Wolfgang Metzger (born July 22 1899 in
HeidelbergHeidelberg is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. As of 2008, over 145,000 people live within the city's area. Heidelberg is a unitary authority...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
; died December 20 1979 in
BebenhausenBebenhausen is a historical village in Baden-Württemberg, now the smallest district of Tübingen. It is located 3 km north of Tübingen proper in the middle of the state nature protected area of the Schönbuch. It is located on Route 464 connecting Böblingen and Tübingen. It was founded in 1183 by...
, Germany) is considered one of the main representatives of
Gestalt psychologyGestalt psychology or gestaltism of the Berlin School is a theory of mind and brain positing that the operational principle of the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies, or that the whole is different from the sum of its parts...
(Gestalt theory) in Germany.
Metzger was a student and associate of the founders of the Berlin school of Gestalt theory,
Max WertheimerMax Wertheimer was a Czech-born Jewish teacher who was one of the three founders of Gestalt psychology, along with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler....
,
Wolfgang KöhlerWolfgang Köhler was a German psychologist and phenomenologist who, like Max Wertheimer, Fritz Perls, and Kurt Koffka, contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology.-Early life:...
and
Kurt KoffkaKurt Koffka was a German psychologist. He was born and educated in Berlin and earned his PhD there in 1909 as a student of Carl Stumpf...
. Metzger became Max Wertheimer's assistant in Frankfurt/Main in the 1930s and his successor when the Nazis forced Wertheimer out.
Wolfgang Metzger (born July 22 1899 in
HeidelbergHeidelberg is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. As of 2008, over 145,000 people live within the city's area. Heidelberg is a unitary authority...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
; died December 20 1979 in
BebenhausenBebenhausen is a historical village in Baden-Württemberg, now the smallest district of Tübingen. It is located 3 km north of Tübingen proper in the middle of the state nature protected area of the Schönbuch. It is located on Route 464 connecting Böblingen and Tübingen. It was founded in 1183 by...
, Germany) is considered one of the main representatives of
Gestalt psychologyGestalt psychology or gestaltism of the Berlin School is a theory of mind and brain positing that the operational principle of the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies, or that the whole is different from the sum of its parts...
(Gestalt theory) in Germany.
Metzger was a student and associate of the founders of the Berlin school of Gestalt theory,
Max WertheimerMax Wertheimer was a Czech-born Jewish teacher who was one of the three founders of Gestalt psychology, along with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler....
,
Wolfgang KöhlerWolfgang Köhler was a German psychologist and phenomenologist who, like Max Wertheimer, Fritz Perls, and Kurt Koffka, contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology.-Early life:...
and
Kurt KoffkaKurt Koffka was a German psychologist. He was born and educated in Berlin and earned his PhD there in 1909 as a student of Carl Stumpf...
. Metzger became Max Wertheimer's assistant in Frankfurt/Main in the 1930s and his successor when the Nazis forced Wertheimer out. Early in the 1940s Metzger became chairman at
MünsterMünster is an independent city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region and it is also capital of the local government region Regierungsbezirk Münster...
, a position he held until his retirement.
The early major work
Gesetze des Sehens (Laws of Seeing) first appeared in serial part issues, edited by the
Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Frankfurt. Expanded editions were printed in 1936, 1954, and 1975. In this work Metzger supplemented his collection of phenomena from everyday perception and the fine arts, always endeavoring to find ever more compelling illustrations for the Gestalt point of view. As Heinz Heckhausen has pointed out this work is a masterpiece for those who come to it without an intense background in the psychology of perception; in a nontechnical style Metzger moves the reader toward a deeper experience, and sometimes an altered conception, of the visual world.
Metzger's most widely acclaimed work is
Psychologie: Die Entwicklung ihrer Grundannahmen seit der Einführung des Experiments (Psychology: The development of basic principles since the introduction of the experimental method). It portrays systematically the foundations of psychology, including the different kinds of psychological reality, the problems associated with reference systems, order, and much more. Pivotal in its discussions is the cumulative knowledge, at that time, of the entire Gestalt school.
Following
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Metzger devoted increasing energy to applied questions, especially those having to do with child-rearing, classroom education, and psychotherapy. His guiding principles in these applied endeavors were developed in his last two books,
Schöpferische Freiheit (Productive freedom, 1949, 1962) and
Psychologie in der Erziehung (Psychology in education, 1971). The theoretical starting point of these works is again Gestalt psychology with its assumption of a natural, nonforced order in nature, which led him to make his observations on the virtues of a theme of freedom among the goals of education. Metzger became eventually an outspoken advocate of
AdlerianPertaining to the theory and practice of Alfred Adler , whose school of psychoanalysis is called Individual Psychology . Central to the Adlerian approach is to see the personality as a whole and not as the mere net result of component forces. Thus the term individual psychology...
psychology with which he had become acquainted during his Berlin days through
Fritz KünkelFritz Künkel bei Landsberg/Warthe - April 1/4, 1956, Los Angeles) was a German psychologist, doctor....
and later through Oliver Brachfeld who was in Münster from 1960 to 1965. Together with Brachfeld he founded in 1964 the German
Alfred Adler Society which became in 1970 the
German Society for Individual Psychology.
Metzger was president of the 16th International Congress for Psychology in 1960 in
BonnBonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 20 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990...
. From 1962 until 1964, he was president of the
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie. He was also highly committed to activities associated with his membership in the
Association de Psychologie de la Langue Française. Metzger's legacy is carried forth in the
Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications (GTA), an international multidisciplinary organization, of which he was honorary chairman.
External links