The
contrast
be-
tween this seclusive side of his nature and the remarkable feel-
ing he revealed in his art and in his music was sharp.
tween this seclusive side of his nature and the remarkable feel-
ing he revealed in his art and in his music was sharp.
Weininger - 1946 - Mind and Death of a Genius
Its title
was Sex and Character (Geschlecht und Character). 1 Wei-
ninger was severely attacked for Sex and Character. Yet most
of those who berated him made little or no effort to penetrate
into the personality behind the book. The work won little
recognition and perhaps would have been overlooked had not
a certain event taken place. On an autumn evening in 1903,
'This, the only one of Weininger's works to be translated into English, is
called throughout by its English title. The page citations are, however, to pages
in the German original.
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? 4 Introduction
Weininger shot himself to death in the house where, seventy-
six years earlier, Beethoven had died. This was the sensational
incident which made people curious about him.
In the succeeding years interest in Otto Weininger's work
spread. By 1925 Sex and Character had been published in
twenty-six printings. Shortly after his death his friend Rappa-
port brought out (in 1907) Vber die letzten Dinge (Con-
cerning the Last Things), a collection of essays, discourses,
and remarks about sadism, masochism, the psychology of mur-
der, criminal psychology, and animal psychology. Many years
later (in 1919) his third and final book, Taschenbuch und
Briefe an einem Freund (Notebook and Letters to a Friend),
was published in Vienna through the agency of another friend,
Arthur Gerber. 2
In the years following the publication of Sex and Character,
views of Weininger and his book were sharply divided. Note-
worthy were the opinions of George Wirth, who called the
book "an unparalleled crime against humanity," 3 and that of
August Strindberg, who enthusiastically wrote, "Here is the
man who has solved the most difficult of all problems. " The
main reason for this clash of opinion lies in the violent and
complex nature of Otto Weininger himself as it is reflected in
his books. Did he have an abnormal mind that produced nor-
mal thoughts or a normal mind that conceived abnormal ideas?
That question, the puzzle of Otto Weininger's personality, is
the subject of the present book.
His twisted personality created a contradictory work re-
flecting his inner struggle. In the first period of his life he
seemed to be quite comfortable within the scope of empirical
science, but later profound doubt of the truth of this method
2 Gerber had had the Taschenbuch and several letters for a long time before
1919, when he gave the manuscript to Oskar Ewald (whose real name was
Oskar Friedlander), another of Otto's friends. The partly illegible stenographic
notations, notes, and letters in this collection were deciphered with great diffi-
culty. Throughout the text references are made to Vber die letzten Dinge as
U. L. D. ; references are made to the later work simply as Taschenbuch.
1 G. Wirth, Ways to Love, p. 219, as quoted in Ivan Bloch, The Sexual Life
of Our Time (London, 1940), p. 17.
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? Introduction
5
continually harassed him and he finally became a skeptic
throughout, involved in his own world. His intellectual de-
velopment was too rapid and went at a pace too fast for his
argumentative abilities, and there did not remain room enough
for his creative, collective strength. He quickly worked out a
solution for his problems, but because of his nature and his
youth, he lacked confidence, and he was forced to look back-
ward even when marching forward.
Weininger's nature forced his mind on long expeditions
into psychology, biology, literature, and philosophy, journeys
from which he never returned. Dissatisfied with scientific re-
search, discontent with his own restless nature, he went
farther and farther along the paths of speculative thought un-
til he was, at the end, quite alone.
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? Shadows of
the Past
It would be hard to find another man who showed even in
mild form the characteristics and the mental processes that
Otto Weininger revealed in the extreme. His personality was
manifold, twisted, fantastic. To understand him and interpret
his mental gyrations is a most difficult task. His outward life
could not reflect the versatility, the sharp lights and the deep
shadows, of his mental life.
In order to understand the structure of Otto Weininger's
personality, it is necessary first to trace the inclinations that
were instruments in shaping his attitudes and reactions, both
sane and morbid, and to study his background. First, there is
the history of his immediate family.
Otto Weininger's father was born January 31, 1854, in
Vienna. His father, Solomon Weininger, was a merchant from
Wradisch, in the county of Neutra, Hungary; his mother, whose
maiden name was Karolina Blau, was born in Nikolsburg,
Southern Moravia. Both of them were Jewish (Letter XIV). 1
Leopold was the eldest--and apparently the only talented one
--of their five or six children (Letters X, XVI). His younger
brother, Friedrich, is said to have been "handsome, charming,
frivolous"; after suddenly deserting his wife and home because
of another woman, he lived through the rest of his life with-
out concerning himself again about his wife or their two chil-
dren (Letter XV). For this Leopold Weininger never for-
gave him; when Friedrich, on his deathbed, asked his brother
to come to see him, Leopold refused--thus showing the rigid
moral attitude typical of him.
1 These letters are to be found in the Appendix. I have assigned numbers to
them for easier reference. Much of the material on the family has been drawn
from an eighteen-page manuscript report of the Reichskriminal-polizeiamt of
Vienna, which I received in 1939.
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? LEOPOLD WEININGER
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? Shadows of the Past 7
Otto Weininger's maternal grandfather was Josef Frey--a
dealer in scrap iron. He was born at Kaladey, Bohemia, in 1829
and was married to Elonore Magdalene Griinwald, who was
born at Szenitz, Hungary, in 1837 and died in 1874. Josef
Frey carried on his trade in secondhand goods until 1879.
After that time he appeared on the official records as unem-
ployed. He died in 1901 of arteriosclerosis. He was the father
of three children, of whom the oldest, Adelheid (Adele), was
Otto's mother. She was born in Vienna on April 10,1857. '^ne
one fact we know of her early life is the death of her mother
when still quite young. Her family were orderly Jewish peo-
ple, although her brother Armand was reported to be not too
honest. The police reported that he was living in the ill-famed
Massenquartier II, Navarnegasse No. 45, "a favorite residence
of vagrants and tramps. " "He certainly," as the report said,
"did not have a clean record. "
Otto's father did not have a formal education. At the age
of twenty-two he was a foreign-language correspondent with
the banking house of Elias. When he married, he started to
work at handicraft, first in chinaware and later as a goldsmith.
He and Adelheid Frey were married April 7, 1878, in Vienna
with Jewish ceremonies. Eleven years later, on March 14,1889,
Leopold Weininger became an Austrian citizen.
The marriage was blessed with seven children, all born in
Vienna: Helene, born November 1, 1878; Otto, born April 3,
1880; Franz, born July 22, 1881; Rosa, born May 25, 1883;
Richard, born July 27, 1887; Mathilde, born April 18, 1893;
and Karoline, born November 8, 1898. Otto was thus the
second child and the eldest son.
It appears that Leopold Weininger's personality was like
that of his son Otto. This resemblance was important and was,
as we shall see, deeply significant in understanding Otto's per-
sonality. A description of the elder Weininger appeared in the
newspaper Der Tag (Vienna, January 3, 1923), called "Erin-
nerung an Leopold Weininger" (Memoir of Leopold Wei-
ninger) and written by Emil Lucka, a close friend of the family.
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? Shadows of the Past
In this article Lucka makes the startling statement that Leo-
pold Weininger was "one of the last of the great goldsmiths of
Benvenuto Cellini's family. " This he elaborated in a letter
which he wrote in reply to my request for information. "I
meant," he said, "that the goldsmith's art, which is closely
connected with the name of Cellini, slowly vanished, and that
Leopold Weininger was one of the last--in Austria perhaps
the last--masters of this noble art" (Letter VII).
Because of his artistic skill as a goldsmith, Leopold Wein-
inger's works were valued through Europe and America. A
great many of his creations--statuettes and ornate cups of
gold, platinum, and enamel--were sought by museums. He
himself year after year was called to England and France and
Italy as an expert in the valuation of rare pieces of art.
As his artistic sense was given expression in his craft, so it
also found an outlet in music. Leopold Weininger, besides
having extraordinary musical talents himself, loved music
deeply. Several times he visited Bayreuth to hear Wagner's
operas. In a typical letter to his daughter Rosa he wrote: "Of
course, I have heard The Flying Dutchman played many times,
but I have never before experienced the toneful effects I heard
today. It was quite indescribable. I felt intoxicated when I
left the Playhouse (Festspielhaus), and only the worldly glit-
ter of the dressed-up crowd leaving the theater made me un-
fortunately, painfully sober. When The Dutchman affects
me in this way, what would I not feel listening to Parsifal,
the playing of which I heard on the train (What a prosaic
place! ) without any prospect of ever reaching a complete un-
derstanding of this wonderful masterpiece. . . . To me Rich-
ard Wagner will always be, above everyone else, the great tone
poet! " (Letter XXIV. )
Leopold Weininger was in ecstasy when he did hear Parsifal
in Bayreuth. Later in the same letter he writes: "This is after
Parsifal. If perhaps I wrote a little too much of The Dutch-
man, I am now so overwhelmed I can hardly say a word. I
have been thrilled by the countless grandiose beauties of the
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? Shadows of the Past 9
music and the performance of every single artist. In the first
and third acts there are long, wonderful passages. I have the
feeling of being a cheat to be part of a modern audience, sit-
ting in a comfortable seat and letting others play for me, when
the only thing one should do is kneel down. . . . I go to bed,
but for me that does not mean to sleep. "
Not only was Leopold Weininger gifted in his own art and
in music. He also had a talent for languages. Thanks to this
and to his extensive travels, he was a master of a number of
foreign tongues. And yet this highly gifted man, with all his
sensitivity of mind, was strict, uncompromisingly strict, with
his children. His daughter says, "As a father peerless, never to
be equaled, he cared with the greatest devotion for the lives and
souls of his children. . . . He was loved and feared by us all"
(Letter XIV). Thus, he was austere in his discipline, rigid in
his criticism, and "divine" in his goodness. One may guess
that his marriage was not a happy one, and this supposition is
borne out by his daughter's statement, "His marriage . . .
was not very successful . . . he made enormous demands
upon his wife and children" (Letter VI).
This very austerity one could recognize in his appearance.
"His cheekbones protruded in an energetic way. . . . His lips
hesitated before opening to let the words pass through, and
his chin jutted forward, edged, nearly cruel," says Lucka in
his memoir.
The elder Weininger had a sensitive mind, full of passion
and feeling, but his exterior was closed, and Lucka was led
to remark that there was something gloomy and secretive in
his Renaissance face, as if "he bore a secret in his soul. He
would often talk, but always a small smile covered the suffer-
ing within him, giving the impression that only with the great-
est exertion of will power was it forced back. " Leopold
Weininger disguised his inner life. He withdrew from the
outside world into the shy and lonely seclusion of his own
thoughts.
There was, then, an ambiguity in his nature. He was re-
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? 10
Shadows of the Past
served and inaccessible and sensitive as well.
The contrast be-
tween this seclusive side of his nature and the remarkable feel-
ing he revealed in his art and in his music was sharp. To judge
from his letters and from his creations, he was as much an
argumentative artist as a sensitive craftsman. He expressed
his true nature in his art; here he opened his heart and soul.
As he grew older he turned his back to the world more and
more. His age had "gone mad," he said. After World War I
he became less and less attracted to his art, although numer-
ous requests for his work came from England and the United
States. His loss of interest seemed to be due, Lucka says, to
"a gloom which eventually penetrated his whole personality. "
In his last years he suffered from cancer of the bladder and
underwent surgery. Yet, notwithstanding his pain, he con-
stantly inquired about concerts and, according to Lucka,
listened to them even up to his last moment. He died April 1,
1922. 2
In existing literature about Otto Weininger, nothing is writ-
ten about his mother. Otto never mentioned her in his letters.
She was an ordinary woman--a good, simple woman, as her
daughter described her--but she was beautiful, if we may
judge from her photograph. She also had a gift for languages,
but in the main she was "only a housewife and mother" (Let-
ter XIV). She was overshadowed by the stronger personality
of her husband. It is not difficult to see why no such deep
understanding developed between mother and son as between
the boy and his father. For several years Adelheid Weininger
was ill with tuberculosis, from which she ultimately died. 3
Meager as this information is, it imparts a picture of Otto's
mother as a typical domestic woman who looked after her
children and tended to the cooking and housework so far as
2 According to the official records, his death was not registered in Der Israelitische
Kultusgemeinde in Vienna. In the records it is told that his body was taken
to Munich, and there is reason to believe that he had left the Jewish religion
earlier.
>> The information given comes from her daughter, from official records, and
from letters sent me by Otto Weininger's friends.
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? Shadows of the Past
11
her illness permitted her to do so. Otto never spoke directly
of her, but it is possible that she in many ways formed the
psychological basis for the type "mother" described in Sex
and Character as opposed to "prostitute. " He writes, among
other things: "A mother takes care that the children she has
borne have enough food. Look only at the dignified resolution
and the grave zeal of the good housewife and mother slaughter-
ing one chicken after another. The mother cannot stand to
throw away any food, no matter how little it be. Her object
in life is the preservation of the race. " If we keep in mind
the influence of the home upon one's pattern of behavior, it
is reasonable to conclude that the type he is describing is his
own mother.
From a psychopathological point of view, Otto's brother
Richard is the most interesting member of the family. He was
born near Vienna in 1887, passed through the regular schools,
then through a commercial school, before he became a mer-
chant. 4 The only court notice of him records that once in
1910 he was fined 10. 00 Kronen ($2. 50) for infraction of
Paragraph 459 of the Criminal Code--"action or omission
through which a danger of fire may arise. " It seems that
Richard had an unusual personality structure resembling the
introverted, inaccessible personality of his father and that of
his brother Otto. His sister describes him as follows: "He is
very handsome and very gifted, and he is wealthy. He is an
Epicurean with a feminine disposition, vain, very hard, and a
lady's man. . . . It is a principle with him not to see his fam-
ily. When he was young he caused many difficulties for my
father. He is the sort of man who will always influence every-
4 His first wife denies that he went through any university and says that he
therefore had no right to the title he is sometimes given in the official records.
During his first year as a merchant he made a small fortune. He entered the
Evangelical church in 1906 and married a Jewish woman in 1912. In Novem-
ber, 1922, he divorced his first wife and married soon afterward (March, 1923),
once again to a Jew. Rosa Weininger states that both his wives were wealthy
when he married them (Letter XI) and that he is now living in the United
States (Letter X). The official documents report him as living in England.
He has declined to make himself known.
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? 12
Shadows of the Past
body. He has a great sense of beauty. He would walk over
your dead body, but he may also give shelter to a beggar when
he is in a good mood and when he is admired. He definitely
is not an ordinary man" (Letter X). And further: "He will
show goodness when least expected. He is hungry for sensa-
tion, audience, applause. " (Letter XI. )
As we shall see later, there is an amazing resemblance be-
tween Otto and Richard in their seeking after sensation, in
their egocentricity and craving for applause, in their feminine
vanity, and in their looks.
As to Otto Weininger's sisters, Mathilde and Karoline, they
both became Christians. The latter was the more gifted, espe-
cially in languages. A description of her character when she
was sixteen years old has been found in a letter from Leopold
Weininger: "I have never seen Karoline moved or touched,
not to mention shocked. When I have scolded her for this
over and over again, as well as for her complete lack of any
sense of gratitude, she has tried to pretend an indifference
which contradicts her inner feeling. I can add no word to
alleviate this sentence. I suppose she cannot help it. God
probably created her that way. "
Up to this time practically nothing has been known of
Otto's early youth. He himself never mentioned his childhood.
Yet the information in our possession gives us a glimpse or
two into the home where Otto grew up.
Documents in the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde of Vienna
indicate that Otto was born in Vienna on April 3, 1880, after
a normal pregnancy and without artificial help. His Hebrew
name was Schlomoh. The date of his circumcision and the
name of the physician performing it are also recorded. Very
early he showed a rare mental maturity, and at the age of four-
teen months he spoke quite distinctly.
In his early years he was apparently very much influenced
by his father. And another factor entered--his home environ-
ment, which seems to have affected him deeply, however un-
conscious he may have been of its force at the start of his life.
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? Shadows of the Past 13
Undoubtedly serious conflicts took place between his parents.
This fact is brought out by the following remarks of his sister:
"The married life of my parents was not peaceful. That was
due to my father's strong personality, his sharp criticism, and
his great demands upon his family. We children let Mother
spoil us, we confided in her, but to us Father was the supreme
judge.
"Today, as a mature woman, I judge my parents' life in
quite a different light. I think that because of her many chil-
dren, because of her wonderful but difficult husband, my
mother had a hard task which she could manage only with the
greatest mental and physical difficulty. She was ill and suffered
for years from bronchio-catarrh. I am certain of one thing: with
an average, ordinary husband, my mother would undoubtedly
have been a happy wife. . . . He [my father] loved her dearly
as a woman, and she loved him, only him. But there were
storms in their life which darkened our youth" (Letter XXIII).
Undoubtedly the disharmony between his parents impressed
young Otto deeply. Having a highly gifted but severe father
and a mother of quite ordinary talents affected his sensitive
mind. The close mental relationship with his father naturally
led Otto to side with him in making demands on his mother.
Even more. Apparently Otto tried to identify himself with his
father and developed hostility--unconscious though it may
have been--toward his mother. There can be little doubt that
his father's severity to his mother was instrumental in forming
the devastating view of women Otto later held.
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? Towards the
Future
During the years 1890-1898 Otto Weininger attended
elementary and secondary school, from which he was
graduated on July 14,1898. He was a good student, with keen
curiosity and an avid thirst for knowledge. Otto was familiar
with philosophical and historical literature utterly unknown
to his comrades, and he was the best of his class in history and
languages. His gift for the latter had developed to such an ex-
tent that at the age of eighteen he knew Latin and Greek, spoke
French, English, and Italian well, and was fluent in Spanish
and Norwegian. At this time, perhaps as a result of his father's
influence, he took no particular interest in science or mathe-
matics. His grades were excellent, except for those in deport-
ment, which were poor because he would not bow to the
ordinary school routine. He always did his school work in his
own way, rarely in the way his teachers wished. He ignored
them and busied himself with his own books or engaged in
writing on his own account. Since he was occupied with his
private affairs, he certainly was not talkative as a student,
although it is claimed that he took an eager part in discussions.
The picture we can thus form of the young Otto is that of
a boy far ahead of his schoolmates in knowledge; he was self-
confident, independent. His desire for, and accumulation of,
learning made him critical of his teachers, and he was able to
put embarrassing questions to them. He followed his own
path.
This feeling of independence was partly at least a product
of his upbringing and of the close relationship between the
boy and his father. Their mutual ties were strong, and Otto
continued to be much more attached to his father than to
his mother. His friend Lucka said in Der Tag: "I think Otto
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? Towards the Future 15
received a greater heritage from his father. He loved him more
than he did his mother; the deep, dark inner life was common
to them. "
His son's resemblance to him also led Leopold Weininger
to take a keener interest in Otto's upbringing. He watched the
development of the boy and the young man carefully. He
noted and encouraged his son's talent for acquiring knowl-
edge. The father, with his philological interests, fostered Otto's
special ability at learning languages. He also shared his musical
experiences with all his children, but especially with his favor-
ite, Otto. Very early he had introduced his son to concerts
and had familiarized him with Wagner and Mozart. When
Otto was six his father took him to hear Der Freischiitz, and
at the age of eight he heard Die Meistersinger for the first time
(Letter VI). Otto may almost be said to have "inherited" his
romantic love for Wagner's music. So much was this true that
Wagner became the most beloved composer in the last years
of the young man's life. The influence of the father upon the
son was significantly strong.
This relationship affected the boy's education and may be
one reason why he tended to live in the realm of his books
and his own thoughts. As his father said: "There was one thing
Otto would never share with anyone--his books. He lived in
complete isolation with them. " 1 We might well expect to
find Otto later searching, as he did, through books for some-
thing of which he was not yet aware. We may assume that
even as a young boy his mental preoccupation was such that
he had no time for playing games with his comrades.
He was bound to feel a sentimental affection for his father.
Mingled with this affection was fear (which was shared by
the other children) because of his father's uncompromising
and rigid principles. "In his home and with his numerous chil-
dren, he (Leopold Weininger) maintained severe discipline. " 2
The family conflict which had affected the child continued
1 Ferdinand Probst, Der Fall Otto Weininger (in Grenzfragen des Nerven-
und Seelenlebens, Wiesbaden, 1904), p. 5. Later cited in the text as Der Fall.
* Paul Biro, Die Sittlichkeitsmetapnysik Otto Weiningers (Vienna, 1927).
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? Towards the Future
to influence the proud, shy boy. The patriarchal father stood
with authority above his wife and children. Since Otto was
sensitive, he could not have been unaware of his mother's suf-
fering, and she, for her part, must have sought sympathy from
the children. Thus, while he was seeking to identify himself
with his father, he very well may also have identified himself
with the suffering of his mother--an identification he repudi-
ated throughout his life.
To this family combination Otto found it difficult to adapt
himself. Even if he sought identification with his father, he
also to some extent resented and feared paternal authority.
Even if he sympathized with his mother, he also resented her.
His situation (Oedipus situation) in the home seemed complex.
Usually a child feels such contradictory feelings of love and
hate toward one or the other parent, and while he is young the
contrary feelings may simply exist side by side for the time
being. Yet as the ego of the boy gradually strengthens, the op-
posite strivings increase to the point of conflict. The boy then
begins to understand that against his identification-love for his
father and his love for his mother is pitted resentment of his
father (positive Oedipus complex). In Otto's case, however,
the home environment fostered identification-love for his
father and strong resentment of his mother, and thus he ap-
parently had a negative Oedipus complex. The conscious or
unconscious hatred of his mother, which seems to have domi-
nated his infantile sexual period, persisted in his boyhood and
manhood. He did not succeed in overcoming his infantile
sexual drives, which were later detrimental to him.
Homeless in his own home, Otto sought even more the refuge
of his books. His highly individual talents and his developing
personality also made Otto go his own way. Intellectually far
more mature than his companions, he naturally found it diffi-
cult to adapt himself to his surroundings and his schoolmates.
Even if his talents and his knowledge acted as incentive and
inspiration, he must also have felt them as a burden and a
hindrance to his happiness at school. His awakening ego made
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was Sex and Character (Geschlecht und Character). 1 Wei-
ninger was severely attacked for Sex and Character. Yet most
of those who berated him made little or no effort to penetrate
into the personality behind the book. The work won little
recognition and perhaps would have been overlooked had not
a certain event taken place. On an autumn evening in 1903,
'This, the only one of Weininger's works to be translated into English, is
called throughout by its English title. The page citations are, however, to pages
in the German original.
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? 4 Introduction
Weininger shot himself to death in the house where, seventy-
six years earlier, Beethoven had died. This was the sensational
incident which made people curious about him.
In the succeeding years interest in Otto Weininger's work
spread. By 1925 Sex and Character had been published in
twenty-six printings. Shortly after his death his friend Rappa-
port brought out (in 1907) Vber die letzten Dinge (Con-
cerning the Last Things), a collection of essays, discourses,
and remarks about sadism, masochism, the psychology of mur-
der, criminal psychology, and animal psychology. Many years
later (in 1919) his third and final book, Taschenbuch und
Briefe an einem Freund (Notebook and Letters to a Friend),
was published in Vienna through the agency of another friend,
Arthur Gerber. 2
In the years following the publication of Sex and Character,
views of Weininger and his book were sharply divided. Note-
worthy were the opinions of George Wirth, who called the
book "an unparalleled crime against humanity," 3 and that of
August Strindberg, who enthusiastically wrote, "Here is the
man who has solved the most difficult of all problems. " The
main reason for this clash of opinion lies in the violent and
complex nature of Otto Weininger himself as it is reflected in
his books. Did he have an abnormal mind that produced nor-
mal thoughts or a normal mind that conceived abnormal ideas?
That question, the puzzle of Otto Weininger's personality, is
the subject of the present book.
His twisted personality created a contradictory work re-
flecting his inner struggle. In the first period of his life he
seemed to be quite comfortable within the scope of empirical
science, but later profound doubt of the truth of this method
2 Gerber had had the Taschenbuch and several letters for a long time before
1919, when he gave the manuscript to Oskar Ewald (whose real name was
Oskar Friedlander), another of Otto's friends. The partly illegible stenographic
notations, notes, and letters in this collection were deciphered with great diffi-
culty. Throughout the text references are made to Vber die letzten Dinge as
U. L. D. ; references are made to the later work simply as Taschenbuch.
1 G. Wirth, Ways to Love, p. 219, as quoted in Ivan Bloch, The Sexual Life
of Our Time (London, 1940), p. 17.
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? Introduction
5
continually harassed him and he finally became a skeptic
throughout, involved in his own world. His intellectual de-
velopment was too rapid and went at a pace too fast for his
argumentative abilities, and there did not remain room enough
for his creative, collective strength. He quickly worked out a
solution for his problems, but because of his nature and his
youth, he lacked confidence, and he was forced to look back-
ward even when marching forward.
Weininger's nature forced his mind on long expeditions
into psychology, biology, literature, and philosophy, journeys
from which he never returned. Dissatisfied with scientific re-
search, discontent with his own restless nature, he went
farther and farther along the paths of speculative thought un-
til he was, at the end, quite alone.
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? Shadows of
the Past
It would be hard to find another man who showed even in
mild form the characteristics and the mental processes that
Otto Weininger revealed in the extreme. His personality was
manifold, twisted, fantastic. To understand him and interpret
his mental gyrations is a most difficult task. His outward life
could not reflect the versatility, the sharp lights and the deep
shadows, of his mental life.
In order to understand the structure of Otto Weininger's
personality, it is necessary first to trace the inclinations that
were instruments in shaping his attitudes and reactions, both
sane and morbid, and to study his background. First, there is
the history of his immediate family.
Otto Weininger's father was born January 31, 1854, in
Vienna. His father, Solomon Weininger, was a merchant from
Wradisch, in the county of Neutra, Hungary; his mother, whose
maiden name was Karolina Blau, was born in Nikolsburg,
Southern Moravia. Both of them were Jewish (Letter XIV). 1
Leopold was the eldest--and apparently the only talented one
--of their five or six children (Letters X, XVI). His younger
brother, Friedrich, is said to have been "handsome, charming,
frivolous"; after suddenly deserting his wife and home because
of another woman, he lived through the rest of his life with-
out concerning himself again about his wife or their two chil-
dren (Letter XV). For this Leopold Weininger never for-
gave him; when Friedrich, on his deathbed, asked his brother
to come to see him, Leopold refused--thus showing the rigid
moral attitude typical of him.
1 These letters are to be found in the Appendix. I have assigned numbers to
them for easier reference. Much of the material on the family has been drawn
from an eighteen-page manuscript report of the Reichskriminal-polizeiamt of
Vienna, which I received in 1939.
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? LEOPOLD WEININGER
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? Shadows of the Past 7
Otto Weininger's maternal grandfather was Josef Frey--a
dealer in scrap iron. He was born at Kaladey, Bohemia, in 1829
and was married to Elonore Magdalene Griinwald, who was
born at Szenitz, Hungary, in 1837 and died in 1874. Josef
Frey carried on his trade in secondhand goods until 1879.
After that time he appeared on the official records as unem-
ployed. He died in 1901 of arteriosclerosis. He was the father
of three children, of whom the oldest, Adelheid (Adele), was
Otto's mother. She was born in Vienna on April 10,1857. '^ne
one fact we know of her early life is the death of her mother
when still quite young. Her family were orderly Jewish peo-
ple, although her brother Armand was reported to be not too
honest. The police reported that he was living in the ill-famed
Massenquartier II, Navarnegasse No. 45, "a favorite residence
of vagrants and tramps. " "He certainly," as the report said,
"did not have a clean record. "
Otto's father did not have a formal education. At the age
of twenty-two he was a foreign-language correspondent with
the banking house of Elias. When he married, he started to
work at handicraft, first in chinaware and later as a goldsmith.
He and Adelheid Frey were married April 7, 1878, in Vienna
with Jewish ceremonies. Eleven years later, on March 14,1889,
Leopold Weininger became an Austrian citizen.
The marriage was blessed with seven children, all born in
Vienna: Helene, born November 1, 1878; Otto, born April 3,
1880; Franz, born July 22, 1881; Rosa, born May 25, 1883;
Richard, born July 27, 1887; Mathilde, born April 18, 1893;
and Karoline, born November 8, 1898. Otto was thus the
second child and the eldest son.
It appears that Leopold Weininger's personality was like
that of his son Otto. This resemblance was important and was,
as we shall see, deeply significant in understanding Otto's per-
sonality. A description of the elder Weininger appeared in the
newspaper Der Tag (Vienna, January 3, 1923), called "Erin-
nerung an Leopold Weininger" (Memoir of Leopold Wei-
ninger) and written by Emil Lucka, a close friend of the family.
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? Shadows of the Past
In this article Lucka makes the startling statement that Leo-
pold Weininger was "one of the last of the great goldsmiths of
Benvenuto Cellini's family. " This he elaborated in a letter
which he wrote in reply to my request for information. "I
meant," he said, "that the goldsmith's art, which is closely
connected with the name of Cellini, slowly vanished, and that
Leopold Weininger was one of the last--in Austria perhaps
the last--masters of this noble art" (Letter VII).
Because of his artistic skill as a goldsmith, Leopold Wein-
inger's works were valued through Europe and America. A
great many of his creations--statuettes and ornate cups of
gold, platinum, and enamel--were sought by museums. He
himself year after year was called to England and France and
Italy as an expert in the valuation of rare pieces of art.
As his artistic sense was given expression in his craft, so it
also found an outlet in music. Leopold Weininger, besides
having extraordinary musical talents himself, loved music
deeply. Several times he visited Bayreuth to hear Wagner's
operas. In a typical letter to his daughter Rosa he wrote: "Of
course, I have heard The Flying Dutchman played many times,
but I have never before experienced the toneful effects I heard
today. It was quite indescribable. I felt intoxicated when I
left the Playhouse (Festspielhaus), and only the worldly glit-
ter of the dressed-up crowd leaving the theater made me un-
fortunately, painfully sober. When The Dutchman affects
me in this way, what would I not feel listening to Parsifal,
the playing of which I heard on the train (What a prosaic
place! ) without any prospect of ever reaching a complete un-
derstanding of this wonderful masterpiece. . . . To me Rich-
ard Wagner will always be, above everyone else, the great tone
poet! " (Letter XXIV. )
Leopold Weininger was in ecstasy when he did hear Parsifal
in Bayreuth. Later in the same letter he writes: "This is after
Parsifal. If perhaps I wrote a little too much of The Dutch-
man, I am now so overwhelmed I can hardly say a word. I
have been thrilled by the countless grandiose beauties of the
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? Shadows of the Past 9
music and the performance of every single artist. In the first
and third acts there are long, wonderful passages. I have the
feeling of being a cheat to be part of a modern audience, sit-
ting in a comfortable seat and letting others play for me, when
the only thing one should do is kneel down. . . . I go to bed,
but for me that does not mean to sleep. "
Not only was Leopold Weininger gifted in his own art and
in music. He also had a talent for languages. Thanks to this
and to his extensive travels, he was a master of a number of
foreign tongues. And yet this highly gifted man, with all his
sensitivity of mind, was strict, uncompromisingly strict, with
his children. His daughter says, "As a father peerless, never to
be equaled, he cared with the greatest devotion for the lives and
souls of his children. . . . He was loved and feared by us all"
(Letter XIV). Thus, he was austere in his discipline, rigid in
his criticism, and "divine" in his goodness. One may guess
that his marriage was not a happy one, and this supposition is
borne out by his daughter's statement, "His marriage . . .
was not very successful . . . he made enormous demands
upon his wife and children" (Letter VI).
This very austerity one could recognize in his appearance.
"His cheekbones protruded in an energetic way. . . . His lips
hesitated before opening to let the words pass through, and
his chin jutted forward, edged, nearly cruel," says Lucka in
his memoir.
The elder Weininger had a sensitive mind, full of passion
and feeling, but his exterior was closed, and Lucka was led
to remark that there was something gloomy and secretive in
his Renaissance face, as if "he bore a secret in his soul. He
would often talk, but always a small smile covered the suffer-
ing within him, giving the impression that only with the great-
est exertion of will power was it forced back. " Leopold
Weininger disguised his inner life. He withdrew from the
outside world into the shy and lonely seclusion of his own
thoughts.
There was, then, an ambiguity in his nature. He was re-
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? 10
Shadows of the Past
served and inaccessible and sensitive as well.
The contrast be-
tween this seclusive side of his nature and the remarkable feel-
ing he revealed in his art and in his music was sharp. To judge
from his letters and from his creations, he was as much an
argumentative artist as a sensitive craftsman. He expressed
his true nature in his art; here he opened his heart and soul.
As he grew older he turned his back to the world more and
more. His age had "gone mad," he said. After World War I
he became less and less attracted to his art, although numer-
ous requests for his work came from England and the United
States. His loss of interest seemed to be due, Lucka says, to
"a gloom which eventually penetrated his whole personality. "
In his last years he suffered from cancer of the bladder and
underwent surgery. Yet, notwithstanding his pain, he con-
stantly inquired about concerts and, according to Lucka,
listened to them even up to his last moment. He died April 1,
1922. 2
In existing literature about Otto Weininger, nothing is writ-
ten about his mother. Otto never mentioned her in his letters.
She was an ordinary woman--a good, simple woman, as her
daughter described her--but she was beautiful, if we may
judge from her photograph. She also had a gift for languages,
but in the main she was "only a housewife and mother" (Let-
ter XIV). She was overshadowed by the stronger personality
of her husband. It is not difficult to see why no such deep
understanding developed between mother and son as between
the boy and his father. For several years Adelheid Weininger
was ill with tuberculosis, from which she ultimately died. 3
Meager as this information is, it imparts a picture of Otto's
mother as a typical domestic woman who looked after her
children and tended to the cooking and housework so far as
2 According to the official records, his death was not registered in Der Israelitische
Kultusgemeinde in Vienna. In the records it is told that his body was taken
to Munich, and there is reason to believe that he had left the Jewish religion
earlier.
>> The information given comes from her daughter, from official records, and
from letters sent me by Otto Weininger's friends.
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? Shadows of the Past
11
her illness permitted her to do so. Otto never spoke directly
of her, but it is possible that she in many ways formed the
psychological basis for the type "mother" described in Sex
and Character as opposed to "prostitute. " He writes, among
other things: "A mother takes care that the children she has
borne have enough food. Look only at the dignified resolution
and the grave zeal of the good housewife and mother slaughter-
ing one chicken after another. The mother cannot stand to
throw away any food, no matter how little it be. Her object
in life is the preservation of the race. " If we keep in mind
the influence of the home upon one's pattern of behavior, it
is reasonable to conclude that the type he is describing is his
own mother.
From a psychopathological point of view, Otto's brother
Richard is the most interesting member of the family. He was
born near Vienna in 1887, passed through the regular schools,
then through a commercial school, before he became a mer-
chant. 4 The only court notice of him records that once in
1910 he was fined 10. 00 Kronen ($2. 50) for infraction of
Paragraph 459 of the Criminal Code--"action or omission
through which a danger of fire may arise. " It seems that
Richard had an unusual personality structure resembling the
introverted, inaccessible personality of his father and that of
his brother Otto. His sister describes him as follows: "He is
very handsome and very gifted, and he is wealthy. He is an
Epicurean with a feminine disposition, vain, very hard, and a
lady's man. . . . It is a principle with him not to see his fam-
ily. When he was young he caused many difficulties for my
father. He is the sort of man who will always influence every-
4 His first wife denies that he went through any university and says that he
therefore had no right to the title he is sometimes given in the official records.
During his first year as a merchant he made a small fortune. He entered the
Evangelical church in 1906 and married a Jewish woman in 1912. In Novem-
ber, 1922, he divorced his first wife and married soon afterward (March, 1923),
once again to a Jew. Rosa Weininger states that both his wives were wealthy
when he married them (Letter XI) and that he is now living in the United
States (Letter X). The official documents report him as living in England.
He has declined to make himself known.
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? 12
Shadows of the Past
body. He has a great sense of beauty. He would walk over
your dead body, but he may also give shelter to a beggar when
he is in a good mood and when he is admired. He definitely
is not an ordinary man" (Letter X). And further: "He will
show goodness when least expected. He is hungry for sensa-
tion, audience, applause. " (Letter XI. )
As we shall see later, there is an amazing resemblance be-
tween Otto and Richard in their seeking after sensation, in
their egocentricity and craving for applause, in their feminine
vanity, and in their looks.
As to Otto Weininger's sisters, Mathilde and Karoline, they
both became Christians. The latter was the more gifted, espe-
cially in languages. A description of her character when she
was sixteen years old has been found in a letter from Leopold
Weininger: "I have never seen Karoline moved or touched,
not to mention shocked. When I have scolded her for this
over and over again, as well as for her complete lack of any
sense of gratitude, she has tried to pretend an indifference
which contradicts her inner feeling. I can add no word to
alleviate this sentence. I suppose she cannot help it. God
probably created her that way. "
Up to this time practically nothing has been known of
Otto's early youth. He himself never mentioned his childhood.
Yet the information in our possession gives us a glimpse or
two into the home where Otto grew up.
Documents in the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde of Vienna
indicate that Otto was born in Vienna on April 3, 1880, after
a normal pregnancy and without artificial help. His Hebrew
name was Schlomoh. The date of his circumcision and the
name of the physician performing it are also recorded. Very
early he showed a rare mental maturity, and at the age of four-
teen months he spoke quite distinctly.
In his early years he was apparently very much influenced
by his father. And another factor entered--his home environ-
ment, which seems to have affected him deeply, however un-
conscious he may have been of its force at the start of his life.
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? Shadows of the Past 13
Undoubtedly serious conflicts took place between his parents.
This fact is brought out by the following remarks of his sister:
"The married life of my parents was not peaceful. That was
due to my father's strong personality, his sharp criticism, and
his great demands upon his family. We children let Mother
spoil us, we confided in her, but to us Father was the supreme
judge.
"Today, as a mature woman, I judge my parents' life in
quite a different light. I think that because of her many chil-
dren, because of her wonderful but difficult husband, my
mother had a hard task which she could manage only with the
greatest mental and physical difficulty. She was ill and suffered
for years from bronchio-catarrh. I am certain of one thing: with
an average, ordinary husband, my mother would undoubtedly
have been a happy wife. . . . He [my father] loved her dearly
as a woman, and she loved him, only him. But there were
storms in their life which darkened our youth" (Letter XXIII).
Undoubtedly the disharmony between his parents impressed
young Otto deeply. Having a highly gifted but severe father
and a mother of quite ordinary talents affected his sensitive
mind. The close mental relationship with his father naturally
led Otto to side with him in making demands on his mother.
Even more. Apparently Otto tried to identify himself with his
father and developed hostility--unconscious though it may
have been--toward his mother. There can be little doubt that
his father's severity to his mother was instrumental in forming
the devastating view of women Otto later held.
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? Towards the
Future
During the years 1890-1898 Otto Weininger attended
elementary and secondary school, from which he was
graduated on July 14,1898. He was a good student, with keen
curiosity and an avid thirst for knowledge. Otto was familiar
with philosophical and historical literature utterly unknown
to his comrades, and he was the best of his class in history and
languages. His gift for the latter had developed to such an ex-
tent that at the age of eighteen he knew Latin and Greek, spoke
French, English, and Italian well, and was fluent in Spanish
and Norwegian. At this time, perhaps as a result of his father's
influence, he took no particular interest in science or mathe-
matics. His grades were excellent, except for those in deport-
ment, which were poor because he would not bow to the
ordinary school routine. He always did his school work in his
own way, rarely in the way his teachers wished. He ignored
them and busied himself with his own books or engaged in
writing on his own account. Since he was occupied with his
private affairs, he certainly was not talkative as a student,
although it is claimed that he took an eager part in discussions.
The picture we can thus form of the young Otto is that of
a boy far ahead of his schoolmates in knowledge; he was self-
confident, independent. His desire for, and accumulation of,
learning made him critical of his teachers, and he was able to
put embarrassing questions to them. He followed his own
path.
This feeling of independence was partly at least a product
of his upbringing and of the close relationship between the
boy and his father. Their mutual ties were strong, and Otto
continued to be much more attached to his father than to
his mother. His friend Lucka said in Der Tag: "I think Otto
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? Towards the Future 15
received a greater heritage from his father. He loved him more
than he did his mother; the deep, dark inner life was common
to them. "
His son's resemblance to him also led Leopold Weininger
to take a keener interest in Otto's upbringing. He watched the
development of the boy and the young man carefully. He
noted and encouraged his son's talent for acquiring knowl-
edge. The father, with his philological interests, fostered Otto's
special ability at learning languages. He also shared his musical
experiences with all his children, but especially with his favor-
ite, Otto. Very early he had introduced his son to concerts
and had familiarized him with Wagner and Mozart. When
Otto was six his father took him to hear Der Freischiitz, and
at the age of eight he heard Die Meistersinger for the first time
(Letter VI). Otto may almost be said to have "inherited" his
romantic love for Wagner's music. So much was this true that
Wagner became the most beloved composer in the last years
of the young man's life. The influence of the father upon the
son was significantly strong.
This relationship affected the boy's education and may be
one reason why he tended to live in the realm of his books
and his own thoughts. As his father said: "There was one thing
Otto would never share with anyone--his books. He lived in
complete isolation with them. " 1 We might well expect to
find Otto later searching, as he did, through books for some-
thing of which he was not yet aware. We may assume that
even as a young boy his mental preoccupation was such that
he had no time for playing games with his comrades.
He was bound to feel a sentimental affection for his father.
Mingled with this affection was fear (which was shared by
the other children) because of his father's uncompromising
and rigid principles. "In his home and with his numerous chil-
dren, he (Leopold Weininger) maintained severe discipline. " 2
The family conflict which had affected the child continued
1 Ferdinand Probst, Der Fall Otto Weininger (in Grenzfragen des Nerven-
und Seelenlebens, Wiesbaden, 1904), p. 5. Later cited in the text as Der Fall.
* Paul Biro, Die Sittlichkeitsmetapnysik Otto Weiningers (Vienna, 1927).
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? Towards the Future
to influence the proud, shy boy. The patriarchal father stood
with authority above his wife and children. Since Otto was
sensitive, he could not have been unaware of his mother's suf-
fering, and she, for her part, must have sought sympathy from
the children. Thus, while he was seeking to identify himself
with his father, he very well may also have identified himself
with the suffering of his mother--an identification he repudi-
ated throughout his life.
To this family combination Otto found it difficult to adapt
himself. Even if he sought identification with his father, he
also to some extent resented and feared paternal authority.
Even if he sympathized with his mother, he also resented her.
His situation (Oedipus situation) in the home seemed complex.
Usually a child feels such contradictory feelings of love and
hate toward one or the other parent, and while he is young the
contrary feelings may simply exist side by side for the time
being. Yet as the ego of the boy gradually strengthens, the op-
posite strivings increase to the point of conflict. The boy then
begins to understand that against his identification-love for his
father and his love for his mother is pitted resentment of his
father (positive Oedipus complex). In Otto's case, however,
the home environment fostered identification-love for his
father and strong resentment of his mother, and thus he ap-
parently had a negative Oedipus complex. The conscious or
unconscious hatred of his mother, which seems to have domi-
nated his infantile sexual period, persisted in his boyhood and
manhood. He did not succeed in overcoming his infantile
sexual drives, which were later detrimental to him.
Homeless in his own home, Otto sought even more the refuge
of his books. His highly individual talents and his developing
personality also made Otto go his own way. Intellectually far
more mature than his companions, he naturally found it diffi-
cult to adapt himself to his surroundings and his schoolmates.
Even if his talents and his knowledge acted as incentive and
inspiration, he must also have felt them as a burden and a
hindrance to his happiness at school. His awakening ego made
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