ABSTRACT
If one views the development of Weber's works in the context of problems and controversies in modern social science one's interest becomes focused on one organization which, unlike many others, stamped the development of social science in Imperial Germany. Together with the Evangelical-Social Congress (Evangelisch-Sozialer Kongress) - though not founded before 1890 - the Verein fiir Sozialpolitik (Social Policy Association) holds a special position in the enormous number of cultured bourgeois institutions and associations which characterized this epoch. 1 The Verein was the manifest link between the dominant socio-scientific paradigm and socio-political conviction. Since the 1870s, the Historical School had emerged as the leading tendency in German political economy. The search for the laws of economic behaviour was replaced by the explanation of prevailing economic and social structures, as well as the interpretation of their perspectives in relation to their historical development. This concept came to dominate the academic discipline of Nationa/Okonomie. It was accompanied by the prevailing opinion among scholars and the cultured bourgeoisie that the outmoded institutional system should be amended in favour of an improvement in the situation of the working classes. Academic knowledge and socio-political convictions thereby legitimated and stimulated each other. Both were cultivated under the roof of the Verein: it was, on the one hand, an academic association with important research and publication programmes. Almost all younger scholars were academically 'socialized' by it. On the other hand, the Verein was a 'combat patrol of social reforms', that is, a platform for cultured bourgeois commitment to social reforms. In this capacity it appealed mainly to state and public opinion, backing its demands with academic authority. Since the turn of the century, however, the Verein had increasingly lost influence, after being highly noted before as a critical accompaniment to the government's social policy. 2
The emergence of lobbies was largely responsible for this loss of influence. The public relations activities of pressure groups (based on propaganda departments which benefited from a sophisticated organization) were taking the place of the cultured bourgeois and the ~cholar as the dominant source of social interpretation. After 1890, the rapid expansion of university education also indicated a slow disintegration of the cultured bourgeoisie itself. A salaried class with university degrees replaced the traditional propertied amateurs. In combination with these external factors, four basic contradictions within the academic discipline of political economy became continually
First, it was a question of the difference between a more social-liberal and a more social-conservative concept of social policy. This difference already marked the older generation, with Lujo Brentano and Karl Bucher in the former camp and Gustav Schmoller and Adolph Wagner in the other. Secondly, a generational conflict emerged between three groups: (1) the founders of the Verein, born between 1835 and 1850; (2) the second generation, born between 1855 and 1870 (Max Weber, Werner Sombart, Heinrich Herkner, Ferdinand Tonnies, Gerhart v. Schulze-Gavernitz, Walther Lotz, Carl J. Fuchs and others); (3) the third generation born after 1870 (Joseph Schumpeter, Arthur Spiethoff, Robert Wilbrandt, Leopold v. Wiese, Johann Plenge and others). Corresponding to a changing economic and political context, the respective younger generations tried to find new academic and socio-political paradigms. Because of this, the concepts of the previous generations were inevitably put in question. Eventually, around the turn of the century, a group of economists formed itself (Julius Wolf, Richard Ehrenberg, Ludwig Pohle, Andreas Voigt, Ludwig Bernhard and others) which radically called into question the sociopolitical accord existing between more liberal and more conservative social scientists. In addition, the increasing sterility of the historical method, which had difficulty in formulating theoretical tools, began to show. At the same time there was an increase in the specialization and heterogeneity of research interests, above all within the third generation.
