Name: The House of Wittgenstein
ISBN: 9780747596738

Alexander Waugh

The true story of a one-handed pianist and the fall of his aristocratic family.

A Family at War

The House of Wittgenstein

Sarah Christine Gill

The House of Wittgenstein is the grand saga of a brilliant and tragic Viennese family whose members included a famous philosopher and the world's greatest one-handed classical pianist. The Wittgenstein family was one of the wealthiest, most talented, and most eccentric in European history, held together by a fanatical love of music yet torn apart by money, madness, conflicts of loyalty, and the upheaval of two world wars. Of the eight children, three committed suicide; Paul lost an arm in the war and yet stubbornly pursued a musical career; and Ludwig, the odd youngest son, is now regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Alexander Waugh, author of the acclaimed memoir Fathers and Sons and himself the offspring of a famous and eccentric family, tells their baroque tale with a novelistic richness to rival Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks.

A remarkable family in remarkable times. Fascinating picture of Austrian (albeit high) life and society amid European social and political convulsions of first half of 20th century. Got a little lost in the detail at times. 
 

The House of Wittgenstein A Family at War

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