page_title: Ludwig Wittgenstein
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Ludwig Wittgenstein / Background / Early life
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Palais Wittgenstein Fassade, Ludwig Wittgensteins Geburtshaus English: Palais Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein's birthplace Français&#160;: Façade du Palais Wittgenstein, lieu de naissance de Ludwig Wittgenstein
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: Wittgenstein's mother was Leopoldine Maria Josefa Kalmus, known among friends as Poldi. Her father was a Bohemian Jew and her mother was Austrian-Slovene Catholic—she was Wittgenstein's only non-Jewish grandparent. She was an aunt of the Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich Hayek on her maternal side. Wittgenstein was born at 8:30 pm on 26 April 1889 in the so-called "Wittgenstein Palace" at Alleegasse 16, now the Argentinierstrasse, near the Karlskirche. Karl and Poldi had nine children in all—four girls: Hermine, Margaret (Gretl), Helene, and a fourth daughter Dora who died as a baby; and five boys: Johannes (Hans), Kurt, Rudolf (Rudi), Paul—who became a concert pianist despite losing an arm in World War I—and Ludwig, who was the youngest of the family.
  The children were baptized as Catholics, received formal Catholic instruction, and were raised in an exceptionally intense environment. The family was at the center of Vienna's cultural life; Bruno Walter described the life at the Wittgensteins' palace as an "all-pervading atmosphere of humanity and culture." Karl was a leading patron of the arts, commissioning works by Auguste Rodin and financing the city's exhibition hall and art gallery, the Secession Building. Gustav Klimt painted Wittgenstein's sister for her wedding portrait, and Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler gave regular concerts in the family's numerous music rooms.
  
  For Wittgenstein, who highly valued precision and discipline, contemporary music was never considered acceptable at all. He said to his friend Drury in 1930, 
  "Music came to a full stop with Brahms; and even in Brahms I can begin to hear the noise of machinery." 
  Ludwig Wittgenstein himself had absolute pitch, and his devotion to music remained vitally important to him throughout his life; he made frequent use of musical examples and metaphors in his philosophical writings, and was unusually adept at whistling lengthy and detailed musical passages. He also learnt to play the clarinet in his 30s. A fragment of music (three bars), composed by Wittgenstein, was discovered in one of his 1931 notebooks, by Michael Nedo, director of the Wittgenstein Institute in Cambridge.
caption: Palais Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein's birthplace, around 1910
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