Karl Otto Clemens Wittgenstein (8 April 1847 – 20 January 1913) was a German-born Austrian 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 concert pianist Paul Wittgenstein, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and of philanthropist Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein. Family background and origins The grandfather of Karl Wittgenstein was an estate manager named Moses Meyer, who came from Laasphe in the former Wittgenstein kreis (county). He moved to Korbach before 1802, where he was a merchant. Around 1808, Moses Meyer named himself Wittgenstein, after his birthplace Siegen-Wittgenstein and thereafter was known as Moses Meyer Wittgenstein. At first, Wittgenstein's business became the biggest and most successful enterprise in the city of Korbach, but also shortly thereafter began to decline. He had a son, Hermann Christian (born 12 September 1802 in Korbach; died 1878 in Vienna) who moved the business to Gohlis at the end of the 1830s. From there, the family continued to prosper financially. In 1938, to escape Nazi racial laws and to be reclassified as half Jewish, his descendants claimed that Herman Christian was not the son of Moses Meyer Wittgenstein but rather the illegitimate offspring of a prince of the House of Waldeck. After Hermann Christian converted to Protestantism, he married Fanny Figdor in 1839. She came from one of the most important business families in Vienna, and like Hermann was Jewish by birth. Karl, born in 1847, was the sixth of eleven children of Hermann and Fanny. Three years later the family moved to Vösendorf (Mödling district) in Austria, where his four younger siblings were born. One of his brothers, Paul Wittgenstein (1842–1928), was the father of Dr Karl Paul Wittgenstein who married Hilde Köchert, daughter of renowned Viennese jeweller Heinrich Köchert: their son Paul Wittgenstein (1907–1979) was "Wittgenstein's Nephew", the central character of a book by his friend Thomas Bernhard. Biography Early life and career Karl had resisted in his youth the classical teaching methods which were imposed upon the children of Viennese bourgeoisie. Karl ran away from home at the age of eleven and at the age of seventeen had been expelled from school for an essay he wrote in which he denied