ABSTRACT

Wittgenstein in a confessional phase reproached himself bitterly for having minimized his Jewish ancestry. Yet he was right to minimize it, if a correct impression of his family and its influence on him was the aim. No one at the turn of the century would have thought of characterizing that large cousinhood as a Jewish family, as it is occasionally described today. Karl Menger, who knew them and was a particular friend of Wittgenstein’s Aunt Clara, comments that in so far as there was any difference between Jewish and non-Jewish households, they seemed to belong rather to the former.1