At the beginning of the twentieth century, early phenomenology examined topics such as emotions, feelings and sociality. The main researchers in this field included philosophers belonging to the Munich and Göttingen phenomenological circles, especially Else Voigtländer, Willy Haas, Moritz Geiger, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Gerda Walther, Aurel Kolnei and José Ortega y Gasset. (cf. Ferran 2008, 14) Gerda Walther's (1897–1977) contribution to early phenomenology was her Ph.D. thesis Ein Beitrag zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften (a contribution to the ontology of social communities) which she wrote under the supervision of the Munich phenomenologist Alexander Pfänder.