Max weber at home and in japan: on the troubled genesis and successful reception of his work

International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society

Volumn 12, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 515-525

  Roth, Guenther ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0242439893     PISSN: 08914486     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1025981132694     Document Type: Article

References (11)

1. See J. and Sabine Frommer, "Max Webers Krankheit-soziologische Aspekte der depressiven Struktur," Fortschritte der Neurologie-Psychiatrie, 61:5 (1993):161-171.
2. This was a dramatized summary of Max Weber (Munich: Beck, 1998), part of the Beck series on Denker.
3. See Edward Shils, tr. and ed., Max Weber on Universities (U. of Chicago Press, 1973), esp. 23-45; see also Schwentker's bibliography listing a 1979 translation (379).
4. I found a reference to Rathgen in a letter Helene Weber wrote to her son Alfred on March 12, 1891 after a dinner engagement: "Next to me sat a Professor Rathgen, who knows you from the Thursday evening meetings, and with whom I had a very interesting conversation about Tokyo" (Collection Max Weber-Schaefer, Bavarian State Library, Munich (BSB.Ana 446).
5. The German original was entitled Japan-Europa. Wandlungen im Femen Osten (Frankfurt: Societaetsdruckerei, 1928).
6. The Japanese translation appeared in 1949, was revised in 1966, and reached its 43rd edition in 1990. The chapter on "Man's Self-Alienation in the Early Writings of Marx" was first published in English in Social Research (21:2, 1954): 204-230. The complete English text came too late to ride the Marx-Weber wave: Max Weber and Karl Marx, ed. with an introduction by Tom Bottomore and William Outhwaite (London: George Alien & Unwin, 1982). The introduction is silent about the Japanese translation and even the partial translation in Social Research.
7. The first Japanese translation, in 1925, was Weber's critique of Lujo Brentano, "Marginal Utility Theory and 'the Fundamental Law of Psychophysics'"; it took fifty more years before Louis Schneider's English translation appeared in 1975 (Social Science Quarterly, 56:1).
8. I discovered the exchange in the Max Weber-Schaefer holdings, now in BSB, Ana 446. There was a failure of communication between the English and German publisher. In his inquiry of July 24, 1934, Siebeck also revealed the astonishing fact that Marianne Weber, whose English was shaky at best, had "corrected' ' the translation: "I just received a letter from Mrs. Marianne Weber in which she asks about the fate of the translation which she corrected at the time. . . . Since I have not heard from you after signing the agreement on Aug. 10, 1928, I would like to ask whether the English translation has appeared in the meantime." In its reply Alien & Unwin stated: "Three copies were sent to you just before the date of publication, June 17th, 1930. The payment we made to you covered the right to sell 2,500 copies." It is surprising to learn that Marianne Weber should not have known for four years about the fact of publication.
9. See the forthcoming study by Guy Oakes and Arthur Vidich, Collaboration, Reputation, and Ethics in American Academic Life: Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Urbana: University of Illinois Press).
10. English, not American publishers initiated the first Weber translations: Alien & Unwin, William Hodge & Co. and Oxford University Press, then more English and academic than it is today.
11. Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. by G. Roth and Claus Wittich (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), a hardcover edition of about 3,500 copies. The University of California Press published a hardcover and paperback edition in 1978, which has sold more than 20,000 copies in two decades.