History of the MWI

The Economics Seminar (1887–1923)

Max Weber succeeded Karl Knies, who, following the changes during the 19th century, had held the only remaining professorship for economics and finance at the Faculty of Philosophy at Heidelberg University. In connection with his appointment, Max Weber succeeded in establishing an economics seminar and creating a second professorship. Sociologically oriented dissertations were also written at his economics seminar, and the second professorship, for which he had to fight longer and to which he would have liked to appoint Werner Sombart, was finally filled in 1900 by the Japan expert Karl Rathgen. After Max Weber resigned from his professorship in 1903 due to illness, the cultural and economic historian Eberhard Gothein took his place.

 

 

The Institute for Social and Political Sciences (1924–1959)

Alfred Weber had a cultural sociological orientation and understood economics as part of the broader field of social and political sciences. Consequently, he worked to transform the economics seminar founded by his brother into an institute for social and political sciences (1924) and to expand the title of his professorship to include sociology (1926). This was the first time that the term sociology appeared formally at Heidelberg University.

In terms of content, sociology in Heidelberg had developed into an internationally recognised focus of sociological research, not least through the work of the two Webers, but also of Emil Lederer, who later became the first dean of the University in Exile in New York. Max Weber was considered the “myth of Heidelberg”, while Alfred Weber drove forward the institutional expansion.

Marianne Weber should also be mentioned in this context. After Max's death in 1920, she ensured that his work was preserved. During the Weimar Republic, the Institute for Social and Political Sciences became a renowned centre that attracted young scholars from Germany and abroad. Examples include Karl Mannheim, who laid the foundations for his sociology of knowledge here, and his colleague Norbert Elias, who later gained worldwide recognition with his study on the civilising process. Talcott Parsons, who came to Heidelberg as an exchange student and obtained his doctorate here, is also worth mentioning. He made Max Weber's work known in the Anglo-American world and himself rose to become one of the world's leading sociologists in the 1950s and 1960s.

The National Socialists' seizure of power also brought about a profound change in sociology in Heidelberg. Karl Mannheim and Emil Lederer, who had already left Heidelberg, were forced into exile abroad, while Alfred Weber went into internal exile after the famous flag dispute. It was Weber who revived sociology in its old form after the collapse of the Nazi regime, but without connecting to the international developments that had taken place in the field in the meantime. In 1948, in recognition of his incomparable work for Heidelberg University, the old Institute for Social and Political Sciences was renamed the Alfred Weber Institute for Social and Political Sciences.

 

 

 

The Institute of Sociology and Ethnology (1960–1976)

The reason for this new foundation was the appointment of Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann, who combined sociology with ethnology. Ernst Topitsch, a social philosopher who taught sociology primarily from this perspective, was appointed to the second professorship in 1962. Topitsch left the institute in 1969, and Mühlmann retired in 1970. Both were reactions to the virulent student movement in Heidelberg at the time.

The departure of the two professors led to a struggle to fill the two chairs, which lasted six years. Either the relevant committees could not agree on a list of candidates, or the candidates rejected the offers made to them. The attempt to find a successor for the combination of subjects represented by Mühlmann proved particularly difficult.

 

The Institute of Sociology (1977–2010)

In 1975, the institute itself was up for discussion. The then Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences made a final attempt that year to find a solution to the staffing issue. To this end, it drew on the expertise of the University of Mannheim, where an internationally compatible sociology programme had been established during the 1960s.

This marked the beginning of the third phase of sociology in Heidelberg. The attempt was successful, albeit only partially at first. In 1976, Wolfgang Schluchter took over one of the full professorships, but had to accept the cancellation of the second full professorship after the first candidate for the position declined. At his request, sociology was institutionally separated from ethnology in 1977 and the institute was renamed the Institute of Sociology. He finally succeeded in regaining the second professorship in 1979 and filling it with the prominent M. Rainer Lepsius. The name Max Weber was then added to the institute in 2011.

In fact, the new institute had meanwhile developed into a centre for Max Weber research. Schluchter succeeded in establishing a Max Weber visiting professorship, editing large parts of the Max Weber Complete Edition together with Lepsius, and designing and pursuing a Weberian research programme with him and a number of colleagues.

In addition, the new institute placed emphasis on the continuous expansion of areas of research and teaching.

From an institutional history perspective, the history of sociology in Heidelberg thus stretches from the founding of the Economics Seminar by Max Weber to the founding of the Institute for Social and Political Sciences by Alfred Weber and the founding of the Institute for Sociology and Ethnology by Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann to the founding of the Institute for Sociology by Wolfgang Schluchter.

 

The Max Weber Institute for Sociology (from 2011)

In 2009, the institute moved to Bergheimer Straße 58, the building that formerly housed the Krehl Clinic. In 2011, the Institute for Sociology was renamed the Max Weber Institute for Sociology (MWI).