ABSTRACT

I N HER BIOGRAPHY of her husband, Marianne Weber tells us that the death of a younger sister when Max Weber was a boy resulted in an estrangement between his parents, based on his father's inability to share his wife's prolonged grief, that was to continue and grow until the father's death. We cannot know if the son was aware of this estrangement at the time or, if so, how it affected his attitudes toward his parents or whether it influenced his later hostility to his father. But there was apparently another, similar inci­ dent of parental estrangement in Weber's childhood of which he could hardly have been completely unaware, since he was himself the cause of it. At the age of two years, he was afflicted with meningitis, a disease which can lead to

imbecility or death. As a result, according to autobiographi­ cal notes written by his mother, Max remained sickly for the next five to seven years, and his mothers worrying over him in this period angered his father because it threatened his "fundamental optimism and boasting of his joy in life."*

Now there is an excellent chance that even if Weber forgot the emotional strains of this period, his mother re­ minded him of them during the period of her and Max Sr.'s intensified antagonism, for in 1918 Max Weber wrote, in an explanatory letter to his siblings which accompanied the notes, that "At the time of these difficult conflicts, 18851897, Mama herself was unable to speak of them, except to the children who were already completely grown, who had experienced it"1 As the eldest son, then, and as one who was already inclined toward the mothers side, it is quite likely that Max heard more than once the story of his father's in­ famous indifference toward his childhood "sickliness," of his father's resentment at his mother's ministrations.t

In any case, Webers wife depicts him as having been

frequently bitter and upset, during the years following his successful passing of his law examination at Gottingen in 1886, because of his prolonged dependence on his fathers pocketbook and hospitality.