Wittgenstein’s Odd Classmate
Ludwig Wittgenstein, the author of Philosophical Investigations and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a don at Cambridge, and one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, was a Catholic Austrian Jew who fought as an officer for the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army in WWI and was decorated for bravery. When Germany took Austria in the Anschluss, the wealthy Wittgenstein family became subject to Germany’s Nuremberg Laws. With three Jewish grandparents, Wittgenstein was to lose Austrian citizenship and become a Jewish non-citizen under those discriminatory laws.

