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   Source:  New Statesman (1996), March 13, 1998 v127 n4376 p18(1).
    Title:  The idea that Hitler and Wittgenstein were once schoolmates
            is certainly compelling. But it's hardly the stuff of
            serious historical conjecture.
   Author: Sean French

 Abstract: Kimberley Cornish reports in the book 'The Jew of Linz'
           that Adolf Hitler was once the schoolmate of the Jewish
           leader Ludwig Wittgenstein. The author theorizes that their
           interaction may have played a role in Hitler's attitude
           toward Jews. However, the arguments are not supported by
           evidence.
 Subjects:  Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) - Portrayals, depictions, etc.
   People:  Cornish, Kimberley - Criticism, interpretation, etc.
            Hitler, Adolf - Biography
            Wittgenstein, Ludwig - Biography

Full Text COPYRIGHT 1998 Statesman and Nation Publishing Company Ltd.
(UK)

I once wrote a diary in which, in some foolishly generous mood, I made
available various ideas for people to use as the basis of a film or
play, on the model of Tom Stoppard's Travesties, which was inspired by
the fact that James Joyce, Lenin and the Dadaist Tristan Tzara were in
Zurich at the same time during the first world war.

I mentioned that Adolf Hitler and Ludwig Wittgenstein were, briefly,
pupils together at the Realschule in Linz. The idea that one of the
great representatives of German-Jewish culture should have brushed
shoulders in a school corridor with its ultimate destroyer seemed
irresistible to me. Now Kimberley Cornish has written about the
"encounter" in The Jew of Linz, the argument of which was summarised
in this week's Sunday Times.

Consider the following extraordinary paragraph: "If I am right,
Wittgenstein's complex, prickly personality was a contributory cause
of the events that climaxed in the attempted extermination of European
Jewry. Hitler, with his own complex, prickly personality, was repelled
by Wittgenstein and came to attribute what he saw as Wittgenstein's
particular personality defects to Jews in general."

In his excellent biography of Wittgenstein Ray Monk mentions the
connection as follows: "Hitler, though almost exactly the same age as
Wittgenstein, was two years behind at school. They overlapped for only
the year 1904-05, before Hitler was forced to leave because of his
poor record. There is no evidence that they had anything to do with
one another."

So what has Cornish come up with to establish a connection? The "real
clue" comes from a mention in Mein Kampf of a Jewish boy at the school
whom "we did not particularly trust. Various experiences had led us to
doubt his discretion."

Cornish connects this with a diary of the time in which Wittgenstein
wrote of a "talk about confessions with my colleagues", which he takes
to be evidence that Wittgenstein may have informed on his classmates.
And he connects that to an entry in the second volume of Mein Kampf in
which Hitler equates "a boy who snitches on his comrades" with
treason.

The "real denouement" occurs in Cambridge in the thirties. Cornish
suggests that Wittgenstein may have been the "recruiter who created
the Soviet spy ring in Cambridge", enlisting Kim Philby, Guy Burgess,
Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt. After all, he was gay, a member of
Trinity and the elite intellectual society, the Apostles, a
sympathiser with Stalin, a charismatic teacher. He therefore played a
major role in helping the Soviet Union in the years before and during
the war, and "thus" the Jew who played the decisive role in inspiring
the Holocaust also played the decisive role in bringing it to an end.

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. Nabokov should have written it. It is not just that there are
weak links in the theory. There are no links in the theory. 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, no evidence that Hitler's
remarks on snitching related to specific incidents at the Linz
Realschule, no evidence that Wittgenstein informed on his fellow
pupils.

Nevertheless the process is strangely hypnotic. Wittgenstein had
perfect pitch and used to correct singers who were out of tune.
Cornish then cites an anecdote from later years when Hitler was
whistling a tune: "When a secretary had the temerity to suggest that
he had made a mistake in the melody, the Fuhrer was furious, shouting,
'I don't have it wrong. It's the composer who made a mistake.'"

Imagine young Hitler's feelings when Wittgenstein corrected his
whistling in the school corridor. QED. Strange things happen to your
mind when you sit for years alone working on a book.

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