Clara Stern


Clara Stern, was an innovator in the field of developmental psychology with her husband, psychologist William Stern.

Biography

Clara was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin, Germany. Her father was the banker Julius Joseephy, her mother Friederike and she was born at the family's home.
She met William Stern while on a bicycle ride through Berlin. Her parents were unhappy with the match, but Clara persisted despite her parents’ disapproval and the two married early in 1899. William Stern became a professor of education at the University of Breslau and the family prospered nearby.
Their first daughter was Hilde who, in later years, became a resistance fighter against Nazi National Socialism forces. Their son, a German essayist, technology critic and philosopher named Günther was followed by another daughter, Eva.
The Stern family moved from Breslau to Hamburg, Germany in 1916, where William was named a professor at the University of Hamburg.

Work in child development

Clara and William Stern greatly influenced the field of child development. Using their three children as subjects, they studied several aspects of each child's language development as well as other aspects they thought might be relevant. They started by keeping a detailed diary for each child, carefully noting the development of each individual from the day each was born up until they were 12, 10, and 7 years old, respectively. In almost 5,000 handwritten pages of notes, the data that they recorded included reactions, babbling, the ability to recall events, lying and moral judgment.
In addition, by systematically recording one-to-one sessions with each child, one parent would begin storytelling and while the other parent, typically Clara, would take detailed notes. By evaluating their cumulative observations of all three children, the Sterns founded the concept of "game theory," which states that a child's personal development depends on the quality of the child's play.
Some of their work was groundbreaking, according to Görlitz.
"During the second year of life, for example, almost all children begin to designate themselves or other people linguistically. Children growing up in a German-speaking environment differ in terms of whether their first self-designation consists of a name or a pronoun. Clara and William Stern discovered that their firstborn first designated herself with a name, whereas her two younger siblings started designating themselves with a pronoun. Ninety years later, this sibling effect, first discovered in case studies from just one family, has been replicated in large samples taken from different cultures and languages."
The children later reported that they hardly noticed any of these observations.

Emigration

With the domination of governmental power in Germany by the Nazis in 1933, Jewish scholars were systematically removed from their professional positions and William Stern was forced to give up management of his psychological institute and his functions on all committees at the University of Hamburg. Warned by their 31-year-old son Günther that Hitler's ultimate aim was the extermination of the Jews, the Stern couple went into exile abroad, first to the Netherlands and then to the United States. Duke University in Durham, North Carolina offered William Stern a professorship in the Department of Psychology that ensured the couple's livelihood.
William Stern is widely remembered as the originator of the Intelligence Quotient. He died 27 March 1938 in Durham.
Clara Stern died in 1945.

Writings

The results of the Stern's collaborative research were summarized in their three books, which listed Clara as first author.
According to James Lamiell, "Bestowed posthumously on Clara Stern at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Holland... one can view the busts of nine individuals judged by a panel of distinguished scientists to have made extraordinary contributions to the discipline of psycholinguistics. The eight busts alongside that of Clara Stern are those of Paul Broca, Karl Bühler, F. C. Donders, Roman Jakobson, Edward Sapir, William Stern, Carl Wernicke, and Wilhelm Wundt – all widely known and highly respected historical luminaries, and all males."

External sources