The Weber debate and what it means for Zurich

Weber, Sombart and Tawney

No discussion of Reformed economic ethics can avoid Max Weber. His essay Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus appeared in two parts in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in November 1904 and June 1905. A revised version was included in the first volume of his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie in 1920. Weber argued that the “worldly asceticism” (innerweltliche Askese) of ascetic Protestantism, above all the psychological consequences of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, produced a rational, methodical conduct of life. Within that conduct of life, work in a calling (Beruf) was sanctified and success could be read as a sign of election. The famous sentence at the end of the essay condenses the argument: “Der Puritaner wollte Berufsmensch sein, – wir müssen es sein” (“the Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so”).¹

Weber’s thesis provoked immediate criticism from Felix Rachfahl, Karl Fischer, Werner Sombart and Lujo Brentano.² Sombart (1863–1941), whose Der moderne Kapitalismus had appeared in 1902, proposed a rival genealogy in Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben (1911), arguing that Jews dispersed after the Inquisition had introduced the capitalist spirit into northern Europe. Sombart’s later writings reflected the antisemitism of the National Socialist regime, a development that casts a dark shadow over his contribution.³ Tawney’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism of 1926 offered a more nuanced account. He saw in the Reformation, particularly in Calvinism, a gradual transformation in which the religious regulation of economic life gave way, over the seventeenth century, to an ethic of individual economic freedom. At the same time he stressed that the early Reformers, Zwingli, Bullinger and Calvin among them, were far from endorsing unrestrained acquisition.⁴

The economists’ return to the question

In the past two decades, quantitative economic historians have reopened the debate with new data and methods. Sascha O. Becker and Ludger Woessmann, in an article entitled “Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic History”, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2009, accepted that Protestant regions were more prosperous but proposed an alternative explanation: Protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity. Using county-level data from late nineteenth-century Prussia and the distance to Wittenberg as an instrument for Protestantism, they found that Protestantism led to higher prosperity and to better education, with Protestants’ higher literacy accounting for most of the gap in economic prosperity.⁵

Davide Cantoni, using population data for 272 German cities between 1300 and 1900, found that Protestantism had no effect on economic growth when interacted with other likely determinants of economic development, a result robust to a variety of checks and instrumental-variable strategies.⁶ Two Swiss studies are particularly relevant. Christoph Basten and Frank Betz exploited a historical quasi-experiment in western Switzerland, where in the sixteenth century a hitherto homogeneous region was split and one part assigned to adopt Protestantism. Using a fuzzy spatial regression discontinuity design, they found that Reformed Protestantism reduced referendum voting for more leisure by 14 percentage points, for redistribution by 5 and for government intervention by 7. These preferences, they found, translated into higher per capita income and greater income inequality.⁷ Timo Boppart, Josef Falkinger and Volker Grossmann, using Swiss historical data that distinguish reading, numeracy, essay writing and knowledge of Swiss history, found that religious affiliation had a particularly strong effect on reading skills, consistent with the motive of Bible reading. Protestant educational motivation, however, extended beyond Bible reading.⁸

What applies to Zurich

What does this literature mean for the history of Zurich? Three observations may be made.

First, Weber’s argument focused on the ascetic Protestantism of the seventeenth century, above all English Puritanism and its derivatives, and on the psychological consequences of a developed doctrine of predestination. The sixteenth-century Zurich Reformation, with its emphasis on the covenant, on the Christian commonwealth and on the moral authority of the magistrate, does not fit easily into this scheme. Bullinger’s theology of the covenant placed its weight on the obligations of a people bound to God and to one another. The Zurich ethic of wealth was communal, regulatory and paternal before it was individual. If there is a “spirit” in Zurich’s economic history, Tawney’s picture of a regulated moral economy describes it more accurately than Weber’s lonely Puritan in his calling.

Secondly, the human capital explanation proposed by Becker and Woessmann fits the Zurich experience well. The Zurich Reformation invested systematically in education: the reform of the Grossmünster chapter created a theological school in 1523, while Bullinger expanded schools and scholarships and urged the council to found Latin and German schools in 1537 and 1556.⁹ The Zurich Bible, the vernacular sermon, the catechism and the expectation that heads of household would read Scripture to their families all contributed to literacy. A literate population of merchants, craftsmen and, later, textile entrepreneurs was a precondition for the commercial and industrial development of the following centuries (see Chapter B.V and Part C).

Thirdly, the finding of Basten and Betz that Reformed Protestantism is associated with lower support for redistribution and higher income inequality should be read with care in the Zurich context. Having established a comprehensive public poor relief and subjected credit to moral limits, the Zurich Reformation was, in the sixteenth century, anything but a laissez-faire programme. What the Reformed tradition may have transmitted over the long term is a strong sense of individual responsibility for one’s household and debts, combined with a preference for public institutions that are lean, rule-bound and predictable. Both are recognisable in the political culture of the canton and in the attitudes of its financial institutions.

The Zurich case therefore suggests a modest conclusion. Zurich had merchants, rents and credit before 1519 (see Part A). The Reformation reframed the ethics of credit: it legitimated moderate interest, placed its regulation in the hands of the magistrate, separated charity from credit, invested in literacy and imposed a discipline of frugality and reputation. These elements proved compatible with the growth of a commercial and financial economy over the following centuries and in some respects conducive to it.

Notes

1. Thomas Sokoll, “Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (Max Weber, 1904/05)”, Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/Die_protestantische_Ethik_und_der_Geist_des_Kapitalismus_(Max_Weber,_1904/05). ↩
2. Sokoll, “Die protestantische Ethik” (as cited above). ↩
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Werner Sombart”, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Werner-Sombart. ↩
4. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, chapter II (as cited above). ↩
5. Sascha O. Becker and Ludger Woessmann, “Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Theory of Protestant Economic History”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 124 (2009), no. 2, pp. 531–596, abstract on RePEc/IDEAS, https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v124y2009i2p531-596..html. ↩
6. Davide Cantoni, “The Economic Effects of the Protestant Reformation: Testing the Weber Hypothesis in the German Lands”, Journal of the European Economic Association 13 (2015), no. 4, pp. 561–598, abstract on EconPapers, https://econpapers.repec.org/article/blajeurec/v_3a13_3ay_3a2015_3ai_3a4_3ap_3a561-598.htm. ↩
7. Christoph Basten and Frank Betz, “Beyond Work Ethic: Religion, Individual, and Political Preferences”, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 5 (2013), no. 3, pp. 67–91, abstract, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.5.3.67. ↩
8. Timo Boppart, Josef Falkinger and Volker Grossmann, “Protestantism and Education: Reading (the Bible) and Other Skills”, Economic Inquiry 52 (2014), no. 2, pp. 874–895, abstract of IZA Discussion Paper 5402, https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/5402/protestantism-and-education-reading-the-bible-and-other-skills. ↩
9. Scheidegger, “Bauern & Bauernkrieg” (as cited above); Bächtold, “Bullinger, Heinrich”, HLS (as cited above); Timmerman, review of Schriften zum Tage (as cited above). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.