Ernst Troeltsch

As sociologist of religion as well as historian, Ernst Troeltsch stands in the shadow of Max Weber, his colleague and friend in Heidelberg. Could a theologian ever also be a ‘value-neutral’ sociologist? Or maybe he wasn’t a real theologian? Bringing the two together has always sparked controversy and yet it was an issue that Troeltsch made his own and, for him, held political significance. He researched the cultural meaning of religion to liberate Protestantism from its traditional ties of church and dogma. After World War One he entered the Weimar Republic political arena as a Liberal, and in his diagnostic writings on contemporary problems went beyond customary boundaries. Graf reconstructs the biographical and historical constellations of this Liberal Protestant and in doing so confirms quite brilliantly Ernst Troeltsch’s conviction that the real importance of a being or an object only becomes accessible through detailed historiography.