In 1910, Georg Simmel, Ernst Troeltsch, and others attended the first conference of the German Society for Sociology. Sociological Beginnings offers translations of five of the nine papers given there—with topics ranging from the sociology of sociability to the ways in which sociology might be connected to civic life. The book also contains a noteworthy essay by Max Weber, who while supposedly reporting on the business aspects of the Society instead examined the unpopularity of the profession and proposed a set of tenets that might gain sociologists respect from the rest of the scientific community.