![]() ![]() In his second year, he took time off to serve in the military, but found military life difficult. Marianne tells us he had no talent for saving money and would often ask for increases to his allowance. By all accounts he led an active social life in college, visiting other bourgeois families, drinking, fencing, and even dueling (from which he suffered a distinctive scar on his face for the rest of his life). He also took up fencing at his father’s fraternity house. At age 18, he enrolled at the University of Heidelberg, where he followed in his father’s footsteps by studying law. In 1882, Max earned his high school diploma and, according to his wife’s biography, “also helped his friends to cheat their way through.” His teachers, she claimed expressed some doubts about his moral maturity, finding him a troublesome if intelligent student. Max grew up in bourgeois comfort, in a home devoted to politics and intellectual pursuits. In fact, Weber’s younger brother, Alfred, would also become a sociologist. The Webers had been a prosperous family for many generations, making their money in the linen trade. Weber was the first of eight children, born to a wealthy statesman (Max Weber, Sr.) and his somewhat devout wife Helene (Fallenstein). Weber would also come to create a particular approach to sociological inquiry, more focused on interpretation and less focused on policy proposals than Durkheim’s. His most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, was a partial answer to that question. ![]() Weber spent his life in a rapidly industrializing and increasing militaristic Germany, living through the devastations of the first World War, and witnessing the rise of fascism during the early years of the Weimar Republic. Like many writers and thinkers of his day, he was interested in how this new industrial society came to be. Max, full name Maximilian Karl Emil, Weber was born in Erfurt, a bustling commercial city in what is now central Germany, on April 21, 1864. ![]()
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