Nicole Immler

The Wittgensteins – A Meta-Biographical Approach

Das Familiengedächtnis der Wittgensteins (2011) one could consider as a meta-biography; defined as being less concerned with authenticating a particular narrative about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein than with ‘the wider questions of textuality, memorialisation, life-course models, the uses of the past, and the narrative interpretation of its traces’ (Ní Dhúill 2020). Thematizing the making of biography and the interface between autobiographical and biographical texts, the book shows the changing fashions of (auto)biographical approaches in Wittgenstein Studies and a certain blindness to the various topoi and clichés pre-formatting autobiographical as biographical texts. It is also a relational biography about Wittgenstein and his oldest sister Hermine Wittgenstein; a sort double biography. The study examines Ludwig’s autobiographical reflections (and their links with his philosophical thoughts) next to the family chronicle/Familienerinnerungen of his sister Hermine (a crucial text in the development of a Wittgenstein family memory). Making use of the concept family memory this biography puts relationships instead of exceptionalism and disconnectedness (a key feature of well-known biographies by Ray Monk or Alexander Waugh) centre place. Therewith my study is part of a shift in the field of Wittgenstein biography from the exceptional (topoi ‘genius’) towards the relational, foregrounding the contextual, the dialogue, the friendship. Contextualising my approach in more recent developments in Wittgenstein-biography and biography theory in general, I want to discuss what we gain from this meta-biographical as well as relational approach for rethinking Wittgenstein and (auto)biographical research.

Nicole L. Immler is Associated Professor for History and Kulturwissenschaften at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht, the Netherlands. She worked at the Wittgenstein Archiv in Cambridge, finishing in 2005 her dissertation on Das Familiengedächtnis der Wittgensteins. As Post-doc at the Austrian Academy of Sciences she examined how victims of National Socialism (such as the Wittgensteins) experienced Austria’s restitution policies. As Marie Curie Fellow at the NIOD in Amsterdam she moved into Transitional Justice, exploring the Narratives of (In)Justice in post-colonial settings; the role of language in doing justice. Her current project on Dialogics of Justice explores with an interdisciplinary team civil court cases on colonial violence, failed peace missions, institutional abuse and ecocide. Publications: Das Familiengedächtnis der Wittgensteins (2011); ‘The making of…’ Genie: Wittgenstein & Mozart. Biographien, ihre Mythen und wem sie nützen (2009).