To finance his studies after his father's fortune had been reduced by hyperinflation, he took up a job as the head of the export department in a local hardware factory 1922.

In 1924, he graduated with a doctoral dissertation in philosophy entitled Idee und Individuum (Idea and Individual) supervised by Richard Hönigswald, a representative of neo-Kantianism.

Disappointed about the absence of the social aspect from neo-Kantianism, which had led to a serious dispute with his supervisor about his dissertation, Elias decided to turn to sociology for his further studies.

In 1925, Elias moved to Heidelberg, where Alfred Weber accepted him as a candidate for a habilitation (second book project) on the development of modern science, entitled Die Bedeutung der Florentiner Gesellschaft und Kultur für die Entstehung der Wissenschaft (The Significance of Florentine Society and Culture for the Development of Science).

His elderly parents remained in Breslau, where his father died in 1940; on 30 August 1942 his mother was deported to Theresienstadt, and on 29 September transferred to and murdered in Treblinka.

[2] During his two years in Paris, Elias worked as a private scholar supported by a scholarship from the Amsterdam Steunfonds (Prof. Frijda's benefit fund) and tried to gain some additional income by organizing a workshop for the production of wooden children's toys.

In 1935, he moved on to Great Britain, where he worked on his magnum opus, The Civilizing Process, until 1939, now supported by a scholarship from a relief organization for Jewish refugees.

Drawing from historical documents describing manners and etiquette, he identified the processes that facilitated the emergence of the modern self within a civilized body.

Among subsequently famous sociologists whom Neustadt and Elias appointed as colleagues at Leicester, were John H. Goldthorpe, Anthony Giddens, Martin Albrow, Sheila Allen, Joe and Olive Banks, Richard Brown, Mary McIntosh, Nicos Mouzelis and Sami Zubaida and Keith Hopkins.

In 1986 the Große Verdienstkreuz of the German Federal Republic was awarded to him, and on his 90th birthday he was appointed Commander in the Order of Orange-Nassau by the Dutch queen.

Due to historical circumstances, Elias had long remained a marginal author, until being rediscovered by a new generation of scholars in the 1970s, when he eventually became one of the most influential sociologists in the history of the field.

The first volume traces the historical developments of the European habitus, or "second nature," the particular individual psychic structures molded by social attitudes.

Elias traced how post-medieval European standards regarding violence, sexual behaviour, bodily functions, table manners and forms of speech were gradually transformed by increasing thresholds of shame and repugnance, working outward from a nucleus in court etiquette.

The internalized "self-restraint" imposed by increasingly complex networks of social connections developed the "psychological" self-perceptions that Freud recognized as the "super-ego."

The initial members of the board of the foundation were Johan Goudsblom (Amsterdam), Hermann Korte (Münster) and Abraham van Stolk, the latter replaced after his death in 1996 by Stephen Mennell (Dublin).

In 2017 a new board took over the management of the Foundation: Johan Heilbron (Rotterdam and Paris), Jason Hughes (Leicester), Adrian Jitschin (Frankfurt), and Arjan Post (Secretary, Amsterdam) [6] Until he retired from the University of Leicester in 1962, Elias had published only one book, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, and no more than a handful of articles.

3 On the Process of Civilisation [note new title], edited by Stephen Mennell, Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom and Richard Kilminster (2012).

15 Essays II: On Civilising Processes, State Formation and National Identity, edited by Richard Kilminster and Stephen Mennell (2008).

17 Interviews and Autobiographical Reflections, edited by Edmund Jephcott, Richard Kilminster, Katie Liston and Stephen Mennell (October 2013).

18 Supplements and Index to the Collected Works [includes major unpublished essays on Freud and on Lévy-Bruhl], edited by Stephen Mennell, Marc Joly and Katie Liston (2014).