1. Introduction

In his dissertation written under Wilhelm Hennis in 1991, Franz-Josef Ehrle was the first to write about the lecture “Probleme der Staatssoziolo-gie” (“Problems of State Sociology”) that Max Weber gave to the Vienna Sociological Society on October 25, 1917.¹ Ehrle used as his source the report on the lecture published in the Neue Freie Presse on October 26, 1917.² Ehrle also mentions a diary entry made by Josef Redlich, who was among the audience: “Thursday evening, a brilliant lecture by Max Weber(Heidelberg) at the Sociological Society.”³ There exists a short biography of Redlich, taken from an excursus on “The Representatives of the (Bourgeois) Austrian Peace Movement” (“Die Vertreter der (bürgerlichen) österreichischen Friedensbewegung”): “Josef Redlich (1869–1936), jurist and politician, 1907–1918 MöAH (Deutsche Fortschrittspartei/German Progressive Party), Oct.–Nov. 1918, last Imperial and Royal Finance Minister.”⁴ Ehrle also indicates that Redlich met Max Weber in Vienna in 1909 at the General Congress of the Society for Social Politics (Verein für Sozialpolitik), but that Redlich’s acquaintance with Alfred Weber went back further (as shown in Redlich’s diary entry of September 2, 1909: “Saw Alfred Weber again”).⁵ Furthermore, a longer meeting with Max Weber is mentioned in Redlich’s diary in 1916 (on June 6).⁶ When Weber was staying in Vienna in 1917 and 1918, he also met privately with Redlich, and Arthur von Rosthorn attended one of these meetings with his wife (entry of May 9, 1918). Finally, Redlich wrote about his acquaintance with Max Weber in a letter to Hugo von Hofmannsthal on December 3, 1926. Ehrle summarizes Weber’s meetings in Vienna as being “limited primarily to his contacts from academia, economics (Hammerschlag), and politics (and, here, above all the economic field (Mataja, Riedl, Schüler)),” often encouraged by the fact that “academics held ministerial posts and ministers held academic posts.”⁷