Max Weber and the ‘Prussian “Geist”’

Abstract

In ‘Wahlrecht und Demokratie in Deutschland’ (1917) Max Weber suddenly shifted from discussing voting rights in a democratic Germany to identifying four generals who he claimed embodied the genuine 'Prussian “Geist”': Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, Boyen, and Moltke. The first three were actively involved in making the reforms to the Prussian military during the early decades of the nineteenth century, but Helmuth Moltke was heavily involved in military matters and political issues from 1864 until his death in 1891. Hence, he made major impressions on the young Max Weber during the first three decades of Weber's life. In this essay, I argue that Weber considered Moltke an 'ideal type' of leader: a modest man who possessed a sense of judgment and who acted according to the ‘ethics of responsibility’. In contrast, another German general, Erich Ludendorff, embodied those traits that Weber warned against in his later lecture Politik als Beruf: vanity, the lack of judgment, and the lack of any sense of responsibility. By contrasting Moltke with Ludendorff we not only get a sense of what Max Weber meant by the genuine 'Prussian “Geist”', but we also get an idea of Max Weber's notion of the true political leader. There is no question that to understand what Weber meant by 'Prussian “Geist”' would mean investigating a full range of topics, including his opinions on the agrarian question, his view of Bismarck and his successors, and many more. However, by focusing on his opinions of Moltke and Ludendorff, we get a good sense of why Weber believed the 'Prussian “Geist”' was so important for Germany's future.