This article proposes to situate Max Weber's work within the social conditions in which it was produced, studying the characteristics of his family configuration and the main traits in the structure of the German university field and its relationship to the world of politics, accompanying the changes in the social space in which Weber's individual trajectory was built. By relating his earlier works, oriented towards intervention in the political and social discussions of late 19th-century Germany, with this German sociologist's betterknown later formulations on the relations between science and politics, the article fosters an understanding of the complexity and changes in such relations, not only in Weber's work itself, but also in the social world in which his work was produced.