19 Facts About Norbert Elias

Norbert Elias was a German sociologist who later became a British citizen.

Norbert Elias's father was a native of Kempen and a businessman in the textile industry.

Norbert Elias's mother was a native of the Jewish community of Breslau itself.

Norbert Elias quit medicine in 1919 after passing the preliminary examination.

In 1925, Norbert Elias moved to Heidelberg, where Alfred Weber accepted him as a candidate for a habilitation on the development of modern science, entitled Die Bedeutung der Florentiner Gesellschaft und Kultur fur die Entstehung der Wissenschaft.

In 1930 Norbert Elias chose to cancel this project and followed Karl Mannheim to become his assistant at the University of Frankfurt.

Norbert Elias taught evening classes for the Workers' Educational Association, and later evening extension courses in sociology, psychology, economics and economic history at the University of Leicester.

Norbert Elias held occasional lectureships at other institutions of higher learning.

Norbert Elias himself trained and worked as a group therapist.

Norbert Elias retired in 1962, but continued to teach graduate students in Leicester until the mid-1970s.

From 1962 to 1964, Norbert Elias taught as Professor of Sociology at the University of Ghana in Legon near Accra.

Norbert Elias died at his home in Amsterdam on 1 August 1990.

Norbert Elias' theory focused on the relationship between power, behavior, emotion, and knowledge over time.

Norbert Elias significantly shaped what is called process or figurational sociology.

When Norbert Elias' work found a larger audience in the 1960s, at first his analysis of the process was misunderstood as an extension of discredited "social Darwinism," the idea of upward "progress" was dismissed by reading it as consecutive history rather than a metaphor for a social process.

Bielefeld University's Center for Sociology of Development in 1984 invited Norbert Elias to preside over a gathering of a host of his internationally distinguished fellows who in turn wanted to review and discuss Elias' most interesting theories on civilising processes in person.

Until he retired from the University of Leicester in 1962, Norbert Elias had published only one book, Uber den Prozess der Zivilisation, and no more than a handful of articles.

Norbert Elias had always written a great deal, but found it very difficult ever to be satisfied with the results, and was very reluctant to release his work for publication.

The new editions of Norbert Elias's works, published by University College Dublin Press, have been carefully revised, cross-referenced and annotated, with a view to making them far more accessible to the reader.