German economist and social historian, was born April 21, 1864, in Erfurt, and educated at the universities of Heidelberg, Berlin, and Göttingen. Father was a government bureaucrat in the Legal department who craved material possessions and status.  Mother was a devout Calvinist.  The home was characterized with a great deal of religious and material tension.  As Runciman argues this dichotomy in the home had a profound influence on Weber.  In 1882 (at the age of 18) Weber studied at the University of Heidelberg. 

After three years of the university, Weber joined the military.  In 1884 he returned home to
 Berlin to study at the university.  He studied at Berlin for eight years eventually finishing his doctorate on Medieval trading companies.    His scholarly interests were wide—economics, history, psychology, sociology, law.

A jurist in Berlin (1893), he subsequently held professorships in economics at the universities of Freiburg (1894), Heidelberg (1897), and Munich (1919).

While working on his dissertation Weber developed a compuslive workaholism.  Father died in 1897 following a violent argument between them.  Weber has a nervous breakdown.  Weber was unable to work until 1902.    Recurring breakdowns occur throughout his life.  It took him over six years before he could function at a university again.

In 1904 Weber delivers papers in the U.S. and publishes many essays on religion, economy, and law.  From the period of 1902 until his death Weber published at an incredible rate.    Finally, he dies of influenza in Munich in 1920.

He was editor of the German sociological journal, for some years.

Challenged by the Marxist theory of economic determinism, Weber combined his interest in economics with sociology in an attempt to establish, through historical study, that historical causation was not influenced merely by economic considerations.

In one of his best-known works, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-05), he tried to prove that ethical and religious ideas were strong influences on the development of capitalism.

Weber’s inner tensions stemmed largely from the tangled web of his relations with his family, as well as from his attempts to escape from the stultifying political atmosphere of the Kaiser’s Germany in which he lived and worked.

His ambivalence toward authority in his personal life and his fascination with the topic in his writings, his double concern with rationality and with the ethic of responsibility, his attraction to innerworldly asceticism and his partial identification with the heroic life-styles of charismatic leaders

He studied drafts for a new German constitution – Weber lived through some of the most important events in the history of modern Germany.