He actually took the place of his former mentor Karl Stumpf. In 1935 Kohler fled to the United States of America after publicly speaking out against the Nazi movement. He spoke up about is disagreement with the Nazis and their persecution of the Jewish people (Dahl, 2005). For that he was harassed and that was when he decided to move to America and pursue a career there. When he arrived in America, Kohler took a teaching position at Swarthmore College where he remained as part of the faculty until 1955 and even became an American citizen in 1946. After leaving Swarthmore College, he took another university faculty position at Dartmouth College as a research professor in 1956. In 1959 he became the president of the American Psychological Association which was a great accomplishment (Dahl, 2005). .
Kohler had an important impact on the field of psychology and contributed significant literary work to his field. Kohler had many professional accomplishments and publications on the understanding of human perception that I feel are worth mentioning. In 1920 Kohler published his book Die Physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im Stationaren Zustand. In English the title translates to "The Physical Gestalten at Rest and in Steady State." In 1921 he published his book titled Intelligenzenprufungen an Menschenaffen which researched the mentality of apes and the "role of insight in learning with apes from a Gestalt perspective" (Dahl, 2005). Also in the 1920s, he co-founded the German Gestalt journal Psychologische Forschung. Intelligence in Apes, which was released in 1925, chronicles his experimental studies with apes. He specifically focused on their learning, behavior, and problem solving using imitation (Dahl, 2005). .
Gestalt Psychology was released in 1929 and was written with an American audience in mind. It discusses the reductionist ideologies of structuralism and behaviorism.
