“Those who would think about the nature of society and history in our time have been living off the big men of the nineteenth century. There has not yet appeared any twentieth- century political theorist, sociologist, historian, or economist whose work is truly up to their level.” C. Wright Mills, “Introduction” to W. E. H. Lecky's History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (Mills, 1955)

At the beginning of 1877, before his fourteenth birthday, Max wrote – evidently as a belated Christmas present – two historical essays “after numerous sources,” one “About the Course of German History, with Special Regard to the Positions of the Emperor and the Pope,” the other “About the Roman Imperial Period from Constantine to the Migration of Nations”; the latter was “Dedicated by the Author to his Own Insignificant Self as well as to his Parents and Siblings.” The text of the second essay is illustrated with a sketch of Constantinople, the family tree of Constantius Chlorus [Constantius I, “The Pale”] and daintily drawn heads of the Caesares and Augusti, apparently copied from antique coins the boy was collecting at the time. (Marianne Weber, 1975: 46)