During the Weimar era, from 1918 until the beginning of the Nazi regime, sociology in Germany became established in universities and the first sociology professorships were created. Several specialist journals were launched, and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS) [German Sociological Association] began to convene regularly. Central locations for sociology were now Cologne (Leopold von Wiese, Max Scheler), Frankfurt (Franz Oppenheimer, Gottfried Salomon, later Karl Mannheim, Norbert Elias, the Institute for Social Research—Carl Grünberg, Max Horkheimer), Heidelberg (Alfred Weber, Emil Lederer, Karl Mannheim, Norbert Elias), Berlin (Werner Sombart, Alfred Vierkandt, Kurt Breysig, Richard Thurnwald), Leipzig (Hans Freyer), Braunschweig (Theodor Geiger), Hamburg (Andreas Walther) and Kiel (Ferdinand Tönnies, Ludwig Heyde). The sociology of knowledge advocated by Karl Mannheim was particularly controversial. At the end of the 1920s, the “sociology of knowledge dispute” arose. As institutionalisation processes, publications and discussions show, sociology in the Weimar Republic developed into an independent academic discipline within the scientific field. It had already diversified in many ways by that time. During the Weimar era, sociologists barely perceived the dangers of fascism. National Socialism caused a significant rupture in the development of sociology. Journals were discontinued, the German Sociological Association (DGS) was shut down, and university degrees in sociology were no longer awarded. Numerous sociologists—about two-thirds—were forced into exile after Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933. Those who remained in Germany either went into so-called “inner emigration” or served the Nazi regime by attempting to build a “German sociology” or by carrying out contract-based social research. However, the Nazis had little interest in sociology as an independent discipline; only the practical knowledge gained from empirical social research seemed useful to them.