Wittgenstein’s Vienna around 1900

Abstract: Even more than 60 years after his death the interest in Wittgenstein’s philosophy is still unbroken. Within the last two or three decades, however, we can observe an additional emphasis on the philosopher’s personality and his socio-cultural background. One way of explaining this development is the assumption that the work of an author, artist, or other intellectual cannot be separated from the person and his or her biographical setting. If this thesis is correct, one also has to take into account the lifeworld context within which any kind of intellectual oeuvre is ingrained. In this paper I try to give a very rough sketch of Wittgenstein’s Vienna and its socio-economic and cultural milieu around 1900.