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[[Otto Weininger]], an Austrian [[Austria]]n and [[Judaism|Jewish ]] intellectual, was born on April 3, 1880, in Vienna, where he committed suicide on October 4, 1903. Adelheid, Otto's mother, whose health was frail, was a submissive wife to his father, Leopold, a renowned goldsmith and powerful personality. Of his six brothers and sisters, only four reached adulthood. A gifted student, Otto entered the University of Vienna in 1898 and took courses in all the various subjects he would later treat in his <i>Sex and Character</i> (1906). His professors included Friedrich Jodl, Ernst Mach, and Richard von Krafft-Ebing. He also frequently attended gatherings of the university philosophical society. In 1900 he traveled to Paris with Hermann Swoboda to attend a conference on psychology, where he sided with those in favor of an introspective approach to psychology as opposed to an experimental and biological approach.
Weininger began writing <i>Sex and Character</i> (origin-ally entitled <i>Eros and Psyche</i>) in the autumn of 1900, and the book progressed through an exchange of ideas with Swoboda. In 1901, after having registered the copyright to his manuscript, he sought to publish it, and with this in mind he showed an outline to Freud, who was not favorably impressed. In 1902 Weininger submitted a revised version of the book to obtain his doctorate in philosophy. On the day he received his degree, he converted to Christianity. A third version of his book—with the added chapters "Judaism," "Women and Mankind," and "Woman and Her Significance in the Universe"—was published in June 1903 by the major publishing firm Braumüller.
Weininger suffered from severe mood swings of exaltation and depression. During the summer of 1902, he traveled in Northern Europe and, writing to his friend Arthur Gerber, asked, "Am I anything?" Weininger left for Italy in somber spirits. In Calabria on August 21, 1903, he drafted a new will and testament that replaced the one he had written the previous February 13. Returning home depressed, he spent five days at his parents' home. On October 3 he shot himself through the heart in a rented room in the house in which Beethoven, his favorite musician, had died.
