For so many deeply feeling individuals who experience the pressures of life in every moment, sociability could not contain the liberating, redemptive joy if it were merely an escape from this life, a mere temporary suspension of its seriousness. However, the liberating and relieving aspect that the deeper individual finds in sociability is that the togetherness and exchange of influences, in which the entirety of life's tasks and burdens unfold, can be enjoyed here in a kind of artistic play. With these words, Georg Simmel concluded the opening of the First German Sociologists' Day, which took place in 1910 in Frankfurt am Main. The blend of sociology, cultural studies, and philosophy hinted at here shapes the essays and treatises collected in this volume from the years 1909 to 1918. It includes the famous works.