Wittgenstein's Family Letters by Brian McGuinness

Author:Brian McGuinness
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781474298148
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2018-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

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1 Moritz Nähr (1859–1945): family friend and family photographer, older than the Wittgenstein siblings.

2 Louise Pollitizer.

3 The famous thermal station in Bohemia.

4 The Wiener Musikverein, a concert hall in the city centre of Vienna, Austria.

5 Hugo Heller (1870–1923): book dealer, organized numerous readings and concerts.

6 Johannes Müller (1864–1949): evangelical religious writer. The sanatorium is Schloss Elmau, his ‘meeting place for searching souls’.

7 Hermann Bahr (1863–1934): The leading critic and director from Vienna. Founder of Young Vienna.

8 Michael Drobil (1877–1958), academic sculptor and member of the Wiener Secession. Like Hermann Hänsel, he was one of the friends that Wittgenstein made when a prisoner of war in Cassino.

9 Max Salzer’s brother.

10 Louis Wittgenstein (1845–1925), Karl Wittgenstein’s brother.

11 Presumably a relative of the engineer Mautner, who routinely was involved in family projects. There were also mill-owners called Mautner in Trattenbach.

12 From Act 1, Scene 2 of Lessing’s Nathan the Wise; translation by Frothingham, 1868.

13 Paul Mudigler, a Hochreit employee’s son.

14 This letter is dated on the basis of a remark in Letter 51 where Hermine writes: ‘according to Paul, you were not able to get on with Gretl at all’.

15 It will all pass, like dew in the sunshine.

16 Wilhelm Furtwaengler (1886–1954) and Adolf Busch (1891–1952).

17 The date reads 5 December 1920, but is given here as 15 December 1920. Wittgenstein was not in Vienna a week prior to 5 December, a Saturday, 27 November, when the Labor concert took place (see Letter 55 and letter to Hänsel of 30 November). The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a school holiday, 8 December, may have been an occasion for Ludwig to visit.

18 A friend of Hermine’s who directed a day-care refuge for malnourished and ailing children.

19 For Clara Wittgenstein see Menger, Reminiscences of the Vienna Circle, p. 77; she was in fact well-informed and modern in her reading. What shocked Hermine may have been that members of a younger generation were present. She also (conversely) seems to think Clara incapable of understanding the masked suggestiveness of Tristram Shandy.

20 Frauenfeld, leading interior architect, who first modernized the villa of the Wittgensteins at Neuwaldegg.

21 Like Trattenbach, Gutenstein is a valley village in Lower Austria, but is somewhat nearer to the family property. The allusion, however, is probably to Hermine’s tutoring one of the boys up at the Hochreit (see Letter 51).

22 This letter is a draft, written on the back of Letter 59. In a letter of 24 January 1921, Ludwig tells Hänsel that he did not send the letter printed here, but a ‘milder, more well-intentioned one’, which had a disquieting effect all the same.

23 Weber’s clarinet concerto no. 2.

24 In a letter of 6 February 1921 to Hänsel, Ludwig comments: ‘Even the milder letter to Mining had quite a powerful effect – and not a good one. But there’s nothing I can do. Perhaps though the end-effect will be a good one.’ Two messages, lightly disguised in Latin, suggest that Hänsel in fact advised an invitation to Hermine, which did in fact result.

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