Philippe Lejeune sociologist Maurice Halbwachs was one of the authors who more contributed for the understanding of the meaning of the collective memory. It lived at the beginning in Paris of the century and was a deep expert of the philosophical debate of the time. After its initial academic formation as disciple of Bergson, was leaned over on the works not published of Leibnitz.

Later, it resigned completely to assertive the philosophical ones of its time and looked a new theoretical inspiration in the work of sociologist mile Durkheim, of who if it became collaborator. The first academic work why he was known was on social classrooms, where already it defended the argument of that the attributed identity the workers could not be pointed only from the form of insertion of determined social groups in the economic activity. Since its nomination as professor of the University of Strasbourg, Halbwachs dedicated the study to it of the memory and was, in fact, the first one scholar to emphasize the social character of the memory. It has 70 years, it already affirmed that everything what we remember the past is part of collective constructions of the gift. Of this form, a classic reference as for the subject of the memory became, therefore its proposals had passed to be used as starting point for expressive reflections, following the increasing interest for the memory as field of inquiry. In the workmanship There mmoire collective (the collective memory), published in 1950, after its death in the concentration camp of Buchenwald, it presents the memory as a social phenomenon, examines and argues the reconstruction of the souvenirs thinking about the scope of the social relations and the groups of conviviality. In this workmanship, the author searchs to understand the individual memory considering the individual as a social being, integrated in social ways that conform its perception concerning the seen and/or tried events.