17 Facts About Elias Canetti

Elias Canetti won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power".

Elias Canetti is noted for his nonfiction book Crowds and Power, among other works.

Elias Canetti's mother descended from the Arditti family, one of the oldest Sephardic families in Bulgaria, who were among the founders of the Ruse Jewish colony in the late 18th century.

Elias Canetti spent his childhood years, from 1905 to 1911, in Ruse until the family moved to Manchester, England, where Elias Canetti's father joined a business established by his wife's brothers.

In 1912, his father suddenly died, and his mother moved with their children first to Lausanne, and later in the same year, when Elias Canetti was seven, to Vienna.

Elias Canetti's mother insisted that he learn and speak German.

Subsequently, the family moved first to Zurich and then to Frankfurt, where Elias Canetti graduated from high school.

Elias Canetti went back to Vienna in 1924 in order to study chemistry.

Elias Canetti received a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Vienna in 1929 but never worked as a chemist.

Elias Canetti published two works in Vienna, Komodie der Eitelkeit 1934 and Die Blendung 1935, before escaping to Great Britain.

Elias Canetti reflected on the experiences of Nazi Germany and political chaos in his works, especially exploring mob action and group thinking in the novel Die Blendung and in the non-fiction Crowds and Power.

Elias Canetti wrote several volumes of memoirs, contemplating the influence of his multi-lingual background and childhood.

Elias Canetti had a short affair with the sculptor Anna Mahler, the daughter of the composer Gustav Mahler.

Elias Canetti became closely involved with the painter Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, who was to remain a close companion for many years.

Elias Canetti had a close relationship with the writer Frieda Benedikt, whom Canetti had already met in Vienna in 1936.

Elias Canetti, who demanded submission from women, later mercilessly skewered Murdoch in his posthumous memoir Party im Blitz.

Elias Canetti is known chiefly for his celebrated trilogy of autobiographical memoirs of his childhood and of pre-Anschluss Vienna: Die Gerettete Zunge ; Die Fackel im Ohr, and Das Augenspiel ; for his modernist novel Auto-da-Fe ; and for Crowds and Power, a psychological study of crowd behaviour as it manifests itself in human activities ranging from mob violence to religious congregations.