"Domination" is one of the most important elements of social action". The earliest version of Max Weber's sociology of domination begins with this sentence. In it, Max Weber studies the most important structures of domination: bureaucratism, patrimonialism, feudalism and charismatism as well as the relationship between political and hierocratic domination. The historical-critical edition of the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works of Max Weber) presents the older version of the sociology of domination for the first time with detailed commentaries and as an independent text corpus. The subject explanations as well as the introduction place the sociology of domination in the context of the legal, cultural and social science disciplines at the end of the German "Kaiserreich". Up to the time of his death, Max Weber had not released the manuscripts for publication; they thus lack a concluding revision which would make them into a complete whole. This opens a window to the workshop of one of the most important modern thinkers.
