The Jew of Linz

by Kimberley Cornish

Offering the theory that Hitler and Wittgenstein were in the same class at school, this book proposes that the latter was the specific target of Hitler's bile in Mein Kampf, in which he describes a Jew at school, and that Hitler's beliefs about Jews came from the experience of meeting Wittgenstein at this time. It also argues that Wittgenstein, a secret Stalinist, had his revenge on Hitler by recruiting Blunt, Philby and other spies at Cambridge, who undermined the German cause by passing military information to the Russians.

Genres: History, Biography

298 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am rather amazed that I re-read this thoroughly weird book, possibly because I was seduced by its first chapters. Essentially it postulates (on slim evidence) that the course of history was changed by boyhood contact in Linz between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Adolf Hitler.

The seduction of the first chapters is that Cornish really has done some interesting and quite deep research on connections between Hitler's world and Wittgenstein's world which are suggestive of many things that could be possible.

It could be that their boyhood contact did trigger different interpretations of Schopenhauer that became world-changing. It could be that Hitler's antisemitism was also triggered by Wittgenstein? It could be that Wittgenstein was an agent of the Comintern? And so forth.

His points may not be proven but they are not entirely implausible - given the evidence he provides - but then he ruins the glamour of it all by over-claiming, reading far too much into probable coincidences. And it really proves little if students' rooms were very close together at Trinity.

The book then, about half way through, switches to meet another agenda entirely following a rather intelligent disquisition on Schopenhauer, Collingwood, Wittgenstein and magical thinking that slides back and forth into the more doubtful territory of Hitler's alleged occultism.

There is merit in exploring the influence of Schopenhauer on both Wittgenstein's more mystical aspects and certainly on Hitler's thought which was uncomfortably often far more sophisticated than our politically necessary demonisation of him ever permits.

But Cornish then, as before, overplays his hand with a rather dubious, if well argued in technical terms, attempt to rescue the 'no ownership' theory of mind (the base of a great deal of 'spiritual' and New Age nonsense) from Hitler and restore it as some kind of truth.

To be frank, the last half of the book was just downright boring - academic philosophy based on self-evidently false assumptions about the mind and rather disconnected from the previous half which was a series of well researched if over-played historical researches.

Equally, frankly, it being the re-read, I simply skipped most of this second half because it soon became pretty clear that it was extended special pleading for nonsense. If anything, the net result was to diminish my previous appreciation of Wittgenstein (I never liked Schopenhauer).

This book is two decades old. Since then, we have detected a strong revival of interest in Schopenhauer's Idealism amongst gloomy bourgeois nihilists as the hippy model of universal consciousness (always nonsense) transforms into despair at the world (equally nonsense).

The turn back to Schopenhauer is an essentialist pose - a fear of engaging with what Nietzsche actually said against him and contra-Wagner - but it is one that suits the new breed of traditionalists and Kali Yuga Rightists who prefer Lovecraft to life.

This book is not quite of that ilk. It is hard to gauge Cornish's politics though he clearly condemns antisemitism and does not like communism. But the fluffy Eastern approach to Mind that underpins the book seems directed at resisting reality by reinventing it, a very bourgeois pose.

My resistance to all this is a matter of personality (I never deny this) but I see those who insist on the 'no ownership' theory of Mind as also representative of a personality type - so desperate for meaning in the universe that they will jump through hoops to get the one they need.

So, all in all, despite the useful and suggestive research on the worlds of Hitler and Wittgenstein and the thoughtful references on magical thinking, this cannot take up space in my library any longer. 'Spiritual writing' is always going to be dead weight when space is scarce.

[Matthew W · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ambitious philosophical speculative work on the possible influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein on a very young Adolf Hitler. I can honestly say that I have never read a book that attempts to do what "The Jew of Linz" attempts, which alone makes it worth reading. Just expect the book to go all over the place with analysis of the philosophies of Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg, The Upanishads, Richard Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ludwig Wittgenstein (the most analyzed, of course), etc. Also expect a somewhat in depth look at the history of rich "aristocratic" Jews from Austria and Germany, Jews that Richard Wagner (the mystical father of National Socialism) hated with a passion. Apparently many of these Jewish families (who usually ended up converting to Catholicism) were very anti-Semitic in their views, including Ludwig Wittgenstein, who I must say has some of the best arguments against the Jews that I have ever read. One could say, "The Jew of Linz" is a work of historical philosophical Philo-Semitism.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t think I have ever been so fascinatingly absorbed by a book at its beginning, but hated with a grand passion at its conclusion as with this speculative non-fiction piece of trash.
The first two chapters are magnificent in their speculation: 1) the ‘ Jew of Linz’ that Hitler wrote about, in a few sentences in Mein Kampf, as the One who opened his eyes to what a ‘Jew’ is leading to his anti-semitism, was, according to Cornish, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
2) Wittgenstein, hating Hitler during WWII, became a Stalinist and was the ‘handler’ of the British/Soviet Spy-ring of Blunt and Philby, et al.
There is zero evidence supporting either of the above claims by Cornish (other than Hitler and Wittgenstein attending the same school as youngsters), but his narrative speculation is gripping and engrossing and you want to believe (as one does in that speculative masterpiece, HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL).
The rest of the book weirdly ignores the above narrative and instead delves into magic and the (sigh) philosophical theory of non-ownership of Mind, to come to the convoluting conclusion that Wittgenstein’s philosophy led Hitler to the Holocaust. ( deep sigh)
If Wittgenstein’s family had not converted and had remained as followers of Judaism, which is ideologically opposed to non-ownership of Mind, then the Holocaust would not have happened. Says Cornish.
Offensive, says I.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 2 out of 5]

Witzige Idee, muss man zugeben. Hitler und Wittgenstein kannten sich aus Realschultagen, und L hat A den Judenhass beigebnracht, weil beide eigentlich ähnliche Interessen hatten, Musik, Architektur, Malerei. Aber das Photo ist schon aussagekräftig. Absurd wird das Ganze, als Wittgenstein auch noch als sowjetischer Topagent enttarnt wird. Obwohl auch hier: wirklich merkwürdig, dass er einen Ruf nach Kasan erhalten hat.

[Schopfi · Rating 2 out of 5]

a sensationalist narrative held together by a carefully comprised sellection of circumstantial evidence. I personally have no problem with that. The problem I have is the topic of the holocaust being molded into a form that is in some aspects very problematic: 1) great men. history as a space created by the few and experienced (passively) by the many. to say "no hitler no holocaust" as if it was caused only by hitler.
2) a stench of teleology, especially in the conclusio.

[Gary Power · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply astonishing is the history of Wittgenstein and Hitler. With Wittgenstein having an annoying habit of correcting people and Hitler hating being corrected so much he once said that the composer was wrong when someone pulled him up about a mistake in his singing. Whether Wittgenstein set Hitler on course to being a Jew hater is not proved by this book but it certainly is suggested in an almost eerily believable fashion.