The greatest philosopher of the 20th century was Ludwig Wittgenstein, known for his difficult early work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a dense collection of aphorisms and his mature and poetic Philosophical Investigations, published posthumously. Surprisingly, Ludwig was not the most famous of his family during his lifetime, despite the adulation he received from Cambridge, particularly from the founders of analytic philosophy, Bertrand Russell (Principia Mathematica) and George Moore (Principia Ethica). Instead, it was his brother Paul Wittgenstein, who after being shot by the Russians in World War I lost his right arm but became a world-famous one-handed pianist. Perhaps one of the other three brothers, just as neurotic and brilliant as Paul and Ludwig, might have become as famous had they each not committed suicide.
It is immediately obvious then why anyone should pick up this biography of the Wittgenstein family, based in fin de siècle Vienna, at the end of the Hapsburg Monarchy and in the last days of Austro-Hungarian greatness. Especially a biography as well-written — filled with charm, wit and irony — as this by Alexander Waugh, the grandson of Evelyn Waugh and the son of Auberon Waugh. It is a case for incredibly rich writing running in one’s blood. The book jacket touts it as a rival to Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, the epic about the rise and fall of a Prussian family that was banned and burned by Adolf Hitler (a classmate of Ludwig’s in 1906 at the Staatsoberrealschule, whose later ambitions included world domination); I liked Waugh’s book even better. It makes you want to pick up Waugh’s biography of his own illustrious family, Fathers and Sons.
Waugh may have taken up this project because he himself is a composer and an opera critic for two British newspapers, and you detect not a few notes of sympathy for a pianist who not only had to reinvent himself as a single-handed virtuoso, but did so despite skepticism from Ludwig and their sister Gretl (who sought advice about her frigidity from her friend Sigmund Freud), both of whom thought that Paul, despite his deep musical expression and technical knowledge, was trying to achieve the impossible by playing piano concertos with only one hand. Indeed, after the Nazis came to power and stressed out Paul and his siblings, Paul’s piano playing became harsh and began to turn off reviewers, some of whom felt that his fame rested on the novelty of his physical exertions. Also, there are only a handful of recordings of his performances, none of good quality, and all this probably contributed to Waugh’s desire to set the record straight.
The family patriarch was steel magnate Karl Wittgenstein, a music and art patron who had a terrible temper and was one of the richest men of his time. As so often happens, children bear the brunt of such tremendous will. Waugh quotes Oscar Wilde: “To lose one son, may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness.” Karl’s wife Leopoldine bore four daughters and five sons. The eldest son Hans was apparently the most prodigious of the lot, mathematically and musically, but vanished at the age of 25 in 1902 and is presumed to have killed himself in America. Rudi, a brilliant chemistry student, killed himself two years later in grief over the death of a homosexual lover (Ludwig was also famously gay). Kurt killed himself rather than surrender to the Italian army in 1918; he was then 40 years old.
As it happens, Paul also fought in WWI; in 1914 he was sent to fight the Russians at Galicia (now divided between Ukraine and Poland) where he was injured and his arm amputated, and then captured and sent to Siberia. This was hell. The Russians were pretty harsh too. But it may have put resolve in Paul’s heart, for he started practicing with one hand on piano keys drawn on a wooden crate, and he never appears to have afterwards thought of suicide. Though he had a famous temper which he unleashed against famous composers like Ravel and Prokofiev, all of whom he commissioned to compose pieces exclusively for his left-handed piano concertos, he was memorably warm to his close ones. He also seduced some of his students, one of whom was forced into an ultimately fatal abortion by Gretl; another was Hilde a blind girl nearly 30 years younger than Paul whom he eventually married and who bore three children.
Waugh’s great writing is not just in the sentences, which range from the lyrical to the suggestive, but also in the fact that he subtly shows you the Wittgensteins as a metaphor for the decline of a great empire. Paul was more or less the culmination of a Viennese musical tradition that produced the greatest Western music ever. Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Haydn, Bruckner and Mahler: many of these played in Karl’s living room, and the family owned many original scores (the Nazis confiscated several manuscripts). Then came WWI, and the Hapsburg empire was reduced to a tiny country
that is today Austria.
Somehow the family managed to avoid losing all its fortune in the Great Depression but then came Hitler, and the Wittgensteins had Jewish blood. WWII caused Paul to escape to America and Ludwig to domicile in England; the sisters (barring Gretl) remained in Vienna, but were not sent to concentration camps only because the Nazis coveted the Wittgenstein fortune, including 250 kgs of gold, stashed in Zurich’s banks. But the damage was done. Europe had fallen. The Wittgensteins were scattered, and doomed to lives as ordinary people. Despite ignominy during his lifetime (as a teacher in rural Austria in 1926, he boxed one of his 11-year-old students into unconsciousness), only Ludwig was able to leave an enduring legacy. Until, that is, Alexander Waugh came along and wrote this magnificent book.
—editorchief@epmltd.com
