Alfred weber biography

By Eberhard Demm

Summary

As an adviser in the imperial office of the treasury (), the Heidelberg economist Alfred Weber helped establish Poland and Lithuania as satellite states under the hegemony of the German Reich (Mitteleuropa).

During the Weimar Republic, he fought against communists and Nazis and engaged in favour of democratic values.

Alfred weber biography With his cultural sociology, Weber separated himself from Marxism, which focused on social processes and which saw civilization and the cultural process as exclusive reflexes. The task of this association and of its official newspaper, Das Neue Litauen DNL , was to win over public opinion in Germany and Lithuania for the establishment of a Lithuanian state under German control. In the case of the primary high cultures it is already striking that a kind of answer is found here, which leads to a cultural stagnation and an entrenched social form of a writer shift. Greek pessimism "stands in glaring contradiction to the bright serenity of the magically-filled cosmos of the Chinese and the grandiose metacosmic, transcending all that is temporal and spatial, that the highest Indians attained—both views of existence nearly unchanged through millennia that from their point of view left behind or dissolved the ephemeral tragedy of human existence.

After , he strove for the re-democratisation, re-unification and neutralization of Germany.

Before the War

After studying political economy at the University of Berlin, Alfred Weber () was appointed professor at the German University of Prague in Three years later, he left for the University of Heidelberg and in published his major economics work Standort der Industrien, Teil I.

Reine Theorie des Standorts (“Theory of the Location of Industries”).

Propagating Mitteleuropa

In August , he voluntarily enlisted and, until May , served as an officer at the Alsatian front. During this time, he published the propaganda brochure Gedanken zur deutschen Sendung (“Thoughts on the German Mission”) which focused upon Germany’s geographical and strategic position after the war.

He also circulated a war aims memorandum that proposed the creation of Mitteleuropa, a vast federation of semi-independent states under German hegemony, which would stretch from western Russia to the Balkans.

Realizing Mitteleuropa

In May , he became an adviser in the office of the treasury, where he was engaged in the development of German Ostpolitik.

In cooperation with the German-Baltic baron Friedrich von der Ropp (), leader of the Liga der Fremdvölker Rußlands (League of Alien Peoples of Russia), he gained the support of Polish and Lithuanian activists as well as German politicians for the establishment of Poland and Lithuania as German satellite states.

On 30 November , together with Ropp, Matthias Erzberger (), Reichstag deputy of the Catholic Centre Party, and various other influential Germans, he founded the Deutsch-Litauische Gesellschaft (German-Lithuanian Society).

Alfred weber biography wikipedia The insertion of the paternal master nomads into the maternal primitive societies evokes all those tensions that lead people to cultural questions and answers, Weber writes: "Wherever man cannot or will not see and bear his darkness as an inescapable part of himself, even if one cannot accept it unchanged, they intervene, either by trying to control it through obedient submission to the cosmos, through contemplative mortification in knowledge, or by throwing away existence by fighting with that radical evil. He also circulated a war aims memorandum that proposed the creation of Mitteleuropa , a vast federation of semi-independent states under German hegemony, which would stretch from western Russia to the Balkans. The total process is a dynamic that knows no repetition, no complete law of moderation, which leaves room to chance, to the role of the will of grown-ups. Having fought against Nazism for years, he lived in complete isolation after his retirement and kept on writing.

The task of this association and of its official newspaper, Das Neue Litauen (DNL), was to win over public opinion in Germany and Lithuania for the establishment of a Lithuanian state under German control. Through his personal contacts and in articles in DNL, Weber emphasized the advantages of creating a satellite Lithuania against the opposition of German annexationists like Erich Ludendorff () and Lithuanian left wing politicians like Steponas Kairys ().

Finally, under German pressure, the opposition in Lithuania was forced to acquiesce, and on 3 March , a semi-independent Lithuanian state with close ties to Germany was proclaimed.

Mitteleuropa in Danger

On 29 November , Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, Marquess of Lansdowne (), leader of the conservative opposition in the British parliament, published a dramatic appeal against the prolongation of the war, which also asked the government to encourage the German peace party.

Only Crown Prince Max von Baden (), president of the first chamber of Baden, indirectly replied to Lansdowne in a speech on 14 December by pointing to currents in Britain striving for a negotiated peace. Subsequently, a group of liberal publicists, among them Alfred Weber, organized a public campaign in favour of a separate peace with Britain.

Alfred weber exopolitics Map 4. This time can then be subdivided into three periods:. Most importantly, Alfred Weber is known for his work on the relationship between economic activity and culture, and for his concept of "cultural distance," which refers to the degree to which different societies or cultural groups are similar or different in terms of their economic and cultural practices. Elias, N.

Weber authored a memorandum for General Erich Ludendorff, Germany’s most important military and political leader at that time, asking him not to jeopardize the realization of Mitteleuropa with an uncertain offensive, but to permit peace negotiations with Great Britain. Ludendorff flatly refused, despite two interventions from Prince Max.

After the War

After a short engagement as co-founder and provisory president of the liberal Deutsche Demokratische Partei (German Democratic Party) at the end of and a fight against the Spartacus insurrection in January , he resumed his courses at the University of Heidelberg and, in speeches and articles, warned against the coming Nazi dictatorship.

In protest against Adolf Hitler () take-over in March , Weber retired prematurely, published his main sociological work Kulturgeschichte als Kultursoziologie (Cultural History as Cultural Sociology) abroad and, in , joined a local resistance movement. After , he contributed to the establishment of a democracy in Germany. His political efforts to prevent the partition of Germany and to re-unify it as a neutralized state failed.

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Eberhard Demm, University of Stendhal-Grenoble III