La familia Wittgenstein

The history of the Wittgenstein family is the history of the 20th century. Karl Wittgenstein was a Viennese millionaire industrialist, convert and patrician, with a special weakness for art and high culture. His eight children were still born under the sign of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which would come to an end with the First World War. The lives of all of them were marked by the spirit of the turn of the century Vienna, the one that would see writers such as Robert Musil or Joseph Roth grow, musicians such as Mahler or Richard Strauss, and painters such as Gustav Klimt. Personalities of the stature of Brahms or Sigmund Freud paraded through the Wittgenstein palace. However, this atmosphere of prosperity hid tensions and bitterness, a product of the father's despotic character, which led three of the brothers to suicide. The fourth, Paul Wittgenstein, became an excellent pianist, although during the Great War he lost his right hand. Perhaps the most famous of the family is the youngest of the brothers, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great philosopher, desk mate of another famous Viennese: Adolf Hitler. Defying parental authority, Ludwig refused to become involved in the family business and went to England to study mathematics and later philosophy and logic at Cambridge, with Bertrand Russell, who always considered him his most brilliant student.