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3.

HERMANN TO ARMAND

2nd letter

25 January 1925

Hello, old boy,

I haven’t heard anything from you directly for quite some time now. But I did receive from Mama your eighteen postcards filled with Weltschmerz. It was a nice idea on your part to send Mama these city views, and she was very pleased with them. However she was horrified by your ruminations on mortality. Such an unhappy person who thinks about food all day long would have to move a mother’s heart to tears. I was somewhat less horrified, even though I do know your ideas on misfortune and the transitory nature of life, and even believe them. But from all that, I see that you are starting, quite properly, to ponder the meaning and the value of life. At the outset it looks as if the whole business is completely meaningless. But philosophy like this, or rather, non-philosophy, is strictly that of a stupid person. You can’t deal so simply with the problem of life by just saying that it is not worth living. The question as to why we are on earth, and what purpose this could all have, is the very beginning of all thinking about the world; and so I am happy, your unhappiness notwithstanding, to learn that you are beginning to ponder these matters. But for today I needn’t talk to you anymore about that; if you want to know anything, you can ask me any time and I will be happy to answer.

For today, then, something more important, indeed, for me of great importance: I am looking for a part of my set theory text, that mathematics book that I am working on with Uncle Willy; today Anna the chambermaid told me that she probably packed it in with your schoolbooks. If you do have it, you will recognize it immediately: it is just one half of a book, starting on about page 220. Please wire me immediately and say whether you have it or not. And send it, if you do have it, express mail without delay.

All the best P.

By the way: Weltschmerz and graveside maunderings are all well and good; but at the end of the day, if a person can’t find anything else to think about, it gets a bit boring.

[KW13/1, 61–62]

2ND LETTER: This numbering is by Hermann Broch.

FOR QUITE SOME TIME: Armand’s letter of January 19, 1925 had not yet arrived.

MAMA: Franziska Broch, née von Rothermann (1884–1974). She was the daughter of a sugar manufacturer in Hirm/Burgunland, which was then Hungarian. Broch married her in 1909, but their estrangement began soon after. Their divorce was finalized on April 13, 1923. Franziska never remarried, and Armand remained in close contact with her until her death.

UNCLE WILLY: Ludwig Wilhelm Hofmann (1890–1979), Viennese mathematician who was a professor at the Technische Universität Wien, having written his postdoctoral professorial thesis (Habilitationsschrift) on demonstrative and projective geometry. While not actually a relative, he was a regular weekend visitor in Teesdorf between 1920 and 1925, coming to work on mathematics with Broch.

MY SET THEORY TEXT: Felix Hausdorff, Grundzüge der Mengenlehre (Fundamentals of Set Theory) (Leipzig 1914)