Background

Viktor Emil Frankl was born on March 26, 1905 in Vienna, Austria. He was the son of Gabriel Frankl and Elsa (Lion) Frankl. His father was a civil servant in Vienna.

During the first World War the Frankl family experienced bitter deprivation; sometimes the children go begging to farmers.

In 1942, Viktor Frankl's parents and brother were arrested and sent to the Thereisienstadt concentration camp; Frankl’s father died there within six months. In Auschwitz concentration camp his brother died, and his mother was killed.

When Frankl’s camp was liberated in 1945, he learned of the death of all his family members, with the exception of his sister who had emigrated to Australia.

Education

Viktor Frankl showed an early interest in psychology, and in secondary school he studied psychology and philosophy. As a teenager, he entered into a correspondence with Freud, who asked permission to publish one of his papers.

After graduation from Gymnasium in 1923, he studied at the University of Vienna Medical School. There Frankl studied Adler’s theories and delivered lectures on individual psychology. He took a particular interest in studying depression and suicide and set up youth counseling centres in Vienna in a successful effort to decrease teen suicide in the city.

Frankl earned a doctorate in medicine in 1930 and a Doctorate in Philosophy in 1948, both from the University of Vienna.

Viktor Frankl earned an Honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna, Austria in 1986.

Career

In 1930 Viktor Frankl joined the staff of the Steinhof psychiatric hospital (nowadays Steinhof hospital) in Vienna, where he headed the female suicide prevention program from 1933 to 1937. He subsequently established a private practice but, being Jewish, was forced to close it after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938.

He then became chief of neurology at Vienna’s Rothschild Hospital, which served the Jewish population. Anti-Semitism was on the rise, however, and in 1942 Frankl and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. In 1944 the surviving Frankls were taken to Auschwitz.

As Frankl observed the brutality and degradation around him, he theorized that those inmates who had some meaning in their lives were more likely to survive; he himself tried to recreate the manuscript of a book he had been writing before his capture.

Following liberation, Frankl returned to Vienna, where he became head of the neurological department at the Vienna Polyclinic Hospital between 1946 and 1970.

In 1946 he produced the classic book "Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager" ("A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp"; published in English as "Man’s Search for Meaning"), which he dictated to a team of assistants in nine days and which went on to sell millions of copies in 24 languages.

Frankl also was a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna from 1948 until 1990.

Throughout his career, he published numerous books, lectured around the world, and served as a guest professor at universities including Harvard, Southern Methodist, and Duquesne. A few months before his death, he published Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning and Recollections: An Autobiography.

Achievements

• Viktor Frankl received numerous awards and prizes during his career, including the Promotion Award for Public Education of the Ministry of Education in 1956, Cardinal Innitzer Prize in 1962, Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art in 1969, and Prize of the Danubia Foundation in 1976, among others.
  
  Besides, he received the Honorary Ring of Vienna in 1980, Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 1981, and Oskar Pfister Award in 1985.
  
  In 1988 he gained Great Silver Medal with Star for Services to the Republic of Austria.
  
  In addition, Frankl received Hans Prinzhorn Medal, Great Gold Medal with Star for Services to the Republic of Austria, and Grand Decoration of the Austrian Chamber of Physicians, all in 1995. The same year he became an Honorary Citizen of the City of Vienna.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Recollections: An Autobiography

    (In these stirring recollections, Frankl describes how as ...)

    1995
  • Unconscious God

    (The distinguished Austrian psychiatrist examines the esse...)

    1943
  • Man's Search for Meaning

    (Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generatio...)

    1946
  • The Feeling of Meaninglessness

    (In The Feeling of Meaninglessness, Viktor Frankl takes a ...)

  • The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy

    (In this classic work, internationally known Viennese psyc...)

    1955
  • The Unheard Cry for Meaning

    (In these selected essays, written between 1947 and 1977, ...)

    1988
  • The will to meaning 1988
  • Psychotherapy and Existentialism: Selected Papers on Logotherapy 1967
  • From Death-Camp to Existentialism 1961
  • On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders 1956

Politics

In February 1934, Frankl attained membership within the ruling Austrofascist, Vaterländische Front, "Fatherland Front".

Membership

Viktor Frankl was an Honorary Member of the association Bürgervereinigung Landsberg im 20. Jahrhundert. He was also the founder, president and member of the Austrian Medical Society for Psychotherapy from 1950.

• Austrian Medical Society for Psychotherapy , Austria

  1950

Connections

In December 1941 Viktor Frankl married Tilly Grosser, with the marriage registered within what was then, Nazi Germany. However, in 1942, Frankl and his wife were arrested and sent to the Thereisienstadt concentration camp. Tilly died at Bergen-Belsen.

In 1947 Viktor Frankl married his second wife Eleonore Katharina Schwindt. She was a practicing Catholic and the couple respected each other's religious backgrounds, going to both church and synagogue, and celebrating Christmas and Hanukah. They had one daughter, Gabriele, who went on to become a child psychologist.

Father:

Gabriel Frankl

Mother:

Elsa (Lion) Frankl

Spouse:

Eleonore Katharina Schwindt

late spouse:

Tilly Grosser

Daughter:

Gabriele Frankl-Vesely

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series
• Recollections: An Autobiography
  1995