 Educated mainly at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, Weber was trained in law, eventually writing his dissertation on medieval trading companies under Levin Goldschmidt and Rudolf von Gneist (and examined by Theodor Mommsen) and Habilitationsschrift on Roman law and agrarian history under August Meitzen. While contemplating a career in legal practice and public service, he received an important research commission from the Verein für Sozialpolitik (the leading social science association under Gustav Schmoller’s leadership) and produced the so-called East Elbian Report on the displacement of the German agrarian workers in East Prussia by Polish migrant labours. Greeted upon publication with high acclaim and political controversy, this early success led to his first university appointment at Freiburg in 1894 to be followed by a prestigious professorship in political economy at Heidelberg two years later. Weber and his wife Marianne, an intellectual in her own right and early women’s rights activist, soon found themselves at the center of the vibrant intellectual and cultural life of Heidelberg. The so-called “Weber Circle” attracted such intellectual luminaries as Georg Jellinek, Ernst Troeltsch, and Werner Sombart and later a number of younger scholars including Marc Bloch, Robert Michels, and György Lukács. Weber was also active in public life as he continued to play an important role as a Young Turk in the Verein and maintain a close association with the liberal Evangelische-soziale Kongress (especially with the leader of its younger generation, Friedrich Naumann). It was during this time that he solidified his reputation as a brilliant political economist and outspoken public intellectual.