measures almost two metres of shelf space. Section 1—the Writings and Speeches—has 18 volumes published. Section 2—the Letters—will shortly have pub lished all the letters from 1906 through to 1920. Section 3 has pub lished five of a projected eight volumes of Weber's lecture courses. For subscribers to the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe (MWG) one can scarcely not be aware of its arrival. But now MWG has its own his tory and this signals its official coming of age. Edith Hanke, Gangolf Hübinger and Wolfgang Schwentker, all volume editors, provide the first thorough and documented account of how the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe came into being. It is a colourful story. Horst Baier was the moving spirit in the 1970s and was motivated to combat the political and expressive Marxism in German universities and at Frankfurt am Main where he was professor in sociology. The legendary hard man of the right (and little known classical philologist), Franz Josef Strauss, was a politi cal sponsor of the project, before it was taken up by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Strauss was just one intermediary. Niklas Luhmann helped to gain support for the project from the Reimers Foundation, which funded six meetings of a foundation committee. Horst Baier wrote the report, which outlined the principles and purposes of the edition and this was widely canvassed. The soci ologist Helmut Schelsky working on the policy commission of the CSU opened the way to the eventual support of the Bavarian Acad emy of Sciences. And in 1976, under the managership of M. Rainer Lepsius, a contract was reached between the Bavarian Academy, the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe and the publisher Mohr Siebeck. The editorial rules of the edition had to be hammered out: on a© Max Weber Studies 2012, Clifton House, 17 Malvern Road, London, E8 3LP. 8 Max Weber Studies historical-critical basis (see Max Weber Studies 2000:104-14), and the institutional structure of research centres established from where the individual volumes were produced. In 1982 Munich became the central research centre, and many international scholars have made the pilgrimage to Marstallplatz to benefit from the Winckelmann library and the warm hospitality of the redactors—first Karl-Ludwig Ay and now Edith Hanke. A bibliography was produced by Martin Riesebrodt in 1976 that revealed some 300 Weber titles which then had to be allocated to volumes. The founder editors had their battles not only getting the project off the ground but sometimes with each other. Johannes Winckelmann, who was the editorial heir to Mari anne Weber, threatened at one point to blockade the use of his indis pensable Weber archive and library to the new editorial project. Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Winckelmann were at daggers drawn over, respectively, the access to letter material and the interpretation of Weber's politics. No less important were the many editors of the separate volumes who were allowed a degree of independence in presenting their scholarly researches, though within the bounds of the rules of the edition. Was the MWG in inception an anti-Marx project? Certainly the Marx-Engel-Gesamtausgabe was sprouting behind the East German dividing wall, and the case for an edition of superior scholarship could be made. But it always remains a mistake to use Weber as a stick with which to beat Marx. Weber's methodology, for instance, can be used to critique materialist conceptions of all sorts as well as the numerous epistemological marxisms of the twentieth century. But Weber's methodology is hardly a blunt instrument. It is through Weber's methodological structures that we are instructed how to combine both material and ideal elements in the determination of history. Friedrich Tenbruck, whose deep grasp of Weber's writings could certainly have qualified him for a place on the editorial board of the MWG, always thought that the scholarly exposition of the methodology would be the...