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Konrad Lorenz R Konrad Lorenz R. W. Burkhardt, Jr., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA ã 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Life and Scientific Career given his Protestant background and his firmly held belief that human behavior should be understood in the Born on 7 November 1903, Lorenz was the second and context of biological evolution. This contributed to his last child of Emma Lorenz and Dr. Adolf Lorenz, a distin- enthusiasm in March 1938 for the Anschluss, the incor- guished and wealthy orthopedic surgeon. Growing up in poration of Austria into Germany. He expected that his comfortable surroundings at the family home in the village chances of scientific support would be greater under of Altenberg, on the outskirts of Vienna, the young Lorenz the Third Reich than they had been under the Austrian was allowed to pursue his enthusiasms as an animal lover. clerico-fascists. His greatest hope was that the Kaiser His interest in animals and evolution as an adolescent led Wilhelm Gesellschaft (KWG), Germany’s primary orga- him to think of becoming a zoologist or paleontologist, but nization for supporting scientific research, would estab- his father wanted him to be a physician instead. After one lish an institute for him in Altenberg. semester of premedical studies at Columbia University, Not hesitant about signaling his enthusiasm for the Lorenz enrolled in 1923 as a medical student in the Second new regime, Lorenz in May 1938 applied for member- Anatomical Institute of the University of Vienna. There he ship in the Nazi Party. In July 1938, at a joint meeting came under the influence of the distinguished comparative of the German societies for psychology and animal psy- anatomist Ferdinand Hochstetter, who taught him how chology, and then over the next several years in other comparative anatomists use physical structures to recon- papers and addresses, he argued that animal behavior struct evolutionary lineages (Figure 1). studies could shed light on matters of racial hygiene. Lorenz’s receipt of his doctorate of medicine in 1928 Breakdowns in the innate social behavior patterns of seems to have satisfied his father’s desire that he receive domesticated animals, he claimed, were strictly analo- a medical education. With his MD in hand, he enrolled gous to the ‘signs of decay’ in civilized man. He at the University of Vienna’s Zoological Institute, receiv- expressed support for Nazi race purity laws. In addition, ing his PhD in zoology in 1933 for a study of bird flight inanarticlein1940,hearguedthatDarwinism,properly and wing form. In the meantime, he had continued to raise understood, led not to communism or socialism but birds and observe their behavior, and his observations instead to National Socialism. had brought him to the attention of Germany’s leading A Kaiser Wilhelm Institute never materialized for ornithologists, Erwin Stresemann and Oskar Heinroth. Lorenz. The KWG Senate reviewed favorably the idea They, along with Hochstetter and the psychologist, Karl of providing him with an institute, but the funds for Bu¨hler, at the University of Vienna, encouraged Lorenz to it were not forthcoming. In 1940, he was named Professor pursue a career combining zoology and animal psychol- of Psychology at the University of Ko¨nigsberg. This pro- ogy. His talents in this regard were displayed in a series fessorship traced back to Immanuel Kant. The post of papers he published on bird behavior, culminating in inspired him to develop his philosophical interests and his path-breaking ‘Kumpan,’ monograph of 1935, entitled recast Kant’s categorical imperative in an evolutionary ‘Der Kumpan in der Umwelt des Vogels: der Artgenosse context. His time at Ko¨nigsberg was brief, however. He als auslo¨sendes Moment sozialer Verhaltungsweisen’ was drafted into the military in 1941, serving successively (‘The Companion in the Bird’s World: Fellow Members as a psychologist, psychiatrist, and then troop physician. of the Species as Releasers of Social Behavior’). In June 1944, the Russians captured him on the eastern Lorenz’s rise in scientific visibility was not followed front. He spent the next three and a half years in Russian immediately, however, by gainful academic employment. prisoner-of-war camps. He did not return to Austria until As of 1937, his only position was that of Dozent (unpaid February 1948. lecturer) in Bu¨hler’s Psychological Institute. By then, he Back in Austria, Lorenz found himself once again had already been married for a decade (to Margarethe without an academic position. The Austrian Academy Gebhardt, his child sweetheart), and he had two children of Sciences provided him with modest support for his (Thomas, b. 1928; Agnes, b. 1930) (a third child, Dagmar, research station at the family home in Altenberg, where would be born in 1941). He and his family lived with his he and his family continued to live (both of his parents parents in Altenberg. He came to fear that his chances for were now deceased). He wrote his popular book King professional advancement in Catholic Austria were slim, Solomon’s Ring (published originally in German in 1949) 298 Konrad Lorenz 299 to become familiar with its entire set of behaviors. His own favored method of research was to raise wild birds in a state of semicaptivity and observe them over the course of months and even years, thereby allowing himself to come to know the whole of a bird’s normal behavior patterns. This also permitted him to witness rare but instructive behavioral events that a field observer might never see, as for example when an instinct ‘misfired’ in a situation where the proper stimuli for releasing it were not present. In addition, by raising different species side by side, he was able to make comparative observa- tions that again would not have been possible for a field observer. On the other hand, he never developed the keen ecological sense of a field biologist. Nor did he develop strong skills as an experimenter. He credited himself with Figure 1 Konrad Lorenz lecturing student research assistants an intuitive understanding of animals, on the basis of his about the principles of ethology during observations of years of close observation of how animals behaved. hand-raised geese at the Max-Planck-Institut fu¨ r Given his predilection for raising animals, it is not Verhaltensphysiologie in Seewiesen in 1971. Photo by Jane surprising that Lorenz developed a special admiration Packard. for two of his predecessors in particular, the American biologist Charles Otis Whitman (1842–1910) and the as a means of making money. In 1950, he appeared to be German ornithologist Oskar Heinroth (1871–1945), both the top choice to replace Karl von Frisch for the profes- of whom raised birds and observed their behavior closely. sorship of zoology at the University of Graz (Frisch was Lorenz portrayed these two scientists, with some exagger- returning to his earlier post at Munich), but political and ation, as animal lovers who were content to watch their ideological considerations scuttled his candidacy. This pigeons and ducks in a completely unbiased way, unbur- would not be the last time that allegations of earlier dened by any hypotheses. However, he also appreciated Nazi sympathies on his part caused him difficulties. Con- their ideas. He credited Whitman with having discov- cluding that he had no chance of ever getting a profes- ered what he called the ‘Archimedean point’ on which sorial appointment in Austria, he appealed to colleagues the new science of ethology revolved. This was the in Britain to find a position for him there. As they went idea that, as Whitman expressed it in 1898, ‘Instinct about this task, Lorenz’s friend, the German behavioral and structure are to be studied from the common stand- physiologist, Erich von Holst, persuaded the Max Planck point of phyletic descent.’ Heinroth became a model for Gesellschaft (MPG) (the KWG’s successor) to work to Lorenz for his studies of how instincts function in avian keep Lorenz in Germany. The MPG quickly set up an social life. institute for Lorenz in Buldern, Westphalia, under the Lorenz’s first scientific publication (in 1927) was an auspices of Holst’s Max Planck Institute for Marine Biol- empirical study reporting his observations on the behavior ogy in Wilhelmshaven. Lorenz gladly took up the new of a tame, pet jackdaw. His experiences with this bird led post. In 1956, the MPG established for him and Holst a him to want to understand how its instinctive behaviors new Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in functioned in the life of a jackdaw colony. To this end, he Seewiesen, near Starnberg, in Bavaria. Lorenz remained established a colony of jackdaws in the attic of the family there until his retirement in 1973. He then returned home home, marked the birds for identification, and began study- to Austria and Altenberg, where he continued his ing the social life of jackdaws. His successes in this regard researches. In the course of his long career, he received led him to study night herons and then graylag geese (along many honors, including the 1973 Nobel Prize. He died on with a host of other species). He promoted his practices as 27 February 1989. the key to advancing animal psychology. In his Kumpan paper of 1935, he wrote that the proper method for the animal psychologist in studying any species was to begin Lifelong Scientific Practices with ‘an extensive period of general observation’ prior to any experimentation, and furthermore to focus on instincts Lorenz prided himself on being an animal lover. The before tackling learning. The investigator unwilling to scientific value of being an animal lover, he liked to begin by gaining a thorough familiarity of the full behav- explain, was that without the love of an animal, one ioral repertoire of his subject species, Lorenz admonished, would never have the patience to watch it long enough ‘should leave animal psychology well alone.’ 300 Konrad Lorenz The Conceptual Foundations of Ethology been familiar with the phenomenon, but Lorenz was the first to focus scientific attention upon it.
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