Until the suicides of his two brothers, Ludwig showed none of the self-destructiveness that was epidemic among the Wittgenstein's of his generation. For much of his childhood, he was considered one of the dullest of this extraordinary brood. He exhibited no precocious musical, artistic or literary talent, and indeed, did not even, start speaking until he was four years old. Lacking the rebelliousness and wilfulness that marked the other male members of this family, he dedicated himself from an early age to the kind of practical skillsand technical interests his father had tried,

unsuccessfully, to instill into his elder brothers. Because of these interests in technology, his family felt that he would do better at a more technically based secondary school than the normal Vienna grammar school that his two brothers attended. So, he was sent to the Realschule in Linz. Unfortunately, this college is not now known for its ability in training top engineers but as the secondary school of Adolf Hitler. Wittgenstein spent three years at the college from 1903 to 1906. His school reports survive and show him to have been, on the whole, a fairly poor student.