Ludwig Wittgenstein: Architect
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
1926
Constant animosity from the parents of his pupils and doubts as to the success of his efforts made Wittgenstein think more and more often about retiring from teaching. In April an incident occured: a pupil lost consciousness following a box on the ears. At Wittgenstein’s own request, the school authorities conducted a formal inquiry and, although he was acquitted of any form of culpability, he asked on 28 April to be released from the education service. He became an under-gardener in the monastery of the Brothers of Mercy in Hütteldorf. On 3 June his mother died.
At the beginning of November 1925, Wittgenstein’s sister Margarethe had commissioned the architect and friend of Wittgenstein, Paul Engelmann, to design and build a large town house in Vienna. Wittgenstein showed lively interest in the project and in Engelmann’s plans. His comments and advice convinced Engelmann that Wittgenstein could realise his sister’s intentions much better than he could himself, and he and Margarethe Stonborough asked Wittgenstein to participate as architect during the construction. After long consideration, Wittgenstein finally agreed and began work in autumn on the house in Kundmanngasse.
The House in Kundmanngasse
Sketch by Paul Engelmann
1927
Schlick’s further attempt to visit Wittgenstein in Otterthal in April 1926 was also without success; Wittgenstein had given up teaching and left Otterthal. In February 1927 Wittgenstein’s sister, Margarethe Stonborough, finally arranged the first meeting between the two. After several further meetings with Schlick alone, Wittgenstein was also prepared to speak to other members of the Schlick circle. Besides Friedrich Waismann, though less regularly, Carnap, Feigl and Marie Kaspar-Feigl came to further meetings up to the end of 1928. It seems that in this period Wittgenstein spoke about philosophy only rarely; he was too occupied with his architectural work. No records of these discussions are known to exist.
A letter of Wittgenstein’s to Ramsey from 2 July contained for the first renewed discussion of logic at any length: TS 206, an Essay on Identity, which appeared in Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, Oxford 1979.
Whilst working on the house, Wittgenstein occupied himself sculpting, as he has done during the school holidays in the previous year. He was a frequent guest in the studio of his friend from POW days, the sculptor Michael Drobil. There he criticised one of Drobil’s works, and demonstrated his arguments by himself modelling a bust of a young girl in plaster of Paris.
1928
In March Wittgenstein was persuaded by Waismann and Feigl to attend a lecture by the Dutch logician L. E. J. Brouwer in the Academy of Sciences. Brouwer’s ideas on the subject of Mathematics, Knowledge and Speech obviously made a great impression on him; he was aroused to indignation and feels himself challenged.
Work on the house in the Kundmanngasse was completed in
the autumn. In a letter to Hermine Wittgenstein of 9.1.1932,
Paul Engelmann described collaborating with Ludwig
Wittgenstein: Nevertheless ... I am satisfied by the
thought of having had something to do with the creation of
such beautiful things. Unfortunately more in a negative than
a positive sense: before, I wanted something else, something
of my own. Now that your brother’s work is to be seen
in its final form, it is evident how inferior this thing of
my own would have been to this better thing of his, which I
then only poorly understood.
Wittgenstein decided to take a holiday in England but had to postpone the trip for reasons of health.
Moritz Schlick