Maurice Halbwachs (; 11 March 1877 – 16 March 1945) was a French philosopher and sociologist known for developing the concept of collective memory. Halbwachs also contributed to the sociology of knowledge with his La Topographie Legendaire des Évangiles en Terre Sainte, a study of the spatial infrastructure of the New Testament (1951).
Early life and education
thumb|350px|Book signed by [[Georges Dumézil and offered to Maurice Halbwachs in the Human and Social Sciences Library Paris Descartes-CNRS, Maurice Halbwachs Collection.]]
Born in Reims, Halbwachs attended the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. There he studied philosophy with Henri Bergson, who had a major influence on his thinking. Halbwachs' early work on memory was in some measure pursued to coincide with Bergson's view on the subject of memory being a particularly personal and subjective experience. He then aggregated in philosophy in 1901. He taught at various lycées before traveling to Germany in 1904, where he studied at the University of Göttingen and worked on cataloging Leibniz's papers until 1907. He was nominated to co-edit an edition of Leibniz's work which never came to fruition.
He returned to France in 1905 and met Émile Durkheim, who sparked his interest in sociology. Initially, when meeting Durkheim, Halbwachs was looking for advice on how to move from his previous focus on Philosophy to Sociology. Halbwachs also began to focus on scientific objectivism rather than his Bergsonian Individualism.
Career
Throughout World War I, Halbwachs worked at the War Ministry. Beginning in 1919, shortly after the end of the war, he became professor of sociology and pedagogy at the University of Strasbourg (1919). He remained in this position for over a decade, taking leave for a year in 1930 as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, when he was called to the Sorbonne in 1935. There he taught sociology and worked closely with Marcel Mauss and served as the editor of Annales de Sociologie, the successor journal to L'Année Sociologique. He taught as a professor of sociology in Sorbonne, Paris from 1935 to 1943 and a professor of social psychology at the College de France from 1943 until death. From 1935 until his death he also served as the secretary-general of Annales de Sociologie. In 1944 he received one of France's highest honors, a chair at the Collège de France in social psychology. During this time, Halbwachs dedicated his time to in-depth research in the field where sociology and psychology overlap to provide a bit of a timeline. He had a son, Pierre Halbwachs (1916–1987), who influenced Gilles Deleuze in the 1940s.
A longtime socialist, Halbwachs and his sons were detained by the Gestapo in Paris in July, 1944 He and his youngest son Pierre were deported to the concentration camp
In 1940, Halbwachs' brother in-law, Georges Basch committed suicide. His parents in-law Victor and Mme Basch aged 84 years old at the time were murdered by Germans.
Main ideas
Halbwachs' most important contribution to the field of sociology appeared in his posthumous book La Mémoire collective, 1950 ("The Collective Memory"), in which he advanced the thesis that a society can have a collective memory and that this memory is dependent upon the "cadre" or framework within which a group is situated in society. Thus, there is not only an individual memory but also a group memory that exists outside of and lives beyond the individual. An individual's understanding of the past is strongly linked to this group consciousness because every person can contribute a different memory or perspective to the collective group memory. Group memory is also different for every group that experiences a certain event, therefore "every group has its own collective memory and that collective memory differs from the collective memory of other groups. This idea of memory being pursued proves people's expression of commemoration in our culture. Commemoration offers collective memory ties to society and its conceptions where physical monuments and rituals fix and affirm collectivity.
Halbwachs also wrote an important book on suicide, Les Causes du suicide, 1930 ("The Causes of Suicide"). In this book he followed in the footsteps of his mentor Émile Durkheim (also a French sociologist), expanding and elaborating upon the Durkheim's theories on suicide. Specifically, he focused on ideas such as, the ways in which rural and urban styles of life explain variations in suicide rates. Halbwachs also continued to further Durkheim's conceptualization of how specific family styles and religious backgrounds alter rates of suicide.