Max Wertheimer (April 15, 1880 – October 12, 1943) was a psychologist who was one of the three founders of Gestalt psychology, along with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler.
For a short time, he left Frankfurt to work at the Berlin Psychological Institute, but returned in 1929 as a full professor.
Wertheimer began his formal education aged five, at a private elementary school maintained by the Piarist order of the Roman Catholic Church.
[6] Due to the diverse courses offered by the university, he began to contemplate his future, and realized his deep fascination with philosophy.
He first began to study law at Charles University, where he also explored philosophy, and other fields such as music, physiology, and psychology.
[7] At Berlin, Max was able to work in the company of figures such as Carl Stumpf, Friederich Schumann, Georg Elias Müller, and Erich von Hornbostel.
Wertheimer first founded his Gestalt theory before World War I, publishing his research on perception in "Experimental Studies on Motion Vision" in 1912.
During World War I Wertheimer was a research psychologist with the Prussian Artillery Testing Commission, the center of which was located in the Bavarian Quarter of Berlin, close to Albert Einstein's house.
[9] After the war, he further advanced his Gestalt theory in collaboration with Wolfgang Kohler, Kurt Koffka, and others through the Weimar years.
In 1923, while teaching in Berlin, Wertheimer married Anna Caro (called Anni), a physician's daughter, with whom he had four children: Rudolf (who died in infancy, 1924), Valentin (1925–1978), Michael (1927–2022) and Lise (born 1928, Lisbeth Rosa).
[12] The Wertheimers' emigration was arranged through the U.S. consulate in Prague, and he and his wife and their children arrived in New York harbor on September 13, 1933.
[13] Along with his move to America, Wertheimer accepted a professional position at age fifty-three at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
[14] From 1934–1940, Wertheimer wrote four major papers, philosophical essays on the topics of truth, ethics, democracy, and freedom which are all commonly grounded on gestalt ideas of the whole and its parts, and the importance of looking at the "total situation."
Although in declining health, Wertheimer continued to work on his research of problem-solving, what he preferred to call "productive thinking."
Wertheimer worked with partners Koffka and Köhler to collect data which ultimately led to their launch of the Gestalt movement.
The explanation of the phi phenomena was that movement is perceived because the eye itself moves in response to the successive flashes of light.
[14] The researchers maintained that human perception is prone to such illusions and they speculated that it is more meaningful to connect close-together events than to keep them artificially separate.
[19] Gestalt, in the closest English definition of the term, is translated potentially as configuration, form, holistic, structure, and pattern.
A synthesis of the ideas that he wrote about in the first three papers, this one was written in the style of an autobiographical parable, like the sort of narrative seen in a pilgrim's progress.
[22] It is Wertheimer's "final affirmation of faith in the power of Gestalt, of the will to truth and justice, to lead the world into a post-Hitler era of freedom".