NOTE: Although the following article has not been revised for this edition of the Encyclopedia, the substantive coverage is currently appropriate. The editors have provided a list of recent works at the end of the article to facilitate research and exploration of the topic.

"German Sociology" has two specific traits: It is part of the general humanities tradition of German culture—that is, it has a philosophical orientation—and it emphasizes epistemological reflection, favoring the understanding of human action through verstehen (intuitive oneness with the explanandum). This is the way in which Raymond Aron (1935) characterized sociology in Germany, studying it at the time of the Nazi regime, when it was mainly a memory and not a living field of knowledge or profession.

Since then a large number of books and essays in the United States have treated sociology as practiced in Germany, at least some of...