August Hermann Francke

Francke stands among the Pietist reformers whose practical piety Weber treats as a decisive force in reshaping everyday conduct, especially in Germany. His impulse is to make belief active — schooling, charity, and methodical self-scrutiny — rather than let it dissolve into either worldly indifference or mere doctrine. That tension between inward conviction and outward discipline is exactly what Weber probes when he asks how religious seriousness could harden into the work ethic of capitalism.