Daniel Johnson: Myths of the Prophet Max

By Dilip -
Max Weber's controversial views on democracy still resonate today. For generations, Germany had been shaped by its culture of didacticism; in Shaw’s day, it was the land of the professor as hero. One such hero towered above his contemporaries: the father of modern social thought, Max Weber. Exactly a century ago, Weber succumbed to an unknown respiratory disease. He was only 56, but his decline was swift. Some close to him blamed the 
doctor, who had claimed that he could handle not only influenza (then a new disease) but also pneumonia; his most recent biographer, Joachim Radkau, implies that antibiotics might have saved him.

Yet neither better doctors nor drugs could have resisted a viral onslaught that attacked not only his lungs but, as an autopsy revealed, his spleen, liver and stomach too. After living through the Covid-19 pandemic, we now realise that even modern medicine may be helpless against viruses of such virulence. Having struggled vainly for a fortnight, Weber died on 16 June, 1920....
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/july-august-2020/myths-of-the-prophet-max/

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