Norbert Elias, or in English, Norbert Elias, is in more than one way the last representative of the classic tradition in sociology. His most important books, The Court Society and On the Process of Civilisation appeared before the second World War. And although the author wrote many beautiful books and articles after the war, his fundamental ideas are contained in those pre-war books that build on the insides of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. Although he rarely refers directly to those great predecessors, his books show that he was very familiar with those ideas, and also, by the way, with the work of Freud. His fundamentally historical approach owes a lot to Marx and Weber, who always were interested in long-term trends. Many ideas that became a crossover are combined and integrated in the work of Margaret Elias. I once noticed that no more than only two handshakes separate me from Karl Marx, so those classical thinkers are closer to us then you might think. But the only classic sociologist that I personally met, whose seminars I attended, whose lectures I never skipped, was Norbert Elias. Who was a welcomed guest lecturer here in Amsterdam in the 60s, and in the 70s, and in the 80s, well in fact, until his death. I had many occasions to listen to him and even to engage in discussions with him. The only classical sociologists that I encountered personally was a very learned and also a very friendly man. One of the things that he told me is that it is possible, but only when one has a lot of luck, to become very old in a gracious way. Although at the end of his life, when he approached 90, he had serious problems with his sight and he became practically deaf. It was a miracle to see, how in this frail body, one of the sharpest minds was still functioning at breathtaking speed. His memory remained intact, and if you shouted loud enough into his ear, you could still receive extremely interesting answers, and even pieces of advice that the old professor still loved to give to his pupils. And he did that with the same friendliness with which he treated his students when he was an assistant professor in Frankfurt around the year 1931. Just like the Dutch students in the 70s and the 80s, the students in Frankfurt and pre-Hitler Germany loved him for being so open. And also so un-authoritarian, a stark contrast with many other German academics in those days. Or that at least is how they spoke about him on the occasion of his 80th birthday that I attended in Germany. In 1933, Elias had written in Frankfurt his first important book, The Court Society, [FOREIGN]. 36 years old, this promising assistant professor now stood at the beginning of what appeared to become a shining academic career, and then all of a sudden everything changed. The National Socialist Party came to power and Elias, who was of Jewish origin, realized that his only chance to survive was to leave Germany. He ended up in London and it was there that he wrote his magnum opus, On the Process of Civilisation, [FOREIGN]. That book was written in German, it was published by a friendly Swiss editor but it couldn't be distributed in the largest German speaking countries like Germany and Austria. Because its author was a Jew and that is one of the many tragic elements in the life of Norbert Elias. His two best books only received the distribution that they deserved at the end of the 60s. When German editions, and English and French translations, brought the book and its author, all of a sudden, into the spotlight of attention. The fact that the enthusiastic reception of his work took place in the 70s, some 30 years too late, makes it seem as if Elias was a contemporary of Giddens or Bourdieu, a modern theorist, but that is an error. The outline of his historical sociological theory was already there in the 30s, and his core contributions are not developed in a debate with Parsons or with Merton, but in a debate with Marx, Durkheim, Simmel, Freud and Weber. Elias should be seen as the last of the great classical sociologists.
