ABSTRACT

If we measure the career of Gustav Stresemann against the ideal-typical virtues of the political leader, as Max Weber defined them, then the result is extremely ambivalent. On the one hand, Weber believed politicians such as Stresemann to be indispensable for the establishment of a capitalist society organized along liberal-bourgeois lines. For, in such a society, the interpenetration of politics and economics is constantly growing: 'Politics is penetrating into the economic order at the same time that economic interests are entering into politics.' 1 On the other hand, it is precisely in Stresemann that Weber diagnosed characteristics of political behaviour that he vehemently rejected on ethical grounds, such as tactical manoeuvring, a readiness to compromise, opportunism, sinecurism and an advocacy of limited and particular interests. All this contrasts sharply with Weber's ideal of a life guided by an ethic of responsibility and oriented towards the political welfare of the whole nation.