Albrecht Ritschl

Ritschl represents a powerful nineteenth-century interpretation of Protestant development that Weber treats as influential but insufficient, particularly on the place of Pietism within the larger story. By naming Ritschl, Weber signals that he is not writing in a vacuum but correcting a received theological narrative about what Protestantism did and did not contribute to modern life. In the essay's middle movement, Ritschl serves as a marker of the historiographical stakes: get Pietism wrong, and the causal chain linking faith to the spirit of capitalism comes apart.