The history of the reading and exegesis of several of Max Weber's writings has been - from the beginning - a history of misunderstandings. This is especially the case with his treatise on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The fact that there has been a history of misunderstandings was pointed out as early as 1944 by Ephraim Fischoff in an article published in Social Research and has been repeated since by several others.

Although all relevant texts are accessible, there remain different opinions with regard to Weber's intentions during the last decade of his life. The divergent positions were put forward in 1975 by Friedrich H. Tenbruck in his article “Das Werk Max Webers,” and recently by Wilhelm Hennis and Wolfgang Schluchter. Since I am going to discuss the supposition that there is a mutual relationship between Weber's studies on Protestantism and his research on the economic ethics of world religions, I must at least in passing consider the different opinions concerning the relation of Economy and Society (ES), Economic Ethics of World Religions (EEWR), and his earlier studies on the Protestant Ethic (PE).