Wolfgang Mommsen Research Articles

Marianne Webers 'Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung'. Beziehungsmodelle zwischen römischem Recht und deutscher Kodifizierung by Evelyn Höbenreich (review)

Book Reviews 129© Max Weber Studies 2021. of moral relativism as heralded by Nietzsche and its impact on Weber. After the influential critiques by Leo Strauss (via philosophy) and Wolfgang Mommsen (via history), there seems no way of circumventing this challenge for any serious appraisal of Weber as a politico-ethical thinker, especially for a book whose avowed goal is to revisit his ethic of responsibility per se. Still, neither Strauss nor Mommsen (or others who follow their suit) is directly engaged on this point, a conspicuous loophole that could have been filled by bringing in Nietzsche to bear upon Weber and confront the question of moral relativism in politics more directly. This ghost of the past could have been confronted earnestly for all its good or ill—not only for a compelling reevaluation of Weber’s ethic of responsibility, but also for the good of the book‘s own ethical prescription for the present and the days yet to come. To be fair, the author seems aware of the overall connection between Nietzsche and Weber as indicated in the very first sentence of the book: ‘If the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has to be recognised as the herald of the decline of traditional Christian and humanist ethics, the sociologist Max Weber deserves recognition of being the first to venture a sociological explanation for this decline’ (1). This opening insight might as well have been heeded throughout the book. Sung Ho Kim Department of Political Science, Yonsei University. Evelyn Höbenreich, Marianne Webers ‘Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung’. Beziehungsmodelle zwischen römischem Recht und deutscher Kodifizierung (Lecce: Edizioni Griffo, 2018), 368 pp. (hbk). ISBN 9788869941597. €28.00. Marianne Weber’s Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung (Wife and Mother in the Development of Law) is a groundbreaking study of the legal, social, and economic standing of women from antiquity through to the book’s publication date in 1907. Her examination of the institution of marriage pioneered women’s studies in the history of law, and her work’s reception has by now certainly expanded beyond a fleeting mention in footnotes. In her monograph Marianne Webers ‘Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung’, Evelyn Höbenreich not only fundamentally examines the role of prehistoric and ancient legal structures and gender issues, but also assesses how these may have impacted Marianne Weber’s reflections on the existence and purpose of women’s legal situation. 130 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2021. Höbenreich,aprofessorofRomanlawattheUniversityofGraz,focusses on the style of Weber’s work, her goals, methodology, and selection of sources, and utilizes these categories to follow a comparative historical approach. Höbenreich’s prime achievement with this work is embedding of Marianne Weber’s book into the European context of its time, which she accomplishes primarily by contrasting Marianne Weber’s work with Paul Gide and Adhémar Esmein’s, Robert Bartsch’s, and Carlo Francesca Gabba’s contemporary studies on the female condition. Throughout its 368 pages, Höbenreich’s analysis of Marianne Weber’s Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung and its European contemporaries is distinguished by both its methodical rigidity and mischievous wit, exemplified by wellchosen and well-placed quotes and references. Höbenreich tackles Marianne Weber’s ‘footnote existence’ head on by taking this expression as the prologue’s title (11). Initially, she outlines how the fundamental works of Marianne Weber’s time generally dealt with women’s history in a cursory manner at best (13 ff). She points out that the German Civil Code did not precede the first attempts at emancipation; the ‘women’s issue’ did not play a significant role at the time of its adoption and was, in fact, limited to questions of family and succession law. The origins of Marianne Weber’s Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung cannot be separated from her environment, specifically from the debate on the Civil Code and associated women’s movements. Höbenreich references that backdrop not only with regard to the ideas Marianne Weber developed in this work but also in appreciation of her far-reachinguniversalistconception,despiteherlackofformaleducation. Höbenreich touches on Max Weber’s influence and the couple’s intense exchange of ideas, but does not determine...

Mentoring and Role Modelling in Educational Administration and Leadership: Neoliberal/globalisation, Cross-cultural and Transcultural Issues

Many, if not most, of my writing comes from experience, as it does for many scholars – either observing situations and events, being among those involved in these, and the many discussions with students and colleagues about the experiences they have gone through in many countries I have visited or worked in. This topic of mentoring and the related role of role modelling initially came to me shortly after doing my doctorate in a mentoring mode with Christopher Hodgkinson in Canada, and my ideas about this were reinforced when I was mentored in informal postdoctoral work with Wolfgang Mommsen in Germany in the 1990s.

Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen und Mächte. Nachlaß, Teilband 4: Herrschaft by Max Weber Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Soziologie. Unvollendet 1919–1920 by Max Weber Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Entstehungsgeschichte und Dokumente by Max Weber (review)

[MWS 17.2 (2017) 282-296] ISSN 1470-8078 http://dx.doi.org/10.15543/MWS/2017/2/9© Max Weber Studies 2017, Rm 4-12, London Metropolitan University, 84 Moorgate, London EC2M 6SQ. Review Essay Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Die Wirtschaft und die gesellschaftlichen Ordnungen und Mächte. Nachlaß, Teilband 4: Herrschaft, ed. Edith Hanke, with Thomas Kroll (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe I/22-4; Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2005), xxx + 944pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-3-16-148694-4. €369.00. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Soziologie. Unvollendet 1919– 1920,editedbyKnutBorchardt,EdithHankeandWolfgangSchluchter (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe I/23; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), xxvi + 847pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-3-16-150292-7. €334.00. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Entstehungsgeschichte und Dokumente, edited by Wolfgang Schluchter (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe I/24; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), xi + 285pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-3-16-150058-9. €114.00. In 1984 the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe commenced publication with Bd. I/15, Zur Politik im Weltkrieg. Schriften und Reden 1914– 1918, edited by Wolfgang Mommsen with the assistance of Gangolf Hübinger. More than thirty years later we still await publication of the ‘methodological’ writings in the MWG; but whether this matters very much is an open question. As Wilhelm Hennis pointed out in a contemporary review of Bd. I/15, given the general lack of manuscripts , typescripts, and other materials, the MWG could never be a ‘historico-critical’ edition since the editors were chiefly limited to reprinting, correcting, and annotating published versions of Weber’s writings.1 It appears to have been Weber’s practice to discard notes, drafts, manuscripts, and proofs once he was finished with them, and so for the great bulk of his work all we have are the printed versions. 1. Wilhelm Hennis, ‘Im langen Schatten einer Edition: Zum Erscheinen des ersten Bandes der Max-Weber-Gesamtausgabe (MWG)’, originally in Zeitschrift für Politik N. F. 32 (June 1985): 208-17; cited here as in his Max Weber und Thukydides: Nachträge zur Biographie des Werks (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 73-86 (80). Tribe Review Essay 283© Max Weber Studies 2017. Of course, since he only ever published two ‘books’—an extract from his doctoral thesis and his Habilitationsschrift—these writings were scattered through journals, newspapers, and conference proceedings ; but Marianne Weber had assembled much of this work in the early 1920s, publishing the ‘methodological’ writings in 1922 as the Wissenschaftslehre. And so we have had a working version of what will, eventually, be MWG Bde. I/7 and I/12 since 1922. What the world actually needed, argued Hennis, was not an exorbitantly expensive ‘complete works’ that turned out for the most part to contain what was already in circulation, but a cheap paperback version of the existing principal writings. He even went so far as to suggest that the publisher of the MWG had a strong commercial interest in the project, since copyright would run out in 1990 and the creation of a new standard edition would refresh the publisher’s rights.2 It soon become clear that having Weber’s writings on wartime politics (Bd. I/15 1988) or on rural and economic policy in the 1890s (I/4 1993) provided a solid basis for the re-assessment of the orthodoxies of the Weber reception. When he launched his acerbic criticisms of the MWG project in the mid 1980s Hennis was engaged in his own studies of Weber, travelling to the GDR to read the correspondence in the Merseburg archives, and subjecting Weber’s writings to line-by-line examination. The essays that resulted from this work contributed a great deal to the positive reassessment of Weber in the later twentieth century; the edition formed a valuable backdrop to this ongoing revision, but for a long time did not appear to be that central to it. The publication of the first volume of letters in 1990 revealed some of the real novelty that the edition would offer, although starting with the correspondence of 1906 and taking until 2012 to arrive at the letters of 1920 led to its own frustrations. Likewise the extension of Abteilung III, devoted to lecture notes, to seven volumes...

The State of the Political: Conceptions of Politics and the State in the Thought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Franz Neumann by Duncan Kelly (review)

[MWS 7.2 (2008) 243-278] ISSN 1470-8078 Book Reviews Duncan Kelly, The Stak of the Political: Conceptions of Politics and the Stak in the Thought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Franz Neumann (Oxford: The British Academy/Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. ix + 368. ISBN 0-19-726287-2. £45.00 (hbk). The State of the Political by Duncan Kelly, published in 2003, is to be commended for its review of the theory of the state in Germany, a research tradition particu larly vibrant around the turn of the twentieth century until the end of the Weimar Republic. This field of reflection, which is far from consensus-driven, constitutes a real source of both controversy and conflict. To give an overview, Duncan Kelly chose three legal experts—Max Weber (1864-1920), Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) and Franz Neumann (1900-1954)—who were not neglected by critics during the twen tieth century and often contrasted with each other in an almost caricature-like manner. The other main reason why these authors sparked people's interest is that they were all 'public moralists' whose influence went far beyond legal or intellec tual circles. After the Second World War, German historians endeavoured to differ entiate between 'friends and enemies' within the progression of ideas, particularly by attributing simple labels to these authors, like 'conservative' (Schmitt), 'liberal' (Weber) and 'social-democrat' (Neumann). These easy and perhaps hasty distinc tions may have neglected some subtle, yet important nuances. Without diminishing their differences, it is true that a closer look at the works of these doctrines allows the reader to isolate common ground and differences between these authors. One of the common battles all authors waged was against legal positivism, Hans Kelsen being the best twentieth-century example. This rejection of positivism is especially visible in the writings of Carl Schmitt and Franz Neumann, however, it is also present in other authors of the between-war period, whose names are mentioned in The State of the Political, for instance, Hermann Heller and Rudolf Smend. Duncan Kelly takes a sensible approach by outlining common issues in the works of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Franz Neumann, thus establishing similar ities across authors. All three repeatedly return to the subject of the figure of the political leader. In line with Wolfgang Mommsen's suggestion, Duncan Kelly under lines Max Weber's legacy in Carl Schmitt's definition of the role and attributes of the president of the Reich. Weber's thoughts on the president's function, clearly out lined in his article 'Der Reichspräsident' published in 1919, underlines the need for an Archimedean point, an institutional leverage point in Weimar, incarnated by the President of the Reich. Schmitt's concessions towards national-socialism, as well as towards antisemitism may shed doubt on this parallel, given that some critics prefer to distinguish clearly between these two great authors, one, the defender of liberal ism and the other, its opponent. Another merit of Duncan Kelly's work is his objec tive analysis of the corpus of these authors' doctrines, whose work left its mark on© Max Weber Studies 2008, Department of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University, Old Castle Street, London El 7NT, UK. 244 Max Weber Studies the twentieth century. In this way, Kelly successfully resists the temptation to allow the subject to be hijacked by the tragedy of the Weimar Republic. Despite their opposing stances, in particular over the relationship between the State and society, these three authors do share the same vision of the State as the supreme and ultimate embodiment of politics and sovereignty. Duncan Kelly's choice of authors is very representative of early-century legal writers in Germany. Following the end of the Empire, the concept of the State, albeit weakened by the reality at the time, remained the nerve centre of politics. This may well be the expla nation for such a strong tradition of research into the theory of the state in Germany. One of the main figures in this line of research was Georg Jellinek who became a ref erence for many other authors in that field. Max Weber was one of these authors and Hans Kelsen was...

Max Weber's 'Economy and Society': A Critical Companion by Charles S. Camic , Philip S. Gorski , David M. Trubek (review)

246 Max Weber Studies with a sense of naiveté and an absence of critical thinking really misses the point. For although commodification and consumption can doubtless involve stupidity, indo lence and whatever else, it can also 'enliven, energise, and, under the right circum stances, support ethical generosity' (p. 128), and this can then be added to an account of the creation of the self as a work of art, a work of enchantment, in a tradition that runs from Kant and Schiller to Michel Foucault. And in trying to circumnavigate the Marxist critique that this is really to aestheticize politics without any recourse to the strategies for changing the world that would actually allow people to transform their conditions, Bennett offers the following rejoinder: What is the content of my ethic of enchanted materialism, and what are the sources upon which it draws? The content, in important respects, is Thoreauian. Its appreciation of nonhuman, as well as human, sites of vitality—of what might be called its hyperecological sense of interde pendence—proceeds from and toward the principle of treading lightly on the earth... [But] The source or rationale for this ethic is more dif ficult to articulate. Why ought enchanted materialists tread lightly, be humble, remember interdependencies, pay attention to details? (pp. 157f.). The disposition 'in favour of life' (p. 158) is the unifying feature of this ethic, and it is an open-ended ethic of generosity and respect for others, both human and non human, that is grounded in the fluid ontology of enchantment. This is a provocative thesis about the ontological and ethical character of individuals understood materi ally, and offers a distinctive challenge to more traditional theories of ethics. It is itself also quite an enchanting book, which does, as one of the dust jacket adverts for the book suggests, actually make one think about the world in slightly new ways. To that end, it is certainly a fitting complement to Max Weber's own analyses of the dis enchanted world and the possibilities of maintaining ethical life within it. Duncan Kelly University of Cambridge Charles S. Camic, Philip S. Gorski and David M. Trubek (eds.), Max Weber's 'Economy and Society': A Critical Companion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 385 + index. ISBN 0-8047-4717-2. $29.95. The essays collected in this volume were first presented in 2000 at a symposium held at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, whose working title was 'Economy and Society: Max Weber in 2000'. Consequently the presenters, mostly sociologists, gener ally addressed themselves to what Max Weber might contribute to our understand ing of the modern world. This is a rather different project to what might be expected from a 'critical companion'. We might reasonably anticipate that a 'critical compan ion' would be directed to specific sections or themes in Weber's Economy and Society, although of course the work that bears this title is only partly 'his book' — itself a problem that forms part of Wolfgang Mommsen's presentation but one which eludes most of the other contributors. A minority of the contributors adopt this approach: besides Mommsen's piece, Richard Swedberg considers the significance of chapter 2, Hans Kippenberg outlines the sections on religious communities, and Duncan© Max Weber Studies 2008. Book Reviews 247 Kennedy seeks to illuminate the manner in which the sections on the sociology of law related to contemporary legal thinking. That is four essays out of fourteen in which Weber's 'book' is explicated, dissected, or expounded. Apart from Guenther Roth's opening biographical essay, the rest of the contributions belong to the famil iar routine of Weber the sociologist. The editors clearly think differently. 'This volume provides a critical and up-to date introduction to Weber's magnum opus. While much has been published about the various parts of Economy and Society, this is the first book to cover all its major sec tions and themes, as well as to discuss the methodological vision that unites them' we can read on the back cover. Exactly whose methodological vision might that be, one might reasonably ask? And what sort of vision is it? Mommsen is the only contributor who outlines the tortured...

Max Weber's Politics of Civil Society by Sung Ho Kim (review)

Book Reviews 259 Despite all these critical remarks, the merits of the book are obvious. The reader will find particular value in the observations on Weber's writing process (pp. 173ff.) as well as in Radkau's explanations of the way Weber finds his questions and themes of research. This can be noticed especially in the chapter on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (pp. 316ff.), which is one of the book's best chapters. It has often been stated that Weber's Protestant Ethic contains some biographical aspects. Radkau manages to describe their implications in a colourful way. Not the least important result of this is that he points out two important things. The first one is his hint on Weber's—like everyone's—deepest desire, a 'longing for deliverance' (p. 221). The second is his consideration of an aspect that has mostly been either ignored or mis understood, namely the question of Weber's own religiosity. Radkau is surely right in saying 'Weber's own religiosity is the biggest puzzle of the entire Weber research' (p. 805). There is one final question remaining: does this imposing biography bring Weber closer to us? The answer is both yes and no. Radkau discloses many inaccessible or unknown aspects of Weber, but all the pieces of this puzzle do not or will not fit into a consistent portrait. Maybe this is not possible at all, because Weberis personality is full of ambiguity—like the personality of every great thinker. Andreas Anter Leipzig University Sung Ho Kim, Max Weber's Politics of Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 189 + references + index. ISBN 0-5218-205-7X. £45 (hbk). Max Weber's political thought and political sociology have probably received less attention than other well-known aspects of his thought, such as the work on bureau cracy, the sociology of religion, historical sociology, problems in the philosophy of science, or even economic sociology. The great exception to this generalization is, of course, the work of Wolfgang Mommsen, starting with Max Weber and German Poli tics (1959) and continuing with several books and essays. Wilhelm Hennis offered an important alternative political interpretation in Max Weber's Central Question (1987), elaborated on subsequently in a series of essays. Weber's ideas have also attracted attention in political theory and liberal-democratic thought, as with David Beetham's Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics (1974) and Peter Bremer's Max Weber and Democratic Politics (1996). Perhaps because of the unsettled nature of these discus sions and the controversies they have provoked, there is a sense that the field is open to new inquiries and that the entire range of Weber's thinking on political topics has not been fully explored. In his important study Sung Ho Kim enters this contested terrain with a thesis about Weber's little-noted contribution to the 'politics of civil society'. Kim is surely justified in suggesting that this dimension of Weber's thought has been ignored or misunderstood, linking the deficit in comprehension surprisingly to a kind of myopia regarding Weber's understanding of American social and religious life. Professor Kim's argument is that for Weber, a modern liberal-democratic politics depends on creating and sustaining a certain kind of 'moral personality', the Beruf smensch or 'person of vocation'. Socially, this kind of person and the ethos it repre sents is made possible only by a particular form of civil society, not the bürgerliche© Max Weber Studies 2008. 260 Max Weber Studies Gesellschaft of Hegelian thought, but the Sektengesellschaft of Weber's investigations, a civil society based on sects that he found in the social life of ascetic Protestantism. Not just any kind of voluntaristic associational activity characterizes this variant of civil society, but rather activity that involves the selection and moral testing of group members. A robust, authentic civil society thus requires a specific social construction of the modern self, a particular kind of 'characterology'. Much of the discussion in the book's six chapters is concerned with explaining the rationale, meaning, conse quences and political implications of this essential claim. The road to Weber's conception of civil society...

The Protestant Ethic Turns 100: Essays on the Centenary of the Weber Thesis by William H. Swatos Jr , Lutz Kaelber (review)

122 Max Weber Studies William H. Swatos Jr, and Lutz Kaelber (eds.), The Protestant Ethic Turns 100: Essays on the Centenary of the Weber Thesis (Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2005), pp. xxxii + 233. ISBN 1-59451-099-7 (pbk). $27.95. Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the 'Spirit' of Capitalism in the Archiv far Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in two instalments in November 1904 and June 1905. There have been a number of celebrations of its hundredth anniversary in Europe and North America and this volume will be one of many publications. Cel ebrations aside, it is important to gather together new information and new insights into Weber's essay beyond what has already has been said about one of the most famous, contentious and heavily debated theses in the historical and social sciences. Hartmut Lehmann argues that Weber's essay should be seen as part of a more general debate within German Nationalökonomie on the genesis of modern capital ism. Both before 1904 as well as afterwards, Werner Sombart and Lujo Brentano were deeply engaged in a wide debate on the origins, development and significance of modern capitalism. Weber's own essay may well have started as a review of Som bart's Der moderne Kapitalismus of 1902. Today, Sombart's very large book is mostly forgotten and unread, but in its day it caused something of an academic sensation, not least because of its re-formulation of the relationship between history and economic theory. Wolfgang Mommsen has shown (in Max Weber Studies 5.2 [2005]: 185-203) that Weber himself had outlined in his economic lectures of the 1890s a similar pro gramme that would allow the relating of culture, to economic motives, and to the meeting of human economic needs. So, the Protestant Ethic and the 'Spirit' of Capitalism (PESC) did not come out of nowhere, but belonged to the contemporary discourse of Nationalökonomie. In the first edition (1904-1905) Weber rather disguises his critical stance to Sombart, not even admitting that the phrase 'spirit of capitalism' was coined by Sombart. And in the second edition (of 1920) Weber takes issue, mainly in the footnotes, of the very substantial subsequent publications of Sombart and Brentano. Lehmann observes that the interpretation of the wider debate has been too narrowly focused through WebeLs own presentation. In the replies to his critics (now translated into English) Weber deliberately keeps the focus on his own train of argument. This went: Puritan beliefs —> conduct of life —* spirit of capitalism. Analytically speaking, if this causal chain is thought of as a horizontal axis, the economic forms of capitalism represent a vertical axis where the causal linkage is rendered as an 'affinity'. Weber said veiy little about the various forms of capitalism, not least because so much was being written, in large books, about that subject. The Protestant ethic is an essay into the motivational and cultural origins of a 'spirit' which had an 'elective affinity' with those new emergent economic forms. As Weber repeatedly tried to point out to his critics, such as Rachfahl, he was not arguing for religion as the explanation of economic forms. One might say that from the outset Weber's essay produced an imbalance into the debate, which to this day is still operant. The very success of Weber's brilliantly written essay tended to cast the wider debate into the shade. Lutz Kaelber, in an informative essay, explores the problematic nature of the above linkages. Only through a careful reading of Weber's replies to his critics is the precise, but rather open-ended, nature of the linkages apparent. Historical scholars of early Puritanism in England and North America have presented, and continue to present, compelling evidence on aspects of religious motivation, discipline and conduct, and economic traditionalism without, however, gathering up all the threads© Max Weber Studies 2007. Book Reviews 123 of Weber's argument. The time dimension is also problematic. Are we expecting, say, Quakers to become capitalists, like the English Cadburys, or the puritan outlook to diffuse through a culture and be taken up within a new form of capitalism? Lutz defends the Weber thesis in its full articulation but...

Max Weber's The City and the Islamic City

Wolfgang Mommsen noted that Weber, despite his rejection of any philosophy of history, implicitly advanced one of his own. This article explores one aspect of this philosophy: the teleology of a unique Western history, which serves as a grid in terms of which other histories are read. In effect, other histories are considered in terms of what the West had and they lacked: a sociology of absence. The City discussed one crucial link in this teleology of the West. I consider this essay in relation to the Islamic city, and how Weber characterized it in different parts of his essay, in contrast with the Western city. I argue that Weber essentialized Islam, like he did China and India, in ways which eliminated history and geography and their considerable range of variation, in favour of implicit ‘ideal types’. The consequences are explored in relation to themes at different points in the history of Muslim cities.

Wolfgang Mommsen, 1930–2004

One of our preeminent historians, Wolfgang Mommsen, died on August 11, 2004, at the age of seventy-three. Death came while he was swimming off Usedom, in the Baltic Sea. To speak of him as “ours” is to say at once that he was a treasured international presence for all of us, that he fully embodied the new transnational character of historical studies. His prodigious work and ebullient temper enriched the lives of his students, colleagues, and friends.

Max Weber's "The City" and the Islamic City

Wolfgang Mommsen noted that Weber, despite his rejection of any philosophy of history, implicitly advanced one of his own. This article explores one aspect of this philosophy: the teleology of a unique Western history, which serves as a grid in terms of which other histories are read. In effect, other histories are considered in terms of what the West had and they lacked: a sociology of absence. The City discussed one crucial link in this teleology of the West. I consider this essay in relation to the Islamic city, and how Weber characterized it in different parts of his essay, in contrast with the Western city. I argue that Weber essentialized Islam, like he did China and India, in ways which eliminated history and geography and their considerable range of variation, in favour of implicit 'ideal types'. The consequences are explored in relation to themes at different points in the history of Muslim cities.

In Memory of Professor Wolfgang J. Mommsen

[MWS 5.1 (2005) 123-124] ISSN 1470-8078 In Memory of Professor Wolfgang J. Mommsen Takeshi Ishida, Hiroshi Orihara, Yukitaka Sasabe, Kazuhiko Sumiya, Ken'ichi Tominaga, Yoshiaki Uchida, Yasutoshi Ueyama, Yoshiro Yano, and Katsuhiko Yoshime It was not so long after Professor Wolfgang J. Mommsen's sudden death in the Baltic Sea on 11 August, that the tragic news was delivered to Japan. We, scholars in Japan, were looking forward to his further aca demic achievements, and are shocked and sorry for this sudden loss. In Japan, he is known foremost as a scholar of Max Weber studies. In particular his masterpiece, Max Weber and German Politics, 1890-1920, brought the authoritarian aspects of Max Weber into daylight, and pro vided a major sensation to Weber studies. Its impact shocked not only German scholars, but scholars worldwide, obviously including Japanese. Since it was published in 1959, his name has been frequently referred to in Japanese Weberian studies, and it has provoked further studies and criticism (recently such as the study of Yukitaka Sasabe). However, with out question, it is still a basic crucial text for the study of the political thinking of Max Weber (a Japanese translation of the second expanded edition was published in 1993-1994). In this magnum opus, Professor Mommsen thoroughly followed the footsteps of Weber's political think ing from his school years to his death. Professor Mommsen not only vigorously gathered unknown or unopened pieces of material on this subject, but also analyzed those pieces in accordance with Weber's multi faceted academic achievements, and provided a synthesized view. It is an essential nautical chart for the next generation who launch into the exploration of the vast ocean of Weber's political thinking. Needless to say, Professor Mommsen's achievements in this field are not limited to this masterpiece. So far, three of his books on Weber have been translated into Japanese: the first of them appeared in 1977, the translation of his Suhrkamp Taschenbuch on Max Weber (1974). More over, his effort to bridge Weber studies, both international and inter disciplinary, is also well known; most notably, the work by him and and his colleagues to hold the 1984 London conference and the publication of the book Max Weber and his Contemporaries (an abridged Japanese translation appeared in 1994).© Max Weber Studies 2005, Department of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University, Old Castle Street, London El 7NT, UK. 124 Max Weber Studies Yet more important for future generations will be his contributions to the on-going publishing of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, in which he played a leading role. In Japan, as one of the biggest markets of the Gesamtausgabe, his contributions are looked upon favourably although at the same time criticized (especially by Hiroshi Orihara in relation to the so called 'Economy and Society' manuscripts). However, no one doubts that his painstaking efforts of these recent years was crucial to the pro gress of this important project, which will benefit not only future devel opments of Max Weber studies internationally, but also the development of the humanities and the social sciences in general. Obviously, his academic achievements were not limited to Max Weber studies. Both he and his twin brother Professor Hans Mommsen are renowned left-liberal historians of modern German history. While Hans Mommsen studied mainly the Nazi period, Wolfgang Mommsen studied the Wilhelmian-era that preceded that period. His works on imperialism and World War I are well known (The book on Imperial ism, which he edited, was translated into Japanese in 2002). Professor Mommsen started his career at Cologne as a historian, under the guid ance of Theodor Schieder. It could be said, that his real ability was shown in the field of modern German history, which he pursued in a wide international perspective. His Weber studies were also done under this historian's perspective, and were supported thoroughly by histori cal material evidence. Last, but not least, the reason why we Japanese scholars of humanities and social science remember him so clearly is because of his repeated visits to Japan! He visited many universities including Tokyo and Kyoto in the 1980s and 1990s, and gave so many impressive...

Max Weber's Liberalism

There are a variety of possible approaches to Weber's political thought. One can emphasize his class-conscious attack upon the new East Elbian agrarian capitalists, or his commitment to a politics of responsibility, in which the probable consequences of political proposals are explicitly assessed and announced. Wolfgang Mommsen has focused upon Weber's nationalism, almost to the exclusion of other aspects of his work. Jürgen Habermas has suggested that Weber tended to reduce ultimate value choices to essentially gratuitous, purely personal decisions. The emphasis in the present essay, however, is upon Weber's liberal pluralism, which anticipated a principled value pluralism, and which was a profound and persistent theme in his political commentaries.

Back to the Future? Integrating the press and media into the history of international relations

The following address, revised slightly here for publication, was delivered at an international conference to mark the retirement of Donald Cameron Watt from the Stevenson Chair of International History at the London School of Economics. Held in June 1993, the conference was entitled ‘Historians and Officials: the development of international history in Britain and the world’. As a measure of Professor Watt's standing, many distinguished historians from around the world attended to deliver papers, including Christopher Andrew, Peter Calvocoressi, Alexander O. Chubarian, Frank Eyck, John Fair, Lawrence Friedman, John Gaddis, Rene Girault, Jonathan Haslam, Peter Hennessy, Sir Michael Howard, Paul Gordon Lauren, William Roger Louis, Gordon Martel, Ernest R. May, Wolfgang Mommsen, Ennio di Nolfo, R. A. C. Parker, Philip Reynolds, Zara Steiner and John Young. Almost as a foretaste for Dr Taylor's opening remarks, his paper was introduced by a former senior Foreign Office official who questioned the relevance o...

Bismarck, Europe and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference, 1884–1885, and the Onset of Partition. Edited by Stig Forster, Wolfgang Mommsen and Ronald Robinson. London: Oxford University Press, for the German Historical Institute, 1988. Pp. xviii+569. £55.

Bismarck, Europe and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference, 1884–1885, and the Onset of Partition. Edited by Stig Forster, Wolfgang Mommsen and Ronald Robinson. London: Oxford University Press, for the German Historical Institute, 1988. Pp. xviii+569. £55. - Volume 33 Issue 2

Weber and Weimar: The ‘Reich President’ Proposals

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.

The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany 1880-1914, edited by Wolfgang Mommsen and Hans-G. Husung

<i>The Development of Trade Unionism in Great Britain and Germany 1880-1914</i>, edited by Wolfgang Mommsen and Hans-G. Husung