Norbert Elias

German-British sociologist of Jewish descent, especially famous for his theory of civilizing (and decivilizing) processes.

During his Breslau years, until 1925, Elias was deeply involved in the German Zionist movement, and acted as one of the leading intellectuals within the German-Jewish youth movement "Blau-Weiss" (Blue-White). During these years he got acquainted with other young Zionists like Erich Fromm, Leo Strauss, Leo Löwenthal and Gershom Scholem. In 1925, Elias moved to Heidelberg, where Alfred Weber accepted him as a candidate for a habilitation (second book project) on the development of modern science. In 1930 Elias chose to cancel this project and followed Karl Mannheim to become his assistant at the University of Frankfurt.

However, after the Nazi take-over in early 1933, Elias fled to Paris. His elderly parents remained in Breslau, where his father died in 1940. On 30 August 1942 his mother was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp, and on 29 September she was transferred to and killed in Treblinka, dates and places Elias himself never got to know.

In 1935, he moved on to Great Britain, where he worked on his magnum opus, The Civilizing Process, until 1939, now supported by a scholarship from a relief organization for Jewish refugees.

Towards the end of World War II, he worked for British intelligence, investigating hardened Nazis among German prisoners of war.

In 1954 – at the very late age of 57 – he at last gained his first secure academic post, at University College Leicester (which soon became the University of Leicester), first as Lecturer and later as Reader in Sociology. Outside his sociological work he always also wrote poetry.

Elias died at his home in Amsterdam on 1 August 1990, aged 93.