How one of the world's most famous philosophers came to love Swansea

The story of how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, found refuge, friendship and inspiration in Swansea is being told on stage for the first time, writes

- Jenny White

HE WAS one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century and Swansea played a very significant part in his life story.

Yet Ludwig Wittgenstein, who has been described as “bigger than Dylan Thomas”, has gone uncelebrated in Swansea other than an enigmatic inscription on a hexagonal building beside the observatory in Swansea marina.

A new play, staged at Taliesin Arts Centre next week, is changing that. Wittgenstein scholar Dr Alan Sandry’s From Linz to Langland: A journey with Ludwig Wittgenstein, tells the story of Wittgenstein's healing and inspiring relationship with Swansea, built on many visits between 1942 and 1947.

Wittgenstein came to Swansea to visit his friend and former student Rush Rhees, who taught at the university. He initially lodged with Rhees, before taking lodgings at 10 Langland Road, Mumbles.

After that, he lodged with a Methodist minister who lived at 2 Cwm-donkin Terrace, Uplands, and then with the Clements family at 1 Cwm-donkin Terrace close to Dylan Thomas's family home.

Wittgenstein stayed in Swansea for months at a time, noting that he found the people in Swansea easy to get on with, and that he felt more like smiling when he walked along the street in Swansea than in England, where he was a professor of philosophy at Cambridge University.

During his time in Swansea, he was part of a milieu that included the Kardomah Boys (most famously, Dylan Thomas, poet Vernon Watkins, composer Daniel Jones, and painters Alfred Janes and Mervyn Levy) who met in the Kardomah Café on Castle Street; and got to know influential Irish classicist Benjamin Farrington, who worked at the university.

Farrington, who lived at 4 Cwm-donkin Terrace, was a key figure in the Communist Party in the UK, and his wife Ruth Schechter (daughter of Rabbi and Cambridge scholar Solomon Schechter), was a friend of Mahatma Gandhi. Also on the scene was the writer, politician and Plaid Cymru founder Saunders Lewis.