How to find images of the first German edition of Wittgenstein's Tractatus?

January 11, 2008 2:36 PM

How might I obtain images or facsimiles of the first and last page of the very first German edition of Wittgenstein's Tractatus?

I want to find decent-quality images (not necessarily pristine or exact, jut not especially blurry, tiny, or heavily pixelated) of the very first and last sentences of Wittgenstein's Tractatus -- and I want them to be from the very 1st German edition ever published. I've found a few possible candidates via Google image search, but nothing that indicates whether these are from the 1st edition.

I realize this probably a pipe-dream, but any suggestions short of buying the book from a rare book dealer (way out of my price range) would be greatly appreciated.

posted by treepour to media & arts (10 answers total)

Have you considered trying to locate a rare book dealer who has a copy, and asking if they'd oblige you by providing a scan or a photo?
posted by cortex at 3:38 PM on January 11, 2008

Or more probably, a research library or rare-books collection in an academic library? If you have access to a major library, the librarians there would be the first place I would turn to get this. They'll have strategies, connections, to help.
posted by LobsterMitten at 4:01 PM on January 11, 2008

I'm taking a stab here: are you looking for the German-only original published in Ostwald's Annalen der naturphilosophie, or the first bilingual edition? I don't think the edition containing the Tractatus is available through Google, at least so far, but this might be an avenue you could pursue.
posted by pullayup at 6:00 PM on January 11, 2008

According to this, it's in the final edition, from 1921, and is titled Logisch-philosophisch Abhandlung, if that's the one you're after.
posted by pullayup at 6:07 PM on January 11, 2008

Ugh, I don't know German, but there may be an "e" on the end of philosophisch: "Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung".
posted by pullayup at 6:13 PM on January 11, 2008

That's it pullayup, thanks! (Wow, one site I visited is selling it for US$ 39372.94).

Now I at least know the original name/etc of what I'm looking for, which is more progress than I likely would have made on my own.
posted by treepour at 6:36 PM on January 11, 2008

Hey, I don't even have a copy of the original and I WROTE the damn thing.
posted by wittgenstein at 6:45 PM on January 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Well, W., if you hadn't so foolishly given away your family fortune, you might have been able to pay for your mistake of not keeping a copy.
posted by treepour at 7:19 PM on January 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

A question this specific surely necessitates at least some degree of expanation.
posted by oxford blue at 2:56 AM on January 12, 2008

A question this specific surely necessitates at least some degree of expanation.

Tattoos. One sentence on each arm.
posted by treepour at 5:53 PM on January 12, 2008