Socjologia jako nauka o rzeczywistości historycznej
Sociology Studying the Past

German Historical Sociologists in the Interwar Period

Summary/Abstract: The article is an attempt to look closer at the presence of historical topics in the works of German sociologists of the interwar period. It discusses the political context of the development of sociology in Germany after the First World War and the place of historical sociology within it. The latter was featured by: treating historical epochs as “individuals,” determining the “spirit” of an epoch in question and focusing on chosen figures of an epoch as particularly representative for it. The epoch that particularly attracted the attention of interwar German sociologists was the Renaissance and the figure they paid special attention to was Niccolò Machiavelli. Unlike most up-to-date socio-historical works, those written in the first half of the twentieth century in the German-speaking area are close to the philosophy of history and only a few of them are empirical comparative studies. In the text the topics are indicated that link the interwar German historical sociology with that practised currently. These are, above all, the interest in Early Modernity and theorising the State as a form of societal organisation.

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