ABSTRACT
Ernst Troeltsch was one of the few men to whom Weber referred publicly on more than one occasion as a 'friend'. 1 Conversely, Troeltsch acknowledged a 'friendship' with Weber. 2 There was no Heidelberg colleague, apart from this theologian who was only a few months his junior, with whom Weber had such close and lasting ties. It is all the more remarkable, then, that at present we know of no letters exchanged between them and no printed evidence that might throw further light on the nature of their long-standing association. We have a few secondary accounts - from Marianne Weber's Lebensbi/d and especially from various recollections by Paul Honigsheim 3 - as well as the two obituaries published by Troeltsch a few days after his friend's death, 4 but these give only an indistinct picture of their personal relations. This paucity of evidence has proved, however, to be an ideal starting point for attempts to make up for our lack of factual knowledge by means of psychologistic intuition and the construction of value-judgements that exceed the evidence. Thus Eduard Baumgarten, for example, discovered in Troeltsch a 'need to avoid having too much to do with Weber' and surmised that 'Weber's attacks on Rachfahl were perhaps due to "object-transference"'. 5 And, in the current controversy among Weber experts, the advocate of 'humanity' (Menschentum) is linked with the representatives of universal evolution at least by the ability, where Troeltsch is concerned, to transcend the limits of historical reason. Wilhelm Hennis is convinced that the appearance of The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches 'must have rankled with Weber', 6 and in the school of Friedrich Tenbruck it is known 'for certain' that Weber read the first parts of 'The Economic Ethics of World Religions' to his friend in 1913. 7 Since there is no evidence for such surmises, I should like - while claiming no expertise as regards Weber, although I have gleaned some knowledge from Troeltsch's critique of historical reason-to devote Part I of what follows to defining the limits of our present knowledge 8 of the biographical facts. Part II will attempt an exemplary account of the complex relations between the work of Troeltsch and that of Weber. Part III will then briefly propose a systematic approach to their interpretation: the potent presence of each man's work in that of the other is an indication and a consequence of their interdisciplinary co-operation in analysing the historical 'vital force' (Lebensmacht) of religion. Their mutual recognition of shared interests, however, encompasses at the same time profound contrasts at an interpretive level, which surface especially in their differing assessments of the
Up to now, we know nothing about when Troeltsch and Weber first met. There is no evidence of any personal contact between them until Weber's move from Freiburg to Heidelberg. Before this time, however, they may have been aware of each other's writings as contributors to Martin Rade's Die christliche Welt, or at least heard of each other, for some close friends of Weber's cousin Otto Baumgarten were also close friends of Troeltsch. - It was through Baumgarten that Weber met the theologians Eduard Grafe, Eduard Simons and Hans von Schubert while he was a student. 9 In April 1887 Baumgarten joined his friend Grafe in Halle to prepare for his licence to teach theology. Here he took lodgings with the ecclesiastical historian Albert Eichhorn, who had a significant influence on Troeltsch's theological development. 10 Weber continued to maintain various contacts with Baumgarten's 'wide circle of acquaintance' through letters and personal visits. 11 Troeltsch also belonged to this circle. There were close intellectual and personal links between a group of Gottingen doctoral and post-doctoral students of theology who were substantially influenced by Troeltsch - and later came to be known as the 'School of Religious History' - and the Halle theologians just mentioned. They all saw themselves as an avant-garde whose purpose was to establish a new historically critical concept of theology, the systematic structure of which was determined by precisely the same empirical interest in the effect of religion on the way people conduct their lives that also shaped Weber's concept of the sociology of religion. Theology was not speculation about dogma or the guardianship of a body of beliefs professed by a particular church, but a science of 'living' or 'lived' religion, which was prosecuted as part of 'cultural history'; it described real religious practice and interpreted the practical relevance of religion to culture, its role as a Lebensmacht. 12 The tensions between religion and culture, the attempts to achieve a productive release of such tensions, the practical significance of 'piety' for the individual and the social effects of communal religious activity (warship, etc.) - these were the most important subjects discussed by the theologians with whom Weber associated from the mid-1880s. It is not possible at present to prove directly that he met Troeltsch in this circle of so-called Jungritschlianer (pupils of the Gottingen systematician, Albrecht Ritschl, who were turning away from their teacher's dogmatic theology and enthusiastically embracing the novel study of religion as it actually existed), but it seems likely: it can be shown that both frequented Grafe's 'open house' before 1890, 13 and, when Troeltsch went to Bonn as professor in 1892, he had such close links with Weber's circle that the two men were probably introduced to each other by mutual friends. Whether or not this assumption is correct, we can say that even before their time in Heidelberg, both men had a common background of experience that could in essence be defined as an interest in the social relevance of religion, which was to be studied theoretically (theology as the history of religion) and also given a practical direction.
