The Unknown Max Weber - Hardcover

Honigsheim, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765800152 ISBN 13: 9780765800152

Publisher: Transaction Pub, 2000

Synopsis

Paul Honigsheim is unique. One of the select few who regularly participated in the Weber-Kreis in Heidelberg during the 1910s, Honigsheim's special place within Weber's world adds a degree of credibility to his writings matched by few others. In the late 1940s Honigsheim published four essays from what might be called Weber's "lost decade," the period during which Weber established his reputation in Germany as the most versatile and brilliant of the younger social scientists. Together in one volume for the first time, these essays reveal portions of Weber's work previously unavailable in English.

In the opening essay, "Max Weber as Rural Sociologist," Honigsheim treats Weber's essays on Russia, Poland, and other works in economic history. He offers a point of departure for those wishing to probe Weber's celebrated and misconstrued distaste for traditional Slavic social structure. In "Max Weber as Applied Anthropologist," Honigsheim examines Weber's commitment to the study of race, ethnicity, and nationalism as mediated by ethnic attachments, social policy formation, handicraft economies, and what he calls "Ethno-Politics." "Max Weber as Historian of Agriculture and Rural Life" is a masterpiece of exegesis and comparative inquiry. The final essay, "Max Weber: His Religious and Ethical Background and Development," acts as a minor corrective and addendum to Marianne Weber's biography. The book concludes with Honigsheim's reminiscences of the Weber circle.

Interest in the work and person of Max Weber grows with each year. From his writings the reader may glean the finer shades and contours of thoughts that arise from private exchanges between Honigsheim and Max Weber. This volume will interest a broad spectrum of social scientists.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Honigsheim studied at the Universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Heidelberg. An emigre from Germany, he joined the staff of the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University in 1938. He died in 1963.

Review

“Paul Honigsheim (1885-1963) is perhaps best known in the US for his contributions to the sociology of music. However, this volume of papers presents another side of the author--as student, colleague, and friend of German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920)... Sica sheds light on Weber as scientist and human being and on the first period of Weber's creativity, which Sica regards as Weber's "lost decade" because "only four essays have entered English language scholarship literally leaving 95 percent ... lost to our knowledge. . .." This work not only enriches our knowledge of Weber the scholar and further illumines his productivity, but brings readers into contact with a promethean figure in a way that might have been otherwise impossible. This volume is required reading, deserving of the widest possible dissemination, and is highly recommended for all libraries.” 

—L. Braude, Choice

“[A]ll of Honigsheim’s essays provide useful resources for contextualist historians of ideas because they situate Weber, both intellectually and personally, in terms of swarming and darting allusions to a host of mainly German scholars.”

—Ira J. Cohen, Contemporary Sociology

About this edition

• Publisher: Transaction Pub
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0765800152
• ISBN 13: 9780765800152
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 290
• Editor: Sica Alan