Our honorary member of the GTA, Prof. Dr Gisela Kubon-Gilke, passed away on 26 July 2026 following a long illness. We mourn the loss of an enthusiastic academic who, since the 1990s, has supported and enriched the Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications with her specialist expertise and dedication.
Gisela Kubon-Gilke was a qualified economist and, from 1998, Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Protestant University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt. Gestalt theory played a prominent role both in her university teaching and in her numerous academic publications. She addressed a wide range of economic, social, ethical and political issues, which she explored and consistently developed further in the tradition of Max Wertheimer, Solomon Asch and Ekkehard Schlicht. In doing so, she wrote about economic topics from a Gestalt-theoretical perspective in accessible language for students and fellow academics as well as for those outside the discipline, thereby facilitating interdisciplinary approaches. Her book *Gestalten der Sozialpolitik* (Shapes of Social Policy), published in 2018, uniquely brings together works by co-authors from various academic disciplines to form a Gestalt-theoretical social policy theory developed by her.
We also mourn the loss of a dedicated member of the GTA Executive Committee who, as an economist, provided many interdisciplinary insights to the committee – which was otherwise composed exclusively of psychologists – between 1995 and 2005, and who was able to offer sound advice and act as a mediator in difficult situations. Her organisation of the 12th Scientific Workshop in 2001 at the Protestant University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, on the topic of ‘Creativity’ which she had proposed, also provided an excellent framework for interdisciplinary exchange against the backdrop of Gestalt theory.
Despite suffering from a long-term illness, she continued to work even after her retirement. Accompanied by her husband Claus Gilke, she was able to accept honorary membership of the GTA in Vienna in 2017. She was thus the fourth woman – following the psychologist Wera Mahler, the mathematician Edith Luchins, and the doctor and developmental psychologist Anna Arfelli-Galli – and, at the same time, the first social economist among the honorary members of our society. We will remember her as a warm-hearted, humorous, independent thinker with a broad outlook, who, above all, brought the ethical aspects of Gestalt theory to life in her writings and in her personal interactions.
Marianne Soff
on behalf of the GTA board