Fate and Utopia in German Sociology provides a lucid introduction to a major sociological tradition in Western thought. It is an intellectual history of five scholars—Ferdinand Tönnies, Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, and Georg Lukács—who created modern German sociology over the course of fifty years, from 1870 to 1923. Liebersohn portrays his subjects as thinkers who were deeply immersed in the politics and poetry of their time, and whose sociology benefited in unexpected ways from sources as diverse as medieval mysticism and Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. He maps out their shared sociological discourse, shaped in response to the fragmentation they perceived in public life, in education and the arts, and in Protestant religious life. German sociology has generally been interpreted as having a tragic perspective on modern society (as implied by the pervasive idiom of "fate"); Liebersohn argues that this sense of fate was matched by an underlying utopian hope for an end to fragmentation, rooted for all of his subjects in the Lutheran idea of community.The book's five biographical chapters are structured to discuss ideas of community, society, and personality in the work of the individual discussed, while there is a general movement among the chapters from community to society to socialism. Many specific texts are discussed, and the overall orientation is one of intellectual history rather than sociological analysis.

"One of the most important works of German and European intellectual history published in years. . . . It will be welcomed by intellectual historians as a long overdue history of the multivalent reception and reworking of Nietzsche."—Jeffrey Herf, author of Reactionary Modernism

This is a translated edition of five of the nine papers and the responses presented at the first conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS) that was held in 1910. These are seminal contributions by some of the founders of classical German sociology and social theory, including Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tönnies, Ernst Troeltsch, and Werner Sombart. A substantial introduction discusses the lives and works of the five thinkers, placing them in the context of Germany in the early twentieth century and discussing their personal and societal connections. The papers, none of which has ever appeared in English, are a remarkable testament to the developing thought of key scholars. The year 1910 was a defining year for German sociology. There were still no sociology schools, departments, or even professorships, but a significant number of important thinkers had published crucial sociological works. Through such publications Ferdinand Tönnies, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, Werner Sombart and Ernst Troeltsch had founded considerable reputations, and by 1909 the first three had banded together with other scholars to form the DGS. The papers show German sociology at a decisive moment, when these thinkers were at their prime and were engaged in building a new society devoted to investigation of social reality based upon sound scholarly principles and free from biased social dogmatics. The topics continue to have relevance and the exchanges provide a lively dimension, one that is not found simply by reading the books of these five founders of sociological thinking.

This open access book traces the development of sociology in Germany from the late 19th century to the present day, providing a concise overview of the main actors, institutional processes, theories, methods, topics and controversies. Throughout the book, the author relates the disciplines history to its historical, economic, political and cultural contexts. The book begins with sociology in the German Reich, the Weimar Republic, National Socialism and exile, before exploring sociology after 1945 as a key discipline of the young Federal Republic of Germany, and reconstructing the periods from 1945 to 1968 and from 1968 to 1990. The final chapters are devoted to sociology in the German Democratic Republic and the period from 1990 to the present day. This work will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, and to a general readership interested in the history of Germany. Stephan Moebius is Professor of Sociological Theory and Intellectual History at the University of Graz, Austria.

A reassessment of the debate surrounding Weber's classic work Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

The Golem in German Social Theory provides an innovative and bold interpretation of German social theory. Authors Yair and Soyer argue that German scholars have been continually preoccupied with ancient, religiously-based myths that criticize the ideals of the enlightenment, exemplified by the 16th-century narrative of the Golem rising over its master.

Money is more than just a medium of financial exchange: across time and place, it has performed all sorts of cultural, political, and social functions. This volume traces money in German-speaking Europe from the late Renaissance until the close of the twentieth century, exploring how people have used it and endowed it with multiple meanings. The fascinating studies gathered here collectively demonstrate money’s vast symbolic and practical significance, from its place in debates about religion and the natural world to its central role in statecraft and the formation of national identity.