A new book, With Wittgenstein in a Gay Sauna, reveals the deep-rooted queer subcultures in cities from Budapest to Prague – defying regional stereotypes and inspiring an art exhibition on masculinity
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that our understanding of reality is fundamentally bound by and shaped by the language we use to talk about it. But there is one place where the Vienna-born thinker’s argument ceases to make sense. “Gay saunas are spaces where language dies,” says Vratislav Maňák, a Czech writer and literary scholar.
With Wittgenstein in a Gay Sauna, a book that made a major splash when it was published in Czech and German earlier this year, Maňák fictionalises Wittgenstein, who had romantic relations with both men and women, entering a Viennese Herrensauna called Kaiserbründl, hailed in newspapers at the time as “the most stylish bathing establishment in the world”.