Christian Freiherr von Ehrenfels, the Austrian psychologist and philosopher, was born in Rodaun near Vienna. He studied at the University of Vienna under Franz Brentano and Alexius Meinong, and took his doctorate at Graz in 1885. He taught at Vienna as a Privatdozent from 1888 to 1896, when he became extraordinary professor at the German University of Prague. He was a full professor at Prague from 1900 until 1929. Besides his professional work, Ehrenfels wrote two essays on Richard Wagner and several plays.

Gestalt Psychology

In psychology, Ehrenfels is best remembered for inaugurating gestalt psychology in his article "Über Gestaltqualitäten" (1890). Starting from Ernst Mach's thesis in his Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen (Jena, 1886), that we can sense (empfinden) spatial and temporal forms ("wholes," Gestalten), Ehrenfels argued that sensing is limited to the present but that the apprehension of a complex datum requires recollection...