Abstract
At the Munich centennial celebration for Max Weber, Karl Loewenstein spoke of how as a young man in 1912 he first went to the Weber house on the Ziegelhauser Landstraße in Heidelberg (Loewenstein 1966). Despite having a letter of introduction, he was apprehensive about meeting the famous Weber—he knew that Marianne was one of the leading figures of the women’s movement and was supposedly beautiful; of Max he knew absolutely nothing! At the door Loewenstein was informed that Marianne was not at home, but that the Professor would most likely receive him. He recounted how Weber talked to him at length about the rational foundations of music and that as a result of this meeting he was changed for life. Max Weber tended to have this powerful effect on people, according to numerous authorities, including Marianne Weber.
One hundred years later, the situation is virtually the reverse—Max Weber is internationally famous whereas Marianne is recognized almost exclusively, first as the wife and then after 1920, as the widow of Max Weber. Based upon these changing perceptions of Marianne Weber, I have chosen to approach this new biography with two questions in mind: first, how well does the author discuss the relationship between Max and Marianne? Second, how well does she tell Marianne’s own story? This biography is highly successful in answering both questions.
Much of what Bärbel Meurer writes about the Webers’ life together is already known, if mainly from Marianne Weber’s own work Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild (Weber 1926). However, Meurer tells us much more. She tells us about Marianne’s life before Max, that her early years were marked by loneliness. Her mother died at age 22 after giving birth to Marianne’s sister—who also immediately died. Marianne’s father was grief-stricken and was either unable or unwilling to tend to Marianne. She was first entrusted into the care of a young aunt, but Marianne’s father developed a deep suspicion of her, so he then gave Marianne to his mother. Throughout her life Marianne had little contact with her father and most of it was unpleasant, and as a result, she grew up with her grandmother and an aunt. Marianne spent most of her time as a “happy street child” but she developed a severe cough which led to a life-long fight with asthma. As a 17-year-old she was sent to a girls’ boarding school; she studied French and English as well as piano and painting—but she had little connection to the school and was frequently homesick. Her life improved when at 21 she was invited to Berlin to stay with her relatives, Max Weber Sr. and his wife Helene. Max’s mother not only supported Marianne emotionally and intellectually but also helped Marianne to learn to stand on her own two feet. In Max Weber Marianne discussed Max’s relation with Emmy Baumgarten but remained rather quiet about her own romantic interests. Here Meurer writes of them and how Marianne and Max ended up marrying. Little is said about the years that the Webers spent at Freiburg or the first years at Heidelberg. Meurer offers a strikingly different take on Max’s breakdown and illness; she does not attribute it to Max’s fight with his father and his father’s subsequent death but instead hints that his mother was partly responsible by her continuous demands on her eldest child. More importantly, Meurer argues that Weber’s collapse was caused primarily by overwork and nervous exhaustion—in effect a “burn out” (p. 122). Weber continued throughout his life to suffer from excessive nervousness and to depend excessively on medications to help him relax and sleep. In her biography Marianne tended to minimize these concerns, instead she writes about their “new phases” and even entitles one chapter “The Beautiful Life.” In contrast, Meurer discusses Marianne’s continuing concern about both his physical and mental health and she frequently remarks on the toll that worry took on Marianne’s own fragile health. Max frequently suffered relapses and could not work; only in his last year was he able to work as he had at Freiburg. Meurer addresses the issue of sex—indicating that the marriage was consummated, and noting that the Webers often talked about having children. She also takes up the question of whether Max and Else Jaffé had sexual relations; she suggests that they did not but acknowledges that Max was extremely attracted to her, much to Marianne’s concern. These matters are open to conjecture; what is not is Meurer’s assessment regarding Marianne’s own work.
Beginning in 1895 Marianne attended lectures, one on Goethe and another on the history of philosophy by Heinrich Rickert. She also participated in one of his seminars as well as one by the philosopher Alois Riehl. While she did not encounter obvert obstacles, she suffered from a lack of support; even Max appeared envious of her studies and made cracks about sending her to the kitchen (p. 144), but Marianne did not learn to cook until the First World War. She continued attending lectures at Freiburg and then at Heidelberg—notably those by the philosopher Kuno Fischer and the church historian (and relative) Adolf Hausrath. After some difficulties with Rickert and with little support from Max she was able to complete her 1900 dissertation Fichtes Sozialismus und sein Verhältnis zur Marxschen Doktrin. This work seemed to attract little interest; Max’s ill health made it imperative that they spend more than a year in Italy. Her accounts of their trip to America in 1904 received quite a bit of attention—especially those relating to the differences between German and American women. She was impressed by the educational opportunities available to many American women that were either denied completely or severely restricted for German women. In 1907 Marianne published her Ehefrau und Mutter: In der Rechtsentwicklung, which as the subtitle indicates was an historical account of the development of women’s legal rights (Weber 1907). It was dedicated to Helene and indicated a debt to her husband; however, later she wrote that he had little impact on her book because of his illness (p. 243). It was a true scientific investigation and covered an enormous amount of historical material; it ended with a lengthy discussion of the marriage rights enshrined in the contemporary German law. There was some minor criticism but in general it was well received. In 1919 Marianne Weber published a collection of 15 essays, several of which first appeared in 1904. Some of these dealt with the problems of women’s education while others called for co-education, but her largest concern was with the problems and disadvantages for women within the institution of marriage. Marianne was quite aware that Max Sr. had taken full legal advantage of his wife’s substantial inheritance and she recognized the legal right that her own husband had to her own 1907 inheritance. She believed that it was imperative that women have control over their own income. She argued for freedom and equality for women, in matters of education as well as in marriage. Although she seemed personally opposed to both divorce and abortion she argued that women need to have access to both if necessary (Weber 1919).
Beginning with her time in Freiburg, Marianne was heavily involved in the practical aspects of the women’s movement. She worked tirelessly for the economic and legal rights of women and children. This occurred in various women’s organizations but especially in the German Women’s Association (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine) where she was a leading figure. She was also active in German politics—in 1919 she was elected as a member of the Baden government but resigned when Max accepted the position in Munich. After his death she became a member of the Heidelberg city council, a position she held until 1926. Unlike her husband, Marianne possessed the temperament and the patience to practice politics.
Marianne’s portrait of her husband ends with his death, but Meurer shows us that her life did not end with his. Granted, Marianne devoted the years after Max’s death to securing his legacy and that meant spending over a year editing her husband’s magnum opus Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. It also meant devoting most of the next several years to arranging and publishing the books that contain her husband’s articles. In 1926 she published her biography of her husband and later a volume of his early letters. In Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild she made it a point to remain in the background and to speak of herself in the third person (pp. 484–87). And, she made it a point not to complain about their life together or to talk about her subsequent life back in Heidelberg. It was there that Marianne finally adopted Lili’s four children. Max’s sister Lili lost her husband early in the war and struggled financially and emotionally to raise them. She committed suicide in 1919 because of her ill-fated relationship with a married man; Max and Marianne were committed to taking care of them, but those plans had to be postponed in part by Max’s death. Marianne gave the children as much support as she could and she was often worried about all of them. Her travels on the part of the women’s movement and her political work meant that she was frequently apart from them. She continued to enjoy recognition for both her efforts on behalf of her husband and her own work—she received an honorary doctorate for Ehefrau und Mutter. However, she lived without a pension and the severe inflation caused further financial difficulties. Later, she had great fears about National Socialism and she despised its ruthless persecution of Jews. Marianne suffered somewhat during the war and then more so after, as in the 1920s there were severe food shortages, little heat, and serious monetary fluctuations. She did not publish much but she did write two memoirs and she compiled a book about refugees, which finally appeared in 2005. Marianne Weber died in Heidelberg on March 12, 1954, having out-lived her husband by almost 34 years. In comparison with her husband, one could say that Marianne was more successful: not only did she publish more books but for decades she was highly regarded as a leader in the women’s movement and as a significant voice in the daily politics of Germany.
The book is not without problems, but they are mostly minimal omissions. Meurer tells of Marianne’s lifelong friendship with her “kindred spirit” Sophie Rickert but never explains the cause of the strained relationship with Sophie’s husband Heinrich (Marianne simply said that he was an “egoist”). She writes approvingly of Ernst Troeltsch but only hints at the basis for Marianne’s disapproval of his wife Marta. Meurer bluntly states that Karl Jaspers never understood Max and simply used him for Jaspers’ own purposes. She notes Marianne’s close friendship with Emil Lask and how his death at the front struck her as being totally senseless, but does not spend much time discussing Marianne’s relation to this complex philosopher. These are, however, minor problems.
Bärbel Meurer’s book is a welcome contribution to our understanding of Max Weber. She does not rehash old research, as Michael Sukale did in Max Weber: Leidenschaft und Disziplin (2002) nor does she engage in highly speculative psychology, as Joachim Radkau did in Max Weber: Die Leidenschaft des Denkens (2005). Instead, she gives a significantly new and rather impressive account of the Webers’ life together. More importantly, in Marianne Weber: Leben und Werke Meurer provides the reader a compelling account of Marianne Weber, not just as the wife and widow of Max, but as an original thinker, a true politician, and a passionate defender of women’s rights.