Someone once said to me, "Siblings are your proof," meaning that your brothers and sisters are witnesses to what happened in your childhood. You know, the ones who will back up the story as the kids saw it, not the parents' version. The ones who know what really happened on that vacation, or that family party.
I agreed, but that's because I've always gotten along with my sisters. I imagine that there must be many families where siblings aren't proof, but rather those liars who don't really remember what happened, or who are just trying to make me look bad, or are sucking up to mom and dad. No matter which it is, though--love, hate, resentment, jealousy--you're tired to your siblings like you are to no one else, even your parents.
Alexander Waugh's "The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War" tells the story of the Wittgenstein family (hence the title), meaning the philosopher Ludwig and his three sisters and four brothers. One brother definitely committed suicide,while two others died in murky ways that suggest suicide; in fact, there were an inordinate number of suicides in the family. If you ever had any doubt that that turn of mind is hereditary, this book might sway you to the yes side.
So that left five children to grow up in fin de siecle Austria, come of age during World War I, endure political upheaval, and escape the Nazis: Hermine, the oldest daughter, a self-sacrificing spinster who stayed at home and took care of her parents; Helene, the most normal (if you can say that), who married a regular kind of guy and had several children; imperious, busybody Margaret, known as Gretl, who married a temperamental American of dubious background (he called himself "Dr.," but wasn't, claimed to be a member of high society, but wasn't, and so on); Paul, a pianist who lost one arm during WW I, retaught himself to play with only his left arm, and spent his life commissioning piano concertos for the left hand, and playing them to various degrees of acclaim; and Ludwig, the philosopher who eschewed the family fortune to work variously as a gardener, teacher, and other menial jobs.
That family fortune thing is pretty big. It seems like the majority of stories about famous people begin with them struggling in poverty and despair and then clawing their ways to the top. The Wittgensteins, though, were fabulously wealthy. The money gave them the freedom to do what they want and be as fractious as they wanted; it saved their lives when the Third Reich wanted to get them to sign over a large portion of the money to the government, and realized that executing the sisters who remained in Germany wouldn't exactly persuade expatriate Paul to give in and release the money held in Swiss banks. It's always said that money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you something like freedom; the Wittgensteins were a fractious bunch with a fortune at hand, so one can hardly imagine what they would have been like without the money that gave them the ability to do whatever they wanted to do.
(Yes, you could argue that maybe being poor and forced to work for a living would have given them more peace, but I am feeling particularly poor right now and don't want to hear that it's good for me.)
(I should also note at this point that it's been a few weeks since I finished this book, and therefore I can't get terribly specific. I can give you, I think, mostly more impressions than a particularly detailed, precise, academic review (like I ever do that anyway)).
"The House of Wittgenstein" feels somewhat like two types of books. The first is more or less a straightforward history of the Wittgenstein family and biography of each child, with some gaining more attention than others. These are the stories of a group of wealthy, intellectual, talented, sometimes difficult young people who seemed both close and distant from each other--as if they were always telling one another, "You are wearing out my last nerve--but I wouldn't want anyone else in the world wearing out that nerve." There is a lot of attention paid to Gretl, the youngest daughter, probably because she was the most-traveled, cosmopolitan, and involved in the others' affairs; it didn't hurt that she left a son to tell her story (actually she had another son by birth plus two adopted ones, but they all drifted apart). Hermine left a memoir that provides one side of the family story that shows Hermine observed a lot more than she let on, and probably ignored a great deal more. Ludwig's life has already been well-chronicled, and he gets a fair account here.
The star of this book is Paul, the pianist who wouldn't let his war injury thwart him. Paul served in the Austrian army and was captured when he was wounded on the battlefield, his arm amputated almost immediately after he was taken. Afterwards he was shuttled from prison camp to hospital to camp, all in horrific conditions, while his family tried to get him included in a prisoner exchange. Almost immediately after realizing what had happened to him, he began to practice playing only with his left hand, his fingers tapping on imaginary keys on any surface. Waugh's depiction of the life of a prisoner during World War I is simple and spare, but with enough detail that I wondered how anyone could have survived it, let alone any man who was trying to recover from a wound or illness. If those didn't kill a prisoner, then I don't know how despair didn't. Reading this made me question what would have happened to me in such a situation. Would I have been one of the ones who hung on through some lucky quirk of physical health and mental strength? Or would I have been one of those who gave up? I wish I could guarantee that the answer would have been the former. I have not been tested enough and worry about what I would have to fight with if I was.
Paul Wittgenstein
Waugh describes Paul as a charismatic, attractive man who even when he was at his demanding worst, still managed to gather admirers, and it must be something of this that makes him dominate the pages of the book. In addition to his personal charm (or whatever you'd like to call it) he also had a lot of money, and therefore could afford to be a jerk when necessary. After his release as part of a prisoner exchange, he sought out music for one-handed pianists and began to give concerts, determined to be accepted as an artist andnot a figure of sympathy who gets extra points just for trying. When the war ended, he began to seek out composers to create original pieces for him. He paid enough money that no one could turn him down, but he infuriated almost every one of these eminent musicians with his insistence on re-orchestrating the music and changing passages. When the composers complained, he said he knew best and they could more or less take it or leave it. Most of them reluctantly accepted his changes (more often than not he was wrong and muddled the composer's work) and then carefully studied their contracts to see how long it would be before Paul lost the eclusive right to perform the material and they could put it back to the intended way and let other, more tractable pianists play the pieces. Despite Paul's sometimes brusque and irascible nature, though, it seems that people who knew him loved him, and when he turned to teaching, he won new admirers in his students (perhaps too much--he did get one girl half his age pregnant and kept her as his mistress, unknown to his family, for a number of years, before helping her emigrate, whereupon he eventually married her).
The second part of the book, though, becomes something of a World War II thriller. The Wittgensteins, who came in various political stripes, from conservative Paul to radical Ludwig, were all Austrian patriots at heart and didn't care much for the annexation of Austria to Germany. They thought it would all blow over, though, and didn't see how it should affect their lives that much. However, it was revealed that their grandmother (or great-grandmother? help, don't have the book with me...) was Jewish. The family regarded itself as Christians, although not particularly devoted ones, and never practiced Judaism or considered themselves Jewish. Now, though, the Wittgensteins, who had been one of the richest, freest, most important families in Vienna, were suddenly amongst the scorned and powerless.
Ludwig had long ago settled in England. Paul found himself doubly in trouble because he, now considered a Jew, had had children with an Aryan woman. He found a way to slip out of the country, and eventually got his mistress to follow. After a period in Switzerland, they settled in the US. As for the Wittgenstein sisters, they became embroiled in an ongoing battle to get their status changed, trying desperately to prove that the side of the family that supposedly had Jewish blood actually were the product of a farm girl and a local Christian lord, not her Jewish husband. The sisters were spent time in prison, even Gretl, who usually traveled freely, due to the passport she'd picked up when she married an American. A lengthy legal fight ensued, with the Nazis trying to get the Wittgensteins--mostly Paul, who had the family fortune in Swiss bank accounts--to sign the majority of the money over to the Reich. In the end, after many angry encounters between lawyers on both sides, some of the money was signed over and the family was permanently divided, most never seeing each other again. They cared about each other, but had always found it hard to be together, now even more so. Left on their own, they all came up with their own versions of the family story.
Waugh is an extremely entertaining writer with an eye (or ear) for just the right anecdote or quote to sum up a relationship, feeling, or event. His writing often has a sly, almost gossipy tone that is a lot of fun to read, as if you were sitting next to him at a dinner party and he said, "Let me tell you about these people I used to know." Most of the book breezed by, although I did get a little lost in the sections detailing the legal battle over the family money and the demands of the Reich. But that's probably more on me than him.
Reading this book made me think more about the topic of siblings, something that always fascinated me. When I meet people, I always like to know whether they have brothers and sisters, and if they get along. You can learn a lot about a person that way. Like I always say I can tell a man who has a sister, because he treats women a lot better and is more at ease with them. I don't have any brothers, but often secretly wished I did. I wonder, if I had had at least one, if I would have been different and my life different. My long lost one, I'm sure you would have changed me somehow.
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