Kurt Koffka
Kurt Koffka ( born March 18, 1886 in Berlin, † November 22, 1941 in Northampton, Massachusetts ) was a German psychologist. It counts with Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler of the founders of Gestalt psychology and the Gestalt theory.
Life
In 1909 he married Mira Klein. The marriage was divorced in 1923. In his second marriage he was married to Elizabeth Ahlgrimm. Koffka's younger brother was the lawyer and writer Friedrich Koffka.
Koffka doctorate in 1909 tonal psychology of Carl Stumpf at the University of Berlin. From 1911 to 1927 he taught at the University of Giessen. In 1921 he published his book " The Fundamentals of psychological development ," in which he presented a developmental psychology of the child to shape a theoretical basis; the English translation was instrumental in the discovery of the Gestalt psychology in the United States. 1922 presented Koffka, the Gestalt theory in an article in the " Psychological Bulletin " in the USA. From 1927 he taught in the U.S. at Smith College. His main work is considered the systematic presentation of Gestalt theory in his book has become a classic " Principles of Gestalt Psychology " (1935 ), available now from the few chapters in a German book version.
Since 2007, the Justus -Liebig- University Giessen annually awarded the Kurt- Koffka Medal to outstanding international researchers for outstanding research in the field of perception and / or developmental psychology.