Abstract
Otto Neurath experienced an adventurous as well as dangerous life. Already in his childhood, he was fascinated by his father’s huge library. He was especially impressed by images and illustrations since Ancient times and the French Encyclopédie, which inspired his lifelong dealing with picture language. This became manifest with the founding of his “Social and Economic Museum of Vienna” and the invention of his “Vienna Method of Pictorial Language,” later on renamed ISOTYPE. In the flourishing period of “Red Vienna” he acquired a lot of books in several languages covering his research fields and practical activities as a social reformer, teacher and museologist, philosopher, sociologist and historian of science. With his forced migrations from Vienna and The Hague, this most valuable collection of books and brochures was partly destroyed, dispersed, and aryanized, when Austro-Fascism came into power in Austria and Hitler’s troops invaded into the Netherlands. Luckily, Otto Neurath and some members of his family and collaborators could survive and save parts of this unique collection of books which mirrors the education and intellectual background of the polymath Neurath in Dutch and British exile. Here, he again bought and published books continuing his activities for the Vienna Circle of Logical Empiricism as well as the Unity of Science and the Isotype movements covering some 3000 books in 1945. Three typical case studies from the Neurath library are provided covering economics, philosophy, and literature: Neurath’s annotations in books of Friedrich A. von Hayek, Karl Popper, and the writer Stefan Zweig.
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Notes
- 1.
On Wilhelm and Otto Neurath, see Uebel (1995).
- 2.
For a discussion of the logic-papers, see Jordi Cat’s chapter in the present volume; for a translation of these papers, see Appendix 1. in the present volume as well.
- 3.
On Neurath’s involvement in the Settlement and Housing Movement, see Sophie Hochhäusl’s chapter in the present volume.
- 4.
On the process of transformation, see Neurath and Kinross (2009) and Angélique Groß’s chapter in the present volume.
- 5.
On pictorial education, the Viennese Method and on ISOTYPE see Angélique Groß’s, Elisabeth Nemeth’s , and Silke Körber’s chapters in the present volume.
- 6.
In parallel, he entertained contacts with the German Bauhaus in Dessau and the CIAM movement of architects between the wars; see Dahms (2004).
- 7.
The manifesto was reprinted recently with its various translations and commentaries in Stadler and Uebel (2012).
- 8.
On Neurath’s way to and work in England, see Adam Tamas Tuboly’s, Silke Körber’s, and Michelle Henning’s chapters in the present volume.
- 9.
On Neurath’s break up with Carnap and the reasons involved, see André Carus’s chapter in the present volume.
- 10.
On this idea in Neurath’s work, see Don Howards’s chapter in the present volume.
- 11.
- 12.
On Neurath’s relation to Susan Stebbing , see Silke Körber’s chapter in the present volume.
- 13.
Neurath to F. A. Hayek, 11 January 1945; Otto Neurath Nachlass.
- 14.
See F. A. Hayek to Neurath, 2 February 1945. (ONN).
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Stadler, F. (2019). A Viennese Library in Exile: Otto Neurath and the Heritage of Central European Culture in the Anglo-Saxon World. In: Cat, J., Tuboly, A. (eds) Neurath Reconsidered. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 336. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02128-3_2
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