125th birthday - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 1984 - 3.50 Shilling

On 20 June 1859, Christian Freiherr von Ehrenfels was born in Rodaun near Vienna. He grew up in his father's castle in Brunn am Walde in Lower Austria, later attended secondary school in Krems, studied at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna and then moved to the University of Vienna. There he devoted himself to the study of philosophy with Franz Brentano and Alexius Meinong. Ehrenfels thus belongs to the important school that had grouped and developed around Franz Brentano. This philosophical direction, which found expression in all parts of the Danube Monarchy, perhaps most strongly influenced the features of Austrian philosophy. It starts from an empirical basis, is objectivistic and therefore anti-Kantian. Since all objects of experience are either physical or psychic, the problem of the character and difference of the mental and the physical becomes the central theme of the Brentano School. In 1885 Ehrenfels was awarded a doctorate in philosophy on the basis of his dissertation "On size relations and numbers". Already 3 years later he completed his habilitation with the writing "Über Fühlen und Wollen". In 1890, Ehrenfels' most famous work, the essay "On Gestalt Qualities", was created. His thoughts described therein later found their way into experimental Gestalt psychology. In 1896 he was called to the German University in Prague, where he worked for thirty-three years. He died on September 7, 1932.