information:extraction, information:filtering
Later work

After recovering from his illness, Weber accepted a position as an associate editor of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1904, alongside his colleagues Edgar Jaffé and Werner Sombart. It facilitated his reintroduction to academia and became one of the most prominent social science journals as a result of his efforts. Weber published some of his most seminal works in this journal, including his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which became his most famous work and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of religion on the development of economic systems. Also in 1904, he was invited to participate in the Congress of Arts and Sciences that was held in connection with the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis alongside his wife, Werner Sombart, Ernst Troeltsch, and other German scholars. Taking advantage of the fair, the Webers embarked on a trip that began and ended in New York City and lasted for almost three months. They travelled throughout the country, from New England to the Deep South. Different communities were visited, including German immigrant towns and African American communities. North Carolina was also visited, as some of Weber's relatives in the Fallenstein family had settled there. Weber used the trip to learn more about America's social, economic, and theological conditions and how they related to his thesis. Afterwards, he felt that he was unable to resume regular teaching and remained a private scholar, helped by an inheritance in 1907.

Shortly after returning, Weber's attention shifted to the then-recent Russian Revolution of 1905. He learned the Russian language in a few months, subscribed to Russian newspapers, and discussed Russian political and social affairs with the Russian émigré community in Heidelberg. He was personally popular in that community and twice entertained the idea of a trip to Russia. His schedule prevented it, however. While he was sceptical of the revolution's ability to succeed, Weber supported the establishment of a liberal democracy in Russia. He wrote two essays on it that were published in the Archiv. Weber interpreted the revolution as having been the result of the peasants' desire for land. He discussed the role of the obshchina, rural peasant communities, in Russian political debates. According to Weber, they were difficult for liberal agrarian reformers to abolish due to a combination of their basis in natural law and the rising kulak class manipulating them for their own gain. His general interpretation of the Russian Revolution was that it lacked a clear leader and was not based on the Russian intellectuals' goals. Instead, it was the result of the peasants' emotional passions.

In 1909, having become increasingly dissatisfied with the political conservatism and perceived lack of methodological discipline of the Verein, he co-founded the German Sociological Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie) and served as its first treasurer. Weber associated the society with the Verein and viewed the two organizations as not having been competitors. He unsuccessfully tried to steer the direction of the association. As part of that, Weber tried to make the Archiv its official journal. He resigned from his position as treasurer in 1912. That was caused by his support for value-freedom in the social sciences, as that was a controversial position in the association. Weber – alongside Simmel, Sombart, and Tönnies – placed an abbreviated form of it into the association's statutes, prompting criticism from other members of the association. In the same year, Weber and his wife befriended a former student of his, Else von Richthofen, and the pianist Mina Tobler. After a failed attempt to court Richthofen, Weber began an affair with Tobler in 1911.