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The Golem Narrative in Max Weber's Work

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DOI: 10.15543/MWS/2006/2/6

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

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.

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

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

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

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

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-

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

228 Max Weber Studies

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—

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

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

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,
depicting men’s victimization by those
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

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

230 Max Weber Studies

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

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

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

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.

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

232 Max Weber Studies

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

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

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

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

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

234 Max Weber Studies

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

© Max Weber Studies 2006.

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

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

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236 Max Weber Studies

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

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

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

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238 Max Weber Studies

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
capitalism—as corrupt and irrational:
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

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

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
to be possessed by the spirit of the capitalist economic machine:
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

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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
Golem that came to dominate them. As Weber said,
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).

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

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

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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

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

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
charisma. As Weber suggested,
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
too much power. As Weber aptly said:
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

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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

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

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).

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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

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

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.

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© Max Weber Studies 2006.

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