Johann Baptist Rieffert

Johann Baptist Rieffert (born October 5, 1883 in Cologne , † July 9, 1956 in Hamburg ) was a German psychologist and philosopher .

The teacher's son Rieffert studied philosophy, economics and physics in Bonn, where he did his doctorate on Schopenhauer with Benno Erdmann , and was assistant to Oswald Külpe until 1912 . His assistance continued in 1914 in Berlin psychology, and he completed his habilitation in 1919 with Carl Stumpf . During the Weimar period he built up the Reichswehr's psychological service. From 1922 to 1931 he headed the Department of Army Psychology and developed a procedure with entrance tests for an assessment center , with which the new officers should be selected. Then he fell out with the Reichswehr leadership. Associate professor since 1926, he now had to teach at the adult education center.

Politically exposed Rieffert initially (until 1926) as a member of the DNVP . In 1931 he joined the SPD , but made sure that this membership was not made public. He later joined the Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur , in 1933 the NSDAP and the Sturmabteilung .

After 1933 was involved in the dissolution of Gestalt psychology in Berlin at the time of National Socialism. After the removal of the Jewish members, he was promoted to the board of the German Society for Psychology . In 1934 he was initially appointed to a personal professorship at the University of Berlin and, after Wolfgang Köhler's emigration in 1935, he was made acting head of the Psychological Institute by the Dean Ludwig Bieberbach . Further members of the Institute for Applied Psychology were removed to create an Institute for Character Studies and Racial Psychology . In 1934 he was still a Reich clerk for psychology, philosophy and education in the Nazi teachers' union . But now the SPD membership from 1931, which he had kept secret, became known and he himself, initiated by Bieberbach, was thrown out of the NSDAP. He fought in party courts for several years, but in 1938 his removal was final. That is why in 1940 he accepted a position as a factory psychologist at Rheinmetall Borsig in Breslau. After the expulsion in 1945 he lived in Lower Saxony, where he fought for his rehabilitation and taught at adult education centers.

Fonts

• Schopenhauer's doctrine of empirical view and its historical presuppositions , treatises on philosophy and its history; Issue 42, hall a. S. 1914, ND Hildesheim 1985, ISBN 978-3-487-07610-2 . (= Bonn dissertation 1910)
• On the Genealogy of Relational Awareness , Habilitation Thesis 1919
• Psychotechnics in the army . In: K. Bühler (ed.): Report on the VII. Congress for Experimental Psychology in Marburg from April 20-23 , 1921. Jena 1922, pp. 79-96.
• Logic: a criticism of the history of your idea , In: The philosophy in its details , Ullstein, Berlin 1925

• Pragmatic Theory of Consciousness on an Experimental Basis , Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Leipzig, 1929
• Tests for selection of personnel in German industry, US Naval Technical Mission in Europe, New York 1945. (Via aptitude tests at Rheinmetall-Borsig)

literature

• Sven Kinas: Academic Exodus. The expulsion of professors from the universities of Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Greifswald and Halle 1933–1945 , Heidelberg 2018.
• Wolfgang Schönpflug : Johann Baptist Rieffert. Scholar in National Socialism follower. A victim yourself? In: Theo Herrmann and Wlodek Zeidler: Psychologists in Authoritarian Systems , Peter Lang 2012, ISBN 978-3-653-02265-0 .
• L. v. Renthe-Fink: From Heeespsychotechnik to Wehrmacht psychology. In: German Wehrmacht Psychology 1914–1945 . Munich 1985, pp. 3-182
• Uwe Wollradt (Ed.): German-speaking psychologists 1933–1945: Ein Personenlexikon. Springer, 2nd edition 2017, p. 368f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Sven Kinas: Academic Exodus. The expulsion of university lecturers from the universities of Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Greifswald and Halle 1933–1945 , Heidelberg 2018, p. 246 f.