Norbert Elias

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Lore & Background

Norbert Elias was born on 22 June 1897 in Breslau (today: Wrocław) to Hermann Elias and Sophie Elias. After passing the abitur in 1915, he volunteered for the German army in World War I and was employed as a telegrapher, first at the Eastern front, then at the Western front. After suffering a nervous breakdown in 1917, he was declared unfit for service and was posted to Breslau as a medical orderly. The same year, Elias began studying philosophy, psychology and medicine at the University of Breslau. 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'. In 1933, Elias fled to Paris. In 1935, he moved on to Great Britain, where he worked on his magnum opus, The Civilizing Process, until 1939, supported by a scholarship from a relief organization for Jewish refugees. In 1940, when an invasion of Britain by German forces appeared imminent, Elias was detained at internment camps in Liverpool and on the Isle of Man for eight months, on account of his being German – an 'enemy alien'. On Febr. 22, 1952 he was naturalized as a British citizen.

Reader's Guide

Norbert Elias's significance lies in his development of process or figurational sociology, which focuses on the relationship between power, behavior, emotion, and knowledge over time. His concept of large social figurations or networks of interdependencies between people explains the emergence and function of large societal structures without neglecting the aspect of individual agency. In the 1960s and 1970s, the overemphasis of structure over agency was heavily criticized about the then-dominant school of structural functionalism. His theory of civilizing and decivilizing processes was applied to historical changes in manners and to events like the Nazi's genocide of the Jews, which he described as a 'decivilizing spurt' of a civilization suffering from decay and a regression to barbarism. Despite being a marginal author for decades, Elias was rediscovered by a new generation of scholars in the 1970s, when he eventually became one of the most influential sociologists in the history of the field. By 1998 an International Sociological Association worldwide survey of sociologists ranked 'On the Process of Civilization' seventh among the most important books in sociology in the twentieth century.

Did You Know?

• Elias served as a telegrapher in World War I at both the Eastern and Western fronts before suffering a nervous breakdown in 1917.
• During his internment on the Isle of Man in 1940, Elias organized political lectures and staged a drama he had written himself, 'Die Ballade vom armen Jakob', with a musical score by Hans Gál.
• Elias co-founded the Group Analytic Society in 1952 and trained and worked as a group therapist.
• He was the first ever laureate of both the Theodor W. Adorno Prize (1977) and the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences (1987).
• In September 2017, a bridge in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam, not too far from where he lived, was named after him.