Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: When did Christian von Ehrenfels die?
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.
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]
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]
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.
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.
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 idea of Gestalt has its roots in theories by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Ernst Mach. Max Wertheimer is to be credited as the founder of the movement of Gestalt psychology. The concept of Gestalt itself was first introduced in contemporary philosophy and psychology by Ehrenfels in his famous work Über Gestaltqualitäten (On the Qualities of Form, 1890). Both he and Edmund Husserl seem to have been inspired by Mach's work Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen (Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations, 1886) to formulate their very similar concepts of Gestalt and Figural Moment respectively.
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]
The castle was probably begun in the early 13th century for the knightly von Campell family. The first mention of the family is from 1289 when "Egeno de Campelle" appears in a record. The original castle was a four story bergfried. In the 13th or early 14th century it was expanded with a ring wall, gatehouse, ditches and a drawbridge on the west side and a residential wing on the east. However, the Campell family died out in the 14th century. In 1389 the Bishopric of Chur recorded that Bishop Hartmann granted lands that used to be the Campell fief to Hans and Gottfried von Ehrenfels. Though the grant probably did not include the castle, because it wasn't until 1418 that the Bishop granted the castle to Hermann von Schauenstein-Ehrenfels.
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).
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]
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).
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]
Until the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-05, Ehrenfels believed that these sort of radical changes would only happened sometime in the far-future, or as Ehrenfels put it in 1902: "the Aryan will only respond to the imperative of sexual reform when the waves of the Mongolian tide are lapping around his neck".[20] After Japan's victory over Russia in 1905, Ehrenfels wrote "the absolute necessity of a radical sexual reform for the continued existence of the western races of men has... been raised from the level of discussion to the level of a scientifically proven fact".[20] In a 1907 essay, Ehrenfels wrote that radical sexual reform was "now a question of 'to be or not to be'...We have no time to lose."[20] Ehrenfels suggested as a starting point, the Austrian government begin to allow soldiers upon completing their military service to have polygamous marriages, with those soldiers who proven themselves especially intelligent, brave and physically fit to have the largest number of wives.[21] Subsequently, Ehrenfels made a public appeal to "manly Aryan men" who had proved themselves to be both "social winners" and "studs" to disregard monogamy and marriage, and to start impregnating as many women as possible to give the "white race" a genetic edge in the coming war against the "Yellow Peril".[21] Before the Russian-Japanese war, it has been the Chinese who had personified the Asian threat to Ehrenfels; after the war, the Asian enemy of the future was the Japanese.[20] In his essays in 1907-1908, Ehrenfels wrote that the Chinese lacked "all potentialities...determination, initiative, productivity, invention and organizational talent".[20] While the Chinese were now a listless mass of allegedly mindless Asians, Ehrenfels wrote that Japan was "a first-rate military power", and should the Japanese conquer the Chinese, the Japanese would engage in selective breeding to create a race of "healthy, sly, cunning coolies, virtuosos of reproduction" in China.[20] Once that happened, Ehrenfels warned that a vast Sino-Japanese army would set to conquer the world consisting of genetically superior soldiers whom the Western powers would be unable to stop.[20]
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.
Gestalt qualities ("Gestaltqualitäten" in German) were introduced by the Austrian philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932). The remarkable essay "On Gestalt Qualities," published in 1890 by Ehrenfels has given a name to one of the most characteristic schools of scientific thought in our time and thereby established its existence formally. It is responsible for the word "Gestalt" having acquired citizenship in the English language; and even the term "Ehrenfels qualities" is encountered here and there in American psychological literature as a term designating Gestalt properties. The qualities were based on tests done by flashing lights for certain amounts of time. This discovery later led to the famous Gestalt effect discovered by Max Wertheimer. A formed Gestalt always is entire, complete structures with clearly defined contours. Quality “trans – positivity” manifested in the fast that the image of the whole remains even if all parts change in its material. But Ehrenfels did more than baptize the new movement. With great discernment he immediately alluded to many of the questions that the Gestalt problem raises in the minds of thoughtful theorists even today.
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.)
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:
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]
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.
Reiss' argumentation builds on his theory that there was a need for "the family´s de- Nazification". This can be compared to documented facts visible also on the dust jacket of Umar Rolf Ehrenfels' "The Light Continent" (1960). "Escaping the Hitler terror when the Nazis occupied Austria, Dr. U.R. Ehrenfels, born at Prague in 1901, took refuge in India in 1939." After respect to his father Christian we are informed of travels to the East and studies. "/In Vienna/ Ehrenfels became founder- president of Der Orientbund, an Afro-Asian students' federation." After a trip to India 1932- 33 "he went back to become the co- editor of "Gerechtigkeit" (justice) in Vienna, a journal which stood for the integrity of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and for Human Rights when Italy invaded that country." The book has a printed dedication: "In memoriam the victims of Sharpeville and Lunda" and to his wife Mireille called Mie. 
Tom Reiss did not go deep enough into the documents shown to him when he visited Lichtenau in 1998. "De- Nazification" was a British invention that all prisoners of internment camps had to go through after 1945. Also Jews who had escaped to India to save themselves from Holocaust were exposed to the process. Not all succeeded. Facts about this are not on the Internet. It seems to be a taboo subject to historians. Reiss solves a "mystery" by turning victims of Nazism into Nazists.
Another testimonial is by Baron Omar Rolf von Ehrenfels in his foreword to a 1973 Swiss edition of the second Kurban Said novel, "The Girl From the Golden Horn". Omar Rolf von Ehrenfels was the husband of Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels von Bodmershof and coincidentally the father of Leela Ehrenfels, the current copyright holder. The complicated story is told by Leela Ehrenfels in "'Ali and Nino'. Identifying "Kurban Said" with the man he would have known in the 1930s as Nussimbaum/Bey, the baron writes: "As a young man I founded the ‘Orient-Bund’ for Afro-Asian students in Vienna and through it I became friends with the quietly observing Azerbaijani Kurban Said... My way brought me shortly after that to India, from where I returned to Europe for the first time in 1954 and immediately went to visit the traditional Muslim grave of my then apparently forgotten friend which stood outside the wall of the cemetery in Positano."
Gerhard Hoepp does not go into this. He is a scientist and has done no research on Ehrenfels, but he has published research on Lev Noussimbaum. Hoepp in 1997 considers Essad Bey as the co-author of "Ali and Nino". One of the informants he mentions is Professor Dr. Heinz Barazon. Reiss 2005 shows that he is the legal adviser of Rolf Ehrenfels' widow Mireille Ehrenfels and their daughter Leela Ehrenfels. Some of the data on "Ali and Nino" from 1970 into the 2000s build on gossip running in Vienna after Anschluss 13 March 1938, as told by Dr Barazon to Tom Reiss, and also distorted memories of aged informants. Mireille Ehrenfels gave the wrong year (1937) and causes for the separation between Rolf and Fridl (conflicts) to the family lawyer Dr Barazon.
Rolf Ehrenfels in "Mother- right in India" (1941) says they wrote together since 1925. In "Kadar of Cochin" he states that Fridl was with him during the first eight months of his exile spent in Greece. She did her own research in Greece and her interest continues. They correspond on topics even 1952.
However, Ehrenfels's ideas did meet with disagreement. In December 1908, Sigmund Freud invited Ehrenfels to give a lecture on his proposed new society.[28] The audience generally offered polite dissent from Ehrenfels with one participant calling his new society an "adolescent sexual fantasy".[28] Ehrenfels's proposed new society earned him criticism from the Catholic Church which objected to his attacks on Christian monogamy; from feminists who were offended by his idea that women should be kept essentially as chattels and treated as sex objects by men; and from the romantic everywhere who were upset about his plans to abolish romantic love. The German feminist Helene Stöcker protested against Ehrenfels's plans, albeit from the same social Darwinian viewpoint, writing: "A sexual ethic that does not rest on the development of women as a personality, but instead regards her merely as an object of male lust, is absolutely counter-evolutionary".[29]
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.