Fritz Mauthner

Fritz Mauthner (22 November 1849 – 29 June 1923) was an Austro-Hungarian novelist, theatre critic and satirist. He was an exponent of philosophical scepticism derived from a critique of human knowledge.

Mauthner was born on 22 November 1849 into an assimilated, well-to-do Jewish family from Horzitz in Bohemia (now Hořice in the Czech Republic). He was the fourth of the six children of Emmanuel and Amalie Mauthner.^:viii

He became editor of the Berliner Tageblatt in 1895, but is remembered mainly for his Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache (Contributions to a Critique of Language), published in three parts in 1901 and 1902. Ludwig Wittgenstein took several of his ideas from Mauthner, and acknowledges him in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922).

Mauthner died in Meersburg am Bodensee on 29 June 1923.^:viii