Editing Ludwig Wittgenstein (section)

== Background ==

=== The Wittgensteins ===
{{See also|Karl Wittgenstein}}
{{Further|Wittgenstein family|Paul Wittgenstein|Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein}}
[[File:Karl Wittgenstein.jpg|left|thumb|[[Karl Wittgenstein]] was one of the richest men in Europe.<ref name=Bramann />]]
According to a family tree prepared in Jerusalem after World War II, Wittgenstein's paternal great-great-grandfather was Moses Meier,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.wittgensteinchronology.com/4.html |title=Wittgenstein Family History – Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Chronology of his Life and Work|last=Preston |first=John|website=www.wittgensteinchronology.com|access-date=6 July 2018|archive-date=6 July 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180706132520/http://www.wittgensteinchronology.com/4.html}}</ref> an [[Ashkenazi Jewish]] land agent who lived with his wife, Brendel Simon, in [[Bad Laasphe]] in the [[Siegen-Wittgenstein|Principality of Wittgenstein]], [[Westphalia]].<ref>See [[:de:Schloss Wittgenstein|Schloss Wittgenstein]]. Various sources spell Meier's name, Maier and Meyer.</ref> In July 1808, Napoleon issued a decree that everyone, including Jews, must adopt an inheritable family surname, so Meier's son, also Moses, took the name of his employers, the [[Sayn-Wittgenstein]]s, and became Moses Meier Wittgenstein.{{sfn|Bartley|1994|pp=199–200}} His son, Hermann Christian Wittgenstein — who took the middle name "Christian" to distance himself from his Jewish background — married Fanny Figdor, also Jewish, who converted to Protestantism just before they married, and the couple founded a successful business trading in wool in [[Leipzig]].{{sfn|Monk|1990|pp=4–5}} Ludwig's grandmother Fanny was a first cousin of the violinist [[Joseph Joachim]].{{sfn|Monk|1990|p=5}}

They had 11 children – among them Wittgenstein's father. [[Karl Otto Clemens Wittgenstein]] (1847–1913) became an industrial tycoon, and by the late 1880s was one of the richest men in Europe, with an effective monopoly on Austria's steel cartel.<ref name="Bramann">{{Cite journal |doi=10.1017/S0067237800012686 |last1=Bramann |first1=Jorn K. |last2=Moran |first2=John |url=http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/KarlWittgenstein.htm |title=Karl Wittgenstein, Business Tycoon and Art Patron |journal=Frostburg State University |year=1979 |volume=15 |pages=106–124 |s2cid=144157990 |access-date=2 September 2010 |archive-date=25 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180625020113/http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/KarlWittgenstein.htm  }}</ref>{{sfn|Edmonds|Eidinow|2001|p=63}} Thanks to Karl, the Wittgensteins became the second wealthiest family in the [[Austro-Hungarian Empire]], only the [[Rothschild family|Rothschilds]] being wealthier.{{sfn|Edmonds|Eidinow|2001|p=63}} Karl Wittgenstein was viewed as the Austrian equivalent of [[Andrew Carnegie]], with whom he was friends, and was one of the wealthiest men in the world by the 1890s.<ref name="Bramann" /> As a result of his decision in 1898 to invest substantially in the Netherlands and in Switzerland as well as overseas, particularly in the US, the family was to an extent shielded from the [[Hyperinflation#Austria|hyperinflation that hit Austria in 1922]].{{sfn|Monk|1990|p=7}} However, their wealth diminished due to post-1918 hyperinflation and subsequently during the [[Great Depression]], although even as late as 1938 they owned 13 mansions in Vienna alone.{{sfn|Edmonds|Eidinow|2001|p=102}}

=== Early life ===
[[File:Palais Wittgenstein 03.jpg|thumb|Palais Wittgenstein, the family home, around 1910]]

Wittgenstein was ethnically [[Jewish]].<ref>{{Cite book |first=Ranjit |last=Chatterjee |title=Wittgenstein and Judaism: A Triumph of Concealment |year=2005 |page=178 |publisher=Peter Lang |isbn=978-0-8204-7256-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4PnNtyGEyk0C&pg=PA178}}</ref><ref name="gottlieb">{{Cite magazine |last=Gottlieb |first=Anthony |date=9 April 2009 |title=A Nervous Splendor |url=https://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/04/06/090406crbo_books_gottlieb |archive-url=https://archive.today/20230108184255/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/04/06/a-nervous-splendor#selection-741.820-741.1007 |archive-date=8 January 2023 |magazine=[[The New Yorker]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Wittgenstein, Leopoldine (Schenker Documents Online) |url=http://mt.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/schenker/profile/person/wittgenstein_leopold.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170308022424/https://mt.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/schenker/profile/person/wittgenstein_leopold.html |archive-date=8 March 2017 |access-date=16 February 2018 |website=mt.ccnmtl.columbia.edu}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.wittgen-cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/text/biogre1.html |title=Ludwig Wittgenstein: Background |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081218032638/http://www.wittgen-cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/text/biogre1.html |archive-date=18 December 2008 |work=Wittgenstein archive |publisher=University of Cambridge |access-date=2 September 2010}}</ref>{{sfn|McGuinness|1988|p=21}} His mother was Leopoldine Maria Josefa Kalmus, known among friends as "Poldi". Her father was a [[Czechs|Bohemian]] Jew, and her mother was an Austrian-[[Slovenes|Slovene]] Catholic—she was Wittgenstein's only non-Jewish grandparent. Poldi was an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate [[Friedrich Hayek]] on his maternal side. Wittgenstein was born at 8:30&nbsp;{{sc|pm}} on 26 April 1889 in the "Villa Wittgenstein" at what is today Neuwaldegger Straße 38 in the suburban parish {{Interlanguage link|Neuwaldegg|de}} next to Vienna.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/DNB/Wittgenstein.html|title=Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann |author=P. M. S. Hacker |website=[[mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk]]|publisher=University of Oxford|access-date=27 February 2021}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Verlorenes Erbe (Wien): Die verschwundenen Wittgensteinhäuser|website=www.initiative-denkmalschutz.at|date=24 March 2021|publisher=Verein Initiative Denkmalschutz |url=https://www.initiative-denkmalschutz.at/berichte/verlorenes-erbe-wien-die-verschwundenen-wittgensteinhaeuser/ |access-date=27 April 2021}}</ref>

[[File:1. The infant Ludwig Wittgenstein.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Ludwig, {{Circa}} 1890s]]
Karl and Poldi had nine children in all—four girls: Hermine, [[Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein|Margaret]] (Gretl), Helene, and a fourth daughter Dora who died as a baby; and five boys: Johannes (Hans), Kurt, Rudolf (Rudi), [[Paul Wittgenstein|Paul]]—who became a concert pianist despite losing an arm in World War I—and Ludwig, who was the youngest of the family.{{sfn|Bartley|1994|p=16}}

[[File:Ludwig as a child.jpg|thumb|Ludwig sitting in a field as a child]]
The children were baptized as Catholics, received formal Catholic instruction, and were raised in an exceptionally intense environment.<ref name=MW>{{Cite book |author-link=Norman Malcolm |first1=Norman |last1=Malcolm |author-link2=Peter Winch |first2=Peter |last2=Winch |title=Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? |publisher=Cornell University Press |year=1994 |isbn=978-1-134-72579-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X7WGAgAAQBAJ}}</ref>{{page needed|date=May 2021}} The family was at the centre of Vienna's cultural life; [[Bruno Walter]] described the life at the Wittgensteins' palace as an "all-pervading atmosphere of humanity and culture".{{sfn|Monk|1990|p=8}} Karl was a leading patron of the arts, commissioning works by [[Auguste Rodin]] and financing the city's exhibition hall and art gallery, the [[Secession hall (Austria)|Secession Building]]. [[Gustav Klimt]] painted a portrait of Wittgenstein's sister Margaret for her wedding,<ref>[https://www.gustav-klimt.com/Portrait-of-Margaret-Stonborough-Wittgenstein.jsp Portrait of Margaret Stonborough Wittgenstein, 1905 by Gustav Klimt]</ref> and [[Johannes Brahms]] and [[Gustav Mahler]] gave regular concerts in the family's numerous music rooms.{{sfn|Monk|1990|p=8}}{{sfn|McGuinness|1988|p=18}}

Wittgenstein, who valued precision and discipline, never considered contemporary classical music acceptable. He said to his friend Drury in 1930: {{blockquote|Music came to a full stop with [[Brahms]]; and even in Brahms I can begin to hear the noise of machinery.<ref>{{Cite book |first=Theodore |last=Redpath |title=Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Student's Memoir |location=London |publisher=Duckworth |year=1990 |page=112 |isbn=978-0-7156-2329-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tADXAAAAMAAJ }}</ref>}} Ludwig Wittgenstein himself had [[absolute pitch]],{{sfn|Edmonds|Eidinow|2001|p=157}} and his devotion to music remained vitally important to him throughout his life; he made frequent use of musical examples and metaphors in his philosophical writings, and he was unusually adept at whistling lengthy and detailed musical passages.{{sfn|Monk|1990|pp=442–443}} He also learnt to play the clarinet in his 30s.{{sfn|Monk|1990|pp=14–15}} A fragment of music (three bars), composed by Wittgenstein, was discovered in one of his 1931 notebooks, by [[Michael Nedo]], director of the Wittgenstein Institute in Cambridge.<ref>{{Cite journal |url=http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/1450-9814/2005/1450-98140505393H.pdf |doi=10.2298/MUZ0505393H |url-status=live |title=Three Bars by Wittgenstein |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714153847/http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/1450-9814/2005/1450-98140505393H.pdf |archive-date=14 July 2014 |first=Eric |last=Heijerman |journal=Muzikologija |year=2005 |issue=5 |pages=393–395 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

=== Family temperament and the brothers' suicides ===
[[File:The Wittgensteins 1890.jpg|thumb|upright|left|From left, Helene, Rudi, Hermine, Ludwig (the baby), [[Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein|Gretl]], [[Paul Wittgenstein|Paul]], Hans, and Kurt, around 1890]]
[[Ray Monk]] writes that Karl's aim was to turn his sons into captains of industry; they were not sent to school lest they acquire bad habits but were educated at home to prepare them for work in Karl's industrial empire.{{sfn|Monk|1990|p=11}} Three of the five brothers later committed suicide.<ref name="Kenny">{{Cite news |last=Kenny |first=Anthony |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/30/books/give-him-genius-or-give-him-death.html |title=Give Him Genius or Give Him Death |newspaper=The New York Times |date=30 December 1990 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.wittgen-cam.ac.uk/ |title=Ludwig Wittgenstein: Background |website=Wittgenstein archive |publisher=University of Cambridge |access-date=7 September 2010 }}</ref> Psychiatrist [[Michael Fitzgerald (psychiatrist)|Michael Fitzgerald]] argues that Karl was a harsh perfectionist who lacked empathy, and that Wittgenstein's mother was anxious and insecure, unable to stand up to her husband.<ref name="Fitzgerald">{{Cite journal |last=Fitzgerald |first=Michael |title=Did Ludwig Wittgenstein have Asperger's syndrome? |journal=European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry |year=2000 |volume=9 |issue=1 |pages=61–65 |doi=10.1007/s007870050117|pmid=10795857 |s2cid=1015505 }}</ref> Johannes Brahms said of the family, whom he visited regularly: {{blockquote|They seemed to act towards one another as if they were at court.{{sfn|Edmonds|Eidinow|2001|p=63}}}}The family appeared to have a strong streak of depression running through it. [[Anthony Gottlieb]] tells a story about Paul practising on one of the pianos in the Wittgensteins' main family mansion, when he suddenly shouted at Ludwig in the next room:{{blockquote|I cannot play when you are in the house, as I feel your skepticism seeping towards me from under the door!<ref name="gottlieb" />}}

[[File:Helene, Ludwig, Hermine, Paul und Margarethe Wittgenstein OeNB 5086848 (A).jpg|thumb|Ludwig (bottom-right), Paul, and their sisters, late 1890s]]
The family palace housed seven grand pianos{{sfn|Waugh|2008|p=38}} and each of the siblings pursued music "with an enthusiasm that, at times, bordered on the pathological".{{sfn|Waugh|2008|p=10}} The eldest brother, Hans, was hailed as a musical prodigy. At the age of four, writes [[Alexander Waugh]], Hans could identify the [[Doppler effect]] in a passing siren as a quarter-tone drop in pitch, and at five started crying "Wrong! Wrong!" when two brass bands in a carnival played the same tune in different [[Key signature|keys]]. But he died in mysterious circumstances in May 1902, when he ran away to the US and disappeared from a boat in [[Chesapeake Bay]], most likely having committed suicide.{{sfn|Waugh|2008|pp=24–26}}{{sfn|Monk|1990|p=11ff}}

Two years later, aged 22 and studying chemistry at the [[Prussian Academy of Sciences|Berlin Academy]], the third eldest brother, Rudi, committed suicide in a Berlin bar. He had asked the pianist to play [[Thomas Koschat]]'s "''Verlassen, verlassen, verlassen bin ich''" ("Forsaken, forsaken, forsaken am I"), before mixing himself a drink of milk and [[potassium cyanide]]. He had left several suicide notes, one to his parents that said he was grieving over the death of a friend, and another that referred to his "perverted disposition". It was reported at the time that he had sought advice from the [[Scientific-Humanitarian Committee]], an organization that was campaigning against [[Paragraph 175]] of the German Criminal Code, which prohibited homosexual sex.  His father forbade the family from ever mentioning his name again.{{sfn|Waugh|2008|pp=22–23}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hirschfield |first=Magnus |title=Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen |volume=VI |year=1904 |page=724 }}, citing an unnamed Berlin newspaper, cited in turn by Bartley, p. 36.</ref><ref>{{Cite news |ref=none |last=Waugh |first=Alexander |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3559463/The-Wittgensteins-Viennese-whirl.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3559463/The-Wittgensteins-Viennese-whirl.html |archive-date=11 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=The Wittgensteins: Viennese whirl|date=30 August 2008|newspaper=The Daily Telegraph}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name=gottlieb /> (Ludwig himself was a closeted homosexual, who separated sexual intercourse from love, despising all forms of the former.<ref>{{harvnb|Monk|1990|p=585}}: "Wittgenstein was uneasy, not about homosexuality, but about sexuality itself. Love, whether of a man or a woman, was something he treasured. He regarded it as a gift, almost as a divine gift. But, together with Weininger (whose ''Sex and Character'' spells out, I believe, many attitudes towards love and sex that are implicit in much that Wittgenstein said, wrote and did), he sharply differentiated love from sex. Sexual arousal, both homo- and heterosexual, troubled him enormously. He seemed to regard it as incompatible with the sort of person he wanted to be. What the coded remarks also reveal is the extraordinary extent to which Wittgenstein's love life and his sexual life went on only in his imagination." {{harvnb|Monk|1990|p=583}}: "In the coded remarks Wittgenstein ''does'' discuss his love for, first David Pinsent, then Francis Skinner, and finally Ben Richards (this is over a period of some thirty years or so), and in that sense they do 'corroborate' his homosexuality." Monk, Ray. "Bartley's Wittgenstein and the Coded Remarks", in Flowers and Ground (2018). ''Portraits of Wittgenstein'', pp. 133-134.</ref>)

The second eldest brother, Kurt, an officer and company director, shot himself on 27 October 1918, just before the end of World War I, when the Austrian troops he was commanding refused to obey his orders and deserted ''en masse''.{{sfn|Monk|1990|p=11}} According to Gottlieb, Hermine had said Kurt seemed to carry "the germ of disgust for life within himself".{{sfn|Waugh|2008|p=128}} Later, Ludwig wrote: {{blockquote|I ought to have ... become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth.{{sfn|McGuinness|1988|p=156}}}}