Abstract
Since the Napoleonic period, England had been for many German liberals the “older brother” who could show a way out of the confusions of French history and the frustrations of German history. After German unification in 1871, the number of liberal admirers gradually declined, until the stage was set for Germany’s fatal challenge to the British Empire.
In the text, PE refers to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner’s, 1958); MWGA refers to Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, Horst Baier, M. Rainer Lepsius, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Wolfgang Schluchter, and Johannes Winckelmann, eds. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1984–2020).
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Notes
- 1.
“By Herrenvolk we do not mean that ugly face of a parvenu which is drawn when some people’s [distorted) sense of national dignity lets that English turn-coat, Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, tell them and the nation what Deutschtum is” (MWGA, I/15, 594). Herrenvolk sounds ominous, especially if translated as “master race,” and “master people” too is awkward, as is any translation of German compounds with Herr in it. But Weber smuggled into a popular rhetoric debased by Social Darwinism and racism a mundane meaning: A Herrenvolk is an enfranchised citizenry that participates in shaping the nation’s fate. Therefore he demanded democratization so that Germany could “join the circle of the Herrenvölker” as a free and mature people (MWGA, 1/15, 727). The crucial point was that “only a Herrenvolk had the right to pursue world politics” (MWGA, 1/15, 396).
- 2.
For the Whig interpretation and its latter-day revision, see Peter Wende, Probleme der Englischen Revolution (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980), 41 ff. For a recent defensc of the older notions, see Christopher Hill, “The Place of the Seventeenth-Century Revolution in English History” (1988), in his A Nation of Change and Novelty (London: Routledge, 1990), 6–23.
Weber was familiar with the liberal reinterpretation of Oliver Cromwell. See Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Oliver Cromwell (London: Goupil, 1899; German ed. 1903). Cromwell had first been rehabilitated by Carlyle, who turned him into “the three-dimensional hero of nineteenth-century Nonconformity, and the spiritual ancestor (ironically, for Carlyle was a great anti-Liberal) of Victorian popular Liberalism. It is hard, at our distance from them, to comprehend the political passions that gave to events of the seventeenth century so profound and immediate a significance for the nineteenth ... In Manchester, the capital of industrial Liberalism, the erection in 1875 of the first Cromwellian statue in England caused a minor political sensation.” Blair Worden, “Rugged Outcast,” New York Review of Books, Nov. 15, 1974, 24. For the German interest in Carlyle and Whig historiography, see especially Weber’s Freiburg colleague, Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz, Zum sozialen Frieden. Eine Darstellung der sozialpolitischen Erziehung des englischen Volkes (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1890); on Carlyle, see 77–290; sec also idem., Carlyles Stellung zu Christentum und Revolution (Leipzig: Marquardt, 1891). Schulze-Gaevernitz repeats some of his favorite themes as late as his 1930 Swarthmore Lectures, Democracy and Religion. A Study of Quakerism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930).
- 3.
“The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 321.
- 4.
Letter of June 21, 1911, in Eduard Baumgarten, ed., Max Weber. Werk und Person (Tübingen: Mohr, 1964), 429.
- 5.
Letter of Jan. 12, 1905, quoted in Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics 1890–1920, tr. Michael Steinberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 392.
- 6.
Marianne Weber, Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung (1907; repr. ed. Aalen: Scientia, 1971), 290.
- 7.
Baumgarten, Max Weber. Paul Honigsheim remembers Weber exclaiming: “A people that has never beheaded its monarch is not a Kulturvolk”; note that Weber here speaks not of Herrenvolk but of Kulturvolk. See Honigsheim, On Max Weber, tr. Joan Rytina (New York: Free Press, 1968), 13 (tr. altered). At the moment of Imperial Germany’s collapse, Weber mitigated his formulation: “It has been beneficial to the self-esteem of every nation to have repudiated its legitimate powers at one time or another, even if they were recalled later by the grace of the people, as it happened in England” (MWGA, 1/16, 107). When William II fled from Berlin in early November 1918 to seek safety in his military headquarters in Belgium (before ending up in the Netherlands), Weber was immediately reminded of the flight of James II and of the opportunism of many members of Parliament. See Karl Loewenstein, “Persönliche Erinnerungen an Max Weber,” in Rene König and J. Winckelmann, eds., Max Weber zum Gedächtnis (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1963), 51.
- 8.
See the letter to Robert Michels, Aug. 16, 1908, Briefe 1906–1908, M. Rainer Lepsius and W. J. Mommsen, eds., with Birgit Rudhard and Manfred Schön, MWGA, 11/5, 641 ff.
- 9.
Georg Gottfried Gervinus, Einleitung in die Geschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Walter Boehlich, ed. (Frankfurt: Insel, 1967), 162, 165. See also, Gangolf Hübinger, Georg Gottfried Gervinus. Historisches Urteil und politische Kritik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984).
- 10.
Reinhard Lamer, Der englische Parlamentarismus in der deutschen politischen Theorie im Zeitalter Bismarcks, 1857–1890 (Lübeck: Matthiesen, 1963), 5.
- 11.
In 1894, a year after Baumgarten’s death, the right-wing historian Erich Marcks tried to sum up his alienated teacher’s political and religious ethos:
“His was a Protestantism, nourished by Lessing and Herder, that understood Christianity in historical terms and history as part of revelation. It was a Protestantism that expressed itself most sharply in struggle against Lutheran orthodoxy and especially Catholicism. On this score Baumgarten was ever more passionate. In his eyes this struggle was crucial for German existence. The whole intellectual history of modern times rested for him on the Protestant idea of the free, self-determined personality. The supreme duty consisted in protecting and enlarging this freedom. His admonition of his contemporaries and his historical sympathies – for Calvinism and political Protestantism as against North German Lutheranism – concerned the fructification of the inner life through the deed, through the political spirit. The challenge lay in uniting the peculiar interiority of our Protestant nature with the powers of the world In this regard the influence of Dahlmann and Duncker and, it must be conceded, of Gervinus too made a deep impact: The ethical element predominates in all of Baumgarten’s utterances, in his whole historical approach.”
Erich Marcks, biographical introduction to Hermann Baumgarten, Historische und politische Aufsätze und Reden (Strasbourg: Truebner, 1894), lxxxv.
Max Weber’s uncle Adolf Hausrath (1837–1909), who was married to Henriette Fallenstein, also was a church historian and shared with his brother-in-law Hermann Baumgarten a sympathy for Calvinism and the conviction that the Alsace would become genuinely German again. On Calvinism and the Jesuits, see his historical novel on sixteenth-century Heidelberg, Klytia, written under the English pseudonym George Taylor (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1883; 6th ed., 1894); it was twice published in German in the United States (1884, 1929) and twice translated (1883, 1884); on the Alsace, see “Die oberrheinische Bevölkerung in der deutschen Geschichte,” in Kleine Schriften religionsgeschichtlichen Inhalts (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1883), 301–328.
- 12.
Baumgarten, “Römische Triumphe,” 504 f.
- 13.
Ibid., 515 f.
- 14.
Ibid., 507.
- 15.
Ibid., 517 f. See also “Ignatius von Loyola,” 498 ff.
- 16.
Letter of Apr. 25, 1887, in Max Weber, Jugendbriefe (Tübingen: Mohr, 1936), 234.
- 17.
For a comprehensive treatment, see Charles E. McClelland, The German Historians and England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).
- 18.
Schulze-Gaevernitz, Zum sozialen Frieden (Leipzig: Drackert Humblot, 1890).
- 19.
See Kurt Zielenziger, Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz (Berlin: Prager, 1926), 7 f.
- 20.
Britischer Imperialismus und englischer Freihandel zu Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1906).
- 21.
MWGA, II/5, 236. Unfortunately, the letter breaks off at this point. Nevertheless, it is clear that Max objected mainly to the exaggeration, not the basic position, whereas Alfred seems to have had greater doubts. In the 1920 version of The Protestant Ethic, Weber refers to Schulze-Gaevernitz’s “beautiful book” – for him usually an adjective that combines praise with some reservation. For another comment see “Antikritisches Schlusswort” (1910) in Johannes Winckelmann, ed., Die protestantische Ethik II. Kritiken und Antikritiken (Gütersloh: Siebenstern, 1978), 327. In his necrology of Max Weber, Schulze-Gaevernitz continued to claim him for his own particular reading. He praised Weber’s critical attitude toward the shallow and vapid utilitarianism into which religious innerworldly asceticism had deteriorated, thus emptying the modem world of meaning. It appeared to him that Weber could maintain such a critical distance all the more easily because “Anglo-Saxon reserve (Gehaltenheit) was alien to his explosive nature. On British soil he would have been conceivable only with a strong admixture of Celtic blood.” Schulze-Gaevernitz lamented that “Weber’s extraordinary understanding of the Anglo-Saxon soul (Volksseele) was not utilized politically, neither before nor during the war. Weber understood what it meant to turn against us that religiously nourished idea of liberty, as it was done in England and even more in America. ... The benighted German government was blind before the light of his genius.” Schulze-Gaevernitz was not capable of facing up to the inherent limitations of his own program of displacing England for the betterment of world civilization. See Schulze-Gaevernitz, “Max Weber als Nationalökonom,” in König and Winckelmann, eds., Max Weber zum Gedächtnis, 56 f. See also Willy Schenk, Die deutsch-englische Rivalität vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg in der Sicht deutscher Historiker (Aarau: Keller, 1967), esp. 136 ff.
- 22.
The phrases can be found, for instance, in Weber’s public affirmation of the naval expansion program of 1898, reprinted in Gesammelte politische Schriften, 3rd ed., Joh. Winckelmann, ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1971), 30 f. On the contemporary meaning of Weber’s slogan, “Our responsibility before history,” and its outdatedness today, see my essay “Max Weber’s Ethics and the Peace Movement Today,” Theory and Society, 13 (1984): 491–511.
- 23.
Otto Baumgarten (1858–1934) also was an Anglophile with a high degree of personal engagement. In the early 1880s he married his cousin, Emily Fallenstein, the daughter of Ida’s half-brother, Otto Fallenstein, who had married an English woman. Emily grew up in England and Australia. Otto Baumgarten learned to speak English fluently and traveled to England before and during his brief marriage; Emily died in childbed with her son. Much concerned about the deteriorating relationship between England and Germany, Baumgarten wrote Carlyle und Goethe (Tübingen: Mohr, 1906) in order to “strengthen the spiritual bond between the two Germanic nations in spite of the increasing tensions” (2). He traveled to England on two ecclesiastic “peace missions” in 1908 and again in 1922. See also his autobiography, Meine Lebensgeschichte (Tübingen: Mohr, 1929), 57, 123, 240 f., 451 ff.
- 24.
Adolf Hausrath satirized his sisters-in-law Helene and Ida for judging people, especially tutors, in terms of their reactions to Channing in his novel Elfriede. A Romance of the Rhineland (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1888), 59, 251.
- 25.
Weber, “Die protestantische Ethik und der ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 21 (1905): 43.
- 26.
On the Congress, see Harry Liebersohn, Religion and Industrial Society: The Protestant Social Congress in Wilhelmine Germany. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 76, Part 6 (1986). It was from their inherited wealth that Ida Baumgarten and Helene Weber, the granddaughters of Carl Cornelius Souchay, financed Naumann’s candidacy for the Reichstag.
- 27.
Already as a fifteen-year-old he had seen his first exchange and port when he visited his uncle Otto Weber, a merchant in Hamburg. Somewhat precociously he reported to his cousin Fritz Baumgarten: “The life of such a seaport has its particular fascination for the layman. One sees how thousands of people work for one purpose. I also watched business being transacted on the floor of the exchange, and thus got a glimpse of the world of trade.” Letter of Oct. 1, 1879, Max Weber, Jugendbriefe, 28. Many years later, during their trip to America, Max and Marianne Weber visited the New York Stock Exchange. See Ernst Troeltsch’s letter of Sept. 3, 1904, quoted in Rollmann’s essay in this volume.
- 28.
Letter of Jan. 3, 1891, Jugendbriefe, 326. For an excerpt, see Marianne Weber, Max Weber, tr. Harry Zohn (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1988), 164.
- 29.
See Levin Goldschmidt, Handbuch des Handelsrechts, Vol. 1:1, Universalgeschichte des Handelsrechts (Erlangen: Enke, 1864); Vol. 1:2, Die Lehre von der Ware (1868). The second volume reads like a guide to the activities of the Souchay circle, involving securities, foreign exchange, liens, mortgages, purchase deeds, dead pledges, warehouse receipts, bills of freight, etc. Like Wilhelm Benecke (see footnote 45 of this essay), Goldschmidt also was an expert on maritime insurance. See Levin Goldschmidt, System des Handelsrechts, mit Einschluss des Wechsel-, See- und Versicherungsrechts, 2d ed. (Stuttgart: Enke, 1889).
- 30.
Letter of Oct. 7, 1896, in Baumgarten, ed., Max Weber, 330.
- 31.
Weber, “Die Börse” (1894–1896), reprinted in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (Tübingen: Mohr, 1924), 321.
- 32.
See Harry Liebersohn, Fate and Utopia in German Sociology. 1870–1923 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), 83; Arthur Mitzman, The Iron Cage. An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber (New York: Knopf, 1970), 18. See also similar remarks by M. Rainer Lepsius, “Die Bewohner des Hauses Ziegelhäuser Landstrasse 17 in Heidelberg” (Ms., 1989), 5 f. There is no doubt that the women remained more religious than the men, who often separated their personal faith from their business ethics. It seems to me, however, that there was an upsurge of ethical rigorism, rather than a mere continuation of a Huguenot/Reformed tradition, in the generation of Helene Weber and Ida Baumgarten. This is my reading of Otto Baumgarten’s account of the religious development of his mother, Ida, in her later years. Writing as a theologian, Baumgarten began his autobiography with a section on “Religious Huguenot Influences” and located his mother and Weber’s grandmother, Emilie, in the “old pastoral Souchay tradition.” See Baumgarten, Lebensgeschichte, 1–9. Although admitting the religious impact of David Friedrich Strauss’ radical rationalism within the Fallenstein family, he remained silent on the business side of the Souchay family and did not mention Emilie’s father, the cosmopolitan capitalist. Thus, Baumgarten may have construed a more consistent religious heritage than had in fact existed. A closer study of Marianne Weber would be needed to decide the extent to which she stylized the women’s ethical rigorism out of her own moralistic concerns and her own involvement with Max Weber’s mother. For a first effort, see my essay “Marianne Weber and Her Circle,” introduction to Marianne Weber, Max Weber, xv–Ix.
- 33.
Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 25.
- 34.
Ibid., 172. Weber attributed to his uncle sterling entrepreneurial qualities: “Only an unusually strong character would save an entrepreneur of this new type from the loss of his temperate self-control and from both moral and economic shipwreck … But these are ethical qualities of quite a different sort from those adapted to the traditionalism of the past” (PE 69). See also Weber’s letter of condolence on his uncle’s death, July 21, 1907, in Briefe, MWGA, II/5, 335 f.
- 35.
Peter Lundgreen, “Ferdinand Kaselowsky,” in Jürgen Kocka and Reinhard Vogelsang, eds., Bielefelder Unternehmer des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts, Rheinisch-Westfälische Wirtschaftsbiographien 14 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1990), 163–187.
- 36.
In 1842 Peter Beuth, the Prussian secretary of commerce, who promoted much foreign travel and sponsored Kaselowsky, wrote to Gustav Delius, who in the 1830s had the highest annual income in town: “As far as Bielefeld is concerned, I have often told you openly that the gentlemen there are merchants who rest on their laurels and money bags, but are not manufacturers.” Thus, for Beuth the problem was how to turn established merchants into technologically innovative manufacturers and how to change a mercantile spirit into an industrial one. Letter of Jan. 10, 1842, cited in Martin Schumacher, Auslandsreisen deutscher Unternehmer 1750–1851 (Cologne: Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, 1968), 218. See also Beuth’s critical letter of 1836, quoted in Karl Ditt, Industrialisierung, Arbeiterschaft und Arbeiterbewegung in Bielefeld 1850–1914 (Dortmund: Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, 1982), 16; on Delius, see 33 f. Ditt provides a detailed account of the outlook of the patrician linen merchants, including the Webers, and the pressure that ultimately resulted in mechanization despite much resistance.
- 37.
In Bielefeld the younger generation finally took the plunge after 1850. In 1852 the first mechanical spinning mill was indeed set up by parvenus, the Hungarian brothers Bozi, who suffered a perpetual capital shortage because of their outsider status. But two years later the young Hermann Delius fetched Kaselowsky, who had become one of the best linen industry experts, from Leeds and made him technical director and major shareholder of the much more successful Ravensberger Spinnerei, which used English machinery until 1902. Kaselowsky, the son of a shoemaker, became very rich and invested much of his wealth in what was considered the most beautiful mansion in Bielefeld, where he lived in grand style. Elected to the Prussian diet in 1877, he died before he could begin his term. Was Kaselowsky one of the parvenus whom Weber so berated for developing “feudal” tastes?
- 38.
His three younger brothers left the home territory for good. Otto (1829–1889) became a merchant and bill broker in Hamburg (see footnote 27 in this essay), Leopold (1833–1876) a well-to-do merchant in Manchester. The youngest, Max Weber’s father (born 1836), left the realm of commerce and became a lawyer, higher-ranking civil servant, and parliamentary deputy. He had, however, planned to spend several years abroad to gain practical experience, a plan that was upset when he met Helene Fallenstein. Through Uncle Leopold, Max Weber had three English cousins, who were slightly older than he. See the entry “Weber” in Edmund Strutz, ed., Deutsches Geschlechterbuch. Quellen deutscher bürgerlicher Geschlechter (Limburg: Starke, 1962).
- 39.
Marianne Weber, Lebenserinnerungen (Bremen: Storm, 1948), 11.
- 40.
See Die Verhandlungen des achten Evangelisch-sozialen Kongresses (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1897), 113.
- 41.
“Die Handelshochschulen” (1911), in Edward Shils, ed. and tr., Max Weber on Universities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 39.
- 42.
Since Marianne did not take an active part in running the enterprise, her role was more that of a capitalist rentier, a figure so often decried by Max Weber. For the Webers, the part ownership was welcome, because it improved their financial circumstances, which had become somewhat reduced after Max resigned his chair in 1903 for health reasons. About the financial arrangements, see the letter from Max to Marianne, Oerlinghausen, Sept. 3, 1907, in Briefe, MWGA, 11/5, 385 ff.
- 43.
While Alfred managed Helene’s money, Max was the real paterfamilias, making the financial decisions with Helene’s concurrence. See Briefe, MWGA, II/5, 36, 52 f., 263, 270, 277, 282 f., 304, 338, 385 f., 404, 420, 526, 682, 686.
- 44.
See Alexander Dietz, Frankfurter Handelsgeschichte, Vol. 4 (1925) (repr. Glashütten: Auvermann, 1973), 331. Dietz lists the great fortunes from 1556 to 1812 and includes the later Souchay figure because of its great size. This fortune amounted to about 300,000 lb sterling, a sum very large also by English standards. On the kind of trade conducted by the Souchays, see a study produced in Weber’s Heidelberg seminar, Hugo Kanter, Die Entwicklung des Handels mit gebrauchsfertigen Waren von der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts bis 1866 zu Frankfurt a. M. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1902); also see the Heidelberg dissertation by Veit Valentin, Politisches, geistiges und wirtschaftliches Leben in Frankfurt am Main vor dem Beginn der Revolution von 1848/49 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1907). On the general importance of Frankfurt, see the lively narrative by Werner Sombart, Die deutsche Volkswirtschaft im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Berlin: Bondi, 1903), esp. 225 ff. On the rise of international capital markets and the capital flight from the French Revolution that helped finance the British Industrial Revolution, see Larry Neal, The Rise of Financial Capitalism. International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). On the general role of the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie, see Charles A. Jones, International Business in the Nineteenth Century. The Rise and Fall of a Cosmopolitan Bourgeoisie (New York: New York University Press, 1987).
- 45.
His daughter Henriette’s future father-in-law was Wilhelm Benecke, an international authority on maritime insurance and risk ventures, matters especially critical during the Blockade. See Wilhelm Benecke, System des Assekuranz- und Bodmereiwesens, 4 vols. (Hamburg: Selbstverlag, 1805–1810); on the effects of the Continental Blockade, see the supplemental fifth volume (1821), 158 ff. For an English version of the widely translated work, see A Treatise on the Principles of Indemnity in Marine Insurance, Bottomry, and Respondentia (London: Baldwin, 1824).
- 46.
See Stanley Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain. From the Industrial Revolution to World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 91. An important source for the various partnerships of the Souchays, Schuncks, Beneckes, and related families is the fortyfive volumes of printed trade circulars from 1829 to 1934 in the Nottingham University Library (Brandt Collection). I am much obliged to Dr. Chapman for directing me to these and other materials.
- 47.
In contrast to Weber, Brentano had close academic connections with England, and he also encouraged his student Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz to go for extended stays and work in the British Museum. As a teenager (1861–1862), Brentano was sent by his very conservative and orthodox mother, perhaps by miscalculation, to his Irish brother-in-law Peter Le Page Renouf (1822–1897), who turned out to be one of the leading liberal Catholics in Great Britain. When Germany was unified under Prussian dominance in 1871, Brentano even thought of emigrating to England. At the time, as he recalled in his autobiography, “I remained in my heart an aggrieved Frankfurter.” See Lujo Brentano, Mein Leben im Kampf um die soziale Entwicklung Deutschlands (Jena: Fischer, 1931), 41; see also James J. Sheehan, The Career of Lujo Brentano (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 10, 24.
- 48.
Excursus III of Lujo Brentano, Die Anfänge des Kapitalismus (Munich: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1916), 122.
- 49.
Ibid., 133.
- 50.
Dietz, Frankfurter Handelsgeschichte, 240. In Mein Leben, 4 ff., Brentano reacted with some irritation to Dietz’s claim of the lowly origins of the Brentanos, but he admitted that some proofs of noble descent might be spurious, and for the rest he declared that he did not care one way or another.
- 51.
Dietz, Frankfurter Handelsgeschichte, 240. Efforts by the city government to expel the Italians failed completely, but the city managed to obstruct for many years an imperial rescript of 1706 that ordered it to make economic and political concessions. The Brentanos fought back by disregarding ordinances and court decisions and by recourse to legal subterfuges. The major one consisted in keeping the firm undivided upon the death of a formal head who had acquired a residency permit – a “green card,” so to speak – when in fact there was a constantly changing number of secret associates. Profits were distributed on a discretionary basis by the patriarchal head of the family firm. The breakthrough came with Peter Anton Brentano, born in Tremezzo in 1735, who gained Frankfurt citizenship through marriage in 1762, set up his own firm in 1771, and was rich enough by 1785 to hand his business over to his son Franz and become financial counsellor and tax administrator for the Elector of Trier. He died a millionaire (in florins) about 1800. The family had “arrived.” Among the thirteen surviving children, who shared in the inheritance, two became famous in the history of German literature: Bettina and Clemens Brentano. A sister, Kunigunde, married the renowned jurist and later Prussian minister of justice, Friedrich von Savigny, and a brother, Christian, was Lujo Brentano’s father. Christian became a close friend and fellow student of Henry Crabb Robinson; see footnote 55 in this essay. In his critique of The Protestant Ethic, Brentano pointed out that since Weber had drawn on his entrepreneurial ancestors, “I may perhaps be permitted to do the same” (133). Just as Weber had portrayed his uncle Karl David, so Brentano eulogized his uncle Franz, who had continued the paternal firm as a banking house until the 1840s. Brentano, Die Anfänge des Kapitalismus, 134.
- 52.
See the comprehensive treatment by Jürgen Kocka, “Familie, Unternehmer und Kapitalismus. An Beispielen aus der frühen deutschen Industrialisierung,” Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 24 (1979): 99–135. Kocka deals with many families, but not the Souchay clan or the Bielefeld Weber family. Hence, the following information supplements Kocka’s larger analysis.
- 53.
In 1900, Edgar Jaffé, whose family fortune was also made in Manchester (and who used it to buy the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik for Weber and to build a villa for his wife, Else von Richthofen, in Heidelberg), sketched the historical development of the German merchant’s relationship to the Lancashire textile industry: “Die englische Baumwollindustrie und die Organisation des Exporthandels,” Schmollers Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung 24 (1900): 193–217, esp. 200. Among several nationalities, French, Greek, Armenian, Danish, and Dutch in particular, German firms predominated. “In volume and number,” Jaffé pointed out,
“the German houses rank first, but we must emphasize that in spite of their German origin and even though some of the owners were still born in Germany, they mostly do not consider themselves German. By inclination and citizenship most of them have become English, and this is true of them much more than of the members of other nations. Thus, the German firms have been most intimately linked with the flourishing of the textile exports. A very prominent role was played by a firm that was established early in this century and owed the foundation of its enormous wealth to the profits from the days of the Continental Blockade. The story has it that the first owner was quite satisfied if one of the five ships that tried to run the blockade from Helgoland in his behalf managed to get through. The profits from one ship easily outweighed the losses of the other.” (p. 200).
If Jaffé did not have Souchay in mind, he came pretty close to his case. During the Napoleonic period, English wares were acquired very cheaply at distress sales and auctions, since the Blockade forced many manufacturers and traders into selling below cost or into outright bankruptcy. Even during the Blockade (1806–1813) there were some 20 German firms in Manchester; they numbered 28 by 1820, 84 by 1840, and 118 by 1861. See Otto Ernst Krawehl, Hamburgs Schiffs- und Warenverkehr mit England und den englischen Kolonien 1814–1860 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1977), 258 f., 495. Krawehl mentions Schunck, Souchay & Co. (495).
Only recently has significant progress been made toward a history of the textile exporters and merchant bankers, although Edgar Jaffé’s Heidelberg dissertation was a significant early treatment of the merchant bankers, Das englische Bankwesen (Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 1904). See Stanley Chapman, The Rise of Merchant Banking (London: Allen and Unwin, 1984); on the Souchay firm, see 11, 13, 139 f., 151; for an older overview, see idem., The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1972).
- 54.
See Emilie Fallenstein (anonymous), Erinnerungsblätter an meine Kindheit und Jugend. Für meine Kinder aufgezeichnet in den Winterabenden 1872–1875 (Stuttgart: Guttenberg, 1882); Henriette Benecke (anonymous), Alte Geschichten (Heidelberg: Avenarius, n.d.), written in 1865; 2d ed., Denmark Hill (London, 1872). Beyond the anecdotal genealogical information contained in the two memoirs, I have relied on Otto Döhner, Das Hugenottengeschlecht Souchay de la Duboissière und seine Nachkommen, Vol. 19, Deutsches Familienarchiv (Neustadt: Degener, 1961). A brother of Emilie and Henriette, Johann Souchay, wrote “Familienaufzeichnungen,” but their whereabouts are unknown to me. The two sisters wrote their memoirs shortly after bereavements, Henriette after her husband’s death and Emilie after the death, in quick succession, of her three stalwart brothers.
- 55.
See Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, 3 vols., Thomas Sadler, ed. (Boston: Fields, 1869); Edith Morley, ed., Crabb Robinson in Germany 1800–1805. Extracts from His Correspondence (London: Oxford University Press, 1929); Hertha Marquardt, ed., Henry Crabb Robinson und seine deutschen Freunde. Brücke zwischen England und Deutschland im Zeitalter der Romantik. Nach Briefen, Tagebüchern und anderen Aufzeichnungen, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1964 and 1967). On June 30, 1866, the ninety-one-year-old Robinson wrote to Nanny Mylius Schunck after reading Henriette’s memoirs:"
“It is a singular circumstance, that my life, insignificant as it has been, and my qualities, altogether inferior to those of the Schunck-Mylius connection, have nevertheless had, on one occasion, an important influence on the affairs of the family. I had the satisfaction to know that influence had been exercised usefully and happily. I propose, one of these days, to draw up a short narrative of my German life. It will be, in the first place, connected with Mrs. William Benecke’s narrative, which I have read with interest. The more, perhaps, because I could connect with Mrs. William Benecke’s history other facts within my own knowledge, and in which I was an agent, which would modify the consequences drawn from those.“ (Diary, Reminiscences, 496 f.). Robinson died soon afterward. It took a century before Hertha Marquardt reconstructed the story of the families involved and discovered what Robinson was alluding to.
- 56.
Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 8.
- 57.
Benecke, Alte Geschichten, 53.
- 58.
Ibid., 54; Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 8.
- 59.
Benecke, Alte Geschichten, 129; Fallenstein, Erinnerungsblätter, 3.
- 60.
Fallenstein, Erinnerungsblätter, 15.
- 61.
Ibid., 29 f.
- 62.
Benecke, Alte Geschichten, 46 f.; Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 8. A tinge of Marianne’s nationalist sentiment is revealed in the curious observation that Helene Schunck was “of entirely German descent” and that therefore “the grace and noble beauty of Max Weber’s mother … were more a German than a French heritage.” Why would she care?
- 63.
Reminiscences (Ms. I, 148), cited in Marquardt, Henry Crabb Robinson, 27. Robinson’s initial judgment makes all the more poignant his observations on her gradual aging and her final thirteen-year struggle against ever more crippling strokes.
- 64.
Marquardt, Henry Crabb Robinson, 88. Many letters from the Souchay circle lie today in the Robinson Collection of the famed interdenominational library, “Dr. Williams’s Trust,” in London.
- 65.
Next to unpublished musings on the philosophy of religion, Wilhelm Benecke published his commentary, Der Brief Pauli an die Römer (Heidelberg: Winter, 1831), tr. by his son Friedrich Wilhelm Benecke, An Exposition of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (London: Longman, 1854). [Not available to me was Grundzüge der Wahrheit (Berlin: Nicolai, 1838). As a young woman, Emilie Souchay was excluded from the regular discussions with Wilhelm Benecke in the London home of Heinrich and Elise Schunck because she was considered “too young to understand the latitudinarian (frei-religiös) tendency of the work.” See Fallenstein, Erinnerungsblätter, 14. See also Wilhelm Benecke, Lebensskizze und Briefe als Ms. gedruckt, 2 vols. (Dresden, 1850).
- 66.
Fallenstein, Erinnerungsblätter, 32; Benecke, Alte Geschichten, 54.
- 67.
Benecke, Alte Geschichten, 49. As the only son of a well-to-do pastor, Carl Cornelius was, of course, not really a “self-made man.” Through his mother, Lily Baumhauer, he seems to have inherited or acquired his large residence and warehouse, Am Fahrtor, near the Main River.
- 68.
Fallenstein, Erinnerungsblätter, 124.
- 69.
Benecke, Alte Geschichten, 92.
- 70.
Fallenstein, Erinnerungsblätter, 102. Emilie Fallenstein’s own Anglophile judgment, expressed as late as the 1870s, emphasized ethical aspects: “The more time passes, the more I have come to the conviction that in terms of duty, faithfulness, and self-sacrifice in those regards in which it furthers the good, the English nation stands higher than any other, even the Prussians not excepted” (110).
- 71.
Morley, ed., Crabb Robinson in Germany, 126.
- 72.
Marquardt, Henry Crabb Robinson, II:20.
- 73.
Ibid., II:43 ff. In later years, it turned out that Jonas Mylius in Hamburg, a brother of Heinrich and Nanny Mylius, also had a mistress and children whom he wanted to legitimate.
- 74.
Marquardt, Henry Crabb Robinson, 1:74.
- 75.
Beyond this network of in-laws, Souchay cooperated closely with the Milano firm of the elder Heinrich Mylius, who began at age nineteen as a traveling salesman and died as a very rich banker. In England, Souchay was in partnership with the son of Johann Jakob Mylius, the younger Heinrich Mylius (1792–1862). The younger Heinrich became a naturalized citizen as head of the London house, from which he is said to have retired with 160,000 lb. His brother Carl, who had grown up in the Aldebert household, also was a Souchay partner, but their brother Georg Melchior (1795–1857) joined the firm Enrico Mylius in Milan. At his death he left behind 400,000 lb, which seem to have passed into the hands of the younger Heinrich Mylius. Some of the figures provided here come from Robinson, who in turn got much of his information from Souchay’s son-in-law Friedrich Wilhelm Benecke. Another important source is the wills, which I consulted at the Principal Registry at Somerset House in London.
- 76.
See Robert H. Kargon, Science in Victorian Manchester. Enterprise and Expertise (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 95–101 and passim. Henry Edward Schunck left about 150,000 lb as late as 1903.
- 77.
See Eduard Franz Souchay, Geschichte der deutschen Monarchie von ihrer Erhebung bis zu ihrem Verfall (Frankfurt: Sauerlander, 1861–1862). See the review by Gustav Freytag, reprinted in Vermischte Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1848 bis 1894 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1903), 137ff.
- 78.
On Eduard Souchay and the decline of Frankfurt, sec Richard Schwemer, Geschichte der Freien Stadt Frankfurt (1814–1866), 3 vols. (Frankfurt: Baer, 1910–1918), and Helmut Böhme, Frankfurt und Hamburg. Des Deutschen Reiches Silber- und Goldloch und die allerenglischste Stadt des Kontinents (Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1968); much material on Souchay is also contained in Franz Lerner, Bürgersinn und Bürgertat. Geschichte der Frankfurter Polytechnischen Gesellschaft 1816–1966 (Frankfurt: Kramer, 1966). On the retreat of Frankfurt patricians, see the letter of Karl Mendelssohn Bartholdy to Alexander Freiherr von Bernus, Berlin, Oct. 19, 1868, in Felix Gilbert, ed., Bankiers, Künstler und Gelehrte. Unveröffentlichte Briefe der Familie Mendelssohn (Tübingen: Mohr, 1975), 199ff. On the emigration of businessmen to England, see Chapman, The Rise of Merchant Banking, 136.
- 79.
The Italian firm Enrico Mylius also continued to flourish. Much of its wealth ultimately flowed back to Frankfurt to shore up its cultural status. The famous Senckenburg Museum was endowed with bequests from Heinrich Mylius, who lost his acquisitive drive when his only son died. The museum was built by the architect Carl Jonas Mylius (1839–1883), a son of Carl Mylius.
- 80.
When Cecilia’s sister Julie married Julius Schunck in Leipzig in 1839, the famous “Wedding March” was supposedly played for the first time. For an account from the Mendelssohn side, see Sebastian Hensel, Die Familie Mendelssohn 1727 bis 1847. Nach Briefen und Tagebüchern (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1921).
- 81.
Letter of Jan. 30, 1867, in Eduard Tempeltey, ed., Gustav Freytag und Herzog Ernst von Coburg im Briefwechsel 1853 bis 1893 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1904), 215. If the currency unit referred to was the Prussian taler (dollar), the sum appears to me exaggerated. The occasion was Freytag’s victory over Lucius in gaining the Liberal nomination for the new North German diet.
- 82.
See Freiherr Lucius von Ballhausen, Bismarck-Erinnerungen (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1921).
- 83.
Weber, Jugendbriefe, 292.
- 84.
By contrast, Lucius von Stödten’s English cousin Ida Benecke (1851–1934) was a feminist and socialist.
- 85.
Quoted in Katharina Trutz, “Sebastian Lucius,” Mitteldeutsche Lebensbilder, Vol. 3, n.d. (before 1938), 368, 365.
- 86.
See Selbstbiographie des Staatsministers Freiherrn Lucius von Ballhausen (privately printed in 1922). This short autobiography was apparently written in connection with the Bismarck Erinnerungen. A copy is in the Deutsche Bibliothek in Leipzig.
- 87.
See the privately published family history, Die Erfurter Familie Sebastian Lucius (Berlin 1894). On the dominance of the Lucius family in Erfurt and its influential political role in Prussia during the Kaiserreich, see Willibald Gutsche, “Die Veränderungen in der Wirtschaftsstruktur und der Differenzierungsprozess innerhalb des Bürgertums der Stadt Erfurt in den ersten Jahren der Herrschaft des Imperialismus,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte 10 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1974), 362 ff. I thank Hubert and Ulrike Treiber for procuring these materials from Erfurt.
- 88.
At their elegant home in London-Lambeth, Marie and Viktor Benecke assembled musicians, writers, actors, and painters. See the vivid description by the banker Franz Mendelssohn in a letter of July 2, 1883 in Gilbert, ed., Bankiers, Künstler und Gelehrte, 229 ff. Marie’s brother Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who had been apprenticed to Schunck & Co. in Leipzig from 1857 to 1859, became a founder (1867) and first director general of Aktiengesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation (AGFA), just as the Erfurt Lucius family cofounded Meister Lucius & Co., known today as Hoechst. (In 1925 the two chemical enterprises were combined into IG Farben.)
- 89.
See Chapman, The Rise of Merchant Banking, 151.
- 90.
Only when she described the second trip in August and September 1895 at great length did Marianne mention in one sentence that “the couple whizzed over the asphalt of London in dainty-two-wheel ‘hackneys’ in order to say a quick hello to the historical sites with which they had become acquainted on their first trip together.” Marianne Weber, Max Weber, 207. More research is needed on this score. It turns out that Ida Baumgarten and her ailing daughter Emmy, who was considered “promised” to her cousin Max Weber, visited the English relatives as late as the summer of 1888: Marie and Viktor Benecke, Henriette Souchay Benecke, and Alfred and Adelheid Souchay Benecke. I thank Dr. Max Weber-Schäfer for giving me access to Ida’s letters.
- 91.
Ibid.
- 92.
Ibid., 495.
- 93.
Marquardt, Henry Crabb Robinson, 11:479.
- 94.
“Die ländliche Arbeitsverfassung,” reprinted in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tübingen: Mohr, 1924), 468.
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Roth, G. (2021). Weber the Would-Be Englishman: Anglophilia and Family History. In: Sigmund, S. (eds) Kapitalismus, Herrschaft und Max Weber. Ausgewählte Aufsätze. Studien zum Weber-Paradigma. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-33939-5_13
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