Maurice Halbwachs

Maurice Halbwachs was a French philosopher and sociologist, born in Reims on 11 March 1877, renowned for developing the concept of collective memory. He studied philosophy under Henri Bergson at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris before turning to sociology under the mentorship of Emile Durkheim. His most significant work, La Memoire collective, published posthumously in 1950, advanced the theory that a society holds a collective memory that depends on the social frameworks within which its groups exist, so that how the past is remembered is shaped by present social structures. He held professorships at the University of Strasbourg from 1919 to 1935, the Sorbonne from 1935 to 1943, and the College de France from 1943 to 1945, and also contributed to the sociology of knowledge through studies of suicide, working-class economics and the spatial dimensions of biblical narratives. A committed socialist and activist against fascism, he was detained by the Gestapo in Paris in July 1944 after protesting the arrest of his Jewish father-in-law, deported to Buchenwald concentration camp, and died there of dysentery in March 1945.