Devotees of Max Weber will find great satisfaction in this volume of writings.... The book comprises “Science as a Vocation” and “Politics as a Vocation,” as well as other texts that are relatively inaccessible since they were originally published in academic publications that are hard to find outside of Germany or were printed in local German dailies — 32 short texts centered on academic life…. The pleasure of gaining access to many of these writings for the first time is equaled by the pleasure derived from the [fine] translation into English [by Gordon C. Wells].

[In the Introduction Dreijmanis describes the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator] and concludes that “there is a very high degree of probability that [Weber] was an extraverted intuitive with introverted thinking (ENTP) type.”… Dreijmanis supports this conclusion with quotes from Marianne Weber, Jaspers, Spann and Mommsen.

Dreijmanis discusses the nervous condition that struck Weber in 1897 (which we understand today as depression) solely through this personality classification. The crisis forced Weber to give up his recently won position at the Department of Political Science in Heidelberg and only began to ease in 1904. Throughout that period Weber continued his research and writing, albeit at the margins of university life. In 1918 he was fleetingly involved in the political life of the Weimar Republic, and he taught a course at the University of Vienna; he died in 1920.  

The Introduction addresses Weber’s vocations, academia and politics, not only as the two areas in which his personal life unfolded but as an internal experience of the conflict between the two. Indeed, in one of the texts, Weber questions his devotion to scholarship, given the satisfaction that practical activity provides — politics, for instance — and which he considers more important, besides. Yet it was only in 1919 that Weber agreed to run for the National Assembly of the Weimar Republic, and he stepped down after the Party changed the candidate list in a way that made Weber less likely to be elected. As we know, in 1918 and 1919 he also served as an accessory to the German delegation to the Versailles Treaty negotiations, as well as to the committee that drafted what became the constitution of the Weimar Republic. In any case, as Dreijmanis indicates, “[H]ad he lived long enough to experience the hyperinflation of 1923, the mass unemployment of the early 1930s, and the national socialist rule, there is little doubt that he would have become again politically active” — even if that would only have been possible after the conclusion of the Second World War, given Weber’s democratic leanings and the political situation created under the Nazi regime….

The book includes many articles and notes on academic life that were published in daily newspapers, mainly in the Frankfurter Zeitung (between 1908 and 1917), in the Tagliche Rundschau (various dates in 1911) and in the Heidelberger Tageblatt and the Heidelberger Zeitung (1911). Most of these shorter notes are responses or corrections to articles and reviews of Weber’s writings and talks. These notes are often polemical. As a man of science, Weber threw himself into these discussions with a passion derived from his dedication to truth, as Dreijmanis points out.

One aspect of university life that Weber vehemently defended was the need to remain independent of the public authorities. One particular incident involved the Prussian Minister of Education, Herr Althoff, under whose leadership the education administration was drirven off course; it was destructive of the traditions of German universities and tended to corrupt those who were part of it. But Weber’s defense of the autonomy of the universities did not extend to abolishing the status of professors as state functionaries nor of the authorities’ involvement in hiring and firing. To him, these were compatible with “autonomy.”

The texts included in this collection cover subjects of great interest; for instance there is a note Weber wrote in 1910 for the Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik regarding the German Sociology Association, another outlining the activities of that Association in 1911 and 1912, and the one he wrote on the occasion of the First Congress of German Sociologists. Add to this a pair of writings on academic freedom and others on various topics; all these writings shed light on Weber as a personality and on his fraught relations with the academic career as defined by universities in those days, and which in practice he had to abandon due to poor health. 
 
Without a doubt, for any student interested in the human dimension of Weber, especially through the biography penned by his wife Marianne, these readings collected and annotated by Professor Dreijmanis will be extraordinarily interesting and useful.

According to editor Dreijmanis (political science, U. Bremen), Weber's Myers-Briggs Type Indicator describes the notes sociologist as an extrovert with a strong inclination toward the intellectual, tendencies that generated these essays on academia, including the famous "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation." Dreijmanis provides other contextual information on Weber, including insights into the illness that kept Weber from much involvement with academic life, and describes the sociologist's intellectual environment. Independent translator Wells captures the essence of Weber in his translations, many of which appear for the first time in English.

[The book] includes articles on academic freedom in German universities, pedagogy, professionalism, the effects of social democrats in teaching positions, on the work and thought of contemporary professors, and on the worth of professional and academic organizations. Weber's commentary on the Althoff system is particularly interesting, as is Weber's declaration of withdrawal from the Allemannia Fraternity.

...All the pieces are newly (and excellently) translated by Gordon C Wells. There have been earlier translations of some of them; however, this is the first by a single translator and claims (with reason) to adhere ‘more closely to Weber’s manner of expression and style than the earlier ones’ (page 23). You certainly get a sense of the ebullience of the man. The text is generously annotated with footnotes — over 500 in total — though in some cases, particu­larly his pieces on academic disputes, it would have been useful to have a bit more background.

… What can we learn from the writings, many about obscure academic quar­rels, of an academic (albeit a pioneer) of a century or so ago? It takes a bit of work to distill out ideas of relevance today, but there is reward for the effort. … Weber’s discussion of the vagaries of academic advancement are more than simply entertaining or eyebrow-raising to today’s audience. They are set in the context of firm views about the aims of academic study and the role of the teacher. These views would almost certainly be regarded as out­moded by most modern, and particularly post-modern scholars, but they are not without value in a climate of moral and intellectual relativism.

For Weber, science (that is, wissenschaft meaning academic study) offers three benefits: ‘knowledge about techniques of calculated control over life’; ‘methods of thinking, the tools and the necessary schooling’ and ‘clarity’. Weber’s explanation of these principles takes him into a debate about values and the role of the teacher, a topic which appears throughout the papers. Weber argues for a value-free science. What it can do is ‘establish . . . facts, mathematical or logical states of affairs’ or in the case he is discussing, estab­lish ‘the internal structure of cultural values’ (page 42). What it cannot – or should not – do is answer the question of the’ value of culture’ (his italics) or how we should act.

… Weber does discuss ‘leadership’. He briefly describes the different kinds of leadership that have emerged historically, and the emergence of the professional politi­cian. Although, in line with his earlier strictures, he claims to avoid questions of value, his analysis is sharp: the effect of the English system is that parlia­mentarians are mostly ‘nothing but well-disciplined voting fodder’ (page 184).

Weber identifies three qualities ‘chiefly decisive’ for the politician: passion, responsibility and a sense of proportion. These are in tension: how can ‘burning passion and a cool sense of proportion’ co-exist in one person? Vanity and irresponsibility are the ‘two deadly sins’. Weber points out that in politics (unlike in academia) a choice must finally be made between conflicting world views. It is here that the awful consequences of political systems emerge. For example, for those defeated in war, he says:  Instead of behaving like old women and looking for someone to "blame" – when the war was actually generated by the structure of society – anyone who takes a manly and dispassionate attitude will say to the enemy: ‘We lost the war and you won it. That is now in the past. Let us now talk about it with regard to the objective interests that were at stake, and, above all, in the face of the responsibility for the future, which above all burdens the victor’ (page 195). 

The consequences of the failure to proceed along these lines is made evident in a rather difficult discussion about ethics and absolutism that follows. But in it, Weber identifies one consequence of absolutism as ‘the peace will be dis­credited, not the war’ (page 198) and later predicts that ‘It is not a summer’s flowering that lies before us, but a polar night of icy darkness and hardness’ (page 206). It was a sadly accurate and prescient analysis of the German political system that followed the failure of the post World War I settlement.

This volume fills a lacuna, in particular since these writings - with the exception of some of the letters - are not yet published in Max Weber Gesamtausgabe.... Dreijmanis's volume is likely to become a standard reference, since it collects all relevant Weber texts, including 'Science as a Vocation.'...

The relation between power and academia is of course still problematic, both on a theoretical and organizational level, and Weber had many lived experiences of this, only to mention his difficulties in promoting the career developments of his young friend Robert(o) Michels and colleague Georg Simmel. Weber was himself engaged in policy science where the problem is difficult to avoid. 

The Bernhard affair and other affairs around 1910-12 provide interesting and partly amusing reading. Weber is almost dragged into duels. Young Bernhard had been appointed to a chair in Berlin, but Althoff, the Prussian minister in charge of university affairs, had jumped over the faculty in the decision-making process, which made 

Bernhard illegitimate as a Lehrstuhlinhaber. Weber urged him to resign, which he did.

A century ago, the German university was a model for the rest of the world. The so-called 'System Althoff' was actually in many ways successful, although not exactly characterized by unrestricted academic freedom. Weber's understanding of the Humboldtian ideal of a unity between Forschung and Lehre has been notoriously misunderstood, as has the Humboldtian ideal itself. 

Academic freedom to many meant the right to preach one's positions from the cathedra, exactly what Weber opposed, because of the structural dependence between teacher and students. There is a story told by Paul Honigsheim about Weber and his colleagues sitting in a post-seminar situation discussing everyday politics, and Weber all of a sudden becoming totally silent. Asked why he became silent, his answer was that students had entered the room and if they had heard what he said he might have influenced them. 

'Politics as a Vocation' is included in Dreijmanis's selection and illustrates Weber's ambiguity in addressing audiences in political matters if it could be assumed he spoke in his capacity of scholar.

 ...

The issue of the proper relation between the search for truth and policy-making remains crucial and controversial....

Weber still has a relevant voice and his writings on scholarship, teaching and state bureaucracy are not only of historical interest, as Dreijmanis rightly emphasizes. Weber himself would have failed as a statesman, because of his allegiance to uncompromised truth. But Weber had two vocations and never gave up his political ambitions, as clearly demonstrated after World War One, when he was very active in party formation....

However, I am not ready to 'jump on' Dreijmanis's Introduction, where we find speculative elements, still original and intriguing, like using C. G. Jung, for a psychological classification of Weber....

This new collection is the first by one and the same translator [Gordon C. Wells].... One important issue which Dreijmanis contributes to bringing on to the agenda is an English translation of the whole of MWG.... Such an endeavour would also put the German editorial group under pressure to fulfil the project in which much has been done but much also remains to be done.

...Dreijmanis aims to closely examine previously unexplained traits of Weber's personality, thereby keeping in mind the non-German-speaking reader...and then Dreijmanis allows Weber to speak for himself...in a translation by Gordon C. Wells, said to come closer to Weber's personal style of speech than former translations.

Dreijmanis' main contribution consists of his interpretations of the characteristics of Weber's personality, which still throw up riddles....

The volume is well worth reading.

… For me, given the availability of the vocation lectures elsewhere, the main appeal of this book lies in its translation of various ‘articles on academia’ that amount to roughly 100 pages of this volume. These articles are indeed intriguing, not least because they span a wide-range of subjects: from an address that summarises differences between American and German universities to a statement clarifying an alleged challenge to a duel by Arnold Ruge (an adjunct lecturer in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg).

    This said, however, this is not a book for the novice reader....

    This question of government involvement in university appointments returns in Weber’s analysis of academic freedom in German universities. These are among the most powerful passage of this book. In reference to the case of Robert Michels, Weber observes that ‘academic freedom’ was conditional at that time on ‘(1) the holding of views which are politically acceptable in court circles and polite society, and (2) assent to a certain minimum level of church beliefs (whether genuine or otherwise). In Germany freedom of science exists within the boundaries of political and religious acceptability—and not outside them’ (pp. 67-68). Weber adds that if we adopt this ‘curious concept’ of academic freedom then the consequences are as follows: 

   (1) On admission to a chair, the professor can and should be examined not only for his scientific qualifications, but also for his loyalty toward the current political rulers and ecclesiastical custom. (2) Any public protest against the prevailing political system can cost the person occupying the chair his job. 3) In contrast, in the lecture hall, which is closed to the public and hence exempt from criticism, the teacher, once appointed, may express himself as he chooses, ‘independently of all authorities’ (p. 70).

    It is here that, as Dreijmanis suggests in his introduction, a number of connections emerge with the text of ‘Science as a Vocation’, in which Weber draws attention to the political limits of science and to the responsibilities of professors within the lecture hall. The above passages perhaps even go beyond this by calling into question the broader institutional politics of what he elsewhere calls ‘value freedom’. In sum, it is the strength of these ‘articles on academia’ that carry this book....