Wolfgang Kohler

Wolfgang Kohler was born in Reval in the Baltic provinces, Estonia, to German parents. When he was six-year-old, his family moved to Germany and settled in Wolfenbutell.

His University Education

Kohler attended the Universities of Tubingen from 1905 to 1906; University of Bonn from 1906 to 1907 and finally studied at the University of Berlin. He received his doctorate in 1909 from Berlin, under Carl Stumpf (1848-1931). Carl Stumpf may be said to have been the godfather of Gestalt psychology. His thesis was on psychoacoustics.

His Professional Career

After receiving his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1909 he went to Frankfurt as assistant in the Psychological Laboratory. There he met Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka, with whom he lay the foundations of Gestalt psychology. The birth of Gestalt psychology was as a reaction to the behavioristic theories of J. B. Watson and I. P. Pavlov and focused mainly on the nature of perception. In Frankfurt he became Privatozent in 1911.

At the recommendation of Stumpf, who was at Berlin University, Kohler was appointed as director of the Anthropoid Station of the Prussian Academy of Science on Tenerife Island. There he worked from 1913 to 1920. The Island of Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands. It is a Spanish province in the Atlantic Ocean. Here Kohler conducted experiments on problem solving by chimpanzees.

Kohler stayed at Tenerife until 1920, returned to Germany, served as acting director of Berlin laboratory for a year. Then he received the appointment to succeed G. E. Müller at Gottingen after Müller's retirement in 1921. Then, he received the chance to serve Berlin University after Carl Stumpf's retirement in 1922.

Why Kohler received the chief post at Berlin University ?

It is worth noting the reason for Kohler's getting the chief post at Germany's most important university, the University of Berlin. Such matters are never determined in a simple manner, but the outstanding event has been Kohler's publication of his Die Physischen Gestalten in Ruhe and imstationärem Zustand in 1920. This was the most scholarly and scientific of books published by Gestalt psychologists. It was right and appropriate that so scholarly a work should have received the recognition that it did.

He was visiting professor at Clark University from 1925 to 1926 and at the University of Chicago in 1935.