"Studying psychology under Köhler is like studying religion under god"—at least that’s how the Halcyon once put it. But for Köhler, hyperbole was hardly needed. His reputation as a founder of Gestalt psychology and dominant figure in the field was already well established before he came to Swarthmore.

The son of German parents, Köhler was born in the port city of Revel [now Tallinn] in Estonia, then a Russian province. After attending the Gymnasium (academic high school) in Wolfenbüttel, he studied at the universities of Tübingen, Bonn, and Berlin and received a Ph.D. in 1909 for a dissertation on psycho-acoustics.

In its early days, experimental psychology was "all very romantic" to the young Köhler, as it was filled, he imagined, with labs, experiments, and dramatic discoveries. He continued his auditory research as an assistant and lecturer at the Psychological Institute at the University of Frankfurt, where he met Kurt Koffka and Max Wertheimer. Together, their work launched the Gestalt movement, based on the belief that perception is best understood as an organized pattern rather than as separate parts.

In 1913, Köhler became director of a primate research facility maintained by the Prussian Academy of Sciences on Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands. There, he applied Gestalt principles to study chimpanzees and recorded their ability to devise and use tools and solve problems. Effectively interned there with his family during World War I, he used the time productively. In 1917, he published and gained fame with The Mentality of Apes, in which he argued that his subjects, like humans, were capable of insight learning. His work led to a radical revision of learning theory.

Köhler returned to Germany in 1921 as head of the Psychological Institute and professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin, where he continued to explore and write about Gestalt theory. At the same time, he publicly responded to the country’s changing political situation by writing, in April 1933, what became the last anti-Nazi article openly published in Germany under national socialism. Speaking of his friends who had not joined the Nazi movement, he wrote: "Never have I seen finer patriotism than theirs." Köhler, who was not Jewish, went on to name several influential and respected scholars—including philosopher Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza and physicists Heinrich Hertz and James Franck—who were, as he noted, all Jewish.

Köhler’s independence did not go unnoticed. "The Nazis invaded his institute," says New School University Professor Emerita of Psychology Mary Henle. "It was a very close-knit group, and they hired and fired people without consulting him." Conditions deteriorated further. By 1935, Robert MacLeod, who as a young researcher had studied at Köhler’s institute in the 1920s, was chair of Swarthmore’s Psychology Department. Learning of Köhler’s untenable situation, he prevailed on President Frank Aydelotte to offer him a position. The result: Köhler came that year and, with MacLeod, built the department by attracting as research associates names now familiar in the field, including Henle, Karl Duncker, and Hans Wallach. The latter two had been his assistants in Germany.

"He was very good about helping his younger colleagues," Henle says. "We would show him papers we were preparing for publication. He even made our English better. He once inserted a sentence in a paper of mine, then quoted the sentence and attributed it to me."

At Swarthmore, Köhler was also known for his intellectually exhausting seminars and for his deadly serious approach to his research. In a 1976 interview, Wallach described one perception experiment, related to figural aftereffects, in which Köhler, as the subject, had two electrodes fastened to the back of his head.

Köhler, sitting in front of a complex pattern, expected to see it change shape as the current passed through his head. Not seeing any change, he encouraged his assistant to turn the current higher, ultimately past the safe limit. At that point, Wallach fell ill and left the room. Köhler, meanwhile, never saw the pattern distort.

"He stopped the experiment when half of his visual field turned dark," Wallach said. "For the next week, he looked awful. He suffered tremendous headaches and feared he had done permanent damage to his brain. But there were no long-lasting ill effects."

Köhler received numerous honors throughout his career, including the American Psychological Association’s first Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. He later served as the organization’s president. He also spent a year as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and was a research professor at Dartmouth College. He died in New Hampshire in 1967.

After Köhler retired from Swarthmore, the College awarded him an honorary doctorate in sciences, one of many he received. The citation acknowledged his status as an innovator, discoverer, and scientist of "the first rank" and as a "broad humanistic scholar who is informed in history, politics, the arts, and philosophy and who uses all to further his insights into the human mind." Dean William Prentice also described him as "a cherished colleague … in many fields and many lands, he is also a warm and loyal friend of students and fellow Swarthmoreans without number."

 

Additional sources: Mary Henle’s 1879 and All That: Essays in the Theory and History of Psychology (1986) and the American Philosphical Society, where Dr. Köhler’s papers are deposited.

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