Republication of: 3. On the theory of gravitation

This is the English translation of the first of a series of 3 papers by Hermann Weyl (the third one jointly with Rudolf Bach), first published in 1917–1922, in which the authors derived and discussed the now-famous Weyl two-body static axially symmetric vacuum solution of Einstein’s equations. The English translations of the other two papers are published alongside this one. The papers have been selected by the Editors of General Relativity and Gravitation for re-publication in the Golden Oldies series of the journal. This republication is accompanied by an editorial note written by Gernot Neugebauer, David Petroff and Bahram Mashhoon, and by a brief biography of R. Bach, written by H. Goenner.