Max Weber: A Biography

Max Weber (1864-1920) is recognized throughout the world as themost important classic thinker in the social sciences - there issimply no one in the history of the social sciences who has beenmore influential. The affinity between capitalism andprotestantism, the religious origins of the Western world, theforce of charisma in religion as well as in politics, theall-embracing process of rationalization and the bureaucratic priceof progress, the role of legitimacy and of violence as offspringsof leadership, the 'disenchantment' of the modern world togetherwith the never-ending power of religion, the antagonistic relationbetween intellectualism and eroticism: all these are key conceptswhich attest to the enduring fascination of Weber's thinking.
The tremendous influence exerted by Max Weber was due not only tothe power of his ideas but also to the fact that behind histheories one perceived a man with a marked character and a tragicdestiny. However, for nearly 80 years, our understanding of thelife of Max Weber was dominated by the biography published in 1926by his widow, Marianne Weber. The lack of a great Weber biographywas one of the strangest and most glaring gaps in the literature ofthe social sciences. For various reasons the task was difficult
time and again, attempts to write a new biography of Max Weberended in failure.
When Joachim Radkau's biography appeared in Germany in 2005 itcaused a sensation. Based on an abundance of previously unknownsources and richly embedded in the German history of the time, thisis the first fully comprehensive biography of Max Weber ever toappear. Radkau brings out, in a way that no one has ever donebefore, the intimate interrelations between Weber's thought and hislife experience. He presents detailed revelations about the greatenigmas of Weber's life: his suffering and erotic experiences, hisfears and his desires, his creative power and his methods of workas well as his religious experience and his relation to nature andto death. By understanding the great drama of his life, we discovera new Max Weber, until now unknown in many respects, and, at thesame time, we gain a new appreciation of his work.

Joachim Radkau, born in 1943, is Professor of Modern History at theBielefeld University, Germany. His interest in Max Weber dates backnearly forty years when he worked together with the German-Americanhistorian George W. F. Hallgarten (Washington), a refugee who leftGermany in 1933 and who, as a student, listened to Weber's lastlecture in summer 1920. Radkau's main works include Die deutscheEmigration in den USA (1971)
Deutsche Industrie und Politik(together with G. W. F. Hallgarten, 1974), Aufstieg und Krise derdeutschen Atomwirtschaft (1983), Technik in Deutschland (1989), DasZeitalter der Nervositat (1998), Natur und Macht: EineWeltgeschichte der Umwelt (2000).