Wittgenstein's copy, signed

[Wittgenstein, Ludwig]. Böhme, Jakob. Schriften. Ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Hans Kayser. Mit der Biographie Böhmes von Abraham von Franckenberg und dem Kurzen Auszug Friedrich Christoph Oetingers.

€ 15,000.00

Ludwig Wittgenstein's copy of Jakob Böhme's Selected Works, a Christmas gift in 1931 from his nephew Thomas Stonborough, with the philosopher's signed ownership inscription in pencil to the front free endpaper: "Von Tommy zu Weihnachten 1931 / Ludwig Wittgenstein".

Having been fascinated by the mystics in his youth, but for many years not worked on them, Wittgenstein, in his Cambridge lectures from 1931 to the middle of the decade, revived certain aspects of the "Teutonick philosophy" that Böhme represents, finding resonance with many of his young disciples. For the academic year 1932, Wittgenstein had been granted leave from his official teaching engagements to concentrate on his own work. He did, however, give private unpaid discussion classes for interested students in his rooms at Whewells Court. These classes became famous, and the lectures that he gave that year even more so.

The German mystic Jacob Böhme (1575-1624) had almost no education and made his living as a shoemaker (for which he was called "the shoemaker of Görlitz"), but soon developed an interest in the works of Paracelsus, the Kabbala, and the Hermetic tradition. He is most famous for his unfinished work "Aurora" (also contained in the present volume), which attracted a circle of followers. He clashed with the church on several occasions, was banned from writing and later banished from his home. He became hugely influential within German Romanticism, and Franz von Baader, Hegel, and Schelling were all influenced by him. He has been given philosophical revivals at frequent intervals through Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger, and Buber. Wittgenstein in particular was fascinated by the tradition of the mystics, going back to Hildegard von Bingen, Nicolaus of Kues, Paracelsus, and probably most importantly and through him the teachings of Giordano Bruno.

Wittgenstein's nephew Thomas Humphrey Stonborough (1906-86), first son of his sister Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein, had studied psychology under Charlotte Bühler, through whom he may have encountered the writings of Böhme. He became a silent partner of the New York bank Shields & Co. and for a while assistant at Columbia University. He had variously involved with his famous uncle and later inherited the Wittgenstein House in Vienna's Kundmanngasse, which he sold in 1968.