ABSTRACT
The surmise that I place before you emerged from a different concern-a comparison between two contemporaries, Max Weber and Oswald Spengler. Since 1918, the works of Spengler have enjoyed something of a rec/ame. In February 1920 certain meetings took place between Weber and Spengler known from the accounts by Marianne Weber 1 and Eduard Baumgarten, 2 and a 1925 paper on their political philosophies exists, written by Otto Koellreutter, then professor of public law at Jena. 3 In terms of influence, I would hold that in fact neither savant exerted the slightest influence on the ideas or behaviour of the other. However, one contrast between them, stressed by Koellreutter, leads to my surmise about the intellectual biography of Max Weber.
