ABSTRACT
On the paternal side, Webers ancestors had been driven
l 6 THE LATE-BOURGEOIS GENERATION from Salzburg because of their "evangelical" convictions.* Karl August Weber, the grandfather, had been a member of the merchant patriciate in Bielefeld. A linen dealer, he became for his grandson a model of the early capitalist entre preneur, still dominated by a traditionalist view of the world. Marianne Weber said of him, "Making money was neither an end in itself nor a sign of probity, but stood mainly in the service of a comfortable, customary way of life. Accord ingly, the labor tempo was moderate." This man married Lucie Wilmans, the daughter of a prominent Bielefeld physician; she bore four sons: the eldest and youngest of these were Karl David Weber and Max Weber, respectively, uncle and father of the author of Die Protestantische Ethik.\
Karl David Weber, the eldest brother of Max Weber, Sr., continued the family linen concern in Bielefeld but radically transformed the old patriarchal business methods to meet the competition of modern, machine-made cloth. He systematically organized the cottage industry of the area by enticing the peasants from their sandy soil to engage in permanent rather than casual home weaving, and delivered yarn to them. He also sought the wholesalers, bringing them samples rather than waiting for their visits. K. D. Weber's colleagues had previously avoided such methods, and viewed his innovations with disgust, until they decided to emulate him. In his nephew's work on the spirit of capitalism, this uncle served as a prime example of the modern entrepreneur,1
the affirmation of whose creative energies contrasted sharply with Weber's lifelong condemnation of the eudaemonistic ethic represented by his own father.
