Today, sociology and sociologists are accepted – and even respected – worldwide. Sociology has long been regarded as a legitimate science. Most universities have a sociology department; there are numerous sociology journals; and sociology conferences are held regularly. The 2002 World Congress of the International Association of Sociology brought together thousands of sociologists from 100 different countries. Besides the International Sociological Association, there are the British Sociological Association, the American Sociology Association and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (D.G.S.).

By contrast with today, sociology as a science barely existed 100 years ago (Hawthorne, 2004: 245). While Auguste Comte may have coined the term ‘sociology’ early in the nineteenth century, the science of sociology was still in its infancy in 1900. Five years earlier, Emile Durkheim had published Les Règles de la Méthode Sociologique and by 1905 Albion Small had established the so–called Chicago school. But in Germany, there were still no professional sociologists or professional sociological associations, no sociological journals and no academic sociological conferences. This began to change in 1909. As Dirk Käsler has argued, for sociology to succeed in Germany, it needed to become institutionalized, and this began when the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie was founded in Berlin on 3 January of that year (Käsler, 1984: 294). Not only did it need to become institutionalized, it also needed to be regarded as non–partisan and objective. It had to dissociate itself from the idealistic and socialist–leaning socio–political movements of the day. Sociology did not arise in Germany as Athena sprang out of Zeus's head; rather, there was a long gestation period.

In his ‘Die Anfänge der Soziologie’ (‘The Beginnings of Sociology’) Werner Sombart discussed this gestation period. He traced the beginnings of sociology in general to the time when neither natural law theories nor contract theories of law held sway. According to Sombart, only when there was no ‘absolute’ could a science of ‘sociology’ become possible (Sombart, 1923: 9). Thus, for Sombart, sociology ‘began’ some time in the last decades of the eighteenth century. As to the question of when German sociology ‘began’, there can be a more definite answer: 1887. That was the year Ferdinand Tönnies published his highly influential book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Community and Society) (see Käsler, 1984: 305).