Biography
Elias was born on June 22, 1897 in Wroclaw, Poland (then called Breslau) to
Hermann and Sophie Elias. His father was a businessman in the textile industry
and his mother a homemaker. He fought in the Prussian army during
World War I and then completed his Ph.D. under Richard Hönigswald at
the Johannesgymnasium in Breslau in 1924. A jew, Elias' career was delayed
when he fled Nazi Germany in 1933. After two years in Paris, he fled to
England where he remained as a refugee for most of his life. Not until 1954
did he again attain a university position at Leicester. He began an
active retirement in 1962.
Published works
- Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939)
- The Established and the Outsiders (1965)
- The Court Society (19??)
- What is Sociology? (19??)
- The Loneliness of the Dying (19??)
- Involvement and Detachment (19??)
- An Essay on Time (19??)
- The Civilising Process (19??)
- Quest for Excitement (19??)
- Humana Conditio (19??; subtitled "Observations on the Development of Mankind in the
- Forty Years since the Second World War"; not available in English)
- The Society of Individuals (19??)
- Los der Menschen (1987; poetry),
- Studien über den Deutschen (19??)
- The Symbol Theory (199?)
- Reflections on a Life (199?)
- Mozart: Portrait of a Genius (199?)
Sources
The Norbert Elias Foundation website