Ludwig Wittgenstein: First World War
Background • The Early Years • Cambridge • Norway • First World War • Tractatus and Teaching • Architect • Return to Cambridge • In Russia and Norway etc. • Professor of Philosophy • Final Years
(1914)
On the eve of the war, Wittgenstein returned to Vienna.
He was determined to enlist, but his motives, as his sister
Hermine wrote in the family memoirs
(Familienerinnerungen), were not only of a patriotic
nature: As I well know, he was not only concerned to
defend his country; he had an intense desire to take on
something difficult and demanding and to do something other
than purely intellectual work.
On 7 August he
voluntarily reported for duty although excused from military
service on the grounds of a double hernia. On the same day
he was posted to a fortress artillery regiment. On 9 August
he began the first extant manuscript volume of the
Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung, MS 101, published
in Notebooks, 1914-1916.
A few days later, as a private soldier, he reached the front aboard the patrol ship Goplana on the Vistula. On 30 October he began the second manuscript, which he worked on until 22.6.1915: MS 102, published in Notebooks, 1914-1916. In the middle of December he was transferred to an artillery workshop in Cracow. In view of his abilities, he was exceptionally accorded the privileges due to an officer.
Before the end of the first year of the war his brother Paul was seriously wounded, losing his right arm, and was taken prisoner by the Russians. Through his fate, Ludwig first learned the horror of the prospect of losing one’s career. Back in Vienna, Paul Wittgenstein continued to work at his career with extraordinary strength of will. He later achieved celebrity, notably in the USA. In 1932 Maurice Ravel wrote for him his Concerto pour la main gauche.
The Guard-ship “Goplana” on the Vistula
1915
After being wounded in an explosion in the workshop, and following a short stay in hospital in Cracow, Wittgenstein was transferred at the end of July to an artillery workshop aboard a train in the vicinity of Lwow.
1916
At the beginning of the spring Wittgenstein was transferred at his own request to a howitzer regiment on the Galician front. There he began, on 29 March, the third extant manuscript, on which he worked until 10.1.1917: MS 103, published in Notebooks, 1914-1916, Oxford 1961.
He was decorated several times and was promoted to corporal on 1 September. He was then ordered to the school for artillery officers in Olmütz, where he met Paul Engelmann, a pupil of Adolf Loos, whom he had got to know in Vienna in 1914 and who arranged the meeting. Engelmann, who was soon to become a close friend, was interested in literature as well as architecture; he wrote for and about his friends Karl Kraus and Adolf Loos, and some of his poems and essays are published by Kraus in Die Fackel. On 1st December Wittgenstein was made a cadet (Fähnrich) in the reserve.
1917
On 26 January he returned to his old regiment in the Bukovina, where among other things he was caught up in the Kerensky Offensive and was decorated several times. After the truce with Russia on 28 November he spent his leave in Vienna.
Wittgenstein’s Military I.D. Card
1918
Wittgenstein was promoted to reserve officer (Lieutenant) on 1 February. In the spring he was transferred to the southern front near Asiago and temporarily posted to a mountain artillery regiment.
On 8 May his friend David Pinsent had a fatal accident during a test flight in England. Because of limited suitability for military service, he had not been called up for active service, but had trained as a test pilot.
On 30 July Wittgenstein was awarded the Band of the Military Service Medal with Swords for gallantry during the final Austrian offensive on the southern front. He spent his last major leave in July and August in Vienna and in the house of his uncle Paul Wittgenstein in Hallein near Salzburg, where he completed the final record for the Logisch-Philosphische Abhandlung, Manuscript 104, published as Prototractatus by Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1971, and the typescripts of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus TSS 202, 203 and 204 later published as Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Kegan Paul, London 1922.
At this time he was still trying unsuccessfully to get Jahoda and Siegel of Vienna, who produce Die Fackel, to publish the book.
At the end of September Wittgenstein was again at the front. Encircled by the Italians, he constructed, as he later described to an English friend, his own mortar using a method dating back to antiquity: he wound bronze wire around a tree trunk of the same diameter as the shells and by means of an intense fire, fused the metal into a gun barrel.
On 3 November he was finally taken prisoner by the Italians near Trento, along with the whole of the Austrian forces in the area. He was initially in a camp near Como.
P.O.W.s in Italy