Otto Weininger

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Otto Weininger 1903, frontispiece of the 3rd edition of Gender and Character (1904). Heliogravure by Richard Paulussen, Vienna, with a facsimile signature.

Otto Weininger (born April 3, 1880 in Vienna , † October 4, 1903 in Vienna) was an Austrian philosopher . He was best known for his work Gender and Character , which is characterized by anti-Semitic and misogyne theories.

Weininger, of Jewish origin and converted to the Protestant faith , was extremely hostile to Jews in his final years and advocated a mindset that was hostile to women and the body. He developed a philosophical-psychological theory of the sexes, at the center of which is the theory of human bisexuality . Through his suicide in Ludwig van Beethoven's house where he died in Vienna, he became an almost legendary figure, and his book became a bestseller with numerous editions.

Life

Otto Weininger came from a Viennese Jewish family. He was born on April 3, 1880 in Vienna as the son of the goldsmith Leopold Weininger and his wife Adelheid. He attended elementary school and grammar school and was versatile; at the age of sixteen he tried his hand at an etymological essay on Greek idioms found in Homer . In July 1898 Weininger passed the school leaving examination.

Weininger was at the University of Vienna enroll . There he studied philosophy and psychology , but also attended scientific and medical lectures. By the age of eighteen he mastered Greek , Latin , French and English , and later also Spanish and Italian . Passive knowledge of the languages ​​of August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen , i.e. Swedish and Norwegian , was added. He was influenced by the ideas and works of Immanuel Kant and attended meetings of the Philosophical Society, where he heard, among others, the later Wagner son-in-law and radical anti-Semite Houston Stewart Chamberlain . Weininger was considered an outsider and lateral thinker.

In the early summer of 1901 Weininger deposited a manuscript in the Academy of Sciences in Vienna in order to preserve the priority of his ideas : “Eros und Psyche. A biological-psychological study ”, the first version of his later dissertation . In 1902 Weininger presented the extended manuscript to Professors Friedrich Jodl and Laurenz Müllner at the University of Vienna, and it was accepted as a dissertation. Weininger passed the Rigorosum on July 21, 1902 . Shortly after completing his doctorate , Weininger converted to Protestantism .

In the summer of 1902 Weininger traveled to Bayreuth , where he was deeply impressed and heard Richard Wagner's “ Parsifal ”. He considered Wagner to be the “greatest man since Christ” and drew from “Parsifal” the knowledge that “coitus is the payment” “which the man has to pay the woman for her oppression”. Weininger recommended strict abstinence. Via Dresden and Copenhagen he continued his journey to Christiania - today's Oslo - and saw Henrik Ibsen’s redemption drama “ Peer Gynt ” for the first time on a stage . He wrote a long essay on Ibsen's 75th birthday. Ibsen's leitmotif preoccupied him deeply:

"Whoever wants to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel, he will keep it." (According to Mark 8,34-36 NIV 8, 34-36)

In the fall he started looking for a publisher for his dissertation. But Jodl, his doctoral supervisor , did not want to recommend “Eros und Psyche” to any publisher as long as certain intellectual and linguistic excesses were not corrected. Weininger was too proud and impatient to heed the advice. He submitted his manuscript to Sigmund Freud in the hope that it would be printed by the Franz Deuticke publishing house on his recommendation. Freud later reported that Weininger made a great impression on him (he remembered a "serious, beautiful face with a touch of genius "), but that he had severely criticized Weininger's manuscript.

Epitaph

Weininger fell into deep depression . An ominous doppelganger whom Weininger called "the ensemble of all evil qualities of the ego " worried him deeply. A first decision to die matured in him, but after a long, nocturnal conversation with his friend Artur Gerber , he found the time to be “not yet ripe”.

Artur Gerber later recalled: “His appearance was strange. The gaunt figure appeared stiff, lacking all flexibility and grace. The movements, often awkward, clumsy, were mostly abrupt and abrupt. ” And Stefan Zweig described his encounter with Weininger as“ passing an inconspicuous person ”:“ He always looked like after a thirty hour train ride, dirty, tired, wrinkled, went around crooked and embarrassed, as it were pressed against an invisible wall, and the mouth under the thin mustache somehow tortured itself crookedly. His eyes (my friends later told me) should have been beautiful: I never saw them, because he always looked past you (even when I spoke to him, I didn't feel them turned towards me for a second): I only understood all of this later from the irritated feeling of inferiority, the Russian criminal feeling of the self-tormented. ”(Berliner Tagblatt, October 3, 1926).

After months of concentrated work, Gender and Character appeared in June 1903 - a fundamental investigation that wanted to put the “relationship between the sexes” in a “new light” in the Viennese publishing house Braumüller & Co. It was the text of Weininger's doctoral thesis, still pending Three decisive chapters expanded in which Weininger unfolded his tendencies towards anti-Semitism, misogyny and uncontrolled metaphysics : "The essence of women and their meaning in the universe", "Judaism", "Women and humanity".

Weininger spread the sum of his life on 600 pages. It was the construct of misogyny to which Judaism also fell victim, as it "seems to be saturated with femininity ". Weininger saw a threat in both women and Jews: sexuality , guilt , only body and matter , devoid of any spirit , soul or morality . Both oppressed and tormented him inside himself. In his mind, only a genius , the epitome of the masculine, promised salvation . Weininger saw its highest form in the founder of religion .

Otto Weininger on his deathbed.
Schwarzspanierstrasse 15, Weininger's and Beethoven's place of death

The book was not received negatively, but the expected sensation did not materialize. The Leipzig professor Paul Julius Möbius , author of the book "On the physiological nonsense of women", attacked Weininger on charges of plagiarism . Weininger traveled to Italy disappointed and full of agonizing doubts .

Aphorisms about the evil in him and about his secret criminality increased during this time, his need for punishment and atonement grew stronger. "The decent person dies himself when he feels that he is finally getting angry ...", it says in the aphorisms from the estate .

After his return, Weininger spent the last five days with his parents until October 3rd. He handed his father the worn leather case of his glasses and then rented a room in Beethoven's house where he died at Schwarzspanierstrasse 15. He went there on the evening of October 3rd. He wrote two letters that night, one to his father and one to his brother Richard.

On the morning of October 4th, he was found dying in his room. He had shot himself in the heart. Otto Weininger died at half past ten in the morning in the Vienna General Hospital on Alser Strasse.

“In the face of the dead man there was no trace of goodness, no glimmer of holiness and love. Not even pain; just an expression that was completely lacking in the face of the living: Something terrible, something terrifying, that which had put the weapon of death into his hand: the thought of evil. "(Artur Gerber:" Ecce Homo ", 1922)

Otto Weininger was buried in the Protestant cemetery of Matzleinsdorf (group 14, no. 126), where his grave can still be seen today with the inscription written by Leopold Weininger:

“This stone closes the resting place of a young man whose spirit never found rest here. And when he had made known the revelations of himself and those of his soul, he suffered no more from the living. He looked for the death zone of a very great person in the Viennese Black Spaniard House and destroyed his body there. "

In 1957 Otto-Weininger-Gasse in Vienna- Hietzing was named after him.

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Gender and character

Title page of the first edition from 1903

→ Main articles: Gender and character

Gender and character are among the classic documents of Viennese modernism . Similar to Houston Stewart Chamberlain's “Foundations of the 19th Century”, the work appears with a universal claim to interpretation. The focus is on the gender issue.

In his main work Weininger revealed a sharply negative attitude towards everything Jewish and at the same time proved to be an advocate of an attitude of mind that was hostile to women and the body. The values ​​of higher life are just as inaccessible to women as the world of ideas. The more feminine the woman, the more she embodies a purely mindless lust. Only through the man does the woman receive a second-hand life.

Weininger combines this with anti-Semitic views: The Jew, he claims, is “always lustful and horny” because of his “female” essence; "The born communist "; by nature “a matchmaker ” and not actually pious, since he “couldn't believe”. Nevertheless, a small hope dawned. The Jewish non-existence would be a “state before being” and therefore the Jews would have to “fight against themselves, internally defeat Judaism ” in order to become people, that is, men. Jesus Christ too "was a Jew, but only in order to most completely overcome Judaism in himself". Therefore “he is the greatest person” who would have conquered his “special original sin ” - namely to be a Jew - through the “complete negation ” of his being.

Judaism seemed to Weininger steeped in femininity. From this he derived the equation that “the Jew” is a woman. Since both women and Jews are only sexuality, only body and matter, devoid of any spirit, soul or morality and incapable of sexual asceticism, they pose a threat. According to Weininger, society must overcome the feminine elements and adapt to the masculine orientate. He calls for a new humanity that should be constructed on a new masculinity.

Weininger tried his hand at the definition of masculine and feminine against the background of the assumption that there is a proportion of both in all living things. "Female" or "male" never appears in their pure form, but always in a mixture. Weininger placed the masculine at one end of a scale. In the idea of ​​woman and instinct on the one hand, and man and spirit on the other, he assigned the feminine a mental and moral inferiority. Feminine is incapable of any spiritual orientation or creative productivity. He also assigned male and female features to various movements and concepts. For him, Judaism was dominated by women, while Christianity was more masculine.

Weininger's remarks on Judaism form one of the most literarily effective versions of anti-Semitic ideology in the history of modern anti-Semitism. In his description of “the Jew” he chooses categories of extreme negativity. Stereotypical judgments taken from anti-Semitic propaganda are used to mark “Judaism” against Christianity. Weininger's formulations often appeal to anti-Semitic resentments. Judaism is one of the most important disruptive factors in the social order. In contrast, Christianity represents the "absolute negation" of Judaism.

The theory of bisexuality

Weininger built on a long tradition in which androgyny was described as human nature. He himself refers u. a. on Indian myths and Plato's Supper . In the 19th century, theories of physical and mental bisexuality were widespread, Weininger worked out a dedicated and well-founded theory of bisexuality.

For Weininger, bisexuality means that the original disposition of man is bisexual and that what is called man or woman only constitutes the predominance of the male or female element . Percentages of the opposite sex were also maintained in adults to different degrees and the laws of sexual attraction would result from the complementary relationships .

Each individual tries to complete their incomplete percentage of "M" or "W". In an ideal-typical abstraction, this would mean that a whole man (M) and a whole woman (W) always strive for each other or seek their sexual complement. If an individual consists of 3/4 M and 1/4 W, it will be attracted to a partner who is composed of 1/4 M and 3/4 W.

Instead of perceiving the possibility of freedom from gender roles and their constraints, Weininger calls for them to be overcome. Just as the man has to eradicate his parts of "W", the same applies to the woman. The degree of their emancipation depends on the degree of their "M" status. Gender and character reach their peak in the formula: "Woman has no ego, woman is nothing".

Sigmund Freud around 1905, photograph by Ludwig Grillich

In Weininger's last diary entries it says: "The hatred of women is nothing more than the hatred of one's own, not yet overcome sexuality." Under the compulsion of his system , Weininger's feelings of guilt increase to the point of hopelessness.

Three years after Weininger's death, Sigmund Freud was embroiled in a copyright battle. His friend Wilhelm Fließ , ear, nose and throat doctor in Berlin, accused Freud of Fließ's concept of the “unconditional bisexuality of all living beings” through his patient Hermann Swoboda , who was also Weininger's friend - which is also the central starting point in Weininger's Analysis of the sexes represents - to have transmitted.

The thought “permanent and necessary bisexuality of all living beings” (Fließ to Freud on July 26, 1904), that “the living substance in all living beings is male and female” (ibid.), Probably originated from Wilhelm Fliess. Fliess felt that Freud had betrayed the authorship of this idea of ​​'bisexuality', which in 1904 led to an exchange of blows between his former friends. Freud is reluctant to admit to having passed this thought on to others, for example Hermann Swoboda (Freud to Fliess on July 23 and 27, 1904) as a usual part of his therapy. This flash of inspiration apparently reached Otto Weininger through Swoboda, who was then able to successfully market this idea in terms of gender and character . In the discussion with Fliess in 1904, Freud initially kept silent about his meeting with Weininger in 1901. When Freud then - confronted with a statement by Oskar Rie , friend of Freud and brother-in-law of Fliess - confessed to knowledge of his manuscript, he spoke to Fliess on July 27, 1904 meekly from "my own attempt to steal this originality from you". The dispute over the authorship of this wisdom then leads to a violent public exchange of blows between Hermann Swoboda and Sigmund Freud on the one hand, Wilhelm Fließ and Richard Pfennig on the other. The conflict divided the friends.

Impact history

After his suicide, Otto Weininger quickly achieved controversial fame. The psychiatric experts considered him insane, the philosophical world dubious and the literary ingenious. Weininger's reputation spread across Europe. Gender and character became a cult book, the author a legend .

August Strindberg, drawn by Carl Larsson , 1899

Weininger's supporters euphorically affirmed his theory of genius, his theses were on everyone's lips. His anti-feminism was transfigured into the modern characterology of the “new woman”; it influenced an entire generation in their misogynous mood. The author of gender and character became the epitome of misogyny, Jew hater and chastity apologist . Elisabeth Badinter , who investigated misogyny in Europe, wrote: “Even the most misogynistic French writers can never come close to a Schopenhauer, a Nietzsche or a Weininger.” Weininger declared in a voluntary disclosure of his publication gender and character : “To be classified among the anti-feminists , I am not afraid; because I have tried to research the female influence in today's cultural and intellectual life everywhere and to fight it. "

While it took nine years for the 600 copies of the first edition of Sigmund Freud's “Traumdeutung” (published 1900) to be sold, the eleventh edition of Gender and Character was already available in 1909, and twenty-eight more were to follow by 1932. The Braumüller publishing house printed its own advertising brochures with numerous homage, including that of Karl Kraus , the publisher of the torch , who was at the head of the Weininger supporters: "A woman who admirers the arguments of his contempt for women enthusiastically agrees!" Kraus also dedicated an obituary to Weininger in which he wrote:

"This suicide was committed in a fit of mental clarity [...] Weininger had reasons, metaphysical and religious, to throw away life at the beginning of a great career."

The Swedish playwright August Strindberg wrote a euphoric thank you letter to Weininger on July 1, 1903 after his first reading of Gender and Character :

"Finally - to see the problem of women resolved is a relief to me, and so - take away my admiration and my thanks!"

After Weininger's death, Strindberg honored Weininger's memory “as that of a brave male fighter” and also wrote an obituary, which Karl Kraus then printed in the torch :

“Regardless of opinions, the fact is that women are rudimentary men ... it was this well-known secret that Otto Weininger dared to utter; it was this discovery of the essence and nature of women, which he communicated in his male book, and which cost him his life. "

The Leipzig physician Paul Julius Möbius also proved to be spiritually related with his work Sex and Immodesty (Halle 1904).

For the painter and draftsman Alfred Kubin , Weininger was “the greatest person of this century”, as he confided in a letter to his friend, the author Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando . Many of Kubin's early drawings seem like illustrations of Weininger's work: voluptuous, gigantic, spider-like female bodies in which men perish and in which men perish. Kubin's drawing Suicide shows a kinship with Weininger's suicide.

The important thinkers of those days, Georg Simmel , Henri Bergson , Fritz Mauthner , Ernst Mach and Alois Höfler dealt with Weininger's thoughts in colleges and counter-writings. The art collector and writer Gertrude Stein read Weininger in English translation and forced the work on many of her friends, almost as if it were a manual for their own views.

Sigmund Freud mentioned Weininger in a footnote to the "Analysis of the Phobia of a Five-Year-Old Boy" from 1909:

“The castration complex is the deepest unconscious root of anti-Semitism, because even in the nursery the boy hears that something from the Jew's penis - he means a piece of the penis - has been cut off, and this gives him the right to despise the Jew. Even the arrogance towards woman has no stronger unconscious root. Weininger, that highly gifted and sexually disturbed young philosopher who, according to his strange book 'Sex and Character', ended his life by suicide, in a much-noticed chapter showered Jews and women with the same enmity and the same abuse. As a neurotic, Weininger was completely under the control of infantile complexes : the relationship to the castration complex is what the Jew and the woman there have in common. "

Weininger and his theories did not leave their mark on music either: Franz Schreker dealt intensively with Weininger, in his operas he addressed the new psychoanalytic view of Eros and Sexus (about 1918 in Die Gezeichen) and saw people as instinctual beings. Weininger also influenced Alexander Zemlinsky's opera Der Zwerg (1922), whose libretto was written by Georg Klaren , who in 1924 published a monograph on Weininger. Gender and character also impressed Arnold Schönberg and Alban Berg , whose "heart made it pound" and who included numerous passages in a collection of quotations that later found their way into his opera Lulu .

Kurt Tucholsky wrote in 1920 when Weininger's papers appeared on the Weltbühne :

“It is indeed the incarnation of the evil principle and something shocking because something was resisting evil. The band is not a paperback for women. But for men and people who have seen the gold flash in this chaos, in this deep understanding under rocks and floods. 'This is where the great rivers come from, where the depths weep with icy horror.' "

Nobel laureate Elias Canetti reports in his memoir that even twenty years after Weininger's suicide, the Viennese coffee house tables were still discussing the misogynist and anti-Jewish book.

In 1930, Theodor Lessing criticized Weininger's “wildly moved” book and his teaching in a case study in his book The Jewish Self-Hatred in 1930 , “which is nothing but a great natural game of pathological excessiveness and brutal arbitrariness. I mean the crude and rude doctrine of Judaism. ”Lessing writes that it is the key to the tremendous fate of tragic self-hatred and describes Weininger as“ Jewish Oedipus and Heraklite nature rolled into one ”.

Ernst Bloch called Weininger's book “a single anti-utopia of women”, the writer Karl Bleibtreu said that Weininger's death was basically a “mocking rejection of our age” and wrote:

"Philosophical certainty of the immortality of every soul monad can tempt you to seek out the unknown land beyond the threshold of consciousness immediately rather than grapple with our pettiness and baseness for longer."

Until the thirties, new editions of gender and character attested Weininger's success.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein , who gave Weininger his last escort at the Matzleinsdorfer Friedhof as a youth, remained loyal to him for a lifetime. In 1931 he defended him against George Edward Moore :

"It's true, he's cranky, but he's great and cranky ... His huge mistake, that's great."

The Dadaist Walter Serner put Weininger in a row with Shakespeare , Dante or Tolstoy :

"They all and others had let the cross find their way up to the last answer: here it was done."

The Italian novelist Italo Svevo mentions Weininger in his novel Zeno Cosini (1923), as does the cultural historian Oswald Spengler , who described Weininger as a “saint of Judaism” , “whose death in a magical spiritual battle between good and evil one of the most sublime moments later Religiousness is " , and the essayist Friedrich Georg Jünger said:

"In the midst of modernity, whose transcendent emptiness he recognizes, he is the transcendent person who perishes."

Weininger saw his time not only as "the most Jewish, but also the most effeminate of all times". He called it "the time of the most gullible anarchism , the time without a sense of state and law". This alone secures an undisputed place in the run-up to fascism .

“But a new Christianity pushes towards the light towards the new Judaism; humanity waits for the new founder of religion, and the struggle presses for a decision as in year one. Between Judaism and Christianity, between business and culture, between woman and man, between species and personality, between worthlessness and value, between earthly and higher life, between nothingness and godhood, humanity again has a choice. These are the two poles: there is no third kingdom. " (Gender and character)

Nevertheless, National Socialism ended the book's triumphant advance. Gender and character , regardless of content, were banned because of the author's Jewish descent. In the long monologues in the Fuehrer's headquarters in Wolfsschanze , Adolf Hitler said one evening that his Munich friend Dietrich Eckart had assured him that there was only “one decent Jew ... Otto Weininger, who took his own life when he realized the Jew lives from the disintegration of other nationalities . ” (Adolf Hitler, monologues in the Führer Headquarters. 1941–1944, Ed. Werner Lochmann, Hamburg 1980)

In fascist Italy , Sesso e Carattere functioned as a war machine against "Jewish-degenerate" psychoanalysis . At the University of Bologna people read about Weininger at the time of fascism. Julius Evola used Weininger in Metafisica del sesso as a shield against Freud . "Weininger made many things clear to me," said Benito Mussolini to Emil Ludwig .

After that, Weininger fell into oblivion, from which he only occasionally reappeared as a curious product of a lost epoch . A late rediscovery began in Italy in the circle of the nuova destra , and then in France .

Heimito von Doderer praised him in a speech in 1963 as the “glorious” : “Glorious is the epithet of the hero ... At the threshold of this questionable century it stands as a monument to the reality of the spirit ...” (“Speech to Otto Weininger “, Written on All Souls Day 1963).

The Polish Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer called Weininger “crazy and brilliant” in 1970 in A Friend of Kafka .

In 1980 the Munich publishing house Matthes & Seitz published a reprint of gender and character , which was accompanied by numerous reviews . Nike Wagner recognized it as "a document that suggests the emancipation of men even more urgently than that of women."

In 1983, Weininger's Night (original title: The Soul of a Jew ), an internationally successful play by the Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol, premiered, which received numerous awards and was also made into a film in 1989. (see below)

In 1985, Jacques Le Rider published Der Fall Weininger, the most comprehensive biography of Weininger to date, published by the Wiener Löcker Verlag, which comprehensively presented the work and the history of its impact and saw Weininger as a "diagnostic document" for the cultural crisis of the turn of the century . Le Rider:

“Perhaps the pathology of a century could be unveiled here. At Weininger we come across the résumé of the demoniac of this era. "

The cultural critic EM Cioran described Weininger's attraction in a letter to Jacques Le Rider:

"With Weininger I was fascinated by the dizzying exaggerations, the limitlessness of the negation, the rejection of any common sense, the murderous intransigence, the constant search for an absolute point of view, the mania of driving a train of thought until it dissolves itself and that entire building of which he is part destroyed. "

Weininger was in 1985 and in that of Hans Hollein conceived century Vienna exhibition Dream and Reality in Vienna presence (Jacques Le Rider wrote the catalog text "Otto Weininger as anti-Freud") and entered in 1988 in the Hungarian film Az én XX. századom ( My 20th Century , directed by Ildikó Enyedi ), who won an award at the Cannes Film Festival .

Further judgments about Weininger

  • August Strindberg (letter, December 8, 1903): “The strange, enigmatic person, Weininger! Born with guilt like me! For I came into the world with a bad conscience; with fear of everything, with fear of people and life. I now believe that I did evil before I was born. [...] Weininger's fate? Yes, did he reveal the secrets of the gods? Stolen the fire? The air was too thick for him down here, that's why he suffocated? Was this cynical life too cynical for him? That he went away means to me that he had the utmost permission to do so. Otherwise it won't happen. It was written like that. "
  • Artur Gerber: “How strange it must appear to those less familiar with his nature when his hand hesitated to grasp an object and then quickly, even violently, grabbed it. That hand that was tender, almost weak, but mostly clenched into a fist! His clothes, plain and unfashionable, resembled those of other, poor students. He often walked timidly on his way, his chin resting on his chest, and often he rushed quickly there. But no one who ever saw it forgot its face. Distinctive because of the force of the forehead, unique because of the large eyes, whose gaze seemed to gently embrace things, with all the youthful freshness of colors of concentrated power, this face was nevertheless not beautiful, almost ugly. I never saw it laugh, seldom smile. "
Kurt Tucholsky in Paris, 1928
  • Kurt Tucholsky in his review of Artur Gerber's paperback (1920): “If Otto Weininger hadn't had the bad luck to fall into the hands of an entire Viennese generation of cafés who wrote him out, misunderstood him, copied badly and corrupted him in general - who knows, how he would stand in our memory today! Now, as Karl Kraus has shown to Heine, every writer is also to blame for the consequences that he causes: but even if Weininger has black spots where the maggots could attach themselves - he did not deserve all of them.
Artur Gerber has edited Weininger's unpublished notes (published by EP Tal & Co. in Leipzig and Vienna) and a few letters from him with a humanly beautiful preface. The foreword contains very interesting data personally - nothing was known of a duel by Weininger - and how tormented this twenty-two-year-old! 'Gender and Character' is not written in ink. What a monk! And what a person! Gerber rightly highlights this one from the notes, which shows where the storm might have driven him had he stayed alive: 'How can I ultimately blame women for waiting for the man? The man doesn't want anything else but her. There is no man who would not be happy if he had sexual effects on a woman. The hatred of women is nothing else than the hatred of one's own, not yet overcome sexuality. ' Some notes are difficult, others are not at all understandable - but all of them show how this head bored into things, ate into them; it is fermenting and flowing, nothing is finished yet - and everything is held by an almost superhuman knowledge. (The bibliography on 'Gender and Character' alone is a miracle.) The letters don't give the stranger too much. They are infinitely fine on a personal level, debate a lot - and ultimately show how he stood where everyone of his stature stood: alone.
But the best thing about the book is a picture. You photographed Otto Weininger when he was dead. The body sits in a flowered chair, the eyes are closed. Gerber saw him like this: 'In the face of the dead there was no trace of goodness to be seen, no glimmer of holiness and love. Not even pain, just an expression that had been completely lacking in the face of the living: something terrible, something terrifying, that which had pressed the weapon of death into his hand: the thought of evil. ' The picture has features of the piercing, brooding Holofernes - not of the giant. It is indeed the incarnation of the evil principle and something shocking because something has resisted evil. The band is not a paperback for women. But for men and people who have seen the gold flash in this chaos, in this deep understanding under rocks and floods. 'This is where the great rivers come from, where the depths weep with icy horror.' "
  • Friedrich Georg Jünger: “Weininger was not an anti-Semite in the hateful sense of this word. He was far removed from the raw, vulgar hatred of women and Jews. He was not a perpetrator, not a violent person, yes, he was so incapable of an injurious act - with the exception of himself - that when he dispatched a papyrus plant he remarked that he had not torn it off but found it torn off. The extent of his attacks corresponds to the access he feels exposed to. His polemic is an act of self-defense and self-defense. Without fear, the pervasive acumen of its combinations is inconceivable, and this fear grows until it becomes despair. "
  • Jean Améry : “Imagine now the 23 year old Otto Weininger, who stares straight ahead and in his deadly aroused brain only the woman he despises without being able to become a master of his desire for him; who only ever sees the Jew , the most disgraceful, lowest of all creatures, the Jew who is himself. Perhaps he felt as if he were in a narrow room, the walls of which are getting closer and closer together. In the process, his head became bigger, like an inflatable balloon, and at the same time thinner. The head hits against all four inexorably approaching walls, every touch hurts and echoes like the beat of a kettledrum. In the end, the Weininger skull, running in all directions, drums a frenzied vortex - until he does. Until it shatters or 'hits the wall', say those who stand outside the room and watch it. (…) He saw and heard, I think, admittedly speculating, but with all the strength of a compelling heart, only without interruption: Woman, Jew, I, away with everything. "

Weininger's Night (play)

→ Main article: Weininger's night

The Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol

The Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol wrote an internationally successful play about Weininger: The Soul of a Jew ( Weininger's Night ). The play takes place in Weininger's last night in Beethoven's house where he died , the scenes sketch Weininger's life in retrospect of the last seconds of complete loneliness, at the moment of the shot, in the moment between life and death: the figures of childhood, father and mother, appear before Weininger's eyes, the companions of his student days, friends, teachers and lovers and the idols and competitors of the spiritual world, Sigmund Freud, August Strindberg and the critic Paul Julius Möbius, to drive him into the arms of death in a murderous dance. The master of ceremonies for this spectacular chase is Weininger's doppelganger (played by a woman), who confronts his alter ego with the unsolvable problem of self-discovery and ultimately goes down with him.

It premiered in 1982 at the Haifa Municipal Theater and was invited to the opening of the Edinburgh Festival , where it won numerous awards. Paulus Manker staged an extended version in 1988 at the Vienna Volkstheater , which was also made into a film in 1989.

“If you look at Weininger's case, including the historical one, then you understand that there is no hatred without a strong element of self-hatred . And that leads to self-destruction . - I think that if the Germans understand what happened to them during the Nazi era, then they should realize that through the persecution of the Jews they also destroyed themselves. " (Author Joshua Sobol on the play)

Fonts

  • Eros and Psyche. Biological-psychological study. Manuscript deposited at the Academy of Sciences in Vienna on June 4, 1901 to preserve priority, sealed letter No. 376
  • To the theory of life. Manuscript deposited in the Academy of Sciences in Vienna on April 1, 1902 to preserve priority, sealed letter No. 390
  • Difference between I-people and world people. Excerpts from "On the theory of life", with a foreword by Hannelore Rodlauer: On the discovery of unknown manuscripts from Weininger's student days (in: Weininger's night), Europa Verlag, Vienna 1988
  • Eros and Psyche. Studies and Letters 1899–1902 (Ed. Hannelore Rodlauer), session reports of the philosophical-historical class of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1990
  • About Eros and Psyche. Dissertation. (lost), Vienna 1902
  • Gender and character. A principal study , Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna and Leipzig 1903; 10th edition, 1908 in archive.org , 11th edition, 1909 in archive.org ; Reprint (in the appendix: Weininger's diary, letters from August Strindberg and contributions from today's perspective), Matthes & Seitz , Munich 1980 & 1997, ISBN 3-88221-312-4 .
  • About the Last Things (with a biographical preface by Dr. Moriz Rappaport). Braumüller, Vienna 1907; Reprint (in the appendix: Theodor Lessing, Otto Weininger), Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88221-320-5 .
  • Love and woman. An attempt to publish the magazine “Ver!”, Vienna, 1921
  • Paperback and letters to a friend (Ed. By Artur Gerber, with a foreword "ECCE HOMO!" By Artur Gerber and letters from August Strindberg to the editor), EP Tal & Co., Leipzig / Vienna 1919; Reprinted by Matthes & Seitz, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88221-312-4 .
  • Letter to Karl Kraus from June 20, 1903. In: Die Fackel. No. 568-571, May 1921
  • Verses. In: Die Fackel No. 613–621, page 158, Vienna 1923
  • Genius and Crime (initiated and selected by Walther Schneider), Stiasny-Bücherei Volume 123, Stiasny Verlag, Graz and Vienna 1962

literature

Essays

Monographs

  • Ferdinand Probst : The Otto Weininger case. A psychiatric study (borderline issues of nervous and mental life. Individual presentations for educated people of all classes; Volume 31). Bergmann Publishing House, Wiesbaden 1904.
  • Egon Friedell : Draft of a review on gender and character . 1904 (Vienna City and State Library HIN 196.936)
  • Emil Lucka : Otto Weininger. His work and his personality. 6th edition. Schuster & Löffler, Vienna 1921.
  • Wilhelm Fließ : On our own behalf. Against Otto Weininger and Hermann Swoboda . Goldschmidt publishing house, Berlin 1906.
  • Robert Saudek (ed.): Thoughts on gender problems from Otto Weininger. 4th edition. Engel & Toeche, Berlin 1907.
  • Carl Dallago : Otto Weininger and his work . Brenner publishing house, Innsbruck 1912.
  • Bruno Sturm: Against Weininger. An attempt to solve the moral problem . Braunmüller publishing house, Vienna 1912.
  • Hermann Swoboda : Otto Weininger's death. Supplemented by some previously unpublished letters from Weininger. 2nd Edition. Publisher H. Heller, Vienna 1923.
  • David Abrahamsen: The Mind and Death of a Genius . Columbia University Press, New York 1946.
  • Franz Theodor Csokor : Otto Weininger. For his 80th birthday. In: word in time. Volume 6 (1960).
  • Rodney Campbell (Ed.): Richard Weininger, "Exciting Years" . Exposition Press, New York 1978 (EA Hicksville, NY 1972).
  • Jacques Le Rider and Norbert Leser (Eds.): Otto Weininger. Work and effect (sources and studies on the Austrian intellectual history of the 19th and 20th centuries; Volume 5). Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1984, ISBN 3-215-05651-8 .
  • Jacques Le Rider : The Otto Weininger Case. Roots of anti-feminism and anti-Semitism . Löcker Verlag, Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-85409-054-4 .
  • Chandak Sengoopta: Otto Weininger. Sex, Science, and Self in Imperial Vienna . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2000, ISBN 0-226-74867-7 .
  • David G. Stern, Béla Szabados (Ed.): Wittgenstein Reads Weininger . Cambridge University Press, New York 2004, ISBN 0-521-53260-4 .
  • Amália Kerekes, Alexandra Millner, Magdolna Orosz, Katalin Teller (eds.): More or Weininger. A text offensive from Austria / Hungary . Braumüller, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7003-1526-0 .
  • Jörg Zittlau : Reason and Temptation. The erotic nihilism of Otto Weininger. Zenon Verlag, Düsseldorf 1990, ISBN 3-925790-15-2 .
  • Waltraud Hirsch: An immodest characterology. Spiritual difference between Judaism and Christianity. Otto Weininger's doctrine of specific character (Tübingen Contributions to Religious Studies; Volume 3). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-631-31129-X (also dissertation, University of Tübingen 1995).

Literary processing

  • Miklós Hernádi: Weininger's end. A detective novel (Otto, 1990). Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-8218-4097-8 ( The Other Library ; Volume 97; from the Hungarian by Erika Bollweg).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Riedl: Woman, Jew, I - Away with everything! , Die Zeit No. 50, Hamburg, December 6, 1985; also in: Weiningers Nacht, Europa Verlag, Vienna 1988.
  2. ↑ Nike Wagner : Gender and Character , Die Zeit No. 48, Hamburg, November 21, 1980.
  3. ^ Heinz-Jürgen Voss : Making Sex Revisited: Deconstruction of gender from a biological-medical perspective. Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2010.
  4. ^ Nike Wagner : Gender and Character, unabridged in: Weiningers Nacht, Europa Verlag, Vienna 1988.
  5. ^ Élisabeth Badinter: XY, the identity of the man . Piper, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-492-03634-1 , p. 29.
  6. ↑ Quoted from: Jacques Le Rider : The case of Otto Weininger. Roots of anti-feminism and anti-Semitism . Löcker, Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-85409-054-4 , p. 42.
  7. ↑ Quoted in the foreword by Artur Gerber to the second edition of Gender and Character , November 1903.
  8. ↑ Artur Gerber (ed.): Paperback and letters to a friend . EP Tal & Co, Leipzig and Vienna 1920.
  9. ^ Kurt Tucholsky: A paperback. first published in: Die Weltbühne , February 5, 1920; see. Kurt Tucholsky: Collected Works . Edited by Mary Gerold-Tucholsky, Fritz J. Raddatz. Volume I 1907-1924. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1960, p. 594 f.
  10. ^ Friedrich Georg Jünger: Otto Weininger. In: Crossroads. Quarterly for skeptical thinking. Edited by Friedrich Georg Jünger and Max Himmelheber. Volume 2 (1972/72), pp. 190-210; Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1972; Special print on theabsolute.net .
  11. ↑ Jean Améry: Put your hand on yourself. Discourse on suicide. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1976, p. 15 f.
  12. ↑ Joshua Sobol , Weininger's Night. Edited by Paulus Manker , with essays by Joachim Riedl and Nike Wagner and texts by Jean Amery, Sigmund Freud, Artur Gerber, Adolf Hitler , Emil Lucka , Karl Lueger , Jonny Moser, Jacques Le Rider, Hannelore Rodlauer, Felix Salten , Arthur Schopenhauer , August Strindberg and Stefan Zweig . In the appendix: Unpublished texts by Otto Weininger, illustrations by Alfred Kubin , Europa Verlag, Vienna 1988.

Web links

Weininger's texts

Wikisource: Otto Weininger  - Sources and full texts
Wikiquote: Otto Weininger  - Quotes
Wikiversity: Weininger, Otto: Gender and Character (1903)  - course materials

Secondary literature

  • Carl Dallago: Weininger and his work (print on demand)
  • Volker Depkat: Review by Chandak Sengoopta: Otto Weininger: Sex, Science, and Self in Imperial Vienna . University of Chicago Press, Chicago - London 2000, in: H-Ideas, November 2001.
  • Ursula Homann: Otto Weininger: Jew hater or saint?
  • Andrea Kottow: The sick man . On the dichotomies disease / health and femininity / masculinity in texts around 1900, dissertation FU Berlin 2004 (PDF file)
  • Kevin Solway: Website on Weininger with a collection of links and English translations a. a. von Weininger's aphorisms
  • Theodor Lessing: Otto Weininger , chapter of The Jewish self-hatred , 1930.
personal data
SURNAME Weininger, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH 4th October 1903
Place of death Vienna