As before the First World War, the scientific field of the interwar period was dominated by historicism and an associated relativism, often perceived as problematic. The differentiation, divisions and perceived arbitrariness of the disciplines, as well as the lack of a final foundation, unity, order and normative orientation, were perceived as serious crisis phenomena of the sciences. The sense of crisis was intensified by the outcome of a war that many intellectuals had still regarded as meaningful in 1914, and correlated with the consequences of the war and social crisis phenomena after 1918. In the scientific field, there were increasing attempts at foundation, order, systematisation and synthesis to counter the “problem of relativism”. At the beginning of the Weimar Republic, great hopes were placed from a university political perspective on sociology to achieve such a synthesis. The article outlines the “crisis of historicism”, addresses different sociological responses and solution strategies to the problem of historicism and relativism, and, finally, reconstructs two attempts at systematisation and order in sociology around 1930, focusing on sociological concepts by Ferdinand Tönnies and Karl Mannheim.