<p>The history of sociology is highly selective, privileging a relatively small set of canonical figures while marginalizing many actors who contributed to the discipline’s development. Although recent scholarship has increasingly recovered such “neglected figures,” the conditions under which they become historically significant – and subsequently forgotten – remain insufficiently understood. In this article, I introduce a temporal perspective on neglect. Drawing on the concept of liminality, I show how moments of crisis and reorganization in the discipline create opportunities for actors operating between institutional, intellectual, and national domains. In such contexts, otherwise marginal figures – here described as liminal intermediaries – can exert significant influence. Yet these same conditions also render them vulnerable to later neglect once disciplinary structures stabilize and retrospective narratives consolidate. In this light, I understand neglect not merely as omission, but as a post-liminal effect of disciplinary closure and historiographical reconstruction. This argument is developed through the case of Max Ralis and his role in the development of empirical social research and the reconfiguration of sociology in post-1945 Germany.</p>