Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: Where was Christian von Ehrenfels born?
Christian von Ehrenfels was born on 20 June 1859 in Rodaun near Vienna and grew up at his father's castle Brunn am Walde in Lower Austria. He joined secondary school in Krems and first studied at the Hochschule für Bodenkultur in Vienna and then changed to the Universität Wien.
Christian von Ehrenfels (also Maria Christian Julius Leopold Freiherr von Ehrenfels; 20 June 1859 – 8 September 1932)[2] was an Austrian philosopher, and is known as one of the founders and precursors of Gestalt psychology.
For men who were "social losers", a certain number of the genetically less fit women would be sterilized and turned into the "courtesan class" who would be set aside for the sexual use of the "loser" men in brothels.[17] Since in Ehrenfels's viewpoint, all that men really wanted from women was sex, not love, in this new society men would not suffer the psychological problems caused by monogamy, thus ending the "splitting". Since this new society would be meritocratic, this would solve the entire "Social Question" as there would no more inherited wealth and privilege.[17] Furthermore, in this new society, women living in their communal barracks would help each other with raising children, so women would have more time for leisure, and as such Ehrenfels believed that women would come to see this new society as a huge improvement over the previous monogamist society.[17] Their husbands now free of monogamy would treat them better, and so the entire "Women's Question" would dissolve as women would lose interest in feminism (which Enrenfels saw as very unnatural).[17] To end the "Yellow Peril" once and for all, Ehrenfels suggested that the "white nations" band together to conquer all the Asian nations before it was too late, and create a new world racial order with a hereditary, racially determined "caste system".[18] In Ehrenfels's vision, whites would serve as the oligarchic "Aryan" military and intellectual castes and the Asians and blacks as the slave castes supporting the whites.[18] Ehrenfels in essays published in 1903 and 1904 that in this industrial age, where the majority of humanity was doomed to spent their lives in "mindless, indeed mind-numbing mechanical labor", that this sort of work was best done by "regressive types" of people instead of "human types of higher value".[18] Ehrenfels argued that Asians and blacks were the "regressive types" born for lives of mindless labor while whites were the types of "higher value" meant for creative thinking, so the division of labor he proposed for his caste system was the one that best suited the intellectual capabilities of the different races that would create the "proper relationship" between them.[18] To prevent Miscegenation, interracial sex would be a capital crime with offenders to be publicly hanged.[18] The American historian Richard Weikart wrote Ehrenfels was typical of the "progress through racial extermination" school of thought that characterized much of the academia in the German-speaking world in the first part of the 20th century, writing that: "Through Ehrenfels was not explicit on this point, presumably the elevation of the Europeans he desired would lead to the annihilation of the East Asians, as well as the other races, whom Ehrenfels considered far inferior to the Europeans.[19]
In the 1890s, Ehrenfels-who was a passionate fan of Richard Wagner-befriended a fellow Wagnerite, the British born German völkisch thinker Houston Stewart Chamberlain, "the Evangelist of Race".[52] Ehrenfels, who despite being a Wagnerite and a friend of Chamberlain's did not generally associate himself with the more extreme racist and anti-Semitic wing of the Wagner movement that Chamberlain came to be the leader of.[53] Ehrenfels never accepted Chamberlain's anti-Semitism, but he was influenced by Chamberlain's theory that the Aryan race was the greatest and best race of them all. Chamberlain was later to have an affair with Ehrenfels's wife, Baroness Emma von Ehrenfels.[54]
Ehrenfels argued in numerous cultural-scientific and sexual-political writings against the cultural harmfulness of monogamy and for the utopia of a polygynian social order. He defended the opinion that monogamy would hinder a Darwinistic reproduction-logic and procreation-selection, which would have a devastating effect on society in a cultural-biological way and therefore monogamy should be combated. With those theories, Ehrenfels exposed himself to massive criticism, because he offered with his theories unimaginable thoughts to contemporary Western conventions. The basis of Ehrenfels's thinking about a new sexual order were expressed in a series of essays published in several academic journals in Germany and Austria between 1902-1910.[4] In his essays, Ehrenfels began with the argument that men are not naturally monogamous, and that monogamy was something that had come to Europe with Christianity.[5] Ehrenfels's starting point was that with many species of animals such as whales, walruses, elephants, lions, etc, the strongest male has a harem, which for him was sufficient proof that this was what nature had intended for humanity.[6] Ehrenfels stated through monogamy had some useful functions such as the "iron discipline" it imposed on European men, on the whole Europeans had suffered terribly from the unnatural condition of monogamy, which had seriously interfered with the Darwinian progress of ensuring the survival of the fittest (Ehrenfels was an avid Social Darwinist).[5] Ehrenfels believed polygamy was what nature had intended for men as it allowed the "fittest" men to father as many children as possible with as many women as possible in a process of "virile selection".[7]
Ehrenfels projected feminine qualities onto the Chinese, always using feminine verbs when writing about the Chinese, and always compared China to a woman after 1904.[39] The German language has three sorts of verbs: masculine, feminine and neutral. Ehrenfels's fear of the Chinese reflected his fear of the feminine which might overwhelm the masculine through the powers of love and sex.[39] By contrast, Ehrenfels always used masculine verbs when writing about the Japanese, and he often compared the Japanese to a rival male that was seeking to dominate the "woman China" in competition to the European powers that were also compared to males.[39] Dickison argued that Ehrenfels's constant use of this sort of sexualized language of power, aggression and domination when writing about China reflected his own fear of sex, love, sexual dependence, his sexual adequacy as a man, and most of all, emotional dependence.[39] Dickinson further noted the great irony of Ehrenfels's life, namely that his own biography disapproved his theories about men as sex-crazed animals incapable of love for either the women in their lives or their children.[39] By all accounts, Ehrenfels did indeed deeply love his wife and his two children.[39]
Dickinson noted that Ehrenfels's intense bouts of depression together with periods of manic activity suggested a degree of emotional instability on his part, adding:
Austrian Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels (1894–1982) registered the novel "Ali and Nino" with German authorities, and her niece Leela Ehrenfels (in association with the Baron Omar Rolf von Ehrenfel's second wife, the Baroness Mireille Ehrenfels-Abeille) has claimed that the pseudonym Kurban Said belonged to her aunt Elfriede, and that she wrote both Kurban Said novels, "Ali and Nino" and "The Girl from the Golden Horn". No one has offered any robust contextual comparison between "Ali and Nino" and other known writings by Elfriede Ehrenfels, but Leela Ehrenfels has noted several coincidences between her aunt's and father's lives and writings that suggest their, or at least Elfriede's, authorship of the novel. One is that the April 20, 1937 working title of the novel was "The Dying Orient", and her father and aunt (the Baron and Baroness Ehrenfels) had previously written an article together entitled "The Dying Istanbul." Another is that the Ehrenfels made a film entitled "The Great Longing", which is "about a man who is disappointed with the world. And he is looking for true love or truth." (The unspoken implication may be that this is similar to "Ali and Nino".) Third, Baron Omar Rolf von Ehrenfels set up the "Orient Bund" for Muslim students in Berlin "in order to bring Europeans and Muslims closer together." Leela Ehrenfels and Mireille Ehrenfels-Abeille have also said it is possible that Elfriede had an affair with Lev Nussimbaum. Fourth, according to the April 20, 1937 contract with E.P. Tal & Co., Baroness Elfriede was the author behind the pseudonym Kurban Said, and Leela has said, "that makes it obvious to me that she wrote both books. But it is possible that Essad Bey supplied some of the material. And that there are certain parts on which they worked together." Fifth, Leela Ehrenfels cites a September 14, 1938 letter from "Essad Bey" to Baroness Ehrenfels, written in Positano, Italy, in which he again refers to her as "Mrs. Kurban Said" and congratulates her on something unmentioned – Leela Ehrenfels interprets this as a reference to "The Girl From the Golden Horn".
Imma was the daughter of Baron Christian von Ehrenfels, the founder of the modern structural Gestalt psychology in Austria. She was also the sister of Umar Rolf Baron Ehrenfels, an orientalist and anthropologist who converted to Islam.
The castle was probably built in the first half of the 13th century. The first mention of the Lord of Ehrenfels is in 1257. In 1320 it was owned by Burkhard and Rudolf von Schauenstein, who also used the name Ehrenfels or Herrenfels. They probably expanded the simple bergfried with residential space and a ring wall around that time. The castle was first mentioned in 1423 with Hermann von Ehrenfels as the owner. Toward the end of the 15th century or in the early 16th century it was given to Cazis Monastery, but the Schauenstein-Ehrenfels family continued to occupy it. During the 16th century the castle was renovated and rebuilt into a more comfortable palas.
The American historian Edward Ross Dickinson wrote the "pieces" of Ehrenfels's thinking were all mainstream, but the way he brought them together was "idiosyncratic".[30] Dickinson suggested that these ideas were rooted in Ehrenfels's own tormented sexuality as he was both fascinated/repulsed by sex.[30] Ehrenfels had been brought up in an extremely conservative, sexually repressive Roman Catholic family, and from his teenage years onwards, always felt deep shame and guilt about his sexual desires.[30] Despite his obsession with sex, Ehrenfels was enraged by pornography (which he wanted to see ruthlessly stamped out) and by the "indecent" popular culture of Vienna, which he saw as far too sexualized.[31] Ehrenfels was especially offended by the Animierkneipen ("hostess bar"), a type of popular bar in Austria where the buxom waitresses wore very low-cut dresses and were encouraged to flirt with the male customers in order to get them to buy more drinks; in the Animierkneipen, the waitresses were paid commissions based on their nightly sales of alcohol.[30] Ehrenfels was deeply disgusted by the sight of women flaunting their sexuality to manipulate men, and wanted the Animierkneipen banned.[30] Besides for that, Ehrenfels complained constantly about "indecent puns" used by ordinary people, the "courtesan style" in modern fashion and by the "pornography of the humorous weeklies, in comic songs, farces and operettas".[30]
Additionally, Ehrenfels argued this psychological "splitting" led to men to treat their wives badly as men were forced into the unnatural condition of monogamy, and that the feminist movement and the entire "Women's Question" had arose as a response; Enrenfels believed the "Women's Question" would naturally resolve itself if only husbands would learn to treat their wives better.[10] Finally, Ehrenfels argued that the monogamy was at the root to the "Social Question" (by which meant Ehrenfels meant the rise of the Austrian Social Democratic Party) as it encouraged men to leave their fortunes to their children, something that Ehrenfels believed to be natural, but also something that "very often contradicts the demands of social justice".[10] As a result of wealth being spread by "privilegistic" means as opposed to "meritocratic" means, the poor felt resentment and were voting for socialist parties, which promised to abolish inequality.[10] Ehrenfels believed that humanity was naturally unequal, and the demand for universal human equality had to be fought as it totally unnatural.[10] In a 1908 essay, the proud aristocrat Baron von Enrenfels called the demand for universal equality in the Austrian Empire being made by the Social Democrats "preposterous".[10]
The concept of gestalt was first introduced in philosophy and psychology in 1890 by Christian von Ehrenfels (a member of the School of Brentano). The idea of gestalt has its roots in theories by David Hume, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Immanuel Kant, David Hartley, and Ernst Mach. Max Wertheimer's unique contribution was to insist that the "gestalt" is perceptually primary, defining the parts it was composed from, rather than being a secondary quality that emerges from those parts, as von Ehrenfels's earlier "Gestalt-Qualität" had been.
Ehrenfels wrote with disgust that monogamy was "that type of sexual life...that corresponded to the needs and capacities of women, at the cost of men".[8] By contrast, Ehrenfels believed that women were naturally monogamous, and that all that women desired was one good husband to look after them.[8] Ehrenfels further believed that all social problems were caused by unnatural state of Christian monogamy, which caused a "splitting" between a man's "day consciousness" when he professed to believe in Christian marriage, and his "night consciousness", when a man's naturally aggressive, animistic sex drive come into play.[9] Ehrenfels argued that this "splitting" within men between their "day consciousness" and "night consciousness" caused men all sorts of psychological trauma, and led to men acting in irrational, often violent ways.[10] The specific example of the sort of male irrationality brought up by Enrenfels concerning this "splitting" was that of men abusing the prostitutes they visited.[10]
Ehrenfels's wife Emma was befriended by Houston Stewart Chamberlain. His daughter was the author Imma von Bodmershof and his son Rolf, a professor of anthropology who converted to Islam in 1927 and assumed the name Omar. Omar Rolf's wife, Elfriede von Bodmershof, was a literary person. As well, she registered the pseudonym "Kurban Said" as belonging to her for the novels "Ali and Nino" as well as "Girl from the Golden Horn."[50] However, Lucy Tal whose company E.P. Tal had published "Ali and Nino" wrote her lawyer saying, "I had never heard of the Baroness... Also my late husband's right hand and secretary knew nothing of the Baroness. Only much later, when for some reason, we looked at Buchhaendler Boersenblatt, we discovered the Baroness as Kurban Said. Of course, under the Nazis pseudonyms were born, people unrightful had themselves as authors ..."[51]
Reinhard Fabian (Hg.) - Philosophische Schriften -, Philosophia-Verlag, München & Wien 1990 (4 volumes: 1. Werttheorie. (1982), 2. Ästhetik. (1986), 3. Psychologie, Ethik, Erkenntnistheorie. (1988), 4. Metaphysik. (1990)) Reinhard Fabian - Christian von Ehrenfels: Leben und Werk -, Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam 1986, ISBN978-90-6203-856-5 Petra Gehring: Viriler Faktor. Die Sexualwissenschaft des Christian von Ehrenfels. In: Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte (III, 2, page 40-51), 2009 Richard Meister - Ehrenfels, Christian Freiherr von. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, (Volume 4, page 352f.) Barry Smith - , Chicago: Open Court, 1996, (Chapters 8 and 9, pp.255f.) Barry Smith - In: Axiomathes, 8 (1997), 83–104 Volkmar Sigusch: Geschichte der Sexualwissenschaft -, Campus, Frankfurt / New York 2008, ISBN978-3-593-38575-4, (Page 327-343) Volkmar Sigusch & Günter Grau (Hg.) - Personenlexikon der Sexualforschung -, Campus Frankfurt / New York: 2009, ISBN978-3-593-39049-9, (Page 119-125) Ehrenfels Christian Frh. von - In: Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien 1957, (Volume 1, page 226f.)
Moreover, Ehrenfels was obsessed with the fear of the "Yellow Peril", and believed that Asian peoples were a deadly threat to European civilization.[10] Ehrenfels wrote if nothing was done to stop the rise of China, that "if there is no change in current practice, this will lead to the annihilation of the white race by the yellow race".[11]
Ehrenfels believed that Asians were especially dangerous enemies of the Europeans because in East Asia, polygamy was accepted as a natural part of the social order. Ehrenfels warned that this process of "socially victorious" Chinese men taking as many wives as possible was ultimately a grave threat to the West.[10] As a result of polygamy, genetically superior Asian men were fathering as many children as possible with as many women as possible while genetically superior European men were fathering children by only one woman.[14] As a result of European monogamy and Asian polygamy, the Europeans were losing out to the Asians, and it was only a matter of time before this genetic edge allowed the Asians to destroy European civilization.[14] As a Social Darwinist and a philosopher thereof, Ehrenfels saw all history as an endless racial struggle with the fittest "races" surviving.[14] Ehrenfels took it for granted that the whites and Asians were natural enemies, and always would be. In Ehrenfels's viewpoint, the fact that Chinese were capable of working hard while eating less than Europeans were an important sign that the Asian "race" was thanks to polygamy was starting become the stronger "tougher race".[15] Ehrenfels wrote with alarm that: "the average constitutional strength of the Chinese, their resistance to overwork and...noxious and prejudicial influences of all kinds...exceeds that of the civilized peoples of the West to an astonishing degree".[14] Ehrenfels warned that it this progress was allowed to continue, then the "beautiful Aryan race" to whom Ehrenfels compared to "clear mountain streams" and "purest white milk" would be swept away by the Asian "torrents of mud".[15] Ehrenfels stated that racist anti-Asian immigrant laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States were a good first step, but were insufficient to stop the rise of the "tough, fecund Mongol race".[15]>
For a period Rolf lived in Berlin. His first wife Ellen Feld can be seen as she has a part in a film, Das grosse Sehnen , for which Rolf wrote the manuscript. Rolf and his friend Willy Bodmershof worked on it together and shot it partly in a studio in Berlin, partly on location in Istanbul in 1923. On this trip, partly by bicycle, Rolf's interest in Islam was kindled. Also Christian von Ehrenfels appears in it, as a wise man. There are still photos in Ehrenfels archive, Lichtenau. The film is now in the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna. The film was reviewed by Kurt Bauchwitz as press clippings in the Ehrenfels archive show. Kurt was one of the intellectual Jews in the Berlin Wilmersdorf area. With him Rolf Ehrenfels developed a friendship for life. Kurt called himself Roy C Bates when he had escaped to the US after 1933. Their relationship is documented in the Roy C Bates papers in the Grenander Collections at Albany University, USA.
His analysis of the transition of a melody to another key became famous. Ehrenfels explained that a melody consists of individual sounds, but that it is considerably more than the sum of these notes. The individual notes would be able to join themselves for completely different melodies, while the melody would remain the same, if transposed into another key and containing single tones. This new opinion, that came up to a “perception of the whole” compared to its “parts” Ehrenfels called Gestaltqualitäten (Figure qualities).
Rolf Ehrenfels was an Austrian citizen all his life. Lichtenau near Krems and Gföhl in Lower Austria was his home parish. Since 1813 the Ehrenfels family were settled in Schloss Lichtenau. Also the castles Brunn im Walde and Rastbach were family properties. Rolf's eldest sister "Elfi" Elfriede Hartmann married a widower with three children and had her own home from the early 1920s. His sister Imma Ehrenfels married Wilhelm "Willy" (von) Bodmershof (Schuster)and they settled at Rastbach castle for life. In 1925 there was a double wedding as Rolf Ehrenfels married Willy's sister Fridl who became Elfriede Ehrenfels. She was born in Trieste, Austria.
Dickinson wrote that when Ehrenfels wrote about men suffering from what he called the "tortuously shackled animal personality" created by monogamy, he was almost certainly writing about himself.[31] Dickinson suggested that based upon a reading of Ehrenfels's private letters, that his concerns about psychological "splitting" within men were based upon his own visits to prostitutes, where he saw johns abusing the prostitutes, and that he may himself had badly treated the prostitutes he had sex with (his letters are somewhat ambiguous on this point).[32] The frequently which Ehrenfels brought up the example of how psychological "splitting" was causing men to abuse prostitutes may very well had reflected a guilty conscience on his part about past abuse that he had inflicted on the prostitutes whose services he had used.[32] In a 1908 essay entitled "The Yellow Peril", Ehrenfels wrote that 13 years earlier in 1895, he "arrived, on the basis of personal experience, which it would be superfluous to recount here, at the following two alternatives: 'Either I am an individual of totally corrupt sex instincts, or our monogamous sexual order is an institution with completely corrupting tendencies.'"[32]
The Czech Zionist, philosopher and friend of Kafka Felix Weltsch wrote many essays and memos about Ehrenfels, who himself was of partly Jewish descent.[55][56] Weltsch was one of Ehrenfels's most important pupils.
Dickinson noted that many of Ehrenfels's ideas seem to anticipate National Socialism, but this was not the case. Within the first decade of the 20th century some of the more radical members of the eugenics-Social Darwinist movement in Germany were already advocating killing the physically and/or mentally disabled as the best way of improving the Aryan race.[48] Ehrenfels was deeply horrified by these ideas, and made it clear that in his proposed new society, the mentally and physically disabled would be prevented from marrying, and this was enough.[49] Had Ehrenfels lived long enough, he would have been appalled by the Action T4 program launched by the German government in January 1939 to exterminate all physically and mentally disabled people in the Reich (which by that included Austria). Likewise, Ehrenfels was opposed to antisemitism, writing there was no "Jewish bogey" threatening the "Aryan race"; called antisemitism "silly" and argued that the Jews would be very useful allies for the Aryans in the coming war with the Asians.[48] In this, Ehrenfels parted company with his friend Houston Stewart Chamberlain who believed in the coming great "race war" that the Asians together with the blacks would fight under the leadership of the Jews against the Aryans.
Omar, or as he later chose, Umar Rolf Ehrenfels was born 28 April 1901 in Prague, Austria. He was baptised Rolf Werner Leopold von Ehrenfels. His father was Roman Catholic Baron Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932) professor of philosophy at the German part of Prague University. He is known as the founder of the Gestalt theory. His mother was Emma von Ehrenfels (1862–1946) born André, in Bratislava (Pressburg). In her parental home both German and Hungarian was spoken. During World War I she worked for the Red Cross caring for Hungarian wounded soldiers. Widowed of her first marriage she brought her daughter Elfriede (Elfi) Hartmann into their home. The second daughter, known as the author Imma von Bodmershof (1895–1983), was born in Graz. Rolf as the only son of Christian Freiherr von Ehrenfels inherited the title but he had to discard it according to new Austrian laws in 1920. As a convert to Islam he took on the name Omar or Umar, kept Rolf and omitted the others. 1932–37 he was a student of social anthropology (Völkerkunde) at Vienna University and got a doctorate there. At the Nazi occupation of Austria, Anschluss, 13 March 1938, he emigrated to India. There he lived until 1961, since 1949 as lecturer, later professor of social anthropology at the University of Madras. Umar Rolf Ehrenfels died 7 February 1980 in Neckargemuend, Germany having been guest professor at Heidelberg University and co- founder of its South Asia Institute 1961-71. Elfriede von Bodmershof (1894–1982) was his wife 1925–1948. The couple was separated due to the Nazi occupation of 1938. Later Ehrenfels married the French social scientist Mireille Abeille (1924–2007).