Obituary: Professor Dr DLitt (h.c.) Wolfgang J. Mommsen 5 November, 1930-11 August, 2004

Abstract

[MWS 5.1 (2005) 113-117] ISSN 1470-8078 Obituary: Professor Dr DLitt (h.c.) Wolfgang J. Mommsen 5 November, 1930-11 August, 2004 Gangolf Hübinger In a 1971 collection Die Großen in Weltgeschichte Wolfgang J. Mommsen used the title 'A liberal in despair' for his article on Max Weber. This well describes the intellectual centre around which turned the historian Mommsen's massive scientific achievement, his dedication to the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe edition, and his spontaneous political interven tions. 'In despair' was how Mommsen analysed the profound structural change undergone by the liberal and elite-educated middle-class citi zenry in the mass society of industrial capitalism and democratic plural ism. In Max Weber Mommsen had chosen a durable and challenging explorer and interpreter of the uncharted territory of modern political conflict and its historical origins. His path-breaking dissertation appeared in English translation (Max Weber and German Politics, 1890-1920, Uni versity of Chicago Press) in 1984 at a time when Weber's international reputation had reached a high point. It is difficult to imagine that the first German edition of Max Weber und die deutsche Politik was written in an atmosphere where it was only with difficulty that a way had to be opened up for an intellectual debate with Weber. Mommsen also exam ined most critically the 'decisionist' theory of modern domination and what it could mean for democracy in Germany after the Second World War. Weber showed him how to place national-historical questions in a universal-historical perspective. The second, and significantly enlarged, 1974 edition of his Weber book profited from this and from new sources; the English translation was based on this second edition. Mommsen gave a very influential lecture on 'Max Weber's idea of universal history' at the International Historians' Conference of 1985. Mommsen saw in Weber the most attractive and unrivalled capacity to analyse the ideal and material driving forces of world-historical change. This led him to an ever new and lifetime's fascination with Max Weber. In selecting his own historical themes Wolfgang J. Mommsen pre ferred to adopt Weber's viewpoint, though less so his critical conceptual methods. He did not wish to give up the narrative element of history© Max Weber Studies 2005, Department of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University, Old Castle Street, London El 7NT, UK. 114 Max Weber Studies writing. His preferred period was the German Empire with its half constitutional structure of the political system, its impetuous but unpro fessional striving for world power of its political elites, and the new nationalism of the middle classes. Mommsen analysed this constellation using a carefully worked out comparative viewpoint of the liberal impe rialism of Great Britain. Mommsen, like his great-grandfather Theodor Mommsen and his student Max Weber, took the British Empire with its liberalism and well developed sense of power as the point of reference against which German politics had to be measured. A typical essay from the 1970s was entitled 'Changes in the liberal idea in the period of imperialism'. Next to politics, issues in the cultural and scientific development of Wilhelmine Germany gained increasing attention. He concluded a sab batical as fellow at the History College in Munich in 1996 with an impor tant volume on 'the role of intellectuals, artists and writers in the First World War'. Mommsen's penetrating publications on Max Weber and his contemporaries raised the profile of the cultural history of the period. In the autumn of 1984 he organized 'Max Weber and his Contemporaries' — probably the most enduring of the many international conferences he ran at the German Historical Institute in London. This brought together international Weber experts and it accompanied the first volume of the new Max Weber Gesamtausgabe. With the appearance of Schriften und Reden zur Politik im Weltkrieg 1914-1918 (MWG 1/15) in autumn 1984 began the great undertaking that so far is half completed, and for which Mommsen and his Düsseldorf work centre have been indispensable. As a co-worker in the first volume I myself under Mommsen's direction have been entrusted with this type of classic edition and its significance for paradigm conflicts in...