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Langer, Walter C. (1899-1981)
Biographical Note: Born
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Langer received his Ph.D. from
Harvard University in 1935, and went to Vienna where he was
analyzed by Anna Freud.
When Austria was occupied by the Nazis in 1938, Langer helped many Jews
and anti-Nazi activists escape, driving small groups of refugees over
the boarder into Switzerland and obtaining US visas for many Austrian
analysts. During the
Second World War, he worked
at the Office of Strategic Services on the Psychology of Nazism
and wrote “The Mind of Adolf Hitler.” Top secret for almost 30
years, the psychoanalytic
study based on documents and interviews with informants who had known
Hitler was published in 1972 and translated to many languages. Walter
Langer is also an author of "The Psychology and Human Living" (1943).
He was the first
non-M.D. member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society. Walter Charles
Langer died in 1981, at the age of 82, in Sarasota, Florida.
Summary: the collection includes two manuscript
boxes
of articles, correspondence, photographs, newspaper
clippings, two medallions, and an Honorable Discharge from the
United States Army certificate of 1919. Langer biographical materials
could also be found in the Gifford,
Sanford
and Oral History
Interviews collections, which feature Dr.
Gifford's articles and talks about Walter Langer, his interview of Dr.
Leonard Langer and a transcript of his interview of Walter Langer's
first wife Mrs. Juanita Franks. A group photograph including Walter
Langer appears in the Bibring
Photograph Collection,
Bib II 176. BPSI also holds over a hundred of books and pamphlets from
the Walter Langer personal library, and a portrait of Sigmund Freud,
which Freud had autographed and presented to Langer in 1938
(Donated to BPSI by Walter's nephew Leonard Langer).
Finding
Aid for
this collection is available
here (viewing it requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).
Related BPSI Collections
Audiovisual
Materials
Bibring Photograph
Collection
BPSI Photograph
Collection
Gifford, Sanford
Oral History
Transcripts, 1961-2004
Related
Archives
Adolf Hitler OSS - CIA files
Related Sites
Walter C. Langer Wikipedia Entry
A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler
(HTML version from Nizkor Project)
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