Haidbauer incident

Haidbauer incident
Wittgenstein (front, seventh right) with his pupils, taken in Puchberg am Schneeberg, spring 1923
DateApril 1926
LocationOtterthal, Austria
ParticipantsLudwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
Josef Haidbauer (c. 1915–c. 1929)
InquiriesProceedings began at the district court in Gloggnitz on 17 May 1926; outcome unknown

The Haidbauer incident, known in Austria as der Vorfall Haidbauer, took place in April 1926 when Josef Haidbauer, an 11-year-old schoolboy in Otterthal, Austria, reportedly collapsed unconscious after being hit on the head during a class by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.[1]

Wittgenstein taught philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1929, but a decade earlier had trained as a school teacher in Austria. It was while working at a village elementary school that the Haidbauer incident took place.[2]

The boy's collapse was reported to the police, and Wittgenstein was summoned to appear in court in Gloggnitz on 17 May 1926, where the judge ordered a psychiatric report.[3] According to the philosopher William Warren Bartley, the hearing exonerated Wittgenstein,[2] although the Wittgenstein biographer Alexander Waugh writes that the outcome of the case was never published. Waugh argues that Wittgenstein's family may have had a hand in making the issue disappear.[4]

Haidbauer was not the only pupil Wittgenstein was alleged to have struck. Ten years later, while working at Cambridge, he returned to the villages, to a mixed reception, to ask for the children's forgiveness.[5]

  1. ^ Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Free Press, 1990, p. 232.
  2. ^ a b W.W. Bartley, III, Wittgenstein, Open Court, 1994 [1973], pp. 107ff.
  3. ^ Alexander Waugh, The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War, Random House of Canada, 2010, p. 149.
  4. ^ Waugh, The House of Wittgenstein, p. 162.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Monk370-372 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).