Weber's main intellectual concern was understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularization, and " disenchantment " that he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity and which he saw as the result of a new way of thinking about the world.

The central theme in Weber's analysis of modern society was the process of rationalization ; a far reaching process whereby traditional modes of thinking were being replaced by an ends / means analysis concerned with efficiency and formalized social control.

Weber's 1876 Christmas presents to his parents, when he was thirteen years old, were two historical essays entitled " About the course of German history, with special reference to the positions of the Emperor and the Pope ," and " About the Roman Imperial period from Constantine to the migration of nations.

Weber was put in charge of the study and wrote a large part of the final report, which generated considerable attention and controversy and marked the beginning of Weber's renown as a social scientist.

From 1893 to 1899 Weber was a member of the Alldeutscher Verband ( Pan-German League ), an organisation that campaigned against the influx of the Polish workers ; the degree of Weber's support for the Germanisation of Poles and similar nationalist policies is still debated by modern scholars.

Also in 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist activist and author in her own right, who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death and her biography of him is an important source for understanding Weber's life.

Weber's ordeal with mental illness was carefully described in a personal chronology that was destroyed by his wife.

This chronicle was supposedly destroyed because Marianne Weber feared that Max Weber's work would be discredited by the Nazis if his experience with mental illness were widely known.

Though the influence of his mother's Calvinist religiosity is evident throughout Weber's life and work, and though he maintained a deep, lifelong interest in the study of religions, Weber was open about the fact that he was personally irreligious.

Weber's methodology was developed in the context of a wider debate about methodology of social sciences, the Methodenstreit.

Weber's position was close to historicism, as he understood social actions as being heavily tied to particular historical contexts and its analysis required the understanding of subjective motivations of individuals ( social actors ).

Another reason for Weber's decision was that Troeltsch's work already achieved what he desired in that area: laying the groundwork for a comparative analysis of religion and society.

The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism was Weber's second major work on the sociology of religion.

The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism was Weber's third major work on the sociology of religion.

Weber's most influential work was on economic sociology, political sociology, and the sociology of religion.

The theme of a religious basis of economic discipline is echoed in sociologist Max Weber's work, but both de Tocqueville and Weber argued that this discipline was not a force of economic determinism, but one factor among many that should be considered when evaluating the relative economic success of the Puritans.

This approach was most notably portrayed in Max Weber's concepts of traditional authority and modern rational-legal authority.

Adorno was chiefly influenced by Max Weber's critique of disenchantment, Georg Lukács's Hegelian interpretation of Marxism, as well as Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history.

Topelius initially thought of writing a trivial entertainment, but having heard extracts from the opera project at a concert in 1851, he realized that Pacius was writing a grand opera on the theme of salvation, following the early Romantic style of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz ( 1821 ) and Oberon ( 1826 ).

This interest was first manifested in Weber's incidental music for Schiller's translation of Gozzi's Turandot, for which he used a Chinese melody, making him the first Western composer to use an Asian tune that was not of the pseudo-Turkish kind popularized by Mozart and others.

Weber's shorter piano pieces, such as the Invitation to the Dance, was later orchestrated by Berlioz, while his Polacca Brillante was later set for piano and orchestra by Liszt.

* The echoing calls heard during " The Chase " sequence strongly resemble similar calls heard in Weber's 1821 Romantic opera Der Freischütz, particularly in the famous " Wolf's Glen " scene.

Weber's analysis of modernity and rationalisation significantly influenced the critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School.

Weber's operas Der Freischütz, Euryanthe and Oberon greatly influenced the development of the Romantic opera in Germany.

They suggested that previous theories such as Weber's bureaucracy and Frederick Winslow Taylor's scientific management had failed because they neglected that management style and organizational structure were influenced by various aspects of the environment: the contingency factors.

* A distinction between the internal and external considerations of law and rules, close to ( and influenced by ) Max Weber's distinction between the sociological and the legal perspectives of law.

* A distinction between the internal and external points of view of law and rules, close to ( and influenced by ) Max Weber's distinction between the sociological and the legal perspectives upon law.

Ludwig von Mises was influenced by several theories in forming his work on praxeology, including Immanuel Kant's works, Max Weber's work on methodological individualism, and Carl Menger's development of the subjective theory of value.

Although not a detailed study of Protestantism but rather an introduction to Weber's later studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economics ( The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, and Ancient Judaism ), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism argues that Puritan ethics and ideas influenced the development of capitalism.

* A distinction between the internal and external points of view of law and rules, close to ( and influenced by ) Max Weber's distinction between the sociological and the legal perspectives of law.

They suggested that previous theories such as Weber's bureaucracy and Taylor's scientific management had failed because they neglected that management style and organizational structure were influenced by various aspects of the environment: the contingency factors.

He criticized Albrecht Weber's hypothesis that the story of the Ramayana was influenced by the Homeric epics.

Weber's ideal bureaucracy is characterised by hierarchical organisation, by delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, by action taken ( and recorded ) on the basis of written rules, by bureaucratic officials needing expert training, by rules being implemented neutrally and by career advancement depending on technical qualifications judged by organisations, not by individuals.

Though his research interests were always in line with those of the German historicists, with a strong emphasis on interpreting economic history, Weber's defence of " methodological individualism " in the social sciences represented an important break with that school and an embracing of many of the arguments that had been made against the historicists by Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School of economics, in the context of the academic Methodenstreit (" debate over methods ") of the late 19th century.

Max Weber's article has been cited as a definitive refutation of the dependence of the economic theory of value on the laws of psychophysics by Lionel Robbins, George Stigler, and Friedrich Hayek, though the broader issue of the relation between economics and psychology has come back into the academic debate with the development of " behavioral economics.

Though today read primarily by sociologists and social philosophers, Weber's work did have a significant influence on Frank Knight, one of the founders of the neoclassical Chicago school of economics, who translated Weber's General Economic History into English in 1927.

Weber's work is generally quoted according to the critical Gesamtausgabe ( collected works edition ), which is published by Mohr Siebeck in Tübingen.

In one of his novels, entitled Invitatie la vals, referring to Carl Maria von Weber's " Invitation to the Dance " ( later orchestrated by Berlioz ), a comparison is made between the novel's main character and Manon Lescaut.

Weber's orchestration has also been highly praised and emulated by later generations of composers – Berlioz referred to him several times in his Treatise on Instrumentation while Debussy remarked that the sound of the Weber orchestra was obtained through the scrutiny of the soul of each instrument.

Homage has been paid to Weber by 20th century composers such as Debussy, Stravinsky, Mahler ( who completed Weber's unfinished comic opera Die drei Pintos and made revisions of Euryanthe and Oberon ) and Hindemith ( composer of the popular Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber ).

Weber's views on the war and the expansion of the German empire changed during the course of the conflict.

Weber's role in German politics remains controversial to this day.

But, even though Weber's research interests were very much in line with that school, his views on methodology and the theory of value diverged significantly from those of other German historicists and were closer, in fact, to those of Carl Menger and the Austrian School, the traditional rivals of the historical school.

Weber's friend, the psychiatrist and existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers, described him " the greatest German of our era " and his untimely death felt to Jaspers " as if the German world had lost its heart.

Der Freischütz came to be regarded as the first German " nationalist " opera, Euryanthe developed the Leitmotif technique to a hitherto-unprecedented degree, while Oberon anticipated Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream and, at the same time, revealed Weber's lifelong interest in the music of non-Western cultures.

Cover of the original German edition of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Wolfgang Weber's last minute goal took the game into extra time, a goal claimed to be controversial by the English, with the ball appearing to hit the hand of a German player as it travelled through the England penalty area before he prodded it in.

However, " until the mid-20th century and the dissemination of the German sociologist Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy " there was not " much interest in a theory of public administration.

Weber's discussion of the relationships between status groups, social class, and political parties is found in his essay " Class, Status, Party " which was written in German before World War I.

It can be considered both as a forerunner of, and a challenge to, the rather better known concept of Max Weber's: the ideal type ( in German Idealtyp ).

Weber's career as a feminist public speaker ended abruptly in 1935, when Hitler dissolved the Federation of German Women's Organizations.

More than a historiographical synthesis of Ranke and Marx ( envisioned by some German historians after the catastrophe of World War I ), Wehler's work incorporates Max Weber's concepts of authority, economy, and culture and strives toward a concept of " total history.

Benedict wrote recitatives for the production of an Italian-language version of Weber's Oberon in 1860 ( it was then the tradition in England to perform German operas in Italian ).