Who was Max Weber? Maximilian Karl Emil Weber He was born in the German city of Erfurt on April 21, 1864. He is considered an economist, philosopher, historian, jurist, political scientist and sociologiststanding out for this last facet.
The family atmosphere had a great influence on Weber’s interests and inclinations, which is why it largely marked the German’s biography. He grew up in a family with seven siblings, he being the oldest, his father was a jurist and politician belonging to the National Liberal Party and his mother a moderate Calvinist. She was about a bourgeois family whose house was visited by people from the academic and public spheres, and where economic, political and intellectual issues were regularly discussed.
Since his adolescence, this sociologist was already reading authors such as Kant, Schopenhauer, Homer or Spinoza. He studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Berlin and Göttingen. Another notable fact from Max Weber’s biography is that in 1882 he entered law at the university of heidelbergwhere he had his uncle Hermann Baumgarten, author of two works on Spanish history, as a teacher.
Later, in 1890, He obtained a doctorate in economic sciences with a thesis that obtained the grade of excellent. During this period he served intermittently in military service in Strasbourg and in 1888 he joined the Professional Association of German Economists, focused on the role of economics as a solution tool for social problems. In it, Weber was in charge of researching and writing about the migratory phenomenon in the process of industrialization, work for which he received great praise and established himself as an expert in agrarian economics.
In 1893 he married a distant relative, Marianne Schnitgera feminist and sociologist who researched the legal protection of women and gender equality through economic and educational independence, as well as played a fundamental role in compiling Weber’s writings once he died.
The following year, the couple moved to Freiburg, where they taught at the university. professor of political economy. Two years later he will continue teaching the same classes but at the University of Heidelberg.
1897 was a difficult year, as an important event occurred in the biography of Max Weber: his father dies two months after both had a strong argument that was not settled. This fact causes him states of nervousness and, so he ends up sinking into a melancholic state, which causes him great difficulties in completing their tasks as a teacher.
In 1898 he moved away from teaching and enter a sanatorium Until the following year, once he left this institution, he spent two years traveling with his wife. Upon his return he resigns from his position as a professor, he only practices this profession privately, and agrees to work as an editor in a social science archive.
In 1904 he traveled to the United States to participate in the Congress of Arts and Sciences, and it was between this year and the next when the most influential works begin to be published of this figure, with the publication of his key essay in 1905 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In 1912 he tried to found, without success, a left-wing political party between liberals and social democrats.
When the First World WarWeber serves for a time as director of nine Heidelberg army hospitals, is part of groups whose objective is to maintain German control in Belgium and Poland, is a member of the workers’ and soldiers’ council and works as a consultant to the German Armistice Commission , that negotiated the surrender of the country through the Treaty of Versailles, ending the war. This commission also assigned him to write the Weimar Constitution, in which he included article 48 that allowed the adoption of emergency measures and the promulgation of emergency decrees, since Weber feared the outbreak of the communist revolution in Germany. Finally, this article was used by Adolf Hitler to proclaim martial law and declare himself dictator.
Once the war was over, this sociologist resumes his position as a teacher, first at the University of Vienna and the following year at the University of Munich. At the University of Munich he promotes the first sociology institute at a university in the country. June 14, 1920 dies at the age of 56 due to pneumonia.
Image: signing of the Treaty of Versailles
The sociologist applied the methodology of sociology to fields such as politics, law, religion and economics. His thinking is characterized by being antipositivist, hermeneutic and idealist. This author’s objective was to understand the interrelation that occurs between the factors that contributed to the founding of the social structure, highlighting the role of cultural elements and collective mentality or ethics throughout history.
Weber highlighted rationalization as the key to the development of Western civilization. He identifies bureaucracy-based rationality as the driver of this process. Likewise, Weber considered that human behavior is guided and linked to culture and religion from the place of origin. From this thought, the Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracywhich establishes the conditions through which people who hold power legitimize their status of domination and how people submit to it.