In 1895, in his inaugural lecture, delivered on being appointed Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Freiburg, Max Weber incidentally described himself as ‘[a] disciple of the German Historical School’ (Weber 1895a: 19). It can be added that he was taught economics by a leading representative of the older German Historical School, Carl Knies (Swedberg 1998: 180–1). Rather than these generational differences within it (see Swedberg 1998: 174–6; Tribe 2002: 5–14), it is the School's struggle with the ghost of Adam Smith – important for its intellectual formation – that is of particular interest here, and also Knies own contribution to the published discussion of Smith. Through these routes Smith was made known to Weber, even though he remained mostly absent from Weber's own writing. Adam Smith's relevance to our understanding of Weber is compounded through Smith's development of an argument in The Theory of Moral Sentiments concerning the spirit of capitalism, which has been ignored in the secondary literature and, while not acknowledged by Weber, is important for an understanding of his Protestant Ethic.

Smith's Wealth of Nations was known in Germany almost immediately after its first publication in London in 1776 (Greenfeld 2001: 180). It was both praised for its scientific prescience by liberal progressives and suspiciously regarded by the defenders of the official doctrine of Kameralism, which promoted state sponsorship of economic activity, for its laissez-faire pronouncements (Greenfeld 2001: 180–7).