Norbert Elias

Norbert Elias (1897–1990) was a German sociologist. He initially studied medicine and philosophy, then turned to sociology and worked as an unofficial assistant to Karl Mannheim. After fleeing Germany in 1933, he taught sociology at the University of Leicester from 1954 to 1962 and later held various visiting professorships. His major work, „The Civilizing Process“, was published in 1939 and examined the relationship between the sociogenesis and psychogenesis of human beings. After receiving little attention for many years, Elias’s work became widely discussed from the 1970s onward. In 1977, he received the Theodor W. Adorno Prize from the City of Frankfurt am Main.