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Protestant work ethic is the concept that a person has a spiritual duty to work hard and use the money earned from that work in a disciplined and careful way. The idea grew from the Calvinistic approach to religion and life as lived out by the Puritan settlers in North America in the seventeenth century. The concept was popularized nearly three centuries later in the writings of a German sociologist and economist. While the ideology of a Protestant work ethic began as a theological and religious ideal, the term has since come into common use in relation to sociology and economic studies. Some credit the Protestant work ethic as being the driving force behind capitalism.

Max Weber was born to a prominent German family; his father belonged to the Reichstag, Germany’s national legislature. Weber studied law and became a professor at Heidelberg, Freiburg, and Vienna; he also traveled widely and was a voracious reader. His writings filled thirteen volumes and ranged widely in subject matter, including discussions of economic policy; philosophy; the ancient religions of India, China, and Palestine; the methodology of social science; social stratification; and the sociology of religion. He also wrote about German farm laborers and the stock exchange, and in these works and others, the rationalization and bureaucratization of modern societies was a central theme. Weber was a politically active nationalist who helped found the German Democratic Party, and his wife, Marianne Weber, was a leader of the German feminist movement. (She also arranged for the posthumous publication of many of Weber’s writings and wrote a biography of her husband.) In addition to all his other activities, Weber ran a military hospital during World War I and accompanied the German delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. His productive life is particularly remarkable given that he was sometimes disabled by emotional illness.