Abstract

Max Webers’ voluminous work remained fragment. In particular the countless Weber-interpretations did not succeed so far in reconstructing an internal unity of the work. In very compressed form this essay tries to show that for Weber the question of history- and culture-determining powof religion is a key-question, which draws through the whole work and helps to decode its internal unity. Without the power of religion for Weber the genesis of the secular western modern age is incomprehensible. In particular the disenchantment of the occidental world itself is the result of a religious-historical process of centuries. Thereby it is the tragedy of religion that it abolished itself in the process of disenchantment, whose vehicle it was. Religion came – actually not to its historical end – but to the end as a culture-determining vital power ."