Margarethe "Gretl" Stonborough-Wittgenstein (September 19, 1882, Neuwaldegg – September 27, 1958, Vienna), of the prominent and wealthy Viennese Wittgenstein family

Karl Wittgenstein

Karl Wittgenstein was a steel tycoon. A friend of Andrew Carnegie, with whom he was often compared, at the end of 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...

, was a sister of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...

 and the pianist Paul Wittgenstein

Paul Wittgenstein

Paul Wittgenstein was an Austrian-born concert pianist, who became known for his ability to play with just his left hand, after he lost his right arm during the First World War. He devised novel techniques, including pedal and hand-movement combinations, that allowed him to play chords previously...

. She was the subject of a famous 1905 portrait made for her wedding by the artist Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects...

 (Stonborough-Wittgenstein and other members of the Wittgenstein family were among Klimt's most important patrons), which was sold in 1960 by her son Thomas and may now be seen in the Neue Pinakothek

Neue Pinakothek

The Neue Pinakothek is an art museum in Munich, Germany. Its focus is European Art of the 18th and 19th century and is one of the most important museums of art of the nineteenth century in the world...

 gallery in Munich.

On 7 January, 1905, she married a wealthy American, Jerome Stonborough (1873 -June 1938, suicide). Of German Jewish ancestry and born Jerome Herman Steinberger, he had had his name changed to Stonborough in 1900. He was also an art collector. They were close friends with Hermann Rothe

Hermann Rothe

Hermann Rothe was an Austrian mathematician.Rothe studied at the University of Vienna and the University of Göttingen. He attained the Doctorate in Engineering in 1909 in Vienna. Then he was assistant at the Vienna University of Technology, where he attained the Habilitation in 1910...

, Margaret was the godmother of his daughter Margarethe. The couple had two sons and divorced in 1923.

• Dr. Thomas Humphrey Stonborough (1906-?). His Swiss friend Marguerite Respinger (1904-2000), whom he had met when he was studying in Cambridge and had invited to Vienna, was briefly (1926-1931) the only known female interest of Ludwig Wittgenstein. In 1939, Thomas Stonborough married Elizabeth Churchill, but they soon divorced (she remarried Washington Evening Star columnist Constantine Brown, and became a journalist and anti-communist activist under the name of Elizabeth Churchill Brown).
• Major John Jerome Stonborough (11 June 1912, Vienna - 29 April 2002, Ferndown, Dorset). Although a US citizen, he served in the Canadian army during Second World War as an intelligence officer and interpreter. He married the daughter of a distinguished Northumberland family
  Morrison-Bell Baronets
  There have been two Baronetcies created for members of the Morrison-Bell family, both in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom.The Morrison-Bell Baronetcy, of Otterburn Hall in Elsdon in the County of Northumberland, was created in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom on 18 December 1905 for Charles...
  
  , Veronica Morrison-Bell (daughter of Sir Claude William Hedley Morrison-Bell, 2nd Baronet), and after the war lived between Britain and Austria.

After the First World War, Stonborough-Wittgenstein was appointed by the American Relief Administrator Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...

 (later president of the United States) as special representative of the American Relief Program for Austria. When working in juvenile prisons as a psychotherapy adviser, she came into contact with Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

 and was analyzed by him during two years. They remained in contact until Freud's death.

In 1926, she commissioned her brother Ludwig and the architect Paul Engelmann

Paul Engelmann

Paul Engelmann was a Viennese architect who is now best known for his friendship with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein between 1916 and 1928, and for being Wittgenstein's partner in the design and building of the Stonborough House in Vienna.Engelmann was born in Olmütz in 1891, and studied with...

 to design and build Haus Wittgenstein in Vienna. Sold by her son Thomas in 1968, this noted building still stands today, and now houses the Bulgarian Cultural Institute. In 1940, she emigrated to the USA, but returned to Austria after the war and obtained restitution of part of her wealth which had been confiscated by the Nazis.