ABSTRACT
Werner Sombart, economist, sociologist and German ideologist, is perhaps best known for his work on modern capitalism, the two editions and several parts of which were published between 1900 and 1930. 1 In the context of this work on the evolution and sources of the capitalist system, his ideas are eminently comparable with those of his contemporary Max Weber. Both born in the mid-1860s, they earned their ideological spurs in the 'Richtungskampf' of the Verein fUr Sozialpolitik, taking the modernist position against the upholders of a patriarchal social policy. From 1902 onwards they were joint editors (with Edgar Jaffe) of the Archiv fiir Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. They also devoted considerable attention to the sources and evolution of the 'spirit' of modern capitalism, and were given to disputing freely with one another. 2
At the level of personal origins and development there are other similarities between Sombart and Weber, which make their divergences during the years 1900 to 1920 so much the more interesting and worthy of investigation. Both men came from well-to-do families of the Berlin upper middle class, with a partly Calvinist background. The personal history of both men in their twenties seems to have been based on an oedipal struggle to oppose and distinguish themselves from the ideological positions and values of their fathers in particular and of the older generation of social reformers in general. Around 1900, both men went through a crisis, bound up with the relation to the father - more serious in Weber's case, but no less evident in Sombart's.
