Class photograph at the Linz Realschule c. 1901, a young Adolf Hitler in the back row on the right. In the penultimate row, third from the right, a student who is said by Cornish (dating the photo to c. 1904) to be Ludwig Wittgenstein. The adult is Oskar Langer who taught at the school until 1901.
The Jew of Linz is a 1998 book by Australian writer Kimberley Cornish, in which the author presents the fringe theories that philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was the childhood catalyst for the antisemitism of Adolf Hitler and that Wittgenstein was involved in the Cambridge Five Soviet spy ring. Cornish is also responsible for the claim that a school photo that features Hitler also shows Wittgenstein, though it has been reliably dated to two years before the latter's time at the Realschule in Linz.
Despite being only days apart in age, Hitler and Wittgenstein were never in the same class, or indeed year (or grade) at the secondary school. Cornish himself did not claim otherwise, though neither did he clearly acknowledge it. Hitler and Wittgenstein only overlapped at Linz over the academic year of 1903/1904, not 1904/1905 as is often wrongly stated, Hitler having spent that later year at the Realschule in Steyr.
Contents
Summary
The occasion for Adolf Hitler becoming anti-Semitic was a schoolboy interaction in Linz, circa 1904, with Ludwig Wittgenstein.[1]
Wittgenstein was responsible for the secret of decrypting the German "Enigma" code being passed to Joseph Stalin, which resulted ultimately in the Nazi defeats on the Eastern Front and liberation of the surviving Jews from the camps.
Both Hitler's oratory and Wittgenstein's philosophy of language derive from the hermetic tradition, the key to which is Wittgenstein's "no-ownership" theory of mind, described by P. F. Strawson in his book Individuals (1958).[2].
Realschule
The photograph
Cornish claims that "a photograph of Hitler aged fourteen at the school also shows the fourteen-year-old Wittgenstein".[a][4] Dating it to 1904,[b] Cornish says the Victoria Police photographic evidence unit in Australia examined the photograph and confirmed that it was "highly probable" the other boy is Wittgenstein. "The matter of the photograph" writes Cornish, "is clearly of great significance for our hypothesis".[4] Why two boys not in the same class would be together in the photograph was a question raised by Gerald Stieg[de].[6] Cornish, in the Notes, says only that "It appears to be the photograph of an age group, not a class."[7]
The photo was published with the caption "Professor Oskar Langer mit der Klasse I b , 1900/1901 Rechts oben der 12jährige Adolf Hitler"(Professor Oskar Langer with Class I b, 1900/1901. Top right: 12-year-old Adolf Hitler) in both Hugo Rabitsch's Aus Adolf Hitlers Jugendzeit (1938) and contemporary publicity for that book in Börsenblatt.[8][9] The photograph also appears in multiple other near contemporary sources that all identify it as a class photograph featuring Hitler in his first year or at an age he would have been during it.[c] A portrait of Langer on the same page of Rabitsch's book is captioned "Hitlers Klassenvorstand 1900/1901" (Hitler's class teacher 1900/1901). Langer has been established by Hermann Möcker as having worked at the school from 1884 only until 1901.[14]
At the time of Cornish's publication, historian Brigitte Hamann dated the photograph to 1900 or 1901 for Focus magazine.[15][d] Since then, German historian Werner Maser has insisted that, contra Cornish, it is "Ein Foto der Linzer Realschulklasse 1B. des Schuljahres 1900–1901" (a photograph of the Linz Realschule class 1B from the school year 1900–1901), Austrian historian Roman Sandgruber[de] has asserted it is from 1901 and Israeli historian Steven E. Aschheim has also said it has been "reliably dated" to that year.[19][20][21] Wittgenstein did not arrive at Linz until the 1903/1904 academic year, as Cornish himself acknowledges.[22]
Wittgenstein and Hitler at Linz
Extract from the Linz Realschule photo. Visual examination of the supposed Hitler/Wittgenstein photograph is itself indicative of it being a '1b' class group. Only Hitler was ever a first year pupil there, and in that class group (1900/1901).
Hitler started at the school in September 1900, repeated the first year in 1901/1902, and left in autumn 1904 to spend the 1904/1905 academic year at the Realschule in Steyr.[23][24] The year at Steyr is discussed by Franz Jetzinger and by Joachim Fest[25] near to passages Cornish quotes, and by Alan Bullock on a page of Hitler: A Study in Tyranny that he cites.[26] Yet, Cornish makes no mention of Hitler's time there. Möcker allows for the possibility that Cornish is unaware of Hitler's year at Steyr (Hitler being silent about it in Mein Kampf). But he also does not discount the idea that Cornish withheld knowledge of it because it did not fit his desired narrative of a close relationship between Hitler and Wittgenstein in Linz.[27] "Blatant manipulation of secondary sources" is a charge levelled against Cornish by Claudia Pugh-Thomas.[28]
Cornish asserts that Wittgenstein arrived at Linz in 1904, during the "second semester of the academic year 1903/4".[29][e] The citation given suggests this is a misunderstanding of Wuchterl and Hübner (1979) whose talk of the second semester is about the classes missed by Wittgenstein following the suicide of his brother Rudolf on 2 May 1904,[31][f] It is not about when Wittgenstein began schooling at Linz, which is given by the same authors later as autumn 1903.[32]Brian McGuinness, like Ray Monk, also reports that it was in 1903 that Wittgenstein was sent to Linz.[33][g] Later scholarly commentary reasserts this and that Wittgenstein and Hitler were together at the Linz Realschule from 1903 to 1904.[35]
While Hitler was just six days older than Wittgenstein, they were two grades apart at the school, Hitler having repeated the first year and Wittgenstein being advanced a year, as McGuinness records (and Cornish quotes without correction).[36][37] There is no evidence that the two got to know each other.[38][39][40] But, as, Aschheim notes, this did not deter Cornish from asserting that the cause of Hitler's 'genocidal anti-Semitism' is a supposed 'schoolboy spat' with Wittgenstein.[41][42]
The Jew of Linz
Cornish's thesis is that the young Wittgenstein was "the very first link in the chain of hatred that led to Auschwitz" and the one Jewish boy from Hitler's school days referred to in Mein Kampf.[43] The last claim referred to the following, as quoted by Cornish:
At the Realschule, to be sure, I did meet one Jewish boy who was treated by all of us with caution, but only because various experiences had led us to doubt his discretion and we did not particularly trust him ...
—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1943 translation by Ralph Manheim, as quoted by Cornish.[44]
"This paragraph — a mere forty words in English translation — is the focus of our investigation" writes Cornish.[45] Though, as Nicholas Mosley points out:
in the next sentence Hitler goes on to say about the boy (and Mr Cornish does not quote this): "Beyond that, my companions and myself formed no particular opinions in regard to him." And a few lines later Hitler is explaining that at this time ... hearing hostile remarks about Jews ... aroused in him "a feeling of abhorrence". (Mr Cornish does not mention this either.)[46]
Thus Hitler, whilst denying that he was yet anti-Semitic,[h] does refer to a Jewish boy at 'the Realschule' [i] but, as Steven Poole notes, "only due to his lack of 'discretion', rather than his race". Cornish "nevertheless reads this as a revelation of how Hitler's anti-Semitism took root".[48]Sean French writes that there is "No evidence that Hitler, in his final unhappy year, even knew a boy two years above him. If they did know each other, there is no evidence that he was the boy Hitler distrusted".[49] Still, as Michael Feld notes:
Cornish concludes that Hitler hated Jews because he hated Ludwig Wittgenstein. He hated Wittgenstein's family, too – his Catholic family, his assimilated family – because they tried to pass for Austrian, and because they had made themselves fabulously wealthy by establishing a steel cartel in the heart of the Habsburg empire. He hated all assimilated Jews. But at root Hitler hated Jews, Cornish tells us, because of his hatred for Ludwig Wittgenstein.[50]
Jackie Assayag asserts that 'a single fact—that the Wittgenstein family in Vienna was never harassed by the Nazis—undermines the argument of the entire book'.[51]Roz Kaveney also suggests that "if Hitler spent his life hating Wittgenstein, it is odd that Wittgenstein's sisters spent the entire war unmolested in Vienna".[52][j]
The Cambridge Five
As Nigel West notes, Cornish identifies Wittgenstein "as a central figure in the Cambridge spy ring: the talent spotter and recruiter".[56]
FrankMcLynn reports that Cornish poses the question of why Wittgenstein, who hated academic life, returned to Trinity in 1929. His answer being that:
Wittgenstein, alarmed by the rise of the Nazis and knowing from his schooldays the manner of man the Fuhrer was, thought the way he could best serve humanity was by becoming a Soviet agent in England.[57]
As McLynn notes, the "obvious objection is that Hitler in 1929 was nowhere near the centre of power".[57]
Cornish presses the question of why the Soviet government offered Wittgenstein the chair in philosophy at what had been Lenin's university during the Great Purge. On this point, Cornish contends in interview that it is undeniably proven that Wittgenstein worked for the Soviets by the fact that he was offered a chair in philosophy in 1935 at Kazan, and that even if this were the only proof it would be quite sufficient.[58]
Antony Flew agrees an explanation is needed "since Wittgenstein was very far from being a Marxist philosopher" and offers some support:
Cornish contends that the reason why ... the USSR treated Wittgenstein with such peculiar generosity was that he had been the recruiter of all the Cambridge spies. The question ... can be definitively settled only if and when the relevant Soviet archives are examined. But I am myself as confident as ... it is possible to be that Mr Cornish is right. For people who during the crucial years between Wittgenstein's return to Cambridge in 1929 and that 1935 offer were attending his classes and/or enjoying other personal contacts with him have given me accounts both of the ... overwhelming force of Wittgenstein's personality and of the absoluteness in those years of his Stalinist commitment.[59]
Adam Shatz writes:
There is, to be sure, a simple explanation for the Russian proposal. As Monk notes, "Wittgenstein was perceived as one of the world's greatest philosophers, and it would have been a great coup for any regime to have him. The Soviet authorities probably offered him the job as a courtesy to John Maynard Keynes, who was friendly with Ivan Maiskii, the Russian ambassador." But Cornish thinks such an explanation is far too simplistic.[60]:21
Further, West says, not only that there is "nothing to suggest that the Austrian refugee ever met any of his putative subordinates" but that:
The mechanics of recruitment of each of the Cambridge spies are, following the release of the KGB file in Moscow, now well established. ... So the issue of another individual, a talent spotter remotely directing operations, hardly arises.[61]
Similarly, Paul Monk, suggests that "long-standing disputes about who really recruited Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt and Cairncross" appeared to have been already settled.[62] Like West, he also notes Cornish reached his conclusions without consulting the Soviet archives. West writes that "the KGB files tell quite a different story" but "for the committed conspiracy theorist that, too, is further proof of the plot".[63]
Cornish also attributes Soviet victory at the Battle of Kursk to their having obtained the key to the Enigma code from Alan Turing, via Wittgenstein. Kaveney asserts that "in fact, the crucial information was given to them by John Cairncross" noting that "the Cambridge spy who arguably won the war for Russia never had anything to do with Wittgenstein".[52]
Shatz remarks that "Cornish's book caused a stir in England when it was published" and that "a number of drolly dismissive commentaries ran in The Guardian, The Economist, The New Statesman, and The Times Literary Supplement" but "nobody took the book seriously".[66] Some of the book's claims did however resurface in the last chapter of a 1999 book by philosopher Laurence Goldstein.[67]
Laurence Goldstein
One of the main issues of contention is the claim that Wittgenstein triggered or substantially contributed to Hitler's antisemitism while they were at school together. This is a view that, says Sandgruber, "must be referred to the realm of inventions".[68] But it is one that had some support from Laurence Goldstein. In his Clear and Queer Thinking (1999), Goldstein called Cornish's book important, writing: "it is overwhelmingly probable that Hitler and Wittgenstein did meet, and with dire consequences for the history of the world" (though the evidence is "admittedly circumstantial").[69]:164
Goldstein says that "Cornish suggests, with some plausibility, that at certain points in Mein Kampf where Hitler seems to be raging against Jews in general it is the individual young Ludwig Wittgenstein whom he has in mind" [70] and that Wittgenstein "may have inspired [...] the hatred of Jews which led, ultimately, to the Holocaust".[71] According to Marie McGinn, this is "exactly this sort of sloppy, irresponsible, but 'plausible' style of thought that Wittgenstein's philosophy, by its careful attention to the particular and to not saying more or less than is warranted, is directed against. Goldstein's susceptibility to the charms of such obvious myths makes his hubristic claim that his 'understanding of Wittgenstein's work has improved immeasurably as a result of developing an empathy for the man' offensive as well as risible."[k]
Anthony Palmer notes that "while prepared to grant Ray Monk's view that there is no evidence that Wittgenstein and Hitler had anything to do with one other, this does not prevent Goldstein from speculating that they did". Palmer takes Goldstein to make 'a genuine contribution' in 'the core of the book', but considers it "a pity" that he includes such "fanciful speculations on Wittgenstein the man".[72] Pehrson insists that "history relies on the distinction between 'it might have been' and 'it was so'" and finds that "the threads are too slender, the interpretation too elaborate".[73] Lange suggests anyone who believes that, based on the available evidence, it is undecidable what the “Objects” in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus are ought not, on the other hand, think he is obliged “in the absence of direct evidence ... to try to establish, whether some historical claim or its opposite is likely to be true”.[74][75]
Goldstein suggests that:
After Hitler had established his programme of persecutions, one can easily imagine Wittgenstein being haunted by the thought of what difference it might have made had he taken the trouble to behave less obtrusively and obnoxiously as a schoolboy in Linz.[70]
In response, a review in the journal Philosophy concludes:
It is all too easy to imagine all sorts of things in relation to the Third Reich. Industries are built on such imaginings. Better perhaps to stick to facts ...[67]
Despite such criticisms, Goldstein remained convinced of the book's importance, writing in a 2010 review, that the author Béla Szabados "to his discredit" and "like many of Wittgenstein's admirers, entirely disregards Kimberly Cornish's controversial book" (and its "not yet conclusive evidence").[76]
Others
David G. Stern described Cornish's "account of Wittgenstein's Jewishness as the driving force behind Hitler's anti-Semitism" as "a good example of the dangers of applying the conspiracy theory approach to Wittgenstein".[77]Hans Sluga describes Cornish as a "gossip-writer" and says his book "constructs a completely fantastic narrative".[78]
A leading article in The Economist remarks of Cornish's argument, "The logic is simple: if a claim has not been conclusively refuted, then that is a good reason to believe it. This principle is of little use in the natural sciences, but it works profitable wonders in the science of publishing."[79] That, on the "slender basis" that his "family were Jewish converts to Christianity, and the young philosopher went to the same school as Adolf Hitler", Wittgenstein is deemed "unwittingly responsible for the Holocaust" is, according to an editorial in Philosophy Now, a "tasteless piece of nonsense".[80]
Alan Bennett remarks, "it seems probable that the 'one Jewish boy' mentioned early on in Mein Kampf was, as Cornish asserts, Ludwig Wittgenstein. The trouble is Cornish makes his case in such a tendentious and overheated fashion, and utterly without humour, that he invites scepticism."[81]Peter Bradshaw refers to the book as "far-fetched speculation" that had been "attacked by historians as fiction masquerading as history".[82]
Jane Kramer describes The Jew of Linz as "right-wing idiocy ... a fantasy disguised as a disquisition ... which holds that Hitler murdered six million Jews because of an unfortunate brush with Ludwig Wittgenstein in a Linz Realschule".[83]Glen Newey describes it as a "wacko book".[84] Andreas Kapsner notes that the work "has gained infamy instead of acclaim as a historical work. ... The usually disdainful verdict of the reviewers of the book ... is based on the fact that there is precious little evidence for Cornish's claims".[85]
Selected reviews
"The lack of any logical framework makes the work in this book insupportable. Moreover, it is erroneous to think that tenuous fragments of information taken as a sum total lead to a weighty hypothesis." writes Sophie Hampshire in Leonardo,"Cornish needs to exercise rigorous deductive analysis and to curb his imagination if he is to continue writing on such complex topics."[86]
Paul Monk says: "As I read The Jew of Linz, I found myself wondering how on earth Cornish had confected so strange a piece of work. I found it by turns puzzling, funny, challenging and outrageously nutty... Cornish calls his book 'pioneer detective work', but I think it is really pioneer detective fiction."[62]
Daniel Johnson viewed The Jew of Linz as a "revisionist tract masquerading as psycho-history". He wrote, "Cornish correctly identifies 'the twist of the investigation' as the thesis that 'Nazi metaphysics, as discernible in Hitler's writings... is nothing but Wittgenstein's theory of the mind modified so as to exclude the race of its inventor'. So the Jew of Linz was indirectly responsible, at least in part, for the Holocaust. Cornish tries to deflect the implications of his argument thus: 'Whatever 'the Jews' may have done, nothing humanly justifies what was done to them.' But he then offers 'a thought that might occur to a Hasidic Jew, and that is more fittingly a matter for Jewish, as opposed to gentile, reflection: the very engine that drove Hitler's acquisition of the magical powers that made his ascent and the Holocaust possible was the Wittgenstein Covenant violation'. At this point, the nonsensical shades into the downright sinister.[87]
Sean French wrote in the New Statesman: "There is something heroic about this argument and it would be a good subject for a novel about the dangers of creating theories out of nothing. Vladimir Nabokov should have written it. It is not just that there are weak links in the theory. There are no links in the theory." [49] In the same magazine Roz Kaveney calls it "a stupid and dishonest book", and says "[Cornish's] intention is to claim Wittgenstein for his own brand of contemplative mysticism, which he defines as the great insight that IndoEuropeans (or, as he unregenerately terms them, Aryans) brought to Hinduism and Buddhism."[52]
Antony Flew, though persuaded by Cornish's claims about Wittgenstein's role as a Soviet spymaster, is less impressed by his philosophical claims: "On the very first page of Part III, Mr Cornish explains that the essence of this doctrine was expressed by Emerson in his restatement of the original Aryan doctrine of consciousness: '... the act of seeing and the thing seen, the see-er and the spectacle, the subject and the object is one'. I confess, not very shamefacedly, that confronted with such doctrines I want to quote Groucho Marx: 'It appears absurd. But don't be misled. It is absurd.'"[59]
Boyd Tonkin, remarks that as "a bizarre showcase of the paranoid style in history, The Jew of Linz would be hard to beat ... this sad obsessive fantasy displays the depth to which ideas about the past can sink once you dump structural causes and simply chronicle the random collisions of actors who move the world (as Hitler desired) by Will alone".[88]
German historian Michael Rissmann argues that Cornish overestimates Hitler's intellectual capacities and uses fraudulent talks Hermann Rauschning claims to have had with Hitler to prove Hitler's alleged occultist interest.[89]
In contrast, Douglas Davis of the Jerusalem Post describes the theory that Wittgenstein "could have been the catalyst that drove Hitler" as "persuasively argued".[90]
Notes
↑Though as journalist Carlos Widmann noted, Hitler and the other boy look younger than 14.[3]
↑Cornish, Kimberley. "The boy who haunted Hitler; Book Extract." Sunday Times [London, England], 8 Mar. 1998, p. 1. GaleA59993637 "Ludwig was educated at home by governesses and tutors for his first 14 years, but his father decided in 1904 to send him away ... to a state school in the provinces. ...Wittgenstein arrived in the second term of 1904." cf. Beaney (2023)[5]
↑The same photograph appears in the 1939 illustrated translation of Mein Kampf by James Vincent Murphy which describes it as showing "young Adolf .. as an eleven-year-old schoolboy" with his classmates.[10] It can also be found in a 1953 memoir of the young Hitler by August Kubizek with the caption "ein Bild aus der ersten Klasse der Linzer Realschule" (a picture from the first Class of Realschule in Linz).[11] and its abridged 1954 translation.[12] It also appears in Hitlers Jugend (1956) by Franz Jetzinger, and repeated in the 1958 translation is the information that it shows Hitler in "a photograph of the first class in the Linz Realschule".[13] The latter is directly cited by Cornish for other reasons but he is silent, at least in the English edition, about its use of the photograph and description of it.
↑Hamann also told Der Spiegel it predated 1903 and that the child near Hitler was not Wittgenstein.[16] German government library sources date the photograph to circa 1901, American ones to June 1901.[17][18]
↑The Austrian academic year for secondary education is divided into two semesters and classes usually run from September to June or July.[30]
↑Oddly Cornish renders his (untranslated) quotation from Wuchterl and Hübner (1979) p.28 as 'Ludwig versaumte damals in Linz, wo er die Realschule besuchte, viele Unterrichtsstunden; im zweiten Semester 1903/04 waren es, im Jahre darauf sogar.' i.e. he deletes the numbers of lessons missed by Wittgenstein in the second semester of 1903/1904 and in the following academic year (124 and 425, respectively).[7]
↑Ray Monk erroneously gives the year that Hitler and Wittgenstein overlapped at the Linz Realschule as 1904–1905 but, almost immediately afterwards, correctly states that Wittgenstein was there from 1903 until 1906.[34] Cornish refers to the first claim but not the second.[4]
↑Contrary to some reports, Hitler does not record that he became anti-Semitic because of a Jewish schoolmate in Mein Kampf (or elsewhere).
↑Möcker suggests the passage could just as easily refer to an incident in Steyr where Hitler had a Jewish classmate. ("Die Passage in Mein Kampf kann sich aber genauso gut auf einen Vorfall in Steyr beziehen, wo Hitler in seinem letzten Realschuljahr einen mosaischen Mitschüler ...") [47]
↑As Adam Kirsch notes, Hitler personally authorised the reclassification of the Wittgensteins as Mischlinge (half-Jewish) just a few days before the invasion of Poland.[53] This was done, as Anthony Gottlieb puts it, "on the pretext that their paternal grandfather had been the bastard son of a German prince. Nobody believed this tale, but the arrangement enabled the German Reichsbank to claim all the gold and much of the foreign currency and stocks held in Switzerland by a Wittgenstein trust."[54] In interview, Cornish reports on his requests to the FBI and CIA for access to the files he thinks ought exist relating to these money transfers.[55]
↑Monk, Ray. "A mind on fire: A century alter its publication, Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus remains one of the most radical works of modern philosophy." New Statesman, vol. 150, no. 5637, 17 Sept. 2021, pp. 58 GaleA677790858 "Hitler, who was almost exactly the same age as Wittgenstein ... attended the same school, which in 1998 prompted the writer Kimberley Cornish to speculate that Wittgenstein was the original cause of Hitler's anti-Semitism. But there is no evidence of this or even of them having met."
↑Stieg, Gerald (1998). "Kimberley Cornish: Wittgenstein contre Hitler. Le Juif de Linz, Paris, PUF, 1998". Austriaca: Cahiers universitaires d'information sur l'Autriche (in French). 47 (1). Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre: 211. Loin de moi de mettre en cause les résultats "hautement probables" des laboratoires de la police australienne qui conclue à l'identité du garçon avec Wittgenstein. Il reste néanmoins une énigme historique: selon d'autres sources plus dignes de foi, que M. Cornish ne nie ni ne rectifie, Adolf et Ludwig n'ont pas fréquenté la même classe. Que font-ils donc ensemble sur cette photo?
↑Hitler, Adolf (2011). Mein Kampf: the 1939 illustrated edition. Translated by James Vincent Murphy. Arden, Warwickshire: Coda Books. p.24. ISBN978-1-908538-70-3. WITH HIS CLASSMATES In this group, young Adolf is seen as an eleven-year-old schoolboy at the Royal Staats-Oberrealschule in Linz, on the River Danube. He is standing in the back row on the far right of the picture.
↑Möcker, Hermann (2006). "Hitlers Schülerbiographie – nachgeprüft und berichtigt". In Haidacher, Christoph; Schober, Richard (eds.). Von Stadtstaaten und Imperien (in German). Universitätsverlag Wagner. p.140. ISBN978-3-7030-0420-9. Das Foto lässt sich über den mit abgebildeten Lehrer eindeutig identifizieren: Es handelt sich um den Klassenvorstand der 1.b, Prof. Oskar Langer, der 1884 bis 1901 an der Linzer Realschule wirkte, ab dem folgenden Schuljahr aber deren Lehrkörper nicht mehr angehörte.
↑Maser, Werner (2018) [2004]. "Kimberley Cornishs Spekulationen über Hitlers Schulzeit in Linz und dessen angebliche Beziehung zu dem jüdischen Mitschüler Ludwig Wittgenstein." [Kimberley Cornish's speculations about Hitler's school days in Linz and his alleged relationship with his Jewish classmate Ludwig Wittgenstein]. Fälschung, Dichtung und Wahrheit über Hitler und Stalin (in German) (1. Auflage der Sonderausgabeed.). Rottenburg: Kopp Verlag. p.62. ISBN978-3-86445-607-7.
↑Sandgruber, Roman (2022). Hitler's Father: Hidden Letters: Why the Son Became a Dictator (1sted.). New York: Pen & Sword Books Limited. pp.239–240. ISBN978-1-3990-1928-6. It is not possible for Wittgenstein and Hitler to be seen together in a class photo of 1 B, as the Australian historian Kimberly Cornish tried to prove in a somewhat oblique book, not only because the two were never in the same class, but because Wittgenstein, when the photo was taken in 1901, was not yet at school at all.
↑Bullock, Alan (1962) [1952]. Hitler: A Study In Tyranny. p.26. Adolf left the Linz Realschule in 1904 ... because his record at school was so indifferent that he had to accept a transfer to another school at Steyr..
↑Pugh-Thomas, Claudia "Books: Paperbacks." The_Observer [London, England], 21 Mar. 1999, p. 14. GaleA75991613 "Blatant manipulation of secondary sources and a tendency to hyperbole accentuate the lack of coherent analysis."
↑S, Bodenman, Paul; Education, United States Department of (1981). The Educational System of Austria. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education. p.7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
↑Wuchterl, Kurt; Hübner, Adolf (1979). "Wittgenstein und Wien". Ludwig Wittgenstein in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (in German). Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. p.28. ISBN978-3-499-50275-0. Ludwig versäumte damals in Linz, wo er die Realschule besuchte, viele Unterrichtsstunden; im zweiten Semester 1903/04 waren es 124, im Jahre darauf sogar 425.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
↑McGuinness, Brian (Bernard Francis) (1988). Wittgenstein: a life, Young Ludwig, 1889–1921. Berkeley [etc.]: University of California Press. pp.50-51. ISBN978-0-520-06451-5. In 1903, then, it was decided to send Paul and Ludwig to state schools. Paul went to a high school in Wiener Neustadt, Ludwig to a secondary school in Linz. ... The K.u.k. Realschule in Linz has its small place in history, since Adolf Hitler attended it from 1900 to 1904. Hitler was a few days older than Ludwig, but during the year in which they overlapped he was in the IIIrd class while Ludwig was in the Vth. It seems that he was a year behind and Ludwig a year ahead of the average.
↑Beaney, Michael (2023). "Introduction". Tractatus logico-philosophicus. New York: Oxford University Press. p.xv. ISBN978-0-19-886137-9. Ludwig was educated at home until 1903, when his father changed his views on how his children should be taught after the death of Hans ... and sent Ludwig to a Realschule ... in Linz. (Adolf Hitler, who was just six days older than Wittgenstein, also attended this school from 1900 to 1904, but Hitler was a year behind his year group and Wittgenstein was a year ahead.) He stayed there until 1906..
↑Monk, Ray (1990). Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. Random House. p.15. ISBN978-1-4481-1267-8. Hitler, though almost exactly the same age as Wittgenstein, was two years behind at school. ... There is no evidence that they had anything to do with one another. Wittgenstein spent three years at the school, from 1903 to 1906.
↑Sluga, H. (1996). Ludwig Wittgenstein: Wittgenstein: Life and work, An introduction. In H. D. Sluga & D. G. Stern (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein (p. 4). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. "It is one of the ironies of history that the future philosopher and the future dictator actually attended the same school for a year. There is, however, no evidence that the two got to know each other in that period." ISBN9780521465915
↑Aschheim, Steven E. (2018), "8. Vienna: Harbinger of Creativity and Catastrophe", Fragile Spaces, De Gruyter, p.125, doi:10.1515/9783110596939-008, ISBN978-3-11-059693-9, retrieved 19 February 2026, There is a picture in which Hitler and allegedly Wittgenstein are shown together ... The picture, however, has been reliably dated to 1901, whereas Wittgenstein only enrolled in the Realschule two years later. While the two attended the same school for that limited period there is no evidence that their paths ever crossed, a fact which did not deter Cornish from asserting that the source of Hitler's genocidal anti-Semitism is to be found in his schoolboy spat with Wittgenstein!{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
↑Robinson, Christopher C (2006). "Why Wittgenstein Is Not Conservative: Conventions and Critique". Theory & Event. 9 (3). Notes. doi:10.1353/tae.2006.0037. ISSN1092-311X. xix. There is a book, touted as "historical research", that claims the anti-Semitism leading to the Final Solution was the consequence of a schoolyard squabble between Hitler and Wittgenstein ... This particular line of argument is built upon one historically accurate anecdote: Hitler and Wittgenstein were both born in 1889, and attended the same high school..
↑Mosley, N. (1998, Mar 14). "Books: Root of the nazi party's anti-semitism? Nicholas Mosley disputes claims made for a philosopher's childhood influence on a future dictator, and later role in bringing him down." The Daily TelegraphProQuest316976506
↑Steven Poole "Books: The List." Guardian [London, England], 26 Mar. 1998, p. 14. Gale Academic OneFileGaleA76113370/
12French, Sean. "The idea that Hitler and Wittgenstein were once schoolmates is certainly compelling. But it's hardly the stuff of serious historical conjecture." New Statesman, vol. 127, no. 4376, 13 Mar. 1998, p. 18. GaleA20484978
↑Feld, Michael. "Blame it on Wittgenstein: author claims that Hitler's hatred of a young Jewish philosopher-to-be produced Nazism and the Holocaust: The Jew of Linz: Wittgenstein, Hitler and their secret battle for the mind." Globe & Mail [Toronto, Canada], 1 Aug. 1998 GaleA30208949
↑"Kimberley Cornish, auteur de «Wittgenstein contre Hitler»". Le Monde (in French). 21 October 1998. Archived from the original on 1 March 2026. Retrieved 16 March 2026. Que Wittgenstein ait travaillé pour les Soviétiques est prouvé, de manière incontestable, par le fait qu'une chaire de philosophie lui fut offerte, en 1935, à l'université de Kazan celle-là même où Lénine avait fait ses études. ... Mon livre apporte, au demeurant, bien d'autres preuves du lien qui unissait Wittgenstein aux Soviets. Mais quand il n'y aurait que celle-là, elle suffirait amplement.
↑Clarke, Steve (2002). "Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Theorizing". Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 32 (2): 131. doi:10.1177/004931032002001. ISSN0048-3931. There are large numbers of people who believe that the United States' military has conspired to keep the public uninformed about visits by alien lifeforms (Shermer 1997, 91-93). Others believe that Elvis Presley conspired to fake his own death (Brewer-Giorgio 1988). Some even believe that Ludwig Wittgenstein led a secret double life as a Soviet spymaster (Cornish 1997).
↑Clarke, Steve. "Conspiracy Theories and the Internet: Controlled Demolition and Arrested Development." Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, vol. 4 no. 2, 2007, p. 176, 180. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/228144.
↑Sandgruber, Roman (2022). Hitler's Father: Hidden Letters: Why the Son Became a Dictator (1sted.). New York: Pen & Sword Books Limited. p.239. ISBN978-1-3990-1928-6. that Hitler's anti-Semitism had expressed itself or even ignited through contacts with Jewish classmates has been claimed above all in connection with Ludwig Wittgenstein. However, [...] that his time at secondary school was the reason for Hitler's hostility to Jews must be referred to the realm of inventions.
↑Pehrson, Claude (2001). "All change:". The Philosophers' Magazine (13): 58. doi:10.5840/tpm20011331. ISSN1354-814X. One is surprised, even intrigued, by the evidence that Wittgenstein and Hitler were both at the Realschule in Linz for a year. One is drawn to speculate whether they knew each other and what happened in their encounter. But history relies on the distinction between 'it might have been' and 'it was so' and consequently requires a sense of reality as robust as metaphysics. For this reader, the threads are too slender, the interpretation too elaborate.
↑Lange, Ernst Michael (2000). "Logik und Psychologie in menschlichem Verständnis: Kommentare zu Wittgenstein". Philosophische Rundschau (in German). 47 (3): 205. ISSN0031-8159. Abwegig erscheint mir seine Spekulation über Wittgenstein und Hitler (164-9); wer aus er-wägenswerten Gründen meint, daß aufgrund der verfugbaren Evidenz nicht entschieden werden kann, was die »Gegenstände«in Wittgensteins Tractatus sind (25), der sollte nicht andererseits meinen, als Historiker verpflichtet zu sein »in the absence of direct evidence ... to try to establish,whether some historical claim or its opposite is likely to be true«(164)
↑Hampshire, Sophie. Review of The Jew of Linz, by Kimberly Cornish. Leonardo, vol. 32 no. 3, 1999, p. 232-233. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/607867.
↑Johnson, Daniel. "What didn't happen in Linz," The Sunday Times Literary Supplement, 17 April 1998.
↑Rissmann, Michael. Hitlers Gott. Vorsehungsglaube und Sendungsbewußtsein des deutschen Diktators, Zürich München: Pendo, 2001, p. 95 and footnote 456.
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