A steel tycoon. A friend of Andrew Carnegie, with whom he was often compared, at the end of the 19th century he controlled an effective monopoly on steel and iron resources within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and had by the 1890s acquired one of the largest fortunes in the world.He was also the father of Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century.

Karl Wittgenstein was the sixth of eleven children of Heinrich Christian. The family moved in 1860 to Vienna, where his father worked in the Real Estate. Karl Wittgenstein (1847-1913) as yet not ran away eighteen family and traveled to America. After about a year, he returned to Vienna. He married in 1873 Leopoldine Kallmus (born March 14, 1850 in Vienna, died June 5, 1926 ), a gifted pianist from a Prague Jewish family whose mother was a Catholic. After chipped engineering studies at the Technical University, he worked at the Teplice rolling mill in Bohemia, where he was in 1877 appointed as Director. He increased sequentially for magnates to the Czech steel industry. 1898 Karl Wittgenstein withdrew from the shops. He built and lived in the Palais Wittgenstein in Vienna and entered (among other things, as a patron of the arts Vienna Secession) on.


Karl Wittgenstein is buried with his wife and together with two of his nine children: Hermine and Rudolf, in a tomb at Vienna's Central Cemetery (Group 32 B, no. 24).

Karl married Leopoldine Kallmus in 1873. They had the following nine children:

Hermine (b. December 1, 1874 in Teplitz; d. February 11, 1950 in Vienna) unmarried
Dora (b. 1876 in Vienna; died at birth)
Johannes (b. 1877 in Vienna; d. 1902 in Chesapeake Bay, probable suicide), a musical prodigy
Konrad (b. May 1, 1878 in Vienna; d. October/November 1918, suicide)
Helene (b. August 23, 1879 in Vienna; d. April 1956 in Vienna) married to Dr. Max Salzer
Rudolf (b. June 27, 1881 in Vienna; d. May 2, 1904 in Berlin, suicide)
Margaret (b. September 19, 1882 in Vienna; d. September 27, 1958 in Vienna) married to Jerome Stonborough in 1904, divorced in 1923
Paul (b. May 11, 1887 in Vienna; d. March 3, 1961 in New York), concert pianist
& Ludwig (b. April 26, 1889 in Vienna; d. April 29, 1951 in Cambridge), philosopher

Rosalie Herrmann, housekeeper is also buried in the family grave in Zentralfriedhof, Vienna.