Patriotism – Max Weber’s interpretation

Serhii Makeiev

Dictionaries are uniform in their definitions of patriotism – love of the fatherland, devotion to the people. What is meant is a clearly positive emotion, feeling, cast of mind, attitude of the individual towards the Motherland. But, it should be added, towards any supra-personal formation. In peacetime one may be known as a patriot of one’s land or locality, region, city, village, factory, or as a supporter of a football team. In everyday speech it is also acceptable to speak of patriotism within a profession, that is, of strict adherence to the best models of performing one’s duties, to sound rules and procedures. Yet in conditions of war only that most essential dictionary meaning remains in circulation: devotion to the fatherland, to the people. Something that has to be turned into one’s own experience and thereby to confirm its personal significance. Patriotism of this kind has easily recognisable visual and auditory signs – the coat of arms, the flag, the language, the anthem, the slogans.

Clearly, patriotism is a complex emotional/mental/behavioural complex: emotion – cast of mind – action. Emotion – the experience or sense of a collective whole as more important than oneself; cast of mind – the presence of convincing arguments as to why such a feeling exists at all; action – behavioural responses confirming the existence of the arguments, of the feeling and of their rational justification. In the spirit of Weberian sociology the formulation would probably be: a meaningful action, oriented towards the generalised other, emotionally coloured.

Like any phenomenon, patriotism has a broad spectrum of shades – from positive to negative. Under the banner of patriotism one often hears calls to hatred, violence, plunder – that is how it is understood by some communities of individuals. And besides, patriotism is easily imitated, and its productive demonstration is often bound up with reputational, prestige and material benefits at the disposal of the state, which uses them as positive sanctions in its interaction with individuals and professional groups – so that individuals compete for them. Indeed the state system of awards and titles, arranged by rank according to the weight and significance of orders, medals and titles, represents a materialised recognition of a certain degree of patriotism displayed and noticed – from the hero’s star to simple badges for labour valour, while some orders have several classes. This is a system of state discrimination between the quality and measure of service to the common good (we understand – the quality and measure of patriotism)

War raises a wave of patriotism: volunteers for the army, members of the territorial defence, volunteers in the civic sense, individual enterprise aimed at meeting the needs of the army, of refugees, of the wounded – altruistic behaviour of the purest kind. That is, many people have to do what they never did before and never even suspected they were capable of doing and would do. But in wartime it is no less natural that suspicions arise and spread of «ostensible», ostentatious, insincere patriotism. And, in the extreme form, of treason: today in Ukraine, for example, the word «collaborationism» appears in everyday speech and in ordinary and social media, and in legal documents (laws) its definition and the measure of punishment for what is in fact anti-patriotism.

In Germany at the beginning of the last century several «patriotisms» coexisted, depending on the declared aims of the war, the conditions and means of achieving peace and the desired construction of the post-war world order: conservative, radical-chauvinist, democratic. Max Weber is an example of a rationally realistic patriotism, so to speak, of an academic scholar of the study-bound, individualised type. He taught little and not for long at a higher education institution; although he founded the German Sociological Society, he took practically no part in its work; he is less well known than his contemporary, the economist and sociologist Werner Sombart; it was said that his wife Marianne Weber, thanks to her public work, was better known in academic circles than he was. Like the almost absolute majority of German scholars and professors, the war aroused enthusiasm and inspiration in Weber – as if from the mere presence, side by side and at the same time, of something great and sacred. And alongside this there told an unremitting striving to do something useful and thereby to identify oneself with that supra-personal formation whose defence was felt as an urgent duty. The emotional component is more present in his letters to relatives and friends. The mental (semantic) one mostly in his lectures and articles, for he believed, not without grounds, that his judgements rested on a sober and careful weighing of the chances (possibilities) of being realised given the available facts, political conditions and socio-economic processes.

This is how the patriotism of the classic of sociology in that First World War was remembered by his contemporaries. In August 1914 Weber had already turned 50. He intends to serve the fatherland personally, with his own physical body. In letters to various correspondents he calls the war «great and wonderful», one in which Germany is defending its own statehood and culture, and he considers death for the fatherland the best conclusion to the life of a citizen worthy of that high name. His devotion and love for the state, that embodiment of the German spirit, are undeniable; this is a patriotic emotion of the purest kind, which he shares with the whole intellectual community of the country and with the unconditional majority of the population. In letters to friends and colleagues he repeats more than once: the war is a matter of honour for the state and for every citizen.

Yet the medical commission is merciless towards the 50-year-old scholar: incapable of long marches or of riding on horseback, and therefore unfit for use at the front. He is a volunteer who is well aware of his poor health anyway. On the first day of mobilisation he is enrolled as an officer in the reserve military hospital commission and spends 13 hours a day arranging medical institutions in the administrative district of Heidelberg — so he does after all take part in the war with his body, but in the rear. At the very beginning of the war some remembered him as a «bellicose militarist» who received guests at his home in the uniform of a reserve officer. The undertaking is complex; he has to see to everything, to demand what is needed, to negotiate with suppliers, to be outraged at bureaucracy, to fend off high-ranking persons from tiresome visits to the wounded.

The scholar, accustomed to working alone at his writing desk, is compelled to keep a strict watch on the proper performance of duties by the staff, to encourage, to impose punishments, to settle conflicts, to delimit powers. In other words, in fact to be the focus of the noise and bustle of a life knocked out of its usual rut — everything that is never conveyed in its full extent from the pages of books and archival documents. Towards the wounded Frenchmen, adversaries in the war, his wife testifies, he behaves as towards people in need of care and treatment, and he allows their compatriots from Alsace to visit them. He organises educational courses for those recovering and, for the first time in 16 years, gives two lectures.

In the autumn of 1915 the commission of reserve military hospitals is abolished, and while the authorities are considering where to place Weber, he submits a report requesting discharge, which is granted. His gifts, analytical abilities and enormous knowledge deserve a better — a direct — application in the status of a moderately nationalist public intellectual-patriot. However, Weber’s expert opinion on political questions — relations with Lithuania, Poland, Russia, with European countries — interests no one. His ability to see, earlier than others, the problems approaching from the future is not in demand; the circle of interlocutors who understand the complexity of the political knots being tied with every further day of the war is, one might say, narrow and hermetic — in essence it practically does not exist. Beyond episodic contacts with those who try to forecast the near future on a more or less systematic basis, Weber bears the stigma of a «defeatist». Evidently moderate patriotism and a rational conception of national honour and dignity seemed to some like a kind of temptation to treason. Moreover, the tone of his speeches on political or scholarly questions is aggressive and intolerant of other points of view; deeply convinced of the rightness of his own judgements, he is prone to sharp conflicts with opponents, up to the rupture of personal relations. His erudition and ability to formulate thoughts precisely are acknowledged, but it is hard to cooperate with him.

In March 1916 Weber submits to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to the offices of the political parties a memorandum analysing the political situation in connection with the attacks of German submarines on civilian vessels, and proposes urgent diplomatic and military initiatives. For this, as he believes, the «conservative hotheads» will certainly declare him a «feeble coward». There is no hope of an adequate response since, he is convinced, «the eye for what is possible and useful is lacking in everyone»: he had no illusions about the practical qualities of politicians, officials, the higher military and even the monarch. Despite this he becomes what he had never been — a public intellectual. From Christmas 1915 and over the following three years Weber publishes almost 30 articles in the newspaper «Frankfurter Zeitung», amounting in total to about three hundred book pages.

In the last two years of the war M. Weber travels the country with lectures whose main theme becomes the post-war socio-political order of Germany. Here are some of the topics of his talks: «Germany’s political position in the world» (27 October 1916), «What does the German people expect of the constitutional commission of the German Reichstag?» (8 June 1917), «Personality and way of life» (29 September 1917), «Problems of the sociology of the state» (25 October 1917), «Science as a vocation» (7 November 1917), «Democracy and aristocracy in America» (23 March 1918). He knew he had a gift — and was proud of it — for speaking with passion, more often improvising than following a text prepared in advance, not so much instilling his own preferences and values as clarifying for his listeners their own. His arguments are used by party representatives in parliamentary and public debates. His attempts to make politics a more reasonable affair by distinguishing the possible from the unrealisable, to reform the country’s constitutional order, testified that he had not lost hope of serving the people with a scholar’s experience.

Yet his influence on the course of events, on the thinking of those involved in taking decisions, was minimal; most of his proposals for reforming the system of governing the state were ignored. The indifference towards what he thought through, said and wrote distressed Weber. Nevertheless he did not abandon his cause. Well, since politicians practically do not listen to him, Weber also turns to students, to those whose receptiveness can still be counted on. And not without the intention, it seems, of forestalling their inclination to be carried away by political utopias. In the famous lecture, honoured within the sociological milieu, «Science as a profession and a vocation» (Wissenschaft als Beruf) he speaks of how important it is to form the ability and the habit of concentrating on the most essential and of studying it comprehensively, relying on intellect and rationality. In German Wissenschaft means not only science but also knowledge, learning, erudition (in English — scholarship). That is why the title «Wissenschaft als Beruf» can also be read thus: «Intellectuality as a profession and a vocation». To this belongs the no less well known lecture «Politics as a profession and a vocation» with its emphasis on the distinction between the ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility. The latter, moreover, ought to be characteristic of contemporary politicians in times of war and of peace: they must carry out their business carefully and honourably, be professionals and not dilettantes. He already knew what a hopeless business it is to write out prescriptions of conduct for those in power, yet he did what he could do best.

Weber’s reaction to the war was a manifestation of the full cycle of patriotism: emotion, cast of mind, action as physical participation in the war and a return to professional duties as a vocation. Nothing else could have been expected of one accustomed to reasoning consistently and reflexively, who also performed the function of a rationally and realistically thinking analyst-propagandist. He did not accept the terms and definitions of the Versailles peace, according to which Germany was recognised as the aggressor. Possibly also because this devalued his personal patriotism. Besides, he often expressed the view that the outbreak of the war had been conditioned by the imperialist policy of Russia; it was in response to this threat that his country had been forced to defend itself.

Wars end sooner or later, and the victors, by denying the patriotism of the defeated, in fact scatter the seeds of revanche. And no one knows when and under what conditions they will sprout. So it happened in the last century. Perhaps it always happens that way.