Overview

Originally published in 1986, From Berlin to Berkeley is an intellectual portrait of one of America’s leading 20th century social scientists, Reinhard Bendix, and his father, Ludwig Bendix. It discusses cultural identity and assimilation and provides a profound account of Ludwig Bendix’s life as a lawyer and critic of the German judicial system, his identification with German culture and his emigration to Palestine during Hitler’s regime. Bendix then examines the relationship with his father and details his youth in Germany, his emigration to America, and his early career as a scholar. Covering the period from 1877 to the 1980s, Bendix shows how the two lives were touched by the culture of Imperial Germany, the German legal profession, World War I, the revolution of November 1918 in Germany and subsequent inflation, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the crisis of the Weimar Republic, the Hitler regime, emigration to Palestine and the United States, World War II, the division of Germany, and the world-political role of the United States. A moving exploration which melds sociological case study and family history, the book is a significant measure of a family and a civilization.

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9781041303480

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Reviews

Original Reviews of From Berlin To Berkeley: ‘An enlightening and moving piece of writing.’ Lewis A. Coser, Contemporary Sociology ‘Bendix is a distinguished academic, noted for his contributions to political sociology…[a] splendid book…’ N. B. Rosenthal, Choice

Author Information

Reinhard Bendix (1916–1991) was a German-born political sociologist whose work focused on industrial relations, nation-building, the history of ideas, the role of the social sciences in society, and the transformation of political legitimacy over time and across nations. He drew his inspiration from the work of Max Weber, and was instrumental during the 1960s and 1970s in making Weber’s vast and complex work accessible to English-speaking scholars. Bendix was a key figure in what has come to be called the ‘first wave’ of historically and comparatively oriented sociology in the United States, together with Seymour Martin Lipset (with whom he collaborated extensively) and Barrington Moore. He left behind lasting intellectual bridges between Germany and the United States that emphasized an awareness of historical contingency as well as of the demonstration effects nation-states exerted on one another, and of the caution that is needed when attempting to generalize.

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