Ernst Kris

Ernst Kris (April 26, 1900 to February 27, 1957) was an Austrian art historian and psychoanalyst who emigrated to London in 1938, established the BBC's research unit on enemy radio propaganda, and from 1940 worked in New York, where he and Hans Speier directed the Research Project on Totalitarian Communication at the New School for Social Research.¹

Vienna

Kris was born in Vienna, the son of the lawyer Leopold Kris. He studied art history under Julius von Schlosser, took his doctorate in 1922, and worked at the Kunsthistorisches Museum on its collection of sculpture and applied arts. In 1927 he married Marianne Kris, a psychoanalyst and daughter of Sigmund Freud's friend, the pediatrician Oscar Rie. He became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1927, assisted Freud with his collection of antiquities, and at Freud's request co-edited the journal Imago with Robert Waelder from 1931.¹

BBC and the New School

After emigrating to London in 1938 he worked at the Psychoanalytic Institute and as a training analyst. In 1939 and 1940 he built up the BBC's analysis of enemy radio propaganda as Senior Research Officer; the German biographical account adds that he was then sent to help found similar institutions in Canada and the United States. After a brief period on a similar task at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Montreal, he settled in New York in 1940 and became a visiting professor of psychology at the New School; the Research Project on Totalitarian Communication ran from 1941 to 1944 with Speier. The 1944 book German Radio Propaganda carries Kris's epilogue. His papers include BBC correspondence with Mark A. Abrams (1940 to 1943) and with John Scarlett Alexander Salt (1940 to 1956), telegrams concerning German propaganda from 1940, New School files with Max Ascoli (1940 to 1941) and Alvin Johnson (1941 to 1944), a Rockefeller Foundation file for 1940 to 1952, and a file of correspondence with Edward L. Bernays for 1942.¹²³⁴

Kris's project on German academic institutions under National Socialism, dated 1942 in the Institute of World Affairs records, drew correspondence about the inability to secure funding for the research from the Carnegie Corporation.⁵ The Institute's finding aid states that the Institute developed from two divisions of the Graduate Faculty, a Study Group on Germany and the Totalitarian Communication Project organized by Speier and Kris.⁶

Later Career

From 1942 Kris taught at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and then at the College of the City of New York, where he was a professor in the Graduate Division from 1945. He attended the September 1947 conference of social scientists convened by Project RAND at which Speier was recruited; his papers contain a file of correspondence with Leo Rosten for 1946 to 1948, the screenwriter through whom Speier came to RAND's attention. In 1949 he joined the Child Study Center at Yale, becoming professor of psychology in 1951 and of psychiatry in 1953. He died in New York on February 27, 1957. His papers (MSS84824, about 7,000 items, bulk 1940 to 1956, a gift of his children in 2001) are at the Library of Congress; they include a folder of correspondence with Hans Speier for 1940 to 1949 and the project's research papers for 1941 to 1944.¹⁴⁷