THANKS IN good measure to the work of David Beetham (1985; orig 1974) and Wolfgang Mommsen ( 1984), an appreciation of Max Weber as a distinctively political thinker and actor is gradually gaining recognition in the English speaking world. Even so, Weber’s reception from British political scientists has remained hesitant and dilatory. A-level options devoted to Modern Political Ideas and Doctrines (London) or Political Theory (Oxford) have no space for Weber in their syllabi; while, to the best of my knowledge, few degree courses in Politics treat him as a seminal figure deserving of the same detailed scrutiny enjoyed by, say, Tocqueville, Mill or Man. This attitude to Weber’s political thought is not only archaic, nurtured by old habits of academic pigeon holing which dictate that Weber was above all a sociologist. It is also deeply paradoxical. For as one commentator has put it, the span of Weber’s political writings is ‘remarkable, ranging from his early analyses of social and political change in East Prussia, through book-length articles on the 1905 Russian revolution, to his sustained polemics on the reform of the German constitution in the wartime and postwar period’ (Beetham, 1985, pp 13-14). Are not the themes of these writings - geo-politics, class conflict, state power, legitimacy, ‘plebiscitary’ leadership, democracy, mass parties etc. - the very staples of the political scientist’s diet? This article examines one episode which occurred towards the end of Weber’s life (he died in June 1920) in which political concerns were of paramount importance: his attempt to influence the constitutional powers of the ‘Weimar’ Reich President. My objective in what follows is merely to highlight Weber the political thinker in action, especially in respect of his preference for a democratic, Caesarist ‘dictator’ to lead the new Republic. I offer here no assessment or critique. My task is thus a limited one. But if this article helps encourage a wider, cross-disciplinary perspective on Weber’s life and work, it will, I believe, have served a useful purpose.