Max Weber: A Biography

Acknowledgements xii

Preface to the English Edition xiii

Abbreviations xviii

At the Den of the Sick Lion 1

Part I The Violation of Nature

1 Great Mother and Harsh Nature: A Precocious Youth on the Margins of Berlin 7

2 Max and Minimax: Blood Brothers and Drinking Companions – Surly Fraternity as a Primary Social Experience 25

3 From Father’s Boy to Mother’s Boy: A Comradely Marriage and the Day of Judgement for the Father 39

4 Antaeus, Antiquity and Agrarians: The Unshackling of Creativity through the Earthing of Culture 70

5 Eruptions from the Ice: Creativity as Natural Catastrophe 96

6 A ‘Gospel of Struggle’ and Old German Corpulence: From Lifestyle Crisis through Creativity Crisis to Existential Crisis 117

Part II Nature’s Revenge

7 The Demons: The Wildness of Nature and the Riddle of Sexuality 145

8 ‘A Sort of Spiritualistic Construction of the Modern Economy’: The Protestant Ethic and the Vain Quest for Redemption through the Spirit 179

9 South – North – West – East: Changing Attempts at Spiritual Conquest of the World 208

10 From the ‘Essay of Sighs’ to ‘Psychophysics’: the Seven-Year Fight with Naturalism against Naturalism 250

11 From the Eranos Circle to the ‘Erotic Movement’: New Roots and New Milieux 275

12 Max Weber’s Love–Hate for the Germans 316

Part III Salvation and Illumination

13 Value-Free Science, Love and Music 345

14 Charisma 390

15 The Naturalness of Community – The Disguised Naturalism in Economy and Society 405

16 From Deborah’s Song of Triumph to the ‘Titans of the Holy Curse’: Pacifist Herdsmen, Prophets and Pariahs – the Israelites 427

17 World War and Flight from the World 450

18 Great Speeches, the Great Love and Death 481

19 Epilogue: Powerplay and the Wrangling over Max Weber’s Spirit 551

Notes 572

Index 667