Educated in law at the University of Heidelberg, Weber also took a firm interest in theology and economics. He served briefly in the German army before returning to his studies at the University of Berlin and the University of Goettingen. He worked as a junior barrister in Berlin until he passed his bar exam in 1886. In 1889 he received his doctorate in law. His interests also included sociology and in 1888 he had become a member of Verein fur Socialpolitik, a society of German economists who saw economics as the means to solve social problems. In 1890, Weber worked on research for the Verein which dealt with the influx of Polish farm workers into Germany and developed a reputation as an expert on agrarian issues. In 1894, he became professor of economics at Freiburg University and in 1896 moved to the University of Heidelberg. He suffered a mental breakdown in 1897, brought about by the death of his father, which kept him out of academic work until 1901. He became an associate editor of the Archives for Social Science and Social Welfare in 1903 and in 1904 visited the United States. In 1905, he published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which established his economic credentials internationally. During the First World War, Weber acted as the director of army hospitals in Heidelberg and also served as a consultant to the German Armistice Commission, assisting in the drafting of the Weimar Constitution. In 1918, he taught at the University of Vienna and in 1919 became the head of the institute of sociology at the University of Munich. That year he also became a founding member of the German Democratic Party. Weber died of pneumonia the following year. Among his other works were Roman Agrarian History (1891), The Objectivity of the Sociological and Social-Political Knowledge (1904), Economy and Society (1914), Politics as a Vocation (1918) and General Economic History (1923-posthumous). |
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