Canetti, Elias

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Canetti, Elias Gender: M
born on 25 July 1905 at 01:00 (= 01:00 AM )
Place Ruse, Bulgaria, 43n50, 25e57
Timezone EET h2e (is standard time)
Data source
BC/BR in hand
Rodden Rating AA
Collector: Treindl
Astrology data s_su.18.gif s_leocol.18.gif 01°19' s_mo.18.gif s_taucol.18.gif 05°49 Asc.s_gemcol.18.gif 06°58'

Elias Canetti
photo: Unknown, license cc-by-sa-3.0



Born to Jacques Canetti and Mathilde née Arditti in Ruse, a city on the Danube in Bulgaria, Elias Canetti was the eldest of three sons of a businessman. His ancestors were Sephardi Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492. His paternal ancestors had settled in Ruse from Ottoman Adrianople. The original family name was Cañete, named after a village in Spain. In Ruse, Elias' father and grandfather were successful merchants who operated out of a commercial building, which they had built in 1898. Canetti's mother descended from one of the oldest Sephardi families in Bulgaria, Arditti, who were among the founders of the Ruse Jewish colony in the late 18th century. The Ardittis can be traced back to the 14th century, when they were court physicians and astronomers to the Aragonese royal court of Alfonso IV and Pedro IV. Before settling in Ruse, they had lived in Livorno in the 17th century.

Canetti spent his childhood years, from 1905 to 1911, in Ruse until the family moved to Britain. In 1912 his father died suddenly, and his mother moved with their children to first Lausanne, then Vienna in the same year. They lived in Vienna from the time Canetti was aged seven onwards. His mother insisted that he speak German, and taught it to him. By this time Canetti already spoke Ladino (his native language), Bulgarian, English and some French (he studied the latter two in the one year in Britain). Subsequently the family moved first (from 1916 to 1921) to Zürich and then (until 1924) to Frankfurt, where Canetti graduated from high school.

Canetti went back to Vienna in 1924 in order to study chemistry. However, his primary interests during his years in Vienna became philosophy and literature. Introduced into the literary circles of First-Republic-Vienna, he started writing. Politically leaning towards the left, he was present at the July Revolt of 1927 – he came near to the action accidentally, was most impressed by the burning of books (recalled frequently in his writings), and left the place quickly with his bicycle. He gained a degree in chemistry from the University of Vienna in 1929, but never worked as a chemist. In 1934 he married Veza Taubner-Calderon (1897–1963) with whom he had a complex relationship. She acted as his muse and devoted literary assistant. Canetti however had many love relationships with other women.



In 1981, Canetti won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power". He is known chiefly for his celebrated tetralogy of autobiographical memoirs of his childhood and of pre-Anschluss Vienna (Die Gerettete Zunge; Die Fackel im Ohr; Das Augenspiel; and Das Geheimherz der Uhr: Aufzeichnungen), for his modernist novel Auto-da-Fé (Die Blendung), and for Crowds and Power, a study of crowd behaviour as it manifests itself in human activities ranging from mob violence to religious congregations.

He died in Zürich on 14 August 1994.


Für die deutsch sprechenden Leser ein Artikel mit persönlichen Erinnerungen an Canetti in seinen letzten Jahren in Zürich. Der Nobelpreisträger und seine Nachbarin

Link to Wikipedia biography


  • other kin relationship with Arditi, Georges (born 14 December 1914). Notes: cousins


  • Relationship : Marriage 1934 (with Veza Taubner-Calderon, born 21 November 1897)
  • Work : Prize 1981 (nobel prize for literature)
  • Death of Mate 29 April 1988 (of his second wife Hera Buschor)
    chart Placidus Equal_H.

Source Notes

birth certificate
Thanks to Yuliana Angelova we have received a copy of the original birth certificate. It is in Bulgarian. He was born on 12 July 1905 (Julian calendar) which makes 25 July (Gregorian calendar). The literal translation sounds: "... born at 1:00 before noon". This does surely not mean 'an hour before noon' but it means 'at 1:00 a(nte) m(eridiem)'.

There had been other quotes of the BC published before with 11 am and 1 pm birth times. Both are now considered as misunderstandings of the actual wording.

Personal note by Alois Treindl: During some years in the mid 1980ies, I used to have lunch in the Zürich restaurant Vier Linden a few times a week, meeting friends. Canetti was a regular lunch customer, often dining with a child which we took for his grandson, but which in fact must have been his only child Johanna, born 1972, when Canetti was already 67 years old. Of course we left the nobel prize winner alone, as is customary in Switzerland. I lived at the time on Scheuchzerstrasse, a street which plays some role in Canettis masterpiece of autobiography. Many years later I met Johanna Canetti in the Literaturhaus Zürich, at the book vernissage of Canetti's biographer, and realized only then that the child at Canetti's lunch table had been this woman.


  • Vocation : Writers : Autobiographer
  • Vocation : Writers : Fiction
  • Vocation : Writers : Religion/ Philosophy
  • Notable : Awards : Nobel prize (literature 1981)