page_title: Ludwig Wittgenstein
section_title: Military service
hierarchical_section_title: Ludwig Wittgenstein / 1913–1920: World War I and the Tractatus / Military service
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Die siegreiche Isonzo-Offensive. Der Durchstoss bei Flitsch. Trainkolonne der Verbündeten im Vormarsch auf einer der Pass-Strassen gen Flitsch. Filmtrupp No:5. Erzherzog Eugen-Strasse, Moistroka-Pass, Oktober 1917
context_page_description: Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.
  From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. During his lifetime he published just one slim book, one article, one book review and a children's dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. The first and best-known of this posthumous series is the 1953 book Philosophical Investigations. His teacher, Bertrand Russell, described Wittgenstein as
  "perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived; passionate, profound, intense, and dominating".
  Born in Vienna into one of Europe's richest families, he inherited a fortune from his father in 1913. He initially made some donations to artists and writers, and then, in a period of severe personal depression after the First World War, he gave away his entire fortune to his brothers and sisters. Three of his four brothers committed suicide, which Wittgenstein had also contemplated.
context_section_description: On the outbreak of World War I, Wittgenstein immediately volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian Army, despite being eligible for a medical exemption. He served first on a ship and then in an artillery workshop 'several miles from the action'. He was wounded in an accidental explosion, and hospitalised to Kraków. In March 1916, he was posted to a fighting unit on the front line of the Russian front, as part of the Austrian 7th Army, where his unit was involved in some of the heaviest fighting, defending against the Brusilov Offensive. Wittgenstein directed the fire of his own artillery from an observation post in no-man's land against Allied troops – one of the most dangerous jobs there was, since he was targeted by enemy fire. In action against British (?) troops, he was decorated with the Military Merit with Swords on the Ribbon, and was commended by the army for "His exceptionally courageous behaviour, calmness, sang-froid, and heroism," that  "won the total admiration of the troops." 
  In January 1917, he was sent as a member of a howitzer regiment to the Russian front, where he won several more medals for bravery including the Silver Medal for Valour, First Class. In 1918, he was promoted to lieutenant and sent to the Italian front as part of an artillery regiment. For his part in the final Austrian offensive of June 1918, he was recommended for the Gold Medal for Valour, one of the highest honours in the Austrian army, but was instead awarded the Band of the Military Service Medal with Swords — it being decided that this particular action, although extraordinarily brave, had been insufficiently consequential to merit the highest honour.
  Throughout the war, he kept notebooks in which he frequently wrote philosophical reflections alongside personal remarks, including his contempt for the character of the other soldiers. He discovered Leo Tolstoy's 1896 The Gospel in Brief at a bookshop in Tarnów, and carried it everywhere, recommending it to anyone in distress, to the point where he became known to his fellow soldiers as "the man with the gospels."
  The extent to which The Gospel in Brief influenced Wittgenstein can be seen in the Tractatus, in the unique way both books number their sentences. 1916 Wittgenstein read Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov so often that he knew whole passages of it by heart, particularly the speeches of the elder Zosima, who represented for him a powerful Christian ideal, a holy man "who could see directly into the souls of other people."
  Iain King has suggested his writing changed substantially in 1916, when he started confronting much greater dangers during frontline fighting. Russell said he returned from the war a changed man, one with a deeply mystical and ascetic attitude.
caption: Austro-Hungarian supply line over the Vršič Pass, on the Italian front, October 1917
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