ABSTRACT
Karl Mannheim provides the link between the diverse currents of Weimar politics, philosophy and sociology which arose out of the complex reality of Germany in that period, and Elias’s sociological synthesis. Mannheim was a signifi cant fi gure in shaping Elias’s sociological outlook. Although, as we will see, Elias departs from Mannheim in signifi cant ways, their sociologies still bear a family resemblance. Or, to use another metaphor, they are from the same stable; that is, the Heidelberg Institut für Sozial und Staatswissenschaften (InSoSta) of the 1920s. However, in establishing the link I have not assumed that the fl ow of inspiration was entirely one way, i.e. from Mannheim to Elias. In the extensive recent scholarship on Mannheim (Kettler et al. 1984; Loader 1985; Woldring 1986; Kettler and Meja 1993, 1995) the possibility that he may have owed something in the formation of his ideas to his close association for many years with a sociologist of the calibre of Elias has not even been raised.2
