These experiences may have had a significant effect on his later research on group psychology. .
After the war in 1921 Lewin began work at the Psychological Institute at the University of Berlin, where he had the opportunity to work with Wolfgang Kohler and Wertheimer the developers of Gestalt Psychology . The emphasis that these men put on looking at the whole picture rather than the sum of its parts in regards to their research had a palpable impact on Lewin's work for the rest of his life. In 1932, after several years of work with Wertheimer and Kohler in Germany, Lewin was invited to be a visiting professor at Stanford University (Patnoe pf.3). He stayed in the United States for six months and then moved back to Germany just as Hitler was coming to power. Being a Jew Lewin wanted to get out of the country as fast as possible. Luckily he was able to do this because of the Committee on Displaced Scholars (Frostburg). .
Lewin's first job after his immigration was at Cornell. There he did studies "concerning social pressure on eating habits in children (Patnoe pg.4)." During his time there Lewin published one of his eight books, "A Dynamic Theory of Personality." After two years of work and the exhaustion of funds at Cornell, Lewin took a new position at The University of Iowa at their Child Welfare Research Station where he would stay for ten years (Frostburg). .
In 1945 he moved back to the East Coast and established two new centers of research and study of his own; one at M.I.T., The Research Center for Group Dynamics and in New York, the Commission for Community Interrelations (Patnoe pg.8-9). His aspirations for the two centers were that they would corroborate "to combine scientific study with Action Research in an effort to answer questions about human affairs - particularly those regarding prejudice (Patnoe pg.9)" The Research Center at M.I.T. did the laboratory and field research side of the work while the Commission for Community Interrelations would test the theories the Resarch commision developed and "feed problems back to the M.
