ABSTRACT
Moritz Lazarus (1824-1903), the founder of the original version of Völker-psychologie, grew up in a town with a mixed German and Polish population, an ethnic mix which stimulated his interest in national differences. Without presuming to compare myself with him in other respects, we did have this kind of background in common: my father was of Czech, my mother of Hungarian origin; I was born in Vienna, and educated there and subsequently in Paris and London. This kind of multinational experience in terms of language, social norms, food habits, and so on, provided me with a relatively cosmopolitan perspective from an early age. At the time, of course, I never imagined that this early exposure would in any way be connected with my future career. It was only later that a serendipitous encounter led to a decisive turning point.
