Reading work by Georg Trakl, published in the Austrian literary magazine
Der Brenner, Wittgenstein said: “I do not understand his poetry, but its tone delights me. It is the tone of a man of real genius.” Wittgenstein reached out indirectly to Trakl in the summer of 1914, making a donation of 100,000 crowns to needy Austrian artists and asked Ficker, the editor of
Der Brenner, to oversee its distribution. Ficker requested that 20,000 of it be sent to Trakl. When Trakl went to withdraw the first...