Karl Bühler, Manuscripts and Correspondence (annotated)

Karl Bühler (1879-1963) is considered one of the most important German-speaking psychologists of the 20th century. He enjoyed his greatest academic success in Vienna, where in 1922 he was appointed to one of the three chairs in philosophy with a focus on philosophy, psychology, and experimental pedagogy, and took over as head of the psychology institute. Following the annexation of Austria in 1938, Bühler was forced to retire and emigrated to the USA. In December 1963, a few months after his death, Charlotte Bühler sent most of her husbands manuscripts to the Vienna Psychological Institute. Since the 1970s, Karl Bühlers estate has been housed in the Research Center for Austrian Philosophy at the University of Graz. Since Bühler published very little after leaving Vienna, these materials are the only source for reconstructing his research, studies, and teaching activities during his final years in Vienna and then in exile. These are not only of interest for the history of psychology, but also offer interesting points of connection for current discussions, e.g., on the concept of life in psychology or the concept of linguistic interaction, which is widely used today in conversation analysis. In 2014, the University Archives of Vienna acquired the exile estate of Charlotte and Karl Bühler. This acquisition included previously unknown material, such as Bühlers correspondence and a series of personal documents. These provide new information about the context in which Karl Bühlers manuscripts were written. This made it possible to launch a project to digitize and annotate a facsimile edition of Karl Bühlers estates in Graz and Vienna. The edition will be uploaded to the Virtual Archive of Logical Empiricism (VALEP: valep.vc.univie.ac.at), an archive and edition management tool, and will be freely accessible to all researchers and interested parties. The digitization of all estate manuscripts and correspondence of Karl Bühler (1939-1963) is planned, and existing transcriptions will be made available at the same time. To provide an initial introduction to the many previously unknown texts, commentaries are being prepared by internationally recognized Bühler specialists. The project aims to: 1) link the estates located in Vienna and Graz, 2) initiate an intensive international discussion of the holdings, and 3) reconstruct and present the manuscripts in accordance with the latest Bühler research findings and open them up for discussion. The choice of VALEP also enables us to examine the relationships between the Bühler School and the Vienna Circle gathered around Moritz Schlick more closely. New findings on the interactions and theoretical debates between the two circles are expected.

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