After 1900, a failure in both profession and
marriage, lacking financial independence and a secure residence, Max Weber was
thrown back into a state of mere existence, at first more physical than mental.
Whereas, in the early years of his professorship, he thought of himself as
singularly blessed by fortune, this belief now crumbled along with any faith in
a teleology of history. And, just as he had formerly preached a politics free
of illusions, now all the illusions he had about himself broke into pieces. Any
vanity or self-complacency went by the board, and with it not only a primary
source of professional glory but also a major factor impairing the creativity
of successful scholars. No longer capable of any personal narcissism, he felt
all the more disgusted by the narcissism of others: vanity became a reproach ever on his lips, whether referring to the
‘sexual vanity’ of men who unjustly discriminated against women, to the
‘compulsive self importance’ of fossilized professorial mandarins, or to the
pomposity of those ‘literati’ drunk with victory who, during the war, had not
wanted to abandon their ambitious war aims even when they had proved to be a
phantasm. In those days he praised the ‘nobility for not taking itself
seriously.’ If Walter Rathenau once called vanity the ‘progressive taxation of
the mind’- an inevitability that makes great minds unbearable to others- Max
Weber had the advantage after his illness that he was not subject to that kind
of self-depreciation.
From an early age Weber cultivated a sense of himself as an insider and held parvenus in contempt – a contempt that still rose in him in later life. He now experienced what it was like to be an outsider. Anyone who knows both situations is aware how different the world looks from each. Many insights are best gained from an external point of view. For his part, Weber was best able to grounds a new self-awareness on the ‘existential’ conviction that intensive experience of marginal situations was the way to deeper knowledge. Like Dante in the Divine Comedy, he could now feel that he was one with those who had ‘been through hell’: ‘lasciate ogni speranza’ had been one of his favorite quotations since he first used in 1895 in Freiburg.
At one point in Economy and Society, Weber asks the fundamental question how anything new can happen in the world where everything has been ‘regularized’. His first answer is, ‘through changes in the external conditions of life’, but he then realizes that this cannot be conclusive, since community might react to such changes by going into decline.
The evidence of ethnology seems rather to show that the most important source of innovation has been the influence of individuals who have experienced certain ‘abnormal’ states (which are frequently, but not always, regarded by present-day psychiatry as pathological) and hence have been capable of exercising a special influence on others.
Such influences are able to ‘overcome the inertia of the customary', while elsewhere pathological tendencies are seem as one of the attributes of charismatic figures. Now, there can be no doubt that Weber was capable, even exceptionally capable, of ‘abnormal states’. Between the lines of such passages, we recognize how he based his new self-awareness- a sense of having a special gift to point out new paths –on such ‘abnormality’. Not by accident did religion now become his most characteristic theme, although it is true that he had already inherited some interest in it from his mother. For sick people, religion has a quite different aspect from the one it has for anti-clerical warriors; people in distress think of religion as the best answer to man’s longing for redemption.
It would appear that, at least in the early years, Weber’s illness also marked his way of acting. During the 1920s – according to Helmt Fogt- his personality and life’s fortunes attracted ‘quite unusual’ attention, ‘much wider than was the case with his scholarly work. The publication of Marianne Weber’s biography in 1926 (together with no fewer than fifty-eight known reviews in the press) brought to a peak this interest in the gripping epic of a ‘descent into hell’ and the rebirth of a genius. It must have found many more readers than Max Weber’s writings, and indeed many of these were henceforth read with a side long glance at the biography.
Marianne’s book was remarkably indiscreet – at least for people in the know who understand the allusions. Otto Gradenwitz, a colleague of Weber’s at Heidelberg, sneered that the ‘historical value’ of Lebensbild came from the better understanding it gave us into the ‘too often misunderstood institution of widow-burning’ , but what he found offensive added to the appeal of the book that would dominate Weber biography for generations. A new rise after a crashing fall: this was precisely what many Germans dreamed of for themselves and their country; nothing else could have done more to paint Weber’s life as an enthralling myth. This was also the view of life held by many of the post-1933 German émigré who played a key role the worldwide spread of the Weber cult.
From an early age Weber cultivated a sense of himself as an insider and held parvenus in contempt – a contempt that still rose in him in later life. He now experienced what it was like to be an outsider. Anyone who knows both situations is aware how different the world looks from each. Many insights are best gained from an external point of view. For his part, Weber was best able to grounds a new self-awareness on the ‘existential’ conviction that intensive experience of marginal situations was the way to deeper knowledge. Like Dante in the Divine Comedy, he could now feel that he was one with those who had ‘been through hell’: ‘lasciate ogni speranza’ had been one of his favorite quotations since he first used in 1895 in Freiburg.
At one point in Economy and Society, Weber asks the fundamental question how anything new can happen in the world where everything has been ‘regularized’. His first answer is, ‘through changes in the external conditions of life’, but he then realizes that this cannot be conclusive, since community might react to such changes by going into decline.
The evidence of ethnology seems rather to show that the most important source of innovation has been the influence of individuals who have experienced certain ‘abnormal’ states (which are frequently, but not always, regarded by present-day psychiatry as pathological) and hence have been capable of exercising a special influence on others.
Such influences are able to ‘overcome the inertia of the customary', while elsewhere pathological tendencies are seem as one of the attributes of charismatic figures. Now, there can be no doubt that Weber was capable, even exceptionally capable, of ‘abnormal states’. Between the lines of such passages, we recognize how he based his new self-awareness- a sense of having a special gift to point out new paths –on such ‘abnormality’. Not by accident did religion now become his most characteristic theme, although it is true that he had already inherited some interest in it from his mother. For sick people, religion has a quite different aspect from the one it has for anti-clerical warriors; people in distress think of religion as the best answer to man’s longing for redemption.
It would appear that, at least in the early years, Weber’s illness also marked his way of acting. During the 1920s – according to Helmt Fogt- his personality and life’s fortunes attracted ‘quite unusual’ attention, ‘much wider than was the case with his scholarly work. The publication of Marianne Weber’s biography in 1926 (together with no fewer than fifty-eight known reviews in the press) brought to a peak this interest in the gripping epic of a ‘descent into hell’ and the rebirth of a genius. It must have found many more readers than Max Weber’s writings, and indeed many of these were henceforth read with a side long glance at the biography.
Marianne’s book was remarkably indiscreet – at least for people in the know who understand the allusions. Otto Gradenwitz, a colleague of Weber’s at Heidelberg, sneered that the ‘historical value’ of Lebensbild came from the better understanding it gave us into the ‘too often misunderstood institution of widow-burning’ , but what he found offensive added to the appeal of the book that would dominate Weber biography for generations. A new rise after a crashing fall: this was precisely what many Germans dreamed of for themselves and their country; nothing else could have done more to paint Weber’s life as an enthralling myth. This was also the view of life held by many of the post-1933 German émigré who played a key role the worldwide spread of the Weber cult.
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