Simmel was read as a sociologist in America decades before as a philosopher

Evidence

In the United States, Simmel never had a great name as a philosopher, but from the turn of the century to the ‘twenties he was well known as a sociologist. Between 1893 and 1910, a number of his writings, most of them sociological, appeared in American periodicals, 30 especially in The American Journal of Sociology, the majority of them in translations by Albion W. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 255