Christian von Ehrenfels

Austrian psychologist and philosopher

• Born: June 20, 1859
• Birthplace: Rodaun, Austria
• Died: September 8, 1932
• Place of death: Lichtenau, Austria

Ehrenfels inspired the founding of modern Gestalt psychology. In his native Austria-Hungary, he was primarily considered a philosopher, especially in the field of value theory and ethics. Controversial in his time, he published a book on sexual ethics. He also wrote on eugenics, music, and mathematics, and was the author of several dramas.

Early Life

Christian von Ehrenfels (AY-rehn-fehls) was born in Rodaun, Lower Austria, at a time when Rodaun was a small town outside Vienna. His old, well-to-do aristocratic family included one grandmother who was a French countess; he may also have had some Jewish ancestors. As a young gentleman, he enjoyed life as a farmer and passionate hunter; later, he gave some of his estates to his younger brother Bernhard, who became a member of the Austrian House of Lords. Ehrenfels subsequently served in the Austrian army as a cavalry officer in a dragoon regiment. It was then, in the early 1880’s, that he took music lessons in Vienna in harmony and counterpoint with the famous composer Anton Bruckner, with whom he shared an admiration for Richard Wagner. After studying agriculture in Vienna, he finally transferred to the University of Vienna to major in philosophy. Among his professors there, the philosopher and psychologistFranz Brentano had the greatest impact on him; Ehrenfels considered himself a follower of Brentano despite the differences in their philosophies. Brentano’s disciples, however, rejected Ehrenfels and his publications. At the University of Graz in Styria, he was a student of Alexius Meinong, whose ideas were similar to those of the Gestalt psychologists. Ehrenfels received the Ph.D. there in 1885; his doctoral dissertation dealt with Gestalten und Zahlen (forms and numbers). Three years later, in 1888, he started teaching philosophy at the University of Vienna, and in 1896 he accepted an associate professorship at the German branch of Charles University in Prague, the most ancient university in Central Europe. Promoted to professor of philosophy in 1899, he stayed there until his retirement in 1929. In Graz in 1894, he married Emma von Hartmann, the widow of a naval officer. They had two children: a daughter who was a well-known novelist and poet, Imma von Bodmershof, and a son, Rolf von Ehrenfels, who became a university professor of anthropology.

Life’s Work

The work with the greatest and most lasting impact appeared fairly early in Ehrenfels’s career: “Über Gestaltqualitäten” (1890; on Gestalt qualities). Ehrenfels used primarily music as an example of Gestalt, stating that Gestalt qualities are not simply tonal or optical phenomena and that there must be something that goes beyond these phenomena. Recognizing a form (Gestalt), such as a square, one conceives a new element that is not contained in the lines or dots. Gestalt qualities do not constitute the sum of the parts alone. A melody that is transposed into different keys keeps its basic form, that is, the Gestaltqualität, provided that the relationships between the tones are not changed. In this regard, a melody is like a visual form. If the key is changed, the tones are all different, but the similarity of the melody is recognizable immediately. If, however, the tonal sequence is changed, one does not recognize the original melody. If a singer sings a melody in a different pitch, he does not reproduce the sum of the original single impressions but a completely different complex in which its members have an analogous connection to one another as do those of the experienced complex before. Thus, the Gestalt quality or entirety has been reproduced but not its elements or parts. The criterion of transposability applies here. Ehrenfels distinguished between temporal and nontemporal Gestalt qualities and between higher Gestalt and lower Gestalt. There are also color melodies and color harmonies beyond melody and harmony of sound. “There is Gestalt not only in musical notes but also in noises.” That includes language, although one is able to distinguish tones among individual vowels. “Every word of a language is a Gestalt quality.”

During World War I, Ehrenfels published Kosmogonie (1916; Cosmogony , 1948), in which he extends his Gestalt theory within a mythical and dualistic philosophy. He did not believe that the creation of the world was complete but was an ongoing day-to-day process, a struggle between the formative principle and the formless chaos. Much in the world is still part of the chaos; therefore, the world in its entirety cannot be conceived rationally, but there is a tendency toward order and Gestalt. God himself is in the process of becoming, and humans are helpers in God’s works. Ehrenfels later developed a law of the prime numbers in connection with the Gestalt theory (1922).

Ehrenfels spent a considerable amount of time on ethical problems and made contributions to the theory of values, which he based on a psychology of desire. “All actions of desire are dependent . . . on the relative promotion of happiness. . . .” He treated ethics as a psychology of moral value facts. “The value of a thing is its desirability. . . .” There are changes in value, such as the gradual capacity to derive a pleasurable psychic impression from an external event, such as the playing of a piece of music, “the fantasy image of the musical Gestalt” (System der Werttheorie, 1897-1898).

At the turn of the century, when pessimistic Europeans became keenly aware of signs of decadence in Western civilization, Ehrenfels, wanting to stem the decline, advocated polygamy for the biologically healthiest and most valuable men. From a biological point of view, he considered the Islamic system to be superior. His son later converted to Muhammadanism. Franz Kafka noted, in a diary entry of February 4, 1912, Ehrenfels’s remark that he preferred mixed races. Remarks such as that and the advocacy of highly unorthodox sexual ethics made him subject to harsh criticism, and there were turbulent student demonstrations against him in his lecture hall. At a time of extreme nationalism, he was against war, because he believed that the best human beings get killed. He also spoke against anti-Semitism in any form.

Ehrenfels is all but forgotten as a dramatic writer. An ardent admirer of Wagner, he wanted to follow and to extend the famous composer’s ideas. In July, 1882, he traveled to Bayreuth to see the first performance of Wagner’s opera Parsifal. He wanted to compose the music for his own stage dramas, just as Wagner had done. Ehrenfels’s opera libretto Melusine (1887) includes detailed suggestions for the composer, but he does admit that he was unable to compose the music himself. For the performance of his four-part cycle Der Kampf des Prometheus (1895), he suggested the construction of a special theater building. A Christian spirit of optimism prevails in a number of works; the influence of Wagner is obvious in the language, but Ehrenfels added the ancient chorus. An allegorical play, Sängerweihe , was put to music by the composer Otto Taubmann, and three performances were staged in Germany (1904). Ideas of improvement of the human race permeate his play Die Sternenbraut (1912). Kafka attended one of its performances in the German Theater in Prague, and Max Brod wrote a review of it, for which Ehrenfels thanked him profusely. In honor of the seventy-fifth birthday of the president of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1925, Ehrenfels dedicated a play, Die Mutter des Legionärs (the mother of the legionnaire), to him, an act that infuriated some German nationalists. In the end, he admitted that he had failed in his attempt to create with his choral dramas a continuation of Wagner’s work.

Ehrenfels was described as a tall, striking man with a full beard. He enjoyed visitors and seems to have been a friendly, pleasant, and warm person. He was a frequent visitor in the home of Bertha Fanta, a well-known host in Prague, who arranged regular meetings, lectures, and discussions for intellectuals, many of whom had connections with the university. Albert Einstein was often there and participated in the philosophical debates. Among the visitors were also several young writers and philosophers from the German-speaking Jewish community, who were students of Ehrenfels and who were greatly impressed by him. Ehrenfels died at Lichtenau, in Austria, on September 8, 1932.

Significance

Ehrenfels was familiar with major world developments, including the growing impact of Charles Darwin’s teachings. He did not think highly of Friedrich Nietzsche and flatly rejected the teachings of Karl Marx. Ernst Mach was among those contemporary philosophers who influenced him. He was not fully aware of the ramification and the international significance of his Gestalt theory. Max Wertheimer, a native of Prague who knew Ehrenfels well and was his student, further developed the Gestalt concepts. He and Wolfgang Köhler are often referred to as the founders of the school of Gestalt psychology , which for a number of years flourished at several German universities, especially Berlin. Almost all Gestalt psychologists fled to the United States before World War II, helping to establish the United States as the leading country in psychological research.

Together with Meinong and Vittorio Benussi, Ehrenfels is sometimes associated with the School of Graz, but frequently he is not given full credit for his accomplishments. He was not the leader of any school. He had many admirers, including well-known writers or scholars who were very proud to have been his students, notably Max Brod, Johannes Urzidil, and Eduard Goldstücker. Yet he had few followers. He waited more than three decades, until 1922, before he expanded his original concepts of Gestalt and countered some criticism. His creative interests were many, including literature, music, and theater; some of his eccentric ideas made him an outsider. Although Ehrenfels did not belong to the mainstream of philosophical and psychological thought, he is a good example of the intellectual ferment in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Bibliography

Ash, Mitchell G. Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967: Holism and the Quest for Objectivity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. A comprehensive history of Gestalt psychology and those who developed it. Includes discussion of Ehrenfels’s contributions.

Ehrenfels, Christian von. Cosmogony. Translated by Mildred Focht. New York: 1948. Ehrenfels, who considered this book his magnum opus, demonstrates a dualistic world view wherein the form-creating God is fighting the formless chaos.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “On Gestalt-Qualities.” Translated by Mildred Focht. Psychological Review 44 (1937): 521-524. This is apparently Ehrenfels’s last article before he died. He summarizes and explains his views on Gestalt qualities.

Hartmann, George W. Gestalt Psychology: A Survey of Facts and Principles. 1935. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974. In the concise chapter “Mach and Ehrenfels,” Hartmann deals with the antecedents and development of Gestalt psychology with emphasis on Ehrenfels’s original article, published in 1890.

Heider, Fritz. “Gestalt Theory: Early History and Reminiscences.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 6 (1970): 131-139. Heider, who, like Ehrenfels, wrote his dissertation under Alexius Meinong, sees Ehrenfels partly as an innovator and partly as a conservative, who, besides Gestalt qualities, created a mixture of myths and science in Cosmogony.

Hothersall, David. History of Psychology. 4th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2004. A wide-ranging examination of the modern historical roots and the tradition of psychology, with a chapter exploring Gestalt psychology in the United States and Germany.

Köhler, Wolfgang. Gestalt Psychology: An Introduction to Concepts in Modern Psychology. Rev. ed. New York: Liveright, 1947. One of the most important texts in the field of psychology. In chapter 6, Köhler explains why Ehrenfels used the term “Gestalt qualities” and the changes in the meaning of the word “Gestalt” in psychology.

Watson, Robert I., Sr., ed. Eminent Contributors to Psychology. Vol. 1, A Bibliography of Primary References. New York: Springer, 1974. Contains eighteen entries of books and articles by Ehrenfels written between 1886 and 1932. Sixteen titles are in German, some of them are not readily available; two titles are in English.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Eminent Contributors to Psychology. Vol. 2, A Bibliography of Secondary References. New York: Springer, 1976. Contains bibliographic entries of books and articles (in German, English, and French) that include references to Ehrenfels, whose name, however, appears only once (in a subtitle).