[MWS 6.2 (2006) 225-249] ISSN 1470-8078

© Max Weber Studies 2006, Department of Applied Social Sciences, London Metropolitan University, Old Castle Street, London E1 7NT, UK.

The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work*

Gad Yair and Michaela Soyer Abstract This paper provides a new metaphor for reading Weber’s writings by exposing an underlying cultural pattern—the Golem narrative—and showing how it is reflected in Weber’s work. We depict the Jewish story of the Golem and the German demonic version of the narrative as presented in the movie Der Golem. We analyze the structure of this story and distinguish three components in this cultural narrative: the will to be empowered; the use of a non-human material instrument to garner this power; culminating in the instrument developing an autonomous spirit, which fatefully makes it turn against the master, leading to personal and social destruction. We show how this narrative appears in Weber’s conception of the role of spirits and gods in world history and moral life. We then provide two expanded examples of the way the narrative of the Golem unfolds in Weber’s work: the rise of capitalism and his observations about charisma and its institutionalization. Keywords: [keywords required].

Here I sit, forming men In my image, A race to resemble me: To suffer, to weep, To enjoy, to be glad— And never to heed you, Like me! (Goethe, Prometheus, 1773).

Berlin, 1920. Max Weber lay on his deathbed while Paul Wegener celebrated his successful production of Der Golem, one of the first German expressionist films. This juxtaposition seems like a meaningless coincidence. But other than the sheer concurrence of the two events, we argue that there is poetic justice in juxtaposing Weber and Der Golem, because—as we show in this article—the narrative

* We thank S.N. Eisenstadt, Gideon Aran, Orit Gazit, Nadav Chorev, and the anonymous reviewer of Max Weber Studies for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

226 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

structure of the Golem story pervades Weber’s sociological repertoire. To support this claim we use the German cultural narrative of the Golem to provide a new perspective of Max Weber’s writings. The paper thereby provides a new tool for interpreting Weber’s writings on such topics as capitalism, religion, charisma, rationality, universi-ties and value neutrality. Superficially, Weber’s corpus seems to be highly fragmented (espe-cially Weber 1978). Some scholars have argued that he emphasized ideal factors in explaining social action and institutional change (Parsons 1937). Others have suggested that Weber should rather be positioned within a conflict sociology paradigm and that in some of his writings he tilted toward material explanations (Collins 1986). Weber’s writings indeed challenge a coherent reading: he studied traditional world religions and modern administrative structures; he examined agrarian reforms in East Germany but was no less keen on interpreting the demise of the Roman Empire; he wrote about the evolution of the modern city but was just as preoccupied with universities and the professoriate. A seemingly eclectic corpus. Topic-wise, we agree with prevailing assessments about Weber’s fragmented oeuvre. However, we join those who occupy themselves with seeking coherence in Weber’s diverse topics (e.g. Goldman 1992; Kalberg 2000). We suggest that a certain underlying cultural pattern—the Golem narrative—provides Weber’s work with a consistent structure. This paper argues that the structure of the early German myth of Golem-run-mad provides a consistent metaphor that helps reading Weber’s oeuvre. In pursuing this challenge, we argue that the persistent theme of the Golem—so impressively presented by Wegener’s expressionist film—appears in Weber’s analyses in some of the major topics he engaged with. Hence, the paper goes beyond the mere identification of coherence in a theorist’s legacy; it suggests that this legacy can be appreciated more fully as one more expression of deep cultural codes. We have two explicit aims in mind. First, we suggest that the narrative of the Golem provides a unique heuristic tool in re-reading Weber’s diverse writings. Instead of Weber’s seemingly eclectic preoccupations, this re-reading points at narrative unity. Second, and more ambitiously, the juxtaposition of Weber’s social theory with the history of German expressionist films suggests that these are two different renditions of common cultural narratives that were evidently diffused in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. The background for this analysis is provided by a detailed exegesis

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 227

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

of the Golem story, followed by a thematic analysis of this basic German cultural narrative. As we suggested at the outset, this motif was simultaneously epitomized in German social theory and German expressionist films, mostly around the 1920s. Therefore, we use these earliest cinematic representations of the Golem story in order to extract the basic structure of this narrative and the moods and metaphors which characterized it. The analytic section of the paper is divided into an introductory exposition of Weber’s general imagery of the ideal world, namely his discussion of gods and demons, and it continues with the presentation of two examples of the way the narrative of the Golem unfolds in Weber’s mind: the explanation of the rise of capitalism and its tragic fateful destruction of human ideals, and his cynical observations about charisma and its fateful bureaucratic institutionalization. The paper concludes with a comparative discussion of two literary narratives—the case of Doctor Faustus being the central alternative to the Golem story—and shows that the Golem narrative better fits Weber’s agenda and style of work.

The German cultural context and the story of the Golem

The original Golem story was a Jewish folktale, dated back to the thirteenth century, though there are earlier conceptions that go back to the first century in Babylon (Scholem 1941). The most famous adaptation is dated to the sixteenth century. The popular story tells of Rabbi Judea Loew Ben-Bezalel (the Maharal of Prague) who decided to sculpt a clay figure—the Golem—and to bring it to life through magical kabalistic rituals (Bloch 2005 [1908]). After awakening the Golem, he entrusted it with the task of safeguarding the Jewish ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks. Though he commanded outstanding supernatural powers, Rabbi Loew knew that the Golem harbored uncontrollable and dangerous potential. Therefore, after saving the community from evildoers, the Maharal took the life out of the Golem and kept his clay figure in the attic of the Old/New Synagogue in Prague for future use in times of catastrophe. This originally optimistic legend was highly popular amongst Jewish communities, serving to strengthen belief in Judaism and rabbinical leadership (for the most authoritative review of Jewish references to the Golem see Idel 1990). However, this heroic story of the Jewish Golem found many darker German adaptations (Rosenfeld 1934). A well-known popular por-

228 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

trayal of the German myth of a Golem-run-amuck was provided by Walt Disney’s Fantasia, specifically The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which was inspired by Goethe’s Der Zauberlehrling. Goethe used the Golem narrative in thinking about man’s Promethean yet vain efforts to control the world and human destiny. Indeed, the scene of the Golem-broom flooding the sorcerer’s household is commonly depicted in stories of the Maharal’s Golem: the Rabbi’s wife asks Golem Joseph to fetch water without having a clue how to stop him, thus causing floods in Prague. Some commentators suggest that Geothe conceived The Sorcerer’s Apprentice after a visit to the Altneuschul in Prague (Scholem 1972), where he probably heard the local legends about the Golem (Idel 1990; Scholem 1972). However, Goethe was neither the original nor the only expounder of the narrative of the Golem in German culture. The same is told about Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, another popular incarnation of the Golem legend (Rowen 1992). Still another famous literary popularization came through the story of the Golem as told in 1808 by Jakob Grimm, the great recorder of German mythology (Scholem 1972). Heinrich Heine, a highly popular German poet also wrote about the Golem. As the title for Wegener’s Der Golem indicates, the Golem was in the world of German scholars. It was an effective metaphor to think about modernity and the unanticipated outcomes of the age of the enlightenment (Ohana 2000). Historians and religionists suggest that it is difficult to point to the origins of the narrative of the Golem and its exact genealogy. How-ever, they agree that it was generally diffused in Germany in the sixteenth century and that it enjoyed continual echoes from that period onward. The times were actually rife with visions of Golems and other Homunculus—some attributed to Christian sources (e.g. Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus) while others to Jewish Rabbis (Bosker 1954). Notwithstanding the historical disputations about periodization and originality, these notes suggest that the German demonic metaphor of a Golem rising over its master was diffused and well known in German culture when Max Weber lived. The imagery of the demonic Golem was further popularized in the early years of the twentieth century by Meyrink’s novel Der Golem (Meyrink 2005 [1914]), and it was presented in the theater during these same years. Similar murky portrayals of human-creations-run-wild appeared in German expressionist movies dated to the 1920s. The best exemplars for this Golem-as-danger genre are Metropolis by Lang—with Rotwang the sorcerer creating a mad robot who wrecks havoc in the metropolis—and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Wiene—

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 229

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

with the mad scientist Caligari loosing control of his somnambulist creature Cesare who becomes a murderer (Eisner 1969; Kracauer 1947). These different renditions had common preoccupations,

epicting men’s victimization by those d

forces originating in his darker imaginings, creatures conjured by ‘Gothic’ fancies—vampires, magicians, hypnotists, demented scientists, archetypal criminals and the like seeking absolute power over their individual victims or over mankind as a whole. To these forces of darkness were opposed the idealism of the soul—loyalty, love, self-sacrifice, usually demonstrated by innocent youth and beauty in the face of evil old age and foul decay (Manvell in Goldsmith 1981: 148).

Paul Wegener visited Prague in 1913 and heard the story of the Golem. Within a year his Bioscop Company produced the first of his trilogy on Der Golem, of which only the third movie survived (Ledig 1988). The first movie told how workers discovered the Golem’s remains in the Alteneuschul’s [Altneuschul earlier – spelling?] attic—where the Maharal buried him under old scrolls. An antique dealer bought the remains and brought the Golem back to life through Kabalistic rituals. The Golem served as a slave until he fell in love with the dealer’s lovely daughter. He then developed an autonomous soul and will, and his attempts at human love were rejected by the pretty-looking daughter. Following this rejection he goes insane and falls to his death from a tower (Goldsmith 1981). Wegener’s third take on the theme of the Golem appeared in the famous feature film he produced in Germany in 1920, titled Der Golem (The Golem: How He Came into the World). The opening scene is similar to the original: Rabbi Loew—a lion in stature—is the leader of the Jewish ghetto, commanding intellectual and mystical powers to lead his community. One day he observes the stars and predicts calamity for his community. There are indeed rising threats imposed on the ghetto: despot’s [just despot?] Luhois argues that the Jews practice black magic, that they endanger the host society, and that they entertain un-Christian manners. Therefore, he decides to expel the Jews from Prague and sends the order of expulsion with a nice-looking and jolly messenger, Florian. To counter this impending catastrophe, Rabbi Loew—presented like a Faustian magician—uses his knowledge of the supernatural to construct an omnipotent yet mindless and soulless figure, which will serve to save the community. With the aid of an assistant, he con-structs an immense figure out of clay and through kabalistic rituals he calls on the dark spirit of Astaroth—one of the images of a devil in

230 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

Doctor Faustus—to reveal the sacred letters for giving life to matter. After getting the word from this devilish spirit he provides the Golem with life by attaching a magical amulet on the Golem’s chest which contains the Hebrew word Emet (literally truth, the Golem’s magical source of life). From that moment on, the Golem is dutifully obedient to his master’s commands, helping the Rabbi in all sorts of ways. Rabbi Loew—otherwise the emperor’s fortune teller and magi-cian—is invited to the King’s court to appeal the emperor’s decision on behalf of his flock. He arrives at the cheerful Rose Festival with the Golem at his side. Meanwhile, his sexually seductive daughter, Miriam, flirts with Florian, the emperor’s messenger, in the Rabbi’s house. During the festival the king asks the Rabbi to prove his magical powers, so Rabbi Loew makes a cinematic phantasm of Jewish history, warning all present not to ridicule the scene. When they do, the entire building crumbles down on the king and his courtiers. Out of desperation, the emperor asks Rabbi Loew to save him and promises to lift his eviction order. In response, the Golem holds up the ceiling from crushing all present at the scene. The emperor then indeed reverses the order of expulsion and the Jewish community rejoices in the heroic feat of the Golem and his master. Following this miraculous event, Rabbi Loew decides that the services of the Golem are no longer required, and that the life of this mightily powerful but inherently dangerous creature has to be terminated. Therefore, he takes off the amulet—after the Golem’s frightening objection—and the Golem immediately loses the essence of life (without the initial ‘E’ the word ‘met’ denotes the Hebrew meaning ‘dead’). Unexpectedly, and without Rabbi Loew’s knowledge, his young stupid assistant, Famulus, puts the magical amulet back on the Golem’s chest, bringing him back to life, to force Miriam to relinquish Florian and love him instead. However, upon re-awakening, the Golem has now developed a will of his own; he is transformed. Enraged and frustrated by Miriam’s rejection of his own love for her, the Golem defends himself from the envious Famulus, kills Florian, abducts the Rabbi’s daughter and runs away, leaving destruction and mayhem in his wake. The end result is that the powerful Rabbi and the Jewish community are left in despair and anguish. They run after the Golem who breaks down the heavy door of the ghetto and walks into a natural and beautiful land, where blonde children are playing. He picks up an innocent young girl who then—playfully—takes away the amulet which provides him with life, and he falls down lifelessly—later to be picked up by the Jews

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 231

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

and carried back into the ghetto.

The thematic structure of ‘Golem narratives’

The successful Der Golem represents the typical thematic archetype shared by many other German Golem stories (Rosenfeld 1934). In the following analysis we distinguish three components in the structure of this common narrative: the will to be empowered; the creation of a non-human material instrument to garner this power; culminating in the soulless instrument developing an autonomous spirit, which fate-fully makes it turn against the master, leading to personal and social destruction. The following lines expand on this basic characterization. The narrative usually starts with the motive of the Imitation Dei, namely an actor’s will to have godly powers in order to increase his wealth, happiness and control over illness and death. In Goethe’s Der Zauberlehrling, it is the will of the sorcerer’s apprentice to get more water from the well with less effort; in Wegener’s Der Golem it is Rabbi Loew’s wish to safeguard the wellbeing of his community and to stop the Emperor’s overpowering maneuvers. These characterizations suggest that human beings—limited by their innate nature—wish to have more power in order to control their fate and improve their circumstances. They also suggest that human frailty motivates actors to create strong, though inherently dangerous, material instruments in order to gain more control of otherwise unpredictable existential prospects. These depictions also suggest that the protagonists believe that their powers—rational, magical or technical—can allow them to have control over these inherent risks and dangers. To achieve their Promethean aims, actors magically bring into life different powerful non-human material instruments, and control them via mental means: hypnosis, suggestion, sorcery and bewitch-ment. These externally-controlled Golems lack a human spirit, autonomy and will, and are therefore supposedly suitable for carrying out their master’s will. At first sight, indeed, they appear harmless, and for a short time they do serve their master’s interests. Goethe’s wooden broom brings more water, while the Maharal’s clay Golem protects the ghetto. So while the protagonists believe that their creatures will forever submit to their powers, they fatefully ignore the fact that notwithstanding their authority, they are limited in foreseeing unintended circumstances. Trapped by false pretensions and blinded by hubris, they trust their ability to control the Golem.

232 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

Yet a hidden dark logic—a malevolent spirit—hides within the seemingly innocent material instrument. This alien spirit is unknown, uncontrolled, and potentially dangerous and violent. The seed of destruction is therefore immanent in the soulless instrument. The third movement provides the tragic turn: fate has the upper hand and the Golem rises against its master. With time, the Golems materialize their hidden logic and nascent harmful potential. The seed of wickedness develops autonomous roots, while the Golem now follows its own interests. From the seemingly unforeseen yet expected doomed transformation, the Golem becomes uncontrollable and destructive. This fabricated quasi-human material creature estranges itself from its creator, thereby alienating its master. In some cases, it even turns against its master, proving the latter’s frailty and the fallibility of his powers. While the Golem initially provides its creator with more power and greater control, with time it inevitably intensifies its owner’s existential insecurity. In other cases, the Golem impoverishes the very community it was originally meant to enrich or safeguard. The Golem has now become a demon or monster. Its spirit haunts humanity and derails the ideal intentions of his übermenschlichen master. In the following analysis we argue that the three-part structure of the Golem narrative—Promethean will for power, creation and fateful destruction—appears in Weber’s diverse works. We start by ferreting out the ubiquity of the Golem narrative in Weber’s Weltanschauung, since this worldview provides the underlying basis for his diverse preoccupations. Following this introductory exegesis we visit two major topics in Weber’s sociology. In the first section we re-read The Protestant Ethic thesis, showing Weber’s ironic analysis of the origins of capitalism and its fateful transformation into the rational Golem of the market that subjugates humanity. In the second we focus on Weber’s analysis of charisma and its demise by institutionalization.

Modern Golems and the fateful annihilation of gods and spirits

The kernel of the Golem narrative appears in Weber’s thinking of his-torical processes and human agency, the core elements in his Weltan-schauung. Weber suggested that humanity unfolds in history because of inherent tensions between the material forces of necessity and the opportunities opened up by man’s ideal essence as an affective, moral creature. Like Marx, Weber tilted toward a materialist position that argued that historical developments are partly determined by external

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 233

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

economic circumstances (Collins 1986). However, he balanced this deterministic posture with an open idealist slant. He argued that while material interests provide the energy for social change, it is ideas and moral passions that direct the actual historical course that society takes. As he said, ‘the “world images”, which have been created by “ideas” have, like switchman, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interests’ (Weber in Gerth and Mills 1946: 63-64). While Weber did not ‘aim to substitute…a one-sided materialistic with an equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of cul-ture and of history’ (Weber 1958: 183), he did regard pluralism in the ideal world of ideas as the inherent source of human freedom and meaningful life. Though he admitted that interests push action from behind, he insisted that ideals provide actors with optional directions to engage in a selfless devotion to substantive values. He argued that pluralistic ideals provide the opportunity for Beruf, a dedicated and meaningful pursuit of ultimate ideals which compete for peoples’ devotion. So while he acknowledged that economic facts delimit the sphere of action, he maintained that a motley of ultimate ideals provides actors with freedom of choice. He asserted that given a diverse world of ideals, actors can have some control over their lives since they have freedom of choice (Goldman 1992). In contrast, in the absence of a varied world of ideals, actors are left with a single option, living a fully-determined life, like passive automatons. Essentially, then, Weber regarded freedom as the precondition for worthwhile moral life; he viewed ideal forces as the essential sources for emancipation from economic determinants and monotheistic orders. Weber regarded the world of ideals as the polytheistic world of gods and demons—those spirits who provide actors with choice and allow them to live meaningfully through devotion to ultimate values (Oakes 2001). He described these spirits as participating in endless battles to attract followers. It is the spirits who provide actors with meaning and suggest alternatives for moral life. Therefore, the war between these gods is a source of freedom. Weber argued that battles over ideals, interpretations and meanings construct a free world for human choice. He even proclaimed that these ideational spirits inject history with openness and provide for cultural pluralism and democratic politics. On account of this Weltanschauung, he affirmed the autonomy of the ideal spheres of humanity: religion, art, culture and philosophy—all the realms where spirits and ideals combat for attaining man’s

234 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

devotion. As he stated in Science as a Vocation:

These are only the most elementary cases of the struggle that the gods of the various orders and values are engaged in. I do not know how one might wish to decide ‘scientifically’ the value of French and German culture; for here, too, different gods struggle with one another, now and for all time to come… So long as life remains immanent and is interpreted in its own terms, it knows only of an unceasing struggle of these gods with one another. Or speaking directly, the ultimate possible attitudes toward life are irreconcilable, and hence their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion. Thus it is necessary to make a decisive choice (Weber in Gerth and Mills 1946: 148-52).

As in Greek mythology, Weber thought that fateful yet unforeseen events determine human destiny; that spiritual wars create uncontrollable incidents that deflect human history from its pre-determined track. However, he suggested that humans are not passive spectators in these wars of godly powers. Rather, humans construct their own gods, and they provide radical interpretations for the ideals that their forefathers espoused. Demagogues, preachers, visionaries and eccentrics, like artists, writers and moralists—are the charismatic figures that spawn new gods and demons into the world. Given their variety, actors have the existential choice to pursue alternative moral agendas. However, Weber suggested that ideal human values and aspira-tions have practical and material consequences. His interest in world religions led him to analyze how different worldviews give shape to diverse behaviors and social institutions. He has shown that different ideals construct varied economic and administrative structures. Fatefully—like Golems—some of these material institutions and structures develop a spirit of their own; some of them, at least, give shape to inhuman social institutions that defeat the best intentions of their masters. Ironically, argued Weber, history is fateful because humans lack the power to control their own ideal creations; because they are doomed by the spirits that they have brought into the world; because they become dominated by the soulless institutions that are crystallized around their ideal, spiritual constructions. While reaffirming this world of the warring spirits, Weber was determined to reveal how modernity shrinks this historically polythe-istic world of the gods. He was obsessed with the debilitating proc-esses of formal rationalization of modernity through bureaucratization and science. His work on these topics set out to expose how efficient man-made constructions—markets, bureaucratic organizations and

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 235

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

institutions—curtail the world of human spirituality and thence delimit moral choice, making for a less humane world. Weber’s view of the historical development of Western society conceived capitalist modern society as a world ‘disenchanted of its gods and demons… [Where] the bearing of man has been disen-chanted and denuded of its mystical but inwardly genuine plasticity’ (Weber in Gerth and Mills 1946: 148). His diverse studies have conse-quently sought to expose how the accurate efficiency of modernity and the calculative mentality of capitalism affect the disenchantment of the world. His career-long preoccupation with formal rationalization and bureaucratization reflects his sense that these historically contingent developments diminish freedom because they destruct the very social ideals that set them in motion in the first place (Kalberg 1980). He argued that actors’ Promethean attempts to gain political control and economic power were accompanied in the West by the creation of material inventions that fatefully turned into Golems which were destined to shrink the sphere of ideal life and hence lead to moral impoverishment. Weber viewed modernity’s fetish-like preoccupation with eco-nomic efficiency as an assault on the better part of human existence: The moral life of man; life suffused with values and ideals; an exis-tence that provides actors with meaning and direction (Kalberg 2004; Morgan 2002). He therefore regarded the processes of rationalization and growth in technical efficiency as real pending dangers for human-ity, because cold and technical calculations daunt the very spirits that motivate action toward ultimate, other-worldly values (Weber 1946). Science, another rational tool that humanity developed, can have no say in the world of gods and demons, since ‘fate, and certainly not “science”, holds sway over these gods and their struggles’ (Weber in Gerth and Mills 1946: 148). Science can provide neither meaning for life nor consolation for death, because it lacks ultimate ideals and values. While science epitomizes the most rational strategy to adjudicate between alternative means, it can never speak to—nor should it be allowed to decide upon—the ideals that should direct human action. The following two sections detail how Weber’s view of the fateful rationalization of ideals unfolds in his analysis of capitalism and charisma. We show that in each of them the Promethean efforts of actors produce new ideals and values (i.e. gods and demons). How-ever, these new ideals lead actors to create new material structures that unintentionally embody a hidden technical spirit. In the fateful

236 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

but tragic history of the West, these rationalized and substance-less spirits broke free and took control over their Promethean creators. This narrative of the Golem of rationalized Western bureaucracy provides another literary tool to understand Weber’s sociological observations.

Capitalism—a malevolent Golem with a rationalized spirit

Weber’s study of the rise of capitalism provides a nice illustration for the appearance of the Golem narrative in his work. Actually, Weber’s interest in writing The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958) is echoed in Wegener’s subtitle for Der Golem: And How He Came into the World. Indeed, Wegener had a latent motive in making the movie: To explain how the evil force of the Golem and his unintended destructive power got into the world. Weber had a similar interest, namely to understand how capitalism came into the world and how it works—like the Golem—to defeat its advocates. He was ‘particularly interested in the origin of precisely the irrational element which lies in this, as in every conception of a calling’ ([Weber 1958?] p. 78). In Wegener’s cinematic answer—namely, that the Jews maliciously brought the destructive Golem into the world to fight against the Germans—he hinted that the poor fate of modern society was historically brought upon by Jewish devilish attempts to call for the help of material forces that it would have been best not to have created in the first place. Weber had a similar assessment vis-à-vis institutionalized modern capitalist economic markets and their impact on the over-rationalized consciousness of modern man. He thought that the vanity of religious men—their attempt to guarantee their salvation in the afterworld—historically evolved to defeat their noble intentions. Weber’s most famous thesis indeed parallels Wegener’s message. Interspersed throughout his text are references to a man-made system (i.e. capitalism as a Golem), which has risen over humanity to dominate it. In this section we show that The Protestant Ethic thesis follows the three-part structure of the Golem story.

The Promethean quest for salvation As Weber’s title suggests, the origin of the spirit of capitalism lies in religious motivations; namely in Protestant believers’ attempts to obtain clues regarding their salvation in the afterworld. Christianity’s dictum of predestination created despair amongst believers. They

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 237

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

were eager to know whether God predestined them to heaven or hell. Calvinism’s ‘open’ interpretation of this religious decree (the certitude salutis) brought immense relief from uncertainty, because now believers could get a clue regarding their salvation. Given that inner-worldly ascetic behavior—coupled with economic success—is the clue for salvation, Weber assumed that every Protestant believer would attempt to work as hard as possible to praise God’s name, thus forcing the clue out of the deity. Because hints of salvation are reflected by inner-worldly economic success, he thought that rational actors would be bound to invest great efforts in their working lives in order to reduce their anxiety about their destination. These other-worldly religious ideas about salvation in eternal heaven, coupled with the Faustian horror of Hell, produced an inner-worldly motivation to work—frugally, methodically and obediently. Consequently, the Protestant ethic of salvation-through-work motivated believers to fervently engage with economic activities in order to get material signs of redemption and salvation. It called for a Promethean effort to force the deity to provide a positive material clue regarding salvation and destiny.

The constitution of the material capitalistic Golem Given these religious ideas, believers utilized their rational capacities to build a non-religious economic infrastructure, using book-keeping, accounting methods and free exchange markets based on money. Transferring their religious ascetism into economic activities, entrepreneurs were keen on lowering expenditure and maximizing profit; they became fanatically calculative, frugal and efficient. The capitalistic mode of production they devised was based upon ‘the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise’ (Weber 1958: 17). This economic administration was based on the separation of business and household; on the legal distinction between corporate and personal interests and responsibilities (Coleman 1991, 1993); and on the availability of rational means to calculate investments and balance a day’s profits. This material administration of economic life was seemingly technical and morally neutral. However, it was not. To control ever-growing economic activities, capitalists perceived sentimentality and humane compassion as weakness: as the anti-thesis of economic rationality. Emotions, compassion, moral sentiments and ultimate beliefs now became ‘problems’, because they are unexpected and

238 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

difficult to manage or plan for. Substantive reasons for action like honor, a sense of calling, religious beliefs or pride were now defined as hindrances to formally rational economic strategies. Humanity became one-dimensional (Marcuse 1964), dominated by a single set of values that was fully based on materialistic monetary thinking. Therefore, in the paradoxical flip side of means and ends—of subservient Golems and their unsuspecting masters—morality became subjugated by thrift. The spirits changed guards: the formal rationality of the Golem economy started dominating ever-expanding realms of cultural and social life (Lowith 1986).

The Golem of capitalism gone mad Weber’s choice of words for the title (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) neatly testifies to his conception of a spirit—a malevo-lent, irrational spirit at that—which resides within the technical/eco-nomic system of capitalism. Taking the Kantian universal moral imperative as a standard, namely to treat humans as ideal aims and never as means to an end, he viewed the rationality inherent in capitalism as the obverse of this compassionate human morality. Indeed, he regarded as veritable values only those where people treated each other as ideal aims. Therefore, he criticized utilitarian conceptions that debase human beings by degrading them to mechanically-controlled means. And he argued that rationally-planned and cynically-administered social relations—Golem-children of capitalistic formal rationality—are morally wrong. From his idealist moral presuppositions he saw Franklin’s earthly pragmatic attitudes—the model he set as the ideal type for the spirit of apitalism—as corrupt and irrational: c

Now, all Franklin’s moral attitudes are colored with utilitarianism. Honesty is useful, because it assures credit; so are punctuality, industry, frugality, and that is the reason they are virtues. A logical deduction from this would be that where, for instance, the appearance of honesty serves the same purpose, that would suffice, and an unnecessary surplus of this virtue appear to Franklin’s eyes as unproductive waste… According to Franklin, those virtues, like all others, are only virtues in so far as they are actually useful to the individual, and the surrogate of mere appearance is always sufficient when it accomplishes the end in view… The impression of many Germans that the virtues professed by Americanism are pure hypocrisy seems to have been confirmed by this striking case (Weber 1958: 52).

Weber was astonished by this American spirit. He was upset by the American sense of ascetic frugality; he was bewildered by the fact that

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 239

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

the good American ‘avoids ostentation and unnecessary expenditure’ (1958: 71); and he was astounded by the fact that the American seems to work and will to ‘get nothing out of his wealth for himself’ (1958: 71). For Weber, the Americans seem to be possessed by an irrational spirit, an overly rational spirit, a spirit-turned-machine. From his pre-capitalist standpoint, American entrepreneurs are ‘incomprehensible and mysterious, so unworthy and contemptible’. His words provide clear evidence for this astonishment with the capitalists, whom he saw o be possessed by the spirit of the capitalist economic machine: t

But it is just that [irrational sense] which seems to the pre-capitalistic man so incomprehensible and mysterious, so unworthy and contempti-ble. That anyone should be able to make it the sole purpose of his life-work, to sink into the grave weighed down with a great material load of money and goods, seems to him explicable only as the product of a perverse instinct, the auri sacra fames (Weber 1958: 71-72).

Unintentionally, suggested Weber, the fabricated economic admini-stration that religious ascetic entrepreneurs devised slowly evolved into the modern Golem of capitalism. And in a seemingly fateful magical transformation, this ostensibly spiritless structure indeed developed a spirit of its own. Following Scholem (1941), a prominent scholar of Jewish mysticism, Eisenstadt focused on this important magical transformation in the Protestant Ethic. He suggested that some religions or worldviews have a capacity for transformation; for a self-generating process and self-directing change. As he suggested, ‘by transformative capacity is meant the capacity to legitimize, in religious or ideological terms, the development of new motivations, activities and institutions which were not encompassed by their original impulse and views’ (Eisenstadt 1968: 10). Such transformation clearly marked the historical development of capitalism. As many authors argued, capitalism developed the most rationalized economic calculative mode of thought possible, lacking compassion and ultimate values (Lowith 1986). While they eagerly developed material instruments for gaining clues about their heavenly destinations, Calvinist visionaries did not suspect these material tools to harbor an overly rational and calculative spirit which doomed the very motivations that set their masters on their path. Characteristic of other Golem stories, Weber thought that Ameri-cans have become enslaved by their non-human creations. True, capitalists are the most rational human beings; they maximize the alignment between means and economic ends; and they forsake unnecessary expenditures and refrain from conspicuous

240 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

consumption. They shun emotions and avoid moralistic discussions. However, they do not have a choice in this ‘ethical calling’. By obeying the now autonomous, formally rational spirit of capitalism (Kalberg 1980), entrepreneurs forfeited their gods, and hence their own humanity and freedom. Ironically, capitalists created economic machines that in time made their unsuspecting masters into one-dimensional machines in their own right (Marcuse 1964). The economic creation of their formal rationality—capitalism—became a

olem that came to dominate them. As Weber said, G

Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naïve point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence’ (Weber 1958: 53).

Ironically, this autonomous spirit—formally rational but substan-tively bankrupt—started dominating capitalists, narrowing their inter-ests to economic frugality (Marcuse 1964, 1971). As Weber said, the capitalist ‘exists for the sake of his business, instead of the reverse’ ([Weber 1958?]: 70). The historical paradox results from this confusion of means and ends. Being possessed by the bad spirit of capitalism, those who were keen on getting a clue about salvation now lost interest in their eventual destination; they no longer cared about their standing in the eyes of God; and they ceased to make an effort for other-worldly causes. As a result, religion became obsolete; and its ultimate values disappeared. Weber’s closing remarks in this masterly exemplar of sociological analysis beautifully illustrate the Golem narrative:

The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine produc-tion—which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so deter-mine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the ‘saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment’. But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage (Weber 1958: 181).

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 241

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

Charismatic spirits encaged—the Golem of institutionalization

Weber’s argument that means-ends connections are tragically and fatefully flip-sided [flipped over?] in modern society reflects the sense of eventual doom inscribed in the Golem narrative. But this deep cultural imagery went beyond Weber’s analysis of the origins of the spirit of capitalism and the fateful incarceration of the human spirit in an iron cage. This narrative resurfaces in his dialectical analysis of charisma in society. The following analysis shows that while Weber regarded charisma as the epitome of freedom and creativity, he thought that it is fated to be institutionalized, and therefore to be enchained by bureaucrats and hence to disappear. In several contexts he hinted that charismatic leaders’ will for power dooms them to succumb to Golem-like organizational structures they construct in order to fortify their power and perpetuate their authority. Weber thought that charismatic leaders provide a unique glimpse into the meaning of election, for those who were chosen by God, who created and embodied new human ideals. Charismatic leaders are therefore Weber’s exemplars for the Übermensch, the men and women who transcend routines and taken-for-granted realities; those elected leaders with a calling, who provide the world with more religious options and with additional interpretive schemes. As Weber suggested, charismatic figures provide humanity with more room for agency, freedom and responsibility. Charisma, indeed, is the ideal type of human creativity; of the ability to surpass normative boundaries; it is based on seemingly magical potency to oppose extant bureaucratic laws and to obliterate traditional religious decrees. Charismatic leaders betray traditions and legal codes. They invent gods and raise new moral spirits. Therefore, they open up new arenas for human action and they provide new meanings to otherwise alienated and senseless human conditions (Kalberg 2004; Morgan 2002). As the following analysis shows, charismatic figures—such as Rabbi Loew—are doomed to fall prey to their Golem-like soulless material creations.

The Promethean charismatic movement Like Marx, Weber’s concept of man was that of Homo Faber: The man that creates. In creativity he saw freedom; he viewed the ability to surpass institutionalized externalities as the sign for human emanci-pation and agency. Weber regarded charismatic leaders—those rare Übermenschen who are thrown into the world with superhuman

242 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

powers—as the creators of new visions that revolutionized fossilized social orders. Having ‘a damonic power’ [damonic ok? demonic](Jaspers, quoted in Adair-Toteff 2005: 191), charismatic leaders obliterate old ideas and traditional institutions, and they generate new ideas and interpretations; they construct new aspirations for their followers (Turner 2003). They thus provide society with new life that is vigorous and authentic. Unsurprisingly, Weber’s discussion of charismatic authority ascribes it with religious overtones. The capacity of innovators to create new religious visions and gather true believers around them stands for him as prime models for those charismatic and creative leaders—like Jesus, Luther, Calvin or Napoleon—who revolutionized prior moral, religious and political orders and set world history on new tracks. As he suggested,

Charisma is the greatest revolutionary force… Charisma…may involve a subjective or internal reorientation born out of suffering, conflicts, or enthusiasm. It may then result in a radical alteration of the central system of attitudes and directions of action with a completely new orientation of all attitudes toward the different problems and structures of the ‘world’ (Weber 1968: 53-54).

Charisma is a source of life, then; it is the engine of social change and the source for new moral currents. However, charisma is the most unstable power in society (Adair-Toteff 2005). Actually, charisma and order are oxymorons. Charisma operates with no limiting rules and it obeys no obliging laws. Therefore, it provides a shaky foundation for an operating social system. It is good at creation, not at sustenance. This is the reason why charismatic orders tend to transform into traditional or bureaucratic orders.

The institutionalization of power Historical records suggest that even strong charismatic leaders seek ways to institutionalize their power; to construct supportive norma-tive and legal machinery that would help them maintain authority and power. Over the long run, then, charismatic orders wear an external mechanical cloak, a fabricated garment that promises continuity and stability. As Weber suggested, charismatic rulers seek perpetuation through institutionalization. In order to amass more power and fortify their authority, they enlist mechanical procedures—rules, laws and other formal decrees—and they nominate officers to control their followers.

The turn of fate: Administration rules charisma

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 243

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

Ironically, however, this fabricated administrative cloak becomes an iron cage for the charismatic spirit. As Weber has aptly argued, charis-matic creativity—when institutionalized through formally rational bureaucratic rules—becomes a shadow of itself; its marrow stiffens in governance structures, its vitality suffocates in procedure. In contrast to the energetic force of charisma, institutionalized rules and laws make for a standard, impersonal order; they construct a mechanized administration, which purposely leaves miniscule degrees of freedom for creative action. Its formal rationality is the seed of death for harisma. As Weber suggested, c

Each charisma finds itself on this way from a stormy-emotional economic-alien life to a slow suffocating death under the weight of material interests in each hour of its life and indeed with each growing hour in increasing measure (Weber in Adair-Toteff 2005: 199).

It is exactly here that the Golem irony reasserts itself: the attempt of a charismatic Übermensch to guarantee his control over others for the long run necessitates that he construct an institutionalized bureaucratic administration. However, while they were structured as passive means, administrations developed a spirit of their own: formal, universal, specific and affectively neutral. With time, subservient administrators start controlling the social order through mechanized, universal decrees. But with the passage of time they also gain control over their creator—the charismatic person, who sought oo much power. As Weber aptly said: t

The introduction of elected officials always involves a radical alteration in the position of the charismatic leader. He becomes the ‘servant’ of those under his authority (Weber 1968: 64).

This analysis suggests that the Golem narrative is implicit in Weber’s analysis of charisma and its doomed downfall. Representing the Promethean Übermensch, the charismatic figure works for humanity; he seeks new alternatives to fossilized customs and taken-for-granted thoughts. By following his calling, the charismatic leader connects with transcendental realms and—like Moses on Mount Sinai—he enlightens his followers with new ideals. Because of this magical and hence non-stable source of esteem (Adair-Toteff 2005), charismatic leaders seek formally rational means to fortify and perpetuate their leadership. To do so they institutionalize their power through administrative arrangements and they nominate officials to carry out their com-mands and formalize their spheres of command. But in doing so they

244 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

construct an organizational Golem. With time, this Golem-like ra-tional administrative and seemingly neutral arrangement develops a spirit of its own. This rational spirit—exhibited by formal laws and administrative rules—attains autonomy from its creator. Bureaucracy now has a life of its own, an unwilled will. Eventually, the formerly rational Golem—originally child of the spirit of charisma—now comes to dominate it. It encages the free spirit of charisma, limiting its expression in daily life, suffocating its liberating influence on humanity. Charismatic leaders are doomed to be the slaves of their own creations. They thus perpetuate the historical dialectic process of change clutched by institutionalization. It should be stressed, however, that Weber viewed institutionalized formal rationality as the antithesis of life, freedom, creativity and happiness. While Western societies created rational bureaucracies to improve their economic lot and to gain control over economic markets, he warned that these organizations fatefully turn to be humanly depraved structures; that the spirit that bureaucracies embody in technical procedures and in administrative routines is bound—like the Golem—to flip the aims-means equation. So while bureaucracies are rational, universal, specific and egalitarian, Weber argued that they are also heartless, inflexible and inhuman. He suggested that their spirit is geared to the survival of the organization and to the legality of its action; that it works to safeguard control over markets and actors so as to allow capitalists the long-term perspective they need for planning economic transactions. However, in pursuing economic and administrative efficiency bureaucracies sacrifice the deepest and most basic interests of their creators. The human need for happiness—the prime motive which necessitated a bureaucratized administration in the first place—is left frustrated. The bureaucratic Golem has once again thwarted the best intentions of humanity. This analysis again leaves little doubt regarding Weber’s tragic conception of historical development. In order to empower their ability to rule and to construct appropriate environs that cater for the perpetuation of their power, kings, princes and charismatic leaders built formal bureaucracies. However, with time the latent spirit of this most formally-rational organization took root; it developed an autonomous logic—one tied to market demands and popular tastes. Charismatic Ubermensclischen, [Übermenschlischen?] who sought a material organizational instrument to embellish their power and ideals, suddenly found themselves trapped by the mechanisms of dilettante administrative machinery that is only interested in

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 245

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

instrumental efficiency and economic riches. In a fateful yet undesired result, charismatic leaders have become mandarins of state power, disciplined and conservative. Weber’s care for emancipation and freedom—epitomized by the power of charisma to spawn new ideals—is thus accompanied by the tragic sense that bureaucracy, being all encompassing, will sound the death knell of charisma (Mommsen 1974). A Golem narrative comes full circle.

Discussion: Golem or Faustus?

The success of Paul Wegener’s Der Golem was one of the first in a series of German expressionist films that reflected the narrative of the Golem—along with others who used the more known German story of Faust (e.g. Murnau’s Faust of 1926). These were also the days when Weber’s pessimistic analyses of modernity were most welcomed by his colleagues in Germany. Both were success stories,and both reflect the same cultural codes. We argue that the juxtaposition between the history of German film and German social theory—Der Golem and The Protestant Ethic, for example—is not only poetically justified, as we said earlier; it is also causally appropriate because they are two renditions of a common cultural code. Wegener was ten years younger than Weber, yet both witnessed Bismarck’s charismatic and authoritarian rule and the destructive effects of industrialization and capitalism. Both were also the common heirs of traditional German cultural conceptions about progress as an alienating process that becomes self-destructive. That both men used this common cultural imagery to understand their social and political context comes as no surprise. As hinted before, the Golem narrative has a meaningful affinity with the famous story of Doctor Faustus. Both stories tell of events which took place in the sixteenth century. Both tell of a Promethean attempt to gain knowledge about the essence and creation of life. The two also suggest that the protagonists—Faust and the Maharal—turn to magic when they are frustrated by their human limitations. Both stories thus provide a moral message about the dangers of knowledge and its improper use (Rosenfeld 1934). These mythical stories were diffused in German lore, and were later used by major German writers—most prominently by Goethe (e.g. Faust, Der Zaubererling, Prometheus) and Thomas Mann (e.g. Doctor Faustus). Some interpreters even claim that the Maharal is actually the Jewish Faust (Rosenfeld 1934).

246 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

Notwithstanding the similarities between the two myths, they do diverge on some crucial points. While the Golem story speaks about the act of creation, Faust is only involved in a pact with the devil, who becomes his servant. While the Golem story tells of a material process which spins out of control, the stories about Doctor Faustus narrate about dark, devilish spirits which corrupt the best of human intentions. From this literary point of view, it seems that the Golem narrative fits more fully with Weber’s preoccupation with the unintended consequences of modernity and capitalism. While both stories speak to the Promethean aspiration of modernity, only the Golem story speaks of material creations that harbor risk and destruction—a major theme in Weber’s writings. While the Golem was conceived through magic, once he bore his material features he could become materially self-sustaining. In contrast, Weber was not using the Faustian motive of evoking magic as a solution for the uncertainty of human existence. He was aiming to show how actors like Doctor Faustus and Rabbi Loew are responsible for the disenchantment of the world—not because they had a magical pact with the devil, but simply because they invented material forces which proved to be stronger than both God and the devil. Historical studies of German expressionist films have indeed suggested that the movies of the 1920s reflected the inner psyche of German culture; that they express common collective fears and share tragic conceptions of history and human agency (Eisner 1969; Kracauer 1947). Kracauer, Adorno’s teacher and lifetime friend, was very explicit about that point, stating that ‘through an analysis of the German films deep psychological dispositions predominant in Germany from 1918 to 1933 can be exposed’ (Kracauer 1947: v). He suggested that the movies of this period recurrently expressed common German themes—like the Golem—and that they therefore emanate from a common cultural and psychological unconscious spirit—the German Geist. Kracauer was again explicit on this point, saying that ‘persistent reiterations of these motifs marks them as outward projections of inner urges… concerned with the psychological pattern of a people at a particular time’ (Kracauer 1947: 8). Rosenfeld argued that Wegener used Faustian magical imageries in filming Der Golem in order to tap into the popular imagination during Weimer Germany and provide the movie-goers with simplistic version of the magical elements in both legends (Rosenfeld 1934). We suggest that similar imagery also animated German social

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 247

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

theory. Although social theory was rarely used as data for the analysis of cultural patterns, this article suggests that the latter is no different from other cultural products: films, novels, paintings or dance. In this article we have followed hermeneutic traditions and interpreted Weber’s mode of thought in order to understand the cultural basis of his social theory. We argue that the persistent theme of the Golem—so impressively presented through German expres-sionist films—reverberates in Weber’s diverse writings. We have shown that Weber’s world is inhabited by gods and demons. He suggested that ideals and spirits constitute the realm of freedom. These non-material features inspire and direct human action and thence give shape to material economic infrastructures. However, Weber shared the belief that human material creations have autonomous spirits; that they have a logic of their own, careless of human ideals and ignorant of transcendental aspirations. His vision of historical processes encapsulated the conception of transformation and fateful destruction (Liebersohn 1988), namely that material products are bound to rise over their ideal forefathers and destroy them. This was clearly his imagery in analyzing the rise of free market capitalism over protestant sects who initiated the very motivation to engage in economic entrepreneurship. This was also his reasoning in discussing the fateful downfall of charismatic leaders. Seeing laws, rules and regulations as an embodied spirit in an otherwise material-ist administrative infrastructure, he suspected that bureaucracies are doomed not only to sound the death knell of charisma but more generally of all human ideals. Weber’s analyses of academic administration and the iron cage of modern rationality thus testify to his own übermenschlichen or Promethean attempt to provide humanity with Aufklärung, with liberation from blind submission to materialist historical processes.

References Adair-Toteff, Christopher 2005 ‘Max Weber’s Charisma’, Journal of Classical Sociology 5: 189-204. Bloch, Chaim [Rosenberg Y.] 2005 [1908] The Prague Golem: Jewish Stories of the Ghetto (Prague: Vitalis). Bosker, Ben Zion 1954 From the World of the Cabbalah: The Philosophy of Rabbi Judah Loew of

Prague (New York: Philosophical Library). Coleman, James S.

248 Max Weber Studies

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

1991 ‘Prologue: Constructed Social Organization’, in Pierre Bourdieu and James S. Coleman (eds.), Social Theory for a Changing Society (Boulder, CO: Westview Press): 1-14.

1993 ‘The Rational Reconstruction of Society’, American Sociological Review 58: 1-15.

Collins, Randall 1986 Weberian Sociological Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 1968 ‘The Protestant Ethic Thesis in an Analytic and Comparative

Framework’, in S.N. Eisenstadt (ed.), The Protestant Ethic and Modernization: A Comparative Framework (New York: Basic Books): 3-45.

Eisner, Lotte H. 1969 The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence

of Max Reinhardt (London: Secker & Warburg). Gerth, Hans H., and Wright C. Mills (eds.) 1946 From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University

Press). Goldman, Harvey 1992 Politics, Death, and the Devil: Self and Power in Max Weber and Thomas

Mann (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Goldsmith, Arnold L. 1981 The Golem Remembered, 1909–1980: Variations of a Jewish Legend (Detroit:

Wayne State University Press). Idel, Moshe 1990 Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid

(New York: State University of New York Press). Kalberg, Stephen 1980 ‘Max Weber’s Types of Rationality: Cornerstones for the Analysis of

Rationalization Processes in History’, American Journal of Sociology 85: 1145-79.

2000 ‘Max Weber’, in George Ritzer (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists (Malden, MA: Blackwell): 144-204.

2004 ‘The Past and Present Influence of Worldviews: Max Weber on a Ne-glected Sociological Concept’, Journal of Classical Sociology 4: 139-63.

Kracauer, Siegfried 1947 From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Ledig, Elfi 1988 ‘Making Movie Myths: Paul Wegener’s “The Golem” ’, in Emily D.

Bilsky (ed.), Golem: Danger, Deliverance and Art (New York: The Jewish Museum): 36-45.

Liebersohn, Harry 1988 Fate and Utopia in German Sociology, 1870–1923 (Cambridge, MA: The

MIT Press). Lowith, Karl 1986 Max Weber and Karl Marx (London: George Allen & Unwin). Marcuse, Herbert 1964 One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial

Yair and Soyer The Golem Narrative in Max Weber’s Work 249

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

Society (Boston, MA: Beacon Press). 1971 ‘Industrialization and Capitalism’, in Otto Stammer and Kathleen

Morris (eds.), Max Weber and Sociology Today (Oxford: Basil Blackwell): 133-51.

Meyrink, Gustav 2005 [1914] The Golem (Prague: Vitalis). Mommsen, Wolfgang J. 1974 The Age of Bureaucracy (New York: Harper & Row). Morgan, David 2002 ‘Pain: The Unrelieved Condition of Modernity’, European Journal of

Social Theory 5: 307-32. Oakes, Guy 2001 ‘The Antinomy of Values: Weber, Tolstoy and the Limits of Scientific

Rationality’, The Journal of Classical Sociology 1: 195-211. Ohana, David 2000 The Promethean Passion: The Intelectual Origins of the 20th Century from

Rousseau to Foucault (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute [Hebrew]). Parsons, Talcott 1937 The Structure of Social Action (New York: McGraw-Hill). Rosenfeld, Beate 1934 Die Golemsage und ihre Verwertung in der Deutschen Literatur (Breslau:

Verlag Dr. Hans Priebatsch). Rowen, Norma 1992 ‘The Making of Frankenstein’s Monster: Post-Golem, Pre-robot’, in

Nicholas Ruddick (ed.), State of the Fantastic: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Fantastic Literature and Film (Westport: Greenwood): 169-77.

Scholem, Gershom G. 1941 Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Schocken Books). 1972 ‘The Idea of the Golem’, in On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (New

York: Schocken Books): 158-204. Turner, Stephen 2003 ‘Charisma Reconsidered’, Journal of Classical Sociology 3: 5-26. Weber, Max 1946 ‘The Social Psychology of the World Religions’, in H.H. Gerth and C.

Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press): 267-301.

1958 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons).

1968 On Charisma and Institution Building: Selected Papers (Chicago: Univer-sity of Chicago Press).

1978 Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press).