About Ivan Illich
Ivan Dominic Illich ( iv-AHN IL-itch; German: [ˈiːvan ˈɪlɪtʃ]; 4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) was an Austrian Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic. His 1971 book Deschooling Society criticises modern society's institutional approach to education, an approach that he argued demotivates and alienates individuals from the process of learning. His 1975 book Medical Nemesis, importing to the sociology of medicine the concept of medical harm, in which he argues that industrialised society impairs quality of life through processes such as overmedicalisation, the pathologisation of normal conditions, and increased dependency on medical institutions. Illich called himself "an errant pilgrim." == Biography == === Early life === Ivan Dominic Illich was born on 4 September 1926 in Vienna, Austria, to Ivan Peter and Ellen Rose (née Regenstreif-Ortlieb) Illich. His father was a civil engineer and a diplomat from a landed Catholic family of Dalmatia, with property in the city of Split and wine and olive oil estates on the island of Brač. His mother came from a Sephardic Jewish family that had converted to Christianity from Germany and Austria-Hungary (Czernowitz, Bukowina). Ellen Illich was baptized Lutheran but converted to Catholicism upon marriage. Her father, Friedrich "Fritz" Regenstreif, was an industrialist who made his money in the lumber trade in Bosnia, later settling in Vienna, where he built an art nouveau villa. His mother traveled to Vienna so that the best doctors could attend during childbirth; Ivan's father was not living in Central Europe at the time. When Ivan was three months old, he was taken along with his nurse to Split, Dalmatia (by then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), to be shown to his paternal grandfather.
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