Kurt Koffka
| Kurt Koffka | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 18, 1886 Berlin, German Empire |
| Died |
November 22, 1941 (aged 55) Northampton, Massachusetts |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
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Main interests
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Social psychology Gestalt psychology |
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Influences
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Influenced
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Kurt Koffka (March 18, 1886 – November 22, 1941) was a German psychologist. He was born and educated in Berlin. Along with Max Wertheimer and his close associates Wolfgang Kohler they established Gestalt psychology. Koffka’s interests were wide-ranging, and they included: Perception, hearing impairments in brain-damaged patients,interpretation, learning, and the extension of Gestalt theory to developmental psychology.
Kurt Koffka was born on March 18, 1886 in Berlin. His father Emil Koffka was a lawyer and his younger brother Friedrich became a judge. His mother Luis Levy was of Jewish descent but listed herself as Protestant. In 1909, Koffka married Mira Klein, who had been an experimental subject in his research. In 1923 they were divorced and he married Elisabeth Ahlgrimm who had recently finished her Ph.D at Giessen. Three years later, in 1926, they divorced and Koffka remarried Mira, but in 1928 they were divorced for the second time and he remarried Elisabeth. Kurt and Elisabeth remained married until his death, and he had no children.
Early in Koffka’s life his biologist uncle aroused his interests in the fields of philosophy and science. He learned how to speak English from an English governess and from 1892 to 1903 was educated at the Wilhelms-Gymnasium, considered one of the best-known schools in the city. He spent the year 1903-1904 at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland where he developed a strong fluency in English. From 1904-1907 Koffka was enrolled in the University of Berlin as a psychology student and earned his PhD there in 1909 as a student of Carl Stumpf. His thesis was entitled Experimental Untersuchungen zur Lehre vom Rhythmus (1909; Experimental Investigations of Rhythm).
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