When wittgenstein is mentioned, what we as ordinary readers can think of must be the handsome, serious and strangely behaved twentieth-century philosopher, and if you happen to be a philosophical enthusiast, you must understand that without Wittgenstein's analytic philosophy, it is as if there were no Impressionism without Monet, and "Wittgenstein" is undoubtedly an absolute philosophical signifier.
However, as the movie "Tower of Babel" shows: life is a net, everyone is one of the knots, you are the protagonist of your own play, but the supporting roles in your life will also play the starring role in their own lives. Wittgenstein is not only the name of the philosopher Ludwig, but also the name of a prominent family in Vienna, about which we may be able to talk about something other than philosophy.
Perhaps in Munch's famous biography, Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, the members of the family ran the dragon suit, but they all had a destined extraordinary life. Most of the reasons why they were destined to have extraordinary lives came from Karl Wittgenstein, the philosopher's father.
He built a vast industrial empire for his descendants, including numerous steel companies, rolling mills, and coal and metal mines throughout the country, in addition to "having seats on the boards of at least three major banks and an arms company." His cousin Carl Mengo once said that before World War I, Carl's wealth was "estimated at two hundred million crowns — at least the same amount of money as the dollar after World War II.". However, as the author of Wittgenstein House put it, "these figures are meaningless, it is better to say that he is rich enough to be an enemy of the country." But all this history has been obscured.
Perhaps the main reason why Wittgenstein failed to be passed on as a symbol of wealth, apart from being overshadowed by the philosopher's dazzling light, was that Karl's business-minded sons failed to keep this vast family property. As the title of the English edition of the book, "a family at war," suggests, the wealth of this family with Jewish blood has vanished after the baptism of two wars that shook all of Europe. In order to repay the debt, the government turned the printing press at full power, and the Austrian krone depreciated by 16 times.
By 1922, paper money was worthless, "and the price of consumer goods was 14,000 times higher than the pre-war level." Not to mention that by the time of World War II, although early generations had been Catholic, but implicated by Jewish blood, members of the Wittgenstein family, in order to survive the bloody mouth of the Nazis, had prematurely unfrozen the last huge fortune in Switzerland and donated most of it to Hitler, a classmate of Ludwig's students who studied on the outskirts of Linz, and the family donated "more than one-tenth of the Czech national gold reserves that the Germans seized a year later."
Of course, it is crude and vulgar to use a string of staggering property figures or yellow gold to calculate the wealth of the Wittgenstein family, and I seem to hear their sneering laughs. Because any high-society family has a collection of art of immeasurable value, not to mention the Wittgenstein family, which has such a group of people who are extremely obsessed with art.
Anyone who has read Munch's biography knows that Ludwig in prison once mentioned in a conversation with a painter that the master of the arts Klimt created a portrait of his sister (Gret, who was about to marry at the time), but after reading "Wittgenstein House", you will know that the latter actually shelved the masterpiece because he was not satisfied with the treatment of her lips.
Not to mention, a large number of musical manuscripts are housed in the three residences of the Wittgenstein family in Vienna. These are what the sociologist Bourdieu called "cultural capital," hidden wealth that is difficult to measure by those of us who focus on "economic capital" and homo economicus.
Karl and his wife are avid music lovers, playing their favorite Bach, Beethoven or Brahms together in the shadows of a private concert hall, and often hosting family concerts in this concert hall, which includes a series of textbook names: Brahms, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg and Gustav Mahler. Such a gorgeous lineup is by no means something that nouveau riche can pile up with a few gold coins. Reverence for music was almost a recessive gene of the Wittgenstein family, Karl's cousin was a student of the famous violinist Joachim and the composer Mendelssohn, while Ludwig's brother Paul was a world-renowned left-arm pianist.
Paul can be said to be another "Wittgenstein" qualified to be the protagonist of the biography. He lost his right hand in World War I, and with amazing perseverance learned to dress alone, cut meat, cut apples, swim, and ride horses, all of which was admirable to an ordinary person, but he was still not satisfied with just surviving, he began to practice the skills of playing the piano with his left hand desperately, and invited his family's common friend, the blind composer Raber (who had been Schoenberg's teacher) to compose a left-handed repertoire for him.
As Paul himself said: "If I can't get to the top from one line, I'll pull down and start all over again." With this tenacity, he finally gained a foothold in Vienna, where masters gathered. Of course, the reason for his success is not clear in two words. As Alexander Wohl reveals, the listener is not generous out of appreciation of music, "but to see the spectacle, as if he were some kind of peddler or playground exhibit."
It was for this reason that Ludwig could not bear to attend his brother's public concerts. In addition, the huge family wealth also contributed to Paul's fame, and the thousands of dollars of remuneration impressed many composers to compose left-handed repertoire for him, including the famous Richard Strauss and Ravel. Of course, the dollar as a reward is not worth a penny compared to his gift of thanking Rabbo, which is said to be a strand of Beethoven's hair.
The Creator must have been a good scriptwriter, which is why Flaubert told us to look for God in the details. At a very early age, he laid the groundwork for the decline of the entire family. Ludwig's two older brothers, Rudolf and Hans, both died by suicide, illustrating the family's own problems. Rudolf once confessed to a charity that he had homosexual "perverted tendencies" and eventually swallowed potassium cyanide under pressure from public opinion.
Hans, who is also said to be a recognized homosexual, has an amazing mathematical mind and is called a musical genius by Mahler's teacher, Epstein, a professor at the Vienna Conservatory, but his fate is to run away from home and die. Fortunately, Ludwig, who had been hovering on the brink of suicide, found his life's work, and fortunately, his mentors Russell and Moore chose to endure his mania and neuroticism, which left the only star that finally shone for the Wittgenstein family. Therefore, when I wrote about it, I found that wittgenstein may only be discussed in the end philosophy.
Source: Beijing Daily
Author: Li Sanda
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