"Krautsalat!" (1920)

"Coleslaw!" is what Wittgenstein yelled out when the headmaster, at the elementary school where he was teaching, played the piano. Witt was an from a rich Austrian family, and it may seem a little unsettling that someone born in the land of Mozart would permit himself such an outburst. It's actually rather funny when one considers the cicumstances. That's the thing about Wittgenstein, his entire life and work is thoroughly intertwined in the fate of his homeland, and the upheavals in his identity. (He is also rumoured to have answered "Good!" when told he had but a few days to live, as he struggled with pancreatic cancer at the end of his life.)

As a philosopher, he is famously remembered as someone who maintained that metaphysical language was misguided, and ultimately meaningless. In fact, he often said he was completely misunderstood by his contemporaries and would become quite agitated. He wrote a work in his youth, in German, which ultimately became his doctoral thesis at Cambridge, giving him English citizenship. His Cambridge lectures in English were noted by his students and became part of his legacy English works. His English was correct, but contained Germanisms.

His Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) is highly structured:

 

He ultimately claims that of that which one cannot speak, one must remain silent. Which sounds like interesting vaguely mystical conclusion. Problem is, this occurs in his early work and  not

his mature one. Interesting!