Paul Plaut family papers

The German Jewish psychologist, Paul Plaut was born 19 February 1894 in Berlin to Hermann Plaut (1849-1909 Berlin) and Ernestine née Loewenthal (1864-1942 murdered in Theresienstadt). He had a brother who emigrated before the outbreak of the Second World War and two sisters murdered by the Nazis in 1943. He married Thekla Delphine Kneip (1899-1980) in 1923. They had one daughter, Claire Allen.

He studied philosophy and literature (1912-1915) as well as medicine (1922-1927). He served as a volunteer during the First World War where he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class. He obtained his PhD  (1920) and became Doctor of medicine (1927). Together with Otto Lipmann and William Stern he developed methods for the study of psychographics in war psychology at their Institute for Applied Psychology in Berlin. 

In 1929 he published Die Psychologie der produktiven Persönlichkeit, which analysed the attitudes of the great writers, artists and thinkers in the German-speaking world of that time- see WL Doc 647 for the original data for that research.

In 1938 he immigrated to the UK via the Netherlands where he began working as a psychiatrist for the Portman Clinic and later the National Health programme (1948-1959) and as a court-appointed expert in adolescent delinquency. He published circa 500 articles abstracts and books. He died in 1960.