Maurice Halbwachs, the French philosopher and sociologist, held a number of prestigious appointments during the course of his career, teaching at the University of Strasbourg, the University of Chicago, as well as the Sorbonne.  Halbwachs wrote his seminal work, Collective Memory, in 1950, establishing formally the study of collective memory.  In that work he argues -- like Frederic Bartlett -- that individual memory operates within social context.  He further argues that differences in collective memory between social groups lead to different patterns of behavior.  Halbwachs work served as the foundation upon which scholars such as David Lowenthal and Paul Connerton would come to build their understandings of social memory.  In 1944 the German secret police captured Halbwachs, an avowed socialist, in Paris, sending him to Buchenwald concentration camp where he was soon after executed.