Norbert Elias German sociologist Date of Birth: 22.06.1897 Country: Germany

Biography of Norbert Elias

Norbert Elias was a German sociologist of Jewish descent who later acquired British citizenship. He was born on June 22, 1897, in Breslau, which is now Wrocław in Silesia, Germany. His father, Hermann Elias, was a textile industry entrepreneur, while his mother, Sophie Elias, managed the household, as was customary at the time.

After completing school, Norbert volunteered for war in 1915 and served as a telegraphist, first on the Eastern Front and then on the Western Front. In 1917, he experienced a nervous breakdown and was declared unfit for service. He worked as a medical orderly and began studying philosophy, psychology, and medicine at the University of Breslau in the same year. He also attended lectures by Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg and studied at the University of Freiburg in 1919 and 1920. In 1919, he dropped out of medicine after passing the preliminary exam.

Due to hyperinflation that depleted his father's fortune, Elias had to finance his own education. In 1922, he found a job as the head of the export department at a local factory. Two years later, he earned his doctorate in philosophy under the guidance of Richard Hönigswald, a representative of neo-Kantianism. However, disappointed with the lack of a social aspect in neo-Kantianism, which led to serious disputes with his supervisor about his dissertation, Elias decided to pursue sociology.

Until 1925, while still in Breslau, Elias was deeply involved in the German Zionist movement and was considered one of the leading intellectuals of the German-Jewish youth movement "Blau-Weiss." During this time, he met other young Zionists, including Erich Fromm, Leo Strauss, Leo Löwenthal, and Gershom Scholem.

In 1925, Elias moved to Heidelberg, where Alfred Weber accepted him as a habilitation candidate. However, in 1930, he decided to abandon this project and became Karl Mannheim's assistant at the University of Frankfurt. Unfortunately, in 1933, after the establishment of the Nazi regime, Mannheim's Sociological Institute was forced to close, and Elias's completed dissertation was never officially accepted until it was published in 1969. In the same year, Elias fled to Paris. His elderly parents remained in Breslau, where his father died in 1940, and his mother was deported to Auschwitz and likely perished in 1941. In Paris, Elias conducted his research on a scholarship from the Amsterdam Steunfonds Foundation. In 1935, he moved to the United Kingdom, where he wrote his seminal work, "The Civilizing Process." During this time, he searched for employment and lived on a scholarship from an organization assisting Jewish refugees. Although "The Civilizing Process" was published in 1939, it gained attention only in the 1960s when the first volume was translated into English.

In 1939, Elias met his former supervisor Mannheim at the London School of Economics and became a senior research fellow. However, in 1940, when the German invasion of Britain seemed imminent, Elias spent eight months in internment camps for Germans. During this time, he organized political lectures and staged his own play, "Die Ballade vom armen Jakob." In 1941, he was released and moved to Cambridge, where he taught evening courses for the Workers' Educational Association and lectured at other educational institutions.

In 1954, Elias relocated to Leicester and became a lecturer at the University of Leicester, contributing to the development of the sociology faculty until his retirement in 1962. From 1962 to 1964, he served as an honorary professor of sociology at the University of Ghana in Legon, a suburb of Accra.

After returning to Europe in 1965, he settled in Amsterdam but frequently traveled as a visiting professor, primarily at German universities. His reputation and popularity significantly increased after the reissue of "The Civilizing Process" in 1969. From 1978 to 1984, Elias worked at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld. He was the first recipient of both the Theodor W. Adorno Award in 1977 and the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences in 1987. In addition to his scientific work, Elias also wrote poetry and essays.

He never married and died on August 1, 1990, at his home in Amsterdam.