Editing Ludwig Wittgenstein (section)

=== 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}}}}