Wilhelm Wirth

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Wirth graduated from high school in Bayreuth, 1894

Wilhelm Wirth (born July 26, 1876 in Wunsiedel , † July 13, 1952 in Amberg ) was an Upper Franconian psychologist . He is considered a pioneer in experimental psychology.

Life

Wirth was a son of the high school teacher Johann Christian Wirth and grew up in Bayreuth , where he also attended high school. From 1894 he studied law in Munich . From the third semester on, he switched to philosophy as a major and also took mathematics and physics for a higher teaching post. After visiting the III. International Congress for Psychology in Munich in 1896, which was oriented towards experimental psychology, Wirth specialized in this direction.

In 1897 he received his doctorate. After studying in Leipzig, Wilhelm Wundt offered him an assistant position. Wirth completed his habilitation in 1900 with the work Der Fechner-Helmholtz'sche theorem on negative afterimages and its analogies . From 1903 to 1945 he edited the archive for the whole of psychology , and from 1926 on the Psychological Abstracts . Together with other researchers, he founded the Society for Experimental Psychology in 1902 . In 1940 he became a member of the NSDAP .

Services

In 1908 Wirth was appointed professor. During this time his main works, the phenomena of consciousness and the methods of experimental psychology were created . His research goal was to obtain precisely measurable stimuli and clearly agreed arbitrary behaviors between the experimenter and the test person as the basis for a generally valid comparative situation of consciousness. In 1938 he defined: "The entire knowledge of quantitatively comprehensible laws of mental performance vis-à-vis the outside world can be described as psychophysics in the narrower sense." From 1926, the accuracy of the coordination between optical perception and subjective movement had crystallized for Wirth.

In 1933 he signed the confession of professors at German universities and colleges about Adolf Hitler . In 1935 he began developing apparatus for practicing aiming on behalf of the Wehrmacht. In 1943, Wirth's seminar and private apartment were completely destroyed in an air raid. At the age of 68, Wirth applied for emeritus status and moved with his family to Bavaria. He is buried in Bayreuth.

Science fiction writer

Wilhelm and his older brother Heinrich Johann Wirth were science fiction writers. In 1889, Heinrich was 16 and Wilhelm 13, they wrote the work From Saturn to the Ring . The authors illustrated their story by hand. The visions of the two progressive high school students from Romanopolis , the New York- inspired capital of the Termenian Empire with its bridges, skyscrapers and high-speed railways seem like an anticipation of the 1920s, of drawings by Frank R. Paul or the film sets of Fritz Lang's Metropolis . The images of the astronomical phenomena are exactly right in terms of size, constellation and shadow contours. The Wirth brothers wanted to open up the beauties of heavenly phenomena in the Saturn ring system.

In 2002 the Fantastic Library in Wetzlar organized the exhibition Planet Cities , in which the original images were shown to the public for the first time. The work of the brothers was also recognized in the exhibition Architecture as it stands in the book in the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Munich from December 2006 to March 2007 and in the accompanying catalog.

Awards

Fonts

literature

  • Wolfgang Wirth (eds.): Heinrich and Wilhelm Wirth: "From Saturn to the Ring", Bayreuth 1889, Bonn 2002 ISBN 3-7812-1572-5
  • Christina Schröder, "Wilhelm Wirth and the Psychophysical Seminar of the University of Leipzig" Munich 1993 in: "Illustrierte Geschichte der Psychologie" pp. 41–46 ISBN 3-928036-72-6
  • Bibliography: "Scientific publications and lectures W. Wirths (1976)." Compiled by A. Wirth in: Archive for the history of Upper Franconia 56, pp. 419-430

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Leaman: Ideological Powers in German Fascism Volume 5: Heidegger in Context: Complete overview of the Nazi involvement of university philosophers ; Argument-Verlag, Hamburg, 1993, translated by Rainer Alisch and Thomas Laugstien, ISBN 978-3886192052 , p. 104

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wirth, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychologist specializing in psychophysics
DATE OF BIRTH July 26, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1952
Place of death On the mountain