FREE THE HOUSE OF WITTGENSTEIN: A FAMILY AT WAR PDF

Alexander Waugh | 384 pages | 30 Dec 2009 | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC | 9780747596738 | English | London, The House of Wittgenstein : A Family at War - -

His youngest child, the philosopher , once asked a pupil if he had ever had any tragedies in his life. Ludwig often thought of doing so, as did his surviving brother, Paul. There were three sisters: Gretl, Helene, and Hermine. Helene was highly neurotic, and had a husband who suffered from dementia. Gretl was regarded as irritating by most people, including her unpleasant husband, who committed suicide, as did his father and one of his aunts. Bad temper and extreme nervous tension were endemic in the family. All of this was before the Nazis got to work. The Wittgenstein children were brought up as Christians, but they counted as full Jews under the Nuremberg racial laws because three of their grandparents had been born Jewish and did not convert to Christianity until they reached adulthood. The fourth, their maternal grandmother, had no Jewish ancestry. After Germany annexed , inthe family money bought the lives of the three sisters—Paul had escaped, and Ludwig The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War safe in England—but at the cost of estranging several of the surviving siblings from one another. A few days before the invasion of Poland, inHitler found the time to issue an order granting half-breed status to the Wittgenstein children, on the pretext that their paternal grandfather had been the bastard son of a German prince. Nobody believed this tale, but the arrangement enabled the German Reichsbank to claim all the gold and much of the foreign currency and stocks held in Switzerland by a Wittgenstein trust. The negotiations for this exchange seem to have involved a The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War pact in which Gretl and Hermine sided with Nazi officials against Paul. After the war, Paul performed with his single hand at a concert in but did not visit Hermine, who was dying there; Ludwig and Paul had no contact after ; nor did Paul and Gretl. This was not a happy family. If ever read it, he must have nodded in recognition. But Karl insisted that he The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War a career in industry or finance. Rudi and Ludwig were homosexual, and Hans may have been, too. There the parallels end. Thomas Mann traced the decline of the Buddenbrooks through four generations, but the Wittgensteins rose and fell within the span of two. Karl more or less built the family fortune himself. He was no stolid merchant but an audacious risk-taker, and something of a rebel in early life. At the age of seventeen, he absconded to , where he arrived in the spring of with a violin and no money. He worked as a waiter, then, among other things, he played in a minstrel band, a gig that came to an abrupt end when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in a theatre and musical performances were banned. Karl was too ashamed to write to his family or answer their letters. It was only when he got a steady job as a teacher at a college in upstate New York that he recovered enough pride to agree to return. His father was a land agent and a trader, and at first Karl was put to work on one of his rented farms. After dropping out, he took a series of engineering jobs. Energy and intelligence got him into management, audacious deal-making The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War him higher, and some capital from his wife he married in provided the first grains of powder for an explosive entrepreneurial rampage. Waugh says that Karl Wittgenstein was a chancer, whose enormous fortune owed as much to the favorable outcomes of his gambles as to his hard work and his skills. That is implausible; nobody has quite such a consistent run of good luck. Karl was adept at swinging the odds in his own favor, and he knew exactly which chances to take—in particular, he appreciated the significance of technology more keenly than his competitors did. Newspaper articles by Karl Wittgenstein show that he believed in unfettered capitalism though not in free trade and was opposed to any legislation aimed at protecting consumers from cartels or fraud. Such laws, in his opinion, would interfere with the crucial work of The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War entrepreneurs, The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War would ultimately raise the standard of living for everybody. An early master of the leveraged buyout, he no doubt cut some corners while assembling his ingeniously integrated empire of mines, iron- and steelworks, and hardware factories. He certainly reaped the benefits of monopoly wherever he could find them. Karl was no philanthropist on the scale of his American friend Andrew Carnegie. Brahms was a family friend. came and performed duets with the young Paul. Music was more than entertainment for the Wittgensteins, though, and more than art. For one thing, it became a store of value. Pages from the Wittgenstein collection of autographed musical manuscripts flutter through this wonderfully told story. Music was also, Waugh writes, the only effective way in which the Wittgenstein children could communicate with their shy, nervous, and intensely musical mother. And music provided consolation and distraction from the tragedies of the family, about which they were mostly required to remain silent. Sometime inHans fled from his father and went to America, much as his own father had done thirty-six years earlier. Inhe disappeared, by most accounts, from a boat, which may have been in the Chesapeake Bay, perhaps on the Orinoco River in Venezuela, or in several other places. Wherever it was, no one doubted that he had committed suicide. Rudi was a twenty-two-year-old chemistry student in when he walked into a bar on a May evening inrequested a sentimental song from the pianist, and then mixed potassium cyanide into a glass of milk and died in agony. The suicide note left for his parents said that he had been grieving over The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War death of a friend. A more likely explanation is that he thought he was identifiable as the subject of a published case study about homosexuality. Waugh thinks that this enforced silence, which the dutiful Mrs. Wittgenstein supported, created a permanent rift between parents and children. Perhaps it was because Paul, after he lost his right arm, had the most tangible affliction in the family that he found the focus to remake himself. His determination to succeed on the concert stage was, in part, inspired by the example of Josef The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War, a blind organist and composer who was a favorite of the Wittgenstein family. Paul worked furiously and ingeniously to develop techniques that would enable him to perform. The training began while he was still recovering from the amputation in a Russian prison hospital, tapping on a dummy keyboard that he had etched in charcoal on a crate. Later, on a real piano, he often practiced for up to seven hours at a sitting. He made few recordings, and Waugh, who is also a composer and a music critic, remarks that most of them are bad. His most lasting significance comes from having commissioned one-handed works from at least a dozen composers, including Richard Strauss, , , , and , whose for the Left Hand remains widely performed. Strauss extracted a particularly large fee, and Britten, at least, affected to be in it just for the money. InSiegfried Rapp, a pianist who had lost his right arm in the Second World War, asked for permission to perform some of these works, many of which had been written a quarter of a century earlier. Paul usually bought exclusive performing rights for his commissions, and he said no. He even felt betrayed by composers who wanted to rearrange his commissions to produce two-handed versions. Russell later grew less indulgent toward his erstwhile pupil, but he had identified a family characteristic: when they believed that an important principle was at stake—which, for The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War, was often—the Wittgensteins were not inclined to be nice. He was a fiercely private man who liked to book entire railway carriages for himself, even when travelling with his family. His wife, Hilde, who was half blind and had been his pupil, bore him two children in Vienna before their marriage; the elder child had been conceived shortly after their first piano lesson, when Hilde was eighteen years old and Paul was forty-seven. When his wife and children arrived in the , inhe set them up in a house on Long Island, which he visited on weekends from his apartment on Riverside Drive. Arriving in New York without a valet, he soon ran into trouble. When his The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War were stolen from a hotel—he had left them outside his room, presuming that someone would wash them—he sat around in bedsheets until a candidate for the post of personal assistant came up with the suggestion that more clothes be bought from a shop. She was hired. Another anecdote has him sallying forth into the street wearing a hat that was still attached to its box. In the Wittgenstein family, it was not the philosopher who was the unworldly one. Ever since childhood, the last-born Ludwig had had a passion and a facility for mechanical things. At the age of ten, he constructed a working model of a sewing machine out of bits of wood and wire; while serving in the Austrian Army, he demonstrated a more dangerous practicality by improvising his own mortar in the field. After leaving school, Ludwig studied engineering in Berlin, specializing in hot-air balloons, and then moved to Manchester to work on aeronautical engines; inhe patented an improvement in propeller technology. Russell found him to be a tormented soul, unsure of his own abilities and unsure whether to be an engineer or a philosopher. Russell soon decided that Ludwig was the most perfect example of genius he had ever known, and persuaded him not to continue with engineering. The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War he feared that his new pupil was on the brink of suicide, as he explained in a letter to his mistress, Lady Ottoline Morrell. If they ever reached Ludwig they did not do the trick. He continued to work with a feverish intensity on the problems of logic that he was discussing with Russell and to agonize about his life. Certain things could be expressed in language, and these were best understood in terms of the logical techniques developed by Russell, he maintained. But others—and these were the most important things in life—could not be expressed in language at all. As it happens, Ludwig—who, unusually for a Wittgenstein, seems not to have mastered any The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War instrument as a child—impressed his musical friends with displays of virtuoso whistling. Several The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War dons recalled hearing him whistle the solo part of an entire concerto while a pianist played the orchestral part. He worked as a schoolmaster for six years and then as an architect, designing and obsessively supervising the building of a house in Vienna The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War his sister Gretl. Resolving to lead a simple life, he gave his share of the family money to three of his siblings; since they were very rich already, he believed they could not be corrupted further by receiving his portion. Then, inhis interest in philosophy was rekindled. This time, his view of language changed— the emphasis on Russellian logic was gone—but one key idea remained the same. The new approach was gentler and more therapeutic. By painstakingly examining how language works in everyday life, Ludwig now believed that one could be cured of the misconceptions that give rise to philosophical puzzles, and thus stop worrying about them. That is what he toiled on, mostly in Cambridge, until his death, in Does this actually work? Curiously, it is hard to say, because Ludwig seldom dealt explicitly with classical philosophical problems. His writings hardly ever mention the great philosophers of days gone by, except in passing. So one has to work out for oneself what, if any, bearing his explorations of the workings of language have on the ideas of Plato, Descartes, or Kant. It remains a point of contention whether he really found an honest way to dispose of philosophical questions or The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War succeeded The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War changing the subject of conversation by the sheer force of his personality. But that would probably be expecting too much of him. Tragic or not, no family has room for more than one Wittgenstein. Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War by Warts and all Here, instead, is a family portrait of an exceedingly mismatched and strained group who happened to be related. The "at war" in the title really refers to the family's war with itself and less so the two world wars The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War the time period covered. I can't claim to know much about Ludwig Wittgenstein, the best-known. I can't claim to know much about Ludwig Wittgenstein, the best-known member of the family, though I had hoped to gain some insight into his philosophy during the course of reading this book. That was not to be, alas, and if Waugh is to be believed, there is not a great deal of coherence to Wittgenstein's philosophical output. I've read a few disgruntled reviews claiming that Waugh's understanding of Wittgenstein is flawed, however. Even so the book does raise an important question: what exactly is the attraction of this strange man? Is it him or his philosophy? Or are the two things so intertwined that the question is rendered meaningless? My primary motivation for reading this book, however, was not to gain insight into Ludwig Wittgenstein and his brother Paul, who are the primary focus of the book. My fascination is with Vienna and in particular the astonishing blossoming of art, music, philosophy, science, and culture that took place in the city after the turn of the 20th century. Indeed, it is the discussion of this realm that I found most satisfying while reading the book. I was also quite interested in learning more about , though like all the Wittgenstein portraits here, Waugh casts him in a cold and unflinching light. But the thing that was most striking and memorable about this book to me was the tale of a family with ostensibly so much -- so much money, so many talents and gifts -- and yet so little. They tore at each others' souls, held grudges, and in some cases genuinely loathed one another. Even when they held common cause, a "cocktail of pride, honor, and obstinacy stood in the way of any reconciliation," as Waugh put it. It made me consider the misunderstandings and dissension in my own family, of course, but it also brought on a general reflection on what makes people happy or unhappy. The contrast between these two books was striking, and at times I found it a bit wrenching to go from one to the other. While members of the Wittgenstein family exhibited a fierce and sometimes self-destructive individuality, de Waal's account of his family The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War tinged with warmth, humor, and something akin to but better than nostalgia. There was solace and support within the Ephrussi family, and they emerged from the Second World War with less money but more wealthin a larger sense. There is, of course, the famous quote by Tolstoy, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. But it left me with a profound feeling of unease. One contemplates this family and wonders: what chance of happiness have I? Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. From Alexander Waugh, the author of the acclaimed memoir Fathers and Sonscomes a grand saga of a brilliant and tragic Viennese family. The Wittgenstein family was one of The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War richest, most talented, and most eccentric in European history. Karl Wittgenstein, who ran away from home as a wayward and rebellious The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War, returned to his native Vienna to make a fortune in the iron From Alexander Waugh, the author of the acclaimed memoir Fathers and Sonscomes a grand The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War of a brilliant and tragic Viennese family. Karl Wittgenstein, who ran away from home as a wayward and rebellious youth, returned to his native Vienna to make a fortune in the iron and steel industries. He bought factories and paintings and palaces, but the domineering and overbearing influence he exerted over his eight children resulted in a generation of siblings fraught by inner antagonisms and nervous tension. Three of his sons committed suicide; Paul, the fourth, became a world-famous concert pianist, using only his left hand and playing compositions commissioned from Ravel and Prokofiev; while Ludwig, the youngest, is now regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. In this dramatic historical and psychological epic, Alexander Waugh traces the triumphs and vicissitudes of a family held together by a fanatical love of music yet torn apart by money, madness, conflicts of loyalty, and the cataclysmic upheaval of two world wars. Through the bleak despair of a Siberian prison camp and the terror of a Gestapo interrogation room, one courageous and unlikely hero emerges from the rubble of the house of Wittgenstein in the figure The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War Paul, an extraordinary testament to the indomitable spirit of human survival. Get A Copy. Hardcoverpages. Published February 24th by Doubleday first published September 15th More Details Original Title. European Book Prize Nominee for Fiction Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The House of Wittgensteinplease sign up. Be the first to ask a question about The House of Wittgenstein. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Apr 15, D rated it really liked it. A wealth of interesting and amazing stories about a family of eccentrics that included Ludwig the philosopher and Paul, a famous one-handed concert pianist. There are also some interesting bits about Austrian history. Nov 30, Gustavo Offely rated it really liked it. Schoene to his bosses in Berlin explained that he had been frustrated in his efforts to seize the Wistag fortune for Germany "by the Jewish lawyers, Wachtell and Bloch, who are ill disposed towards the Reich. Oct 13, Lauren Albert rated it really liked it Shelves: biography-autobiography. I've said before that group biographies are difficult to do well. In this biography of the Wittgenstein family, Waugh really isn't doing a group biography, in my opinion. His focus is clearly on the two most famous Wittgensteins--Paul, the musician and Ludwig, the philosopher. He certainly includes the rest of the family--parents and children--as much as any individual's biography rightfully includes family background--but they are not his focus. This is not a criticism. The book is very readabl I've said before that group biographies are difficult to do well. The book is very readable and gives a good sense of the times. I found Waugh's discussion of the family's negotiations with the Nazis over their money--which the Nazis wanted and over their "Jewish" standing-- were they full blooded Jews? You can feel what it would have been like in Vienna then--with the Nazis using family against each other and some "suddenly" Jewish families who had never, like the Wittgensteins, considered themselves Jewish trying to get themselves classified as non-Jews or at least as only The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War breeds" so that they could maintain some of The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War civil rights. Worth reading. View 1 comment. Dec 16, Jimmy rated it it was amazing Shelves: philosophy-wittgenstei. The famous portrait The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War Klimt is referred to as being "sexually predatory. It is believed he was worried about being identified as the subject of a study on homosexuals. On May 2,he walked into a restaurant and asked the pianist to play a popular song. Then he dissolved potassium cyanide into a glass of milk and drank it. Father Karl was humiliated. No one was allowed to mention Rudolf's name again. Another brother Hans was also believed to be homosex The famous portrait artist Klimt is referred to as being "sexually predatory. Another brother Hans was also believed to be homosexual. His ending is shrouded in mystery. No one knows for certain where or how he died. The "most likely scenario" is that "he did indeed commit suicide. The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War Paul the pianist was more famous than Ludwig in their lifetime. They had private tutoring and developed into hardened individualists who struggled to maintain meaningful relationships. Ludwig claims to have first had thoughts of suicide at age 10 or An aunt and cousin also killed themselves. Ludwig meets . He asks the great philosopher, "Will you please tell me if I am a complete idiot or not. Russell tells him to write a paper for him. After reading one sentence, he says, "No you must not become an aeronaut. Ludwig joined a group at Cambridge known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society, a The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War conclave of intellectual, left-wing, and mainly homosexual men. The House of Wittgenstein : A Family at War - -

He devised novel techniques, including pedal and hand-movement combinations, that allowed him to play chords previously regarded as impossible for a five-fingered pianist. He was an older brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. He was raised as a Christian; three of his grandparents had converted from Judaism as adults. Only his maternal grandmother had no Jewish lineage. The The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War was frequently visited by prominent cultural figures, among them the composers Johannes BrahmsGustav MahlerJosef Laborand Richard Strausswith whom the young Paul played duets. His grandmother, Fanny Wittgenstein, was a first cousin of the violinist Joseph Joachimwhom she adopted [2] and took to to study with . The following year, however, World War I broke out, and he was called up for military service. He was shot in the elbow and captured by the Russians during the Battle of Galiciaand his right arm had to be amputated. During his recovery in a prisoner-of-war camp in Omsk in Siberia, he resolved to continue his career using only his left hand. Through the Danish Ambassador, he wrote to his old teacher Josef Laborwho was blind, asking for a concerto for the left hand. Labor responded quickly, saying he had already started work on a piece. Once again he began to give concerts. Many reviews were qualified with comments that he played very well for a man with one arm, but he persevered. He then approached more famous composers, asking them to write material for him to perform. Maurice Ravel wrote his Piano Concerto for the Left Handwhich became more famous than any of the other compositions that Wittgenstein inspired. Wittgenstein did not perform every piece he had commissioned. He told Prokofiev that he did not understand his 4th Piano Concerto but would some day play it; however, he never did so. As Wittgenstein explained to Siegfried Rapp on June 5, You don't build a house just so that someone else can live in it. I commissioned and paid for the works, the whole idea was mine But those works to which I still have the exclusive performance rights are to remain mine as long as I still perform in public; that's only right and fair. Once I am dead or no longer give concerts, then the works will be available to everyone because I have no wish for them to gather dust in libraries to the detriment of the composer. Siegfried Rapp The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War to premiere Prokofiev's 4th Piano Concerto infive years before Wittgenstein's death. As a performer, Wittgenstein's posthumous reputation is mixed. Alexander Waugh comments in "The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War" that between andWittgenstein was "a world-class pianist of outstanding technical ability and sensitivity" but that his playing grew increasingly "harsh and ham-fisted". Orchestras and conductors that had invited him once, seldom sought to rebook him. His tendency to alter and rewrite, without authorisation, the works he had commissioned have also contributed to his controversial musical status. The Wittgenstein family had converted to Christianity three generations before his birth on the paternal side and two generations before on the maternal side; nonetheless they were of mainly Jewish descent, and under the Nuremberg laws they were classed as Jews. Following the rise of the Nazi Party and the annexation of AustriaPaul tried to persuade his elder sisters Hermine and Helene 69 and 64 years old at the time to leave Vienna, but they demurred: The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War were attached to their homes there, and could not believe such a distinguished family as theirs was in real danger. Ludwig had already been living in England for some years, and Margaret Gretl was married to an American. Paul himself, who was no longer permitted to perform in public concerts under the Nazis, departed for the United States in From there he and Gretl, with some assistance from Ludwig The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War acquired British nationality inmanaged to use family finances mostly held abroad and legal connections to attain The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War status for their sisters. Essentially all family assets were surrendered to the Nazis in return for protection afforded the two sisters under exceptional interpretations of racial laws, allowing them to continue to live in their family palace in Vienna. His wife, Hilde, had been his pupil; they had two children before their marriage, the first conceived after the first piano lesson, [ citation needed ] when Hilde was eighteen years old and Paul was forty-seven. Because Hilde was not Jewish, Paul was open to charges of " racial defilement "; in he fled to New York. When his wife and children arrived in the United States, inhe set them up in a house on Long Islandwhich he visited on weekends from his apartment on Riverside Drive. Charles Winchester David Ogden Stiers provides him with the sheet music for Ravel's Concerto for the Left Handtells him Wittgenstein's story, and encourages him not to abandon his musical gift. Wittgenstein appears as a character in 's film Wittgensteinabout his brother Ludwig. Wittgenstein is The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War extensively in the latter half of Brian Evenson's novel Last Days. Wittgenstein's life is the basis for the Neil Halstead song "Wittgenstein's Arm" on his album Palindrome Hunches. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Paul Wittgenstein. Main article: Works associated with Paul Wittgenstein. The New Yorker. Retrieved July 6, Village Voice. Retrieved May 20, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Picture theory of language Truth tables. Language- game Private language argument The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War Form of life Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. Ideal language philosophy Ordinary language philosophy Wittgensteinian . Anscombe R. Moore Frank P. Ayer Gordon Baker James F. Wittgenstein film. Categories : Paul Wittgenstein births deaths Jewish emigrants from Austria to the United States after the Anschluss American Protestants American classical pianists Male classical pianists American male pianists Austrian amputees Austrian classical pianists Austrian people of German descent Austrian Christians Austro-Hungarian military personnel of World War I Classical pianists who played with one arm Wittgenstein family Musicians from Vienna World War I prisoners of war held by Russia Austrian prisoners of war Jewish classical pianists 20th-century classical pianists 20th-century American male musicians 20th- century American pianists. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Wikimedia Commons. Paul The House of Wittgenstein: A Family At War playing the piano.