Hitler's Favorite Jew: The Enigma of Otto Weininger

· Simply Charly
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191
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About this ebook

Otto Weininger (1880-1903) is the most controversial figure to emerge from fin de siècle Vienna. The son of a Jewish goldsmith, he studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Vienna and spoke six languages by the time he was 21. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1902, he converted to Christianity and, in 1903, he published his book Sex and Character—a groundbreaking and highly provocative study that would come to influence Adolf Hitler, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and James Joyce, among others. As troubled as he was brilliant, Weininger took his own life on October 3, 1903, leaving behind a small number of works, an array of challenging ideas, and many unanswered questions.

In Hitler’s Favorite Jew, Professor Allan Janik draws upon a half-century of research to explore the life and legacy of Otto Weininger, and to illuminate his outsized impact on some of the greatest thinkers and the greatest monster of the twentieth century. Janik explains how Weininger came to write his bizarre book featuring outrageous claims about women and Jews, and argues that, contrary to the received wisdom, Weininger’s true goal was progressive and humanistic.


With its deep insights into both Weininger the man and Viennese intellectual life at the turn of the century, Hitler’s Favorite Jew offers a rich and multifaceted portrait that challenges our ideas about sexuality, the nature of anti-Semitism, and the puzzle of human identity.

About the author

Allan Janik is adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna and a former research fellow of the Brenner Archives at the University of Innsbruck. His many books include The Use and Abuse of Metaphor (2003), Wittgenstein's Vienna (with Stephen Toulmin) (1996), and Essays on Wittgenstein and Weininger (1985). He is the author of numerous articles and reviews in a wide variety of international journals, and holds a grant from the Austrian Science Foundation to produce a critical electronic edition of the works of Otto Weininger.

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