Max Weber

One of the founding fathers of sociology Max Weber was born on April 21, 1864 in Erfurt in Thuringia, Germany. He was the oldest of seven children of Max Weber Sr. and his wife Helene Fallenstein. His father was a prominent politician and politics was a major theme Weber was surrounded and grew up. From the early years Weber proved to be very intelligent. When he was only thirteen, as a Christmas present to parents, he wrote for them two historical essays.

Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg in 1882. As his father Weber's major field of study was a law, but he also attended lectures in economics and studied medieval history and theology. During this time he also served with the German army. In the fall of 1884 Weber become student at the University of Berlin and returned to his parents' home where he stayed for the next eight years. He was a junior barrister in Berlin courts, and later a Docent at the University of Berlin. In 1886 Weber passed German bar examination, called "Referendar". He continued his study of history and earned his doctorate in law in 1889 by preparing a doctoral dissertation on legal history entitled "The History of Medieval Business Organizations." At this time he started deliberations on contemporary social policies. He was also a part of group that pioneered large-scale statistical studies of economic problems. In the next two years he completed habilitation and become "Privatdozent" - this achievement qualified him to hold a German professorship. Weber married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger in 1893, who after his death in 1920 collected his works, which previously appeared only as articles in journals, and published them as books. Max with his wife moved to Freiburg where he was appointed professor of economics at Freiburg University in 1894. The same year his father died, only two months after an angry dispute between both of them. After this incident Weber's insomnia and nervousness progressed drastically. Because this nervous breakdown he was not able to teach anymore and resigned as a professor.

In 1904, Weber started work on the series of articles that were later published as his most famous book "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." This book laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cultures and religions on the development of economic systems. During the First World War, Weber was a director of the army hospitals in Heidelberg