I have handicapped feet, therefore if I don't rise, as I should rise, I can't really do
it properly without throwing over everything here.
Now talking about Ludwig von Mises as a man, and we speak about his cultural background,
my lecture is really restrained to that subject.
You must realize that he is difficult to order in socially, and as you will see, to order
in nationally, ethnically, he is a man between all camps and all situations.
He is born in Lwów, that is the Polish name, Lwów would be the Ukrainian name, Lemberg
That would be the German name of Galicia.
The Kingdom of Galicia was southern Poland, really southern Poland, incorporated into
Austria in 1772, the first partition of Poland, and of course his origins were Jewish.
His grandfather was the head of the Jewish cultural community, which was a state institution
and to teach and to practice religion, like the Catholic Church or the Lutheran Church.
And as you will see, thereby, then the grandfather became nobilitated.
He belonged also to the minor nobility.
And his upbringing was in a society which was largely Polish, naturally Jewish, Polish.
He spoke German from childhood on, but he also spoke Polish.
In all likelihood, he did not speak Ukrainian because there were really three nationalities
in Lemberg.
The vast majority of the inhabitants of that city were Polish, make him a very large Hebrew
sector and finally also a Ukrainian sector.
So he was conversant in all likelihood with the German script, with the Latin script, with
the Hebrew script, and with the Cyrillic script, I mean from the upbringing you can see in
the school.
In other words, he was faced initially by enormous variety of cultures, civilizations.
Now the Hebrew element had come into Poland from Germany.
In Germany, the Hebrews lived in large quantity, especially on the Rhine, but constantly disturbed
by popular rising which mobbed the ghettos, and never forget here one thing, a ghetto was
a privilege, it was self-government, it was certainly not an action of the government
to enclose them, but through their demeanor and their clothing and their accent and their
rituals and their religion, and unfortunately, since they were the money lenders, because
according to their own faith, they could only lend money to gentiles, and in the Middle
Ages, the gentile was prohibited of lending money to another gentile, in other words,
a Catholic to another Catholic.
So they were in a difficult position and King Kazimir the Great of Poland, who had ruled
of an agrarian country, an almost purely agrarian country without any bigger cities, called
into the country German settlers and with them also the Jewish settlers, both of them
could converse with each other obviously because Yiddish after all is a form of medieval German
And then they built the cities, and that is the background.
In Poland, on the other hand, they had no ghettos, they had no such privilege, if you
like, and they lived together, together in freedom.
They had a kaha, it was a sort of community, and since they couldn't walk on the Sabbath
was more than 2,000 steps, so they congregated, naturally congregated.
Now that is, you see, also his religious background, however he lived, and that is now very important,
he lived in Galicia, that is southern Poland, and the southern Poland under Austrian administration,
In other words, of a country which had a variety of nationalities, German, Czech, Polish, Ukrainian,
Italian, Slovenian.
This country became that part of partition Poland, partition between Austria and Russia,
which had the greatest liberties.
There were two universities.
There was a university in Lwów, in Lemberg, where he was born, a university in Krakow.
And many Poles said that the restoration of Poland was only possible having greater rights,
greater privileges, and becoming the foundations of a once later reunited Poland.
So they were very loyal to the Habsburg family.
The Polish delegates in the parliament in Vienna were always, perhaps, pro-Austrian, at the
same time, of course, thinking, we are going to be the basis of a reunited Poland, and
maybe, under certainly, under the same house, under the same dynasty.
Always bear in mind, very, very important to bear in mind, that monarchy in Europe was
an international institution, not a national institution.
If you take the year 1910, you only find two dynasties which are truly native, the dynasties
of Montenegro and the dynasty of Serbia.
The House of Saxe-Coburg also, for instance, ruled in England and in Belgium and in Saxe-Coburg
and in Portugal and in Bulgaria.
And the House of Sonderburg-Luxburg-Augustenburg ruled in Norway and in Denmark and in Greece.
In the whole, Salernes are not Russians, they are Alemannic, they come from a different
part of Germany.
They also ruled in Romania.
So you see, the idea was here of countries ruled by foreigners who had a real distance
from the local population.
Very curious, the Swedish laws for the Swedish dynasty, they can marry aristocrats and they
They can even marry commoners, provided they are foreigners, but nobody within the country.
Because then of course you get a sort of either with industry or agriculture you get a connection.
You should have a sort of feeling of equal distance.
Now you see then of course in Poland and that Polish atmosphere, Poland had an enormous
claims nobility. In other words, in Poland, according to one Polish scholar, about one quarter of the Polish population claims nobility.
Now in Austria, for instance, in Little Austria, it's about a third of one percent, but there are 24 percent, and 11 percent can prove it with documents.
is another maybe five, six percent who are noble but don't have the necessary documentation.
And this nobility prior to the partition of Poland had its own sense of equality.
There's a Polish saying, which means the little noble man in his primitive abode is just equal
to the great magnate who might have 120 servants.
And then, of course, the pride is very, very important.
I mean, this nobilitarian aspect, which you then see in the development of the Austrian
economy, that all has a relation to it, that, of course, led to the transformation of the
The kingdom of Poland into an elective monarchy, of course elected by the nobility, huge masses
were elected, and after 1572, the Polish kingdom was re-veptized into Czechoslovakia, and that
means republic, so you had a Polish republic with a very powerful parliament, the same,
but in the same since any nobleman were really equal, and the idea that one nobleman could
rule over another one was distasteful, every decision had to be unanimous.
In other words, the vote of one man, the liberal way to say I don't accept that law, of course
made the law unacceptable, and that of course led finally to this big realm, never forget,
the Polish-Lithuanian Church of Post-Polita was a country bigger than France, it was a
huge country, led to its weaknesses and its partition.
But you see here that spirit of freedom, the spirit of freedom, another Polish saying, was
fight against other kings but oppose your own one, you see, to zifro gromish magruzis
swojemu.
So you see here that spirit, very, very important for the development of young Ludwig von Mises
living in this atmosphere, now he belongs to the nobility.
Remember, forget in the old times, any Hebrew became a Christian, it happened of course
again and again, immediately, automatically, was becoming a member of the Schlachter, of
the nobility, because obviously, I mean, being a Hebrew, you were a relative of our Lord,
so therefore you have it.
You see here, a world so radically different from yours, but with an enormous love for
freedom and an enormous tolerance, religiously speaking, Poland was the most tolerant country
in Europe as far as religions go.
When you compare, let us say, Poland with England, there's just no comparison.
Poland actually, when the big wave came, the big wave of the reformation, you know, one
third of the Poles became Calvinists, became Presbyterian, another third became Unitarian,
but when I say Unitarian, please forget now totally Boston and Unitarianism, quite, quite,
quite different from the Bostonian kind, but then the Catholic Church regained it, but
to short pressures. Culturally, the Jesuits, of course, played a tremendous role. At that
time, the Jesuits still were devout Catholics, which today they are only sporadically. So
these Jesuits then finally had the right schools. They took anybody into their schools. Then
they propagandized their faith with the theater. Never forget the Jesuits are the founder of
and the technology of the modern stage, theatrical performances to school, the building of wonderful
baroque churches and paintings and culturally.
So finally the Unitarians disappeared completely without duress, and the Presbyterians also
disappeared almost, I would say, without leaving a trace.
So there he grows up, you can imagine a young Ludwig von Mises belonging to the nobility
but still officially remaining Hebrew, remaining Jewish.
Then later on comes to Vienna but starts his schools in Ruf and then he comes to Vienna
and now you take the schools in which he has been.
I mean, what were the schools?
The four years elementary, and he went to public schools, as most of the children go.
Private schools in Europe are very, very rare.
My own children, those of my wife, my father, we all went to public schools.
They were highly disciplined, I can assure you.
And then after four years of elementary, you had to make an entrance examination into a
to a school, which is a combination of quasi-combination of high school and college, but without real
choice of subjects, eight years, and these eight years are the worst years in your life.
I can assure you the concentration camp or the cancer ward comes as a relief, and you
You ended up at the age of about 18 becoming a bachelor and then you go to a university
which is purely a graduate school and you study either theology or medicine or law or
what is called philosophy.
So you see that is the career, he studied law, that is the career, the education which
he received.
In other words, obviously he could read Latin and Greek and he spoke Polish and he spoke
fluent German and I'm absolutely certain that if you take the social position of his family,
he must have spoken also French and certainly had, even long before he came to America,
He must have learned English because, needless to say, that he knew all the great English
economic writers in the original.
So that is his growth.
Now you take liberalism, liberalism was in Europe in the 19th century leading a very
powerful party.
liberal parties in all the country, but at a still restricted election system, and that
helped them.
In other words, there were qualifications to vote.
Now in Austria, these qualifications disappeared in 1908, after 1908, you have one man, one
vote, and then the liberal parties receded.
Now the great party of Bismarck, Bismarck originally was a conservative, but he ceased
used to be one and it was the National Liberal Party which helped Bismarck.
And of course in the principle of liberalism is freedom.
Now we must go into the analysis of the word liberal as the word is used worldwide and
that means when I speak, I call myself an arch-liberal, when we speak about American
and Liberalism, what you call in your country liberalism,
it is just the opposite.
And there are so many misunderstandings between,
I think about Santa Claus, who has nothing to do whatsoever
with Christmas, or the word Holocaust,
which really has nothing to do with genocide,
and so forth and so forth.
Or the Middle East, you put Palestine into the Middle East
and where's the nearest, of course you don't find it.
So in other words here, what is liberalism?
Whereas democracy answers the question, it's also very important for our lecture, answers
the question, who should rule?
The answer it gives is the majority of politically equal citizens, either in person or through
their representatives.
Whereas liberalism, rightly understood, doesn't answer the question, who should rule?
But how should government be exercised?
Liberalism says, regardless of who rules, whether it's an absolute monarch or a dictator
or a political majority in the parliament, government must be exercised in such a way
that each individual has the greatest, of course, reasonable amount of freedom.
You can't say, I'm a great liberal, I'm going to drive 100 miles an hour through a village.
But you see here, freedom is the essence, and there were really four phases.
There are the pre-liberals, a man like Adam Smith, who never called himself a liberal.
And the word, of course, politically comes from the country, which had always the greatest
enthusiasm for freedom, and that is Spain.
Now the supporters of the Constitution of Cardiff called themselves Los Liberales and called
their enemies Los Serviles, the servile ones.
South in England used the word in 1860 the first time and he spoke about our British
liberales, L-E-S, Spanish form.
And so Walter Scott spoke about libero, A-U-X, he took the French form.
The origins of liberalism of course is continental, it's not British, it's not English.
And then after the pre-liberals to get the early liberals, very, very important, the
early liberals, and of course these periods overlap in time.
The early liberals would be de Tocqueville, would be Montalembert, would be Lord Acton.
These are the early liberals.
Then you have the old liberals, they come later, Cobden, for instance.
Now our friend Mises really was an old liberal, Hayek was an old liberal.
And then finally after 1961, after the breakup of the Montpellier society, you get the new
liberals.
I call myself of course a new liberal, following Röpke rather than Hayek and Mises, but of
course I knew them all, I knew Hayek well, I knew Mises quite well, I knew Röpke very
well, he was also a very personal friend of Hayek, I spent the summers a week in the Alps,
was an inexhaustible source of information, both Hayek and Mises, as you know, really
died as non-marginarians.
No, but of course the liberalism got into a crisis in Europe, especially when you had
one man, one vote.
Because the vast majority of people, we have to face that fact, if they make a choice what
What they believe, not what is, but what believe is security and freedom.
Well, of course, they choose always security, the bread, the daily bread and security and
freedom.
And the people who have a real vested interest in freedom, I mean, I say a vested interest,
a realized interest in freedom.
for the people of a minority, usually people who are creative one way or the other.
Now what of course Mises experienced before World War I, especially after World War I,
never forget, Mises was in the army because the system was, if you had your bachelor's
degree, which he had, then you had to serve in the army, but only one year.
All the others had to serve in Austria for three years in the army, but he served only
one year.
And at the end of one year, you got the commission as a reserve officer.
So he served as a reserve officer in World War I in the Imperial and Royal Army, I say
Imperial and Royal, Imperial for Austria and Royal for Hungary.
There were two different citizenships, don't forget that.
Many things in common, but two different citizenships.
He then was wounded, not very seriously, but wounded sufficiently to be no longer capable
of participating in the war.
And after the war, he was seeking, as you do know, for an academic career in the university
where he had of course difficulties,
difficulties not on account of his racial background,
if you like, but difficulties around of his liberal outlook
because the university was increasingly professors,
were increasingly either Catholic oriented
with a conservatives land, but as a minority,
The majority really was nationalistic liberal.
The German expression is Wir sind geschlindert.
In other words, in which we fell accidentally that it became a war between nations.
Of course it was a war between nations already due to the French Revolution.
Prior to the French Revolution we had mere cabinet wars.
The cabinet war was king against king, and he had to look into the till, did he have enough money?
And then he called in for ruffians and cutthroats who liked to fight the war,
and they had as officers, members of the nobility, who had to bribe a government,
And he had to buy a commission, bribe a government to die, not waiting for the cancer ward, but
to die nobly on the battlefield.
He had to pay for that.
He didn't burn your draft card, as many Americans did during the Vietnam War.
So that was the old system.
And of course, tiny armies, and now you have gigantic armies, and you had democracy, you
You had parties in the parliament and you had to marshal now entire nations against
each other.
The Austrian ultimatum against Serbia would have merely resulted as a matter of fact in
a local war against Austria, against a small country, and Count Witte, former Russian prime
minister said, oh these Serbs, they are only badly baptized Turks anyhow.
But that it became really a world war was really due, and you see how cruel history is, a conspiracy
between the chief of the Russian general staff and the minister of war, who mobilized not
only on the Austrian border, to which they had the brief right because Austria was mobilized
but also against Germany, and then came this frightful exchange of wires between the two,
The war minister and the chief of the staff lie to Nicholas II.
William II is now convinced that he's lied at by Nicholas II, and then finally declares
the war on Russia.
And then the Austrians have come as allies of Germany.
The Austrians have to declare the war against Russia, not the Russians, I mean, I could
I'll tell you 99.9% of all Europeans think it the other way around.
History is so many, many facets are entirely different.
But you see the war between nations and nations who are taught now to hate each other, you
know, is all between nations is then converted in 1917 in something different, something
we didn't quite have before, and that is into an ideological crusade.
And it is now since the Russian monarchy falls, Russia becomes a democracy under Kerensky
and now Woodrow Wilson has a chance to pervert this war between nations, bad enough a war
between nations, into an ideological crusade to make the world safe for democracy.
That means now safe for the absolute victory of one party.
And if Hitler had any sense of humor, he would have erected a colossal statue to Rudolf Wilson.
Because only in the conversion, you see, into democracies, as Plato has clearly foreseen,
if you read Plato book eight and nine of the Republic, you see the absolute Xerox picture
of the Change of the Weimar Republic into the Nazi Tyranny.
But of course, even before that, you have the onslaught of socialism, and socialism,
Ludwig von Mises faced that in Austria, this rise, massive of socialism, also at the university.
You see that socialism is of what de Tocqueville would have called, and he used the expression
in Another Connection, une false idée claire, a clear but false idea of socialism you can
explain to any high school student at the age of 15 in 15 to 20 minutes.
But the working of a free economy, you need a seminar for that.
So naturally in that democratic framework, one man, one vote, when the masses vote, the
The attraction of socialism has become enormous and he saw that with great, great fear.
And of course, he realized naturally that the monarchy was a sort of bulwark against
this development.
And of course, also nationalism now with the artificial humiliation of certain countries,
Nationalism also rose and therefore you get now already the stage in a sense, you see,
prepared for a national socialism.
And that could very well even be combined with anti-Semitism because in our central
European mind, this is not generally true, the idea really was Judaism and the Jews and
and the Hebrews, and that is capitalist, now the stock exchange in Vienna was entirely
dominated by Hebrews.
So you see here that Goebbels also once declared, we are anti-Semitic because we are anti-capitalist.
There is this combination, the destruction, you see, important of the old vertical order
now into something horizontal.
Your old vertical order, Godfather in heaven
and the Holy Father in Rome,
and the King is the father of the fatherland,
and the father is a king in the family.
It went up and down.
You looked up and down.
Now you're looking timidly right and left
because they are the parties,
and the parties are based upon masses.
And these masses, of course,
are obviously uneducated and facing without real any political education or knowledge
the issues they can become prey now of demagoguery of popular leaders, it means of demagogues.
And Mises saw that, this development very, very clearly.
And of course his mind is how to save freedom.
And he knew very well that the material aspect of the problem of freedom was very, very crucial,
especially in view of the socialisms.
I speak now in the plural of it, because don't forget there is national socialism and international
socialism.
There are the socialisms.
And in the year 1934, the Dolfus regime, which was a dictatorship, which was carried
by a minority of decent people who were supported by Mises.
Mises worked as an advisor for Dolphos,
for a Catholic dictatorship.
I have nothing against the dictatorship.
I'm interested in freedom.
If a dictatorship protects my personal liberty and freedom,
I'm all for a dictatorship because, I mean,
my vote alone means really nothing.
I'm a microbe in the voting process.
And certainly, Mises realized that.
He became a financial advisor of Dodolfo's regime.
And in that year, 1934, there are two civil wars in Austria.
There's the one in February against the socialists
and the one in July against the national socialists.
International and national socialism.
And Austria was really in the middle of these two enemies.
Now you must realize that at that period, as you know very well, Mises has been accused
of having favored fascism in Italy, and he really favored his rise because his interest
was not democracy, his interest was really always freedom.
And since in Italy, freedom was really seriously menaced by socialism, hyphen, and communism,
he thought that fascism really was certainly by all means the minor evil, and I can assure
you I've lived also in fascist Italy.
In fascist Italy, if you were not a complete fool, you could live very freely because that
fascism had really two, how should I say, two breaks on, the one was the monarchy and
the other one was the Catholic Church.
And you could live quite, quite freely.
You could speak freely out, there would be nobody here, your speech was never censored,
newspapers were, books were, but otherwise you lived a very, you lived a very free life.
And Italy was then the only power which really protected the independence of Austria.
When then the Nazis in July of 1934, who revolution tried to get the upper hand, the Italian army
mobilized, I was in that time in the Tyrol, I saw the mobilized Italian army and Hitler
was made to know that if he moved into Austria, the Italians would come to the defense of
of Austro-Independence, because Mussolini naturally realized that if Austria is lost,
then Czechoslovakia would be entirely surrounded.
And if Czechoslovakia failed, then Poland would be entirely surrounded.
There was a domino theory, which certainly, like the other one, was perfectly right.
So that is his idea, rather having Italian fascism, and you had sometimes, you had liberals
and Socialist Fleeing Austria went even to fascist Italy.
And then Italy was driven into the arms of, into the arms of Hitler by Anthony Eden and
the British foreign policy in the Abyssinian War.
And then Mussolini said to highly placed Austrians, I can't do anything else.
I'm completely isolated from the West.
I must somehow collaborate with Hitler and he very, very reluctantly, as you all know,
he went into World War II only in the summer of 1940 with great, great reservation thinking
now that Hitler is going to dominate everything and he should get a little bite here, a little
to bite there, in order at least to save his own freedom of power of a country pushed practically
then by Hitler to the Mediterranean.
So that is, you see the reason why there exists an article about the relationship of Mises
to Italian Fascism, and to call National Socialism fascism, fascism of course is a leftish, not
a rightist, fascism is a leftish phenomenon, the fascist which you also find on your dime
at the back is a republican symbol and it started out to be a republican movement.
Mussolini, only being the son of an Italian anarchist, changed his mind.
Now you get also Mises, we come to World War II, the calamity of World War II, the calamity
of World War I was enormous, George F. Kennan, whom I also personally know, is the man who
who says rightly all the sources, all the roots of our evils really go back to World War I.
That is the great catastrophe really in our life, World War I, which brought in an order
which favored the rise of the National Socialism and which was won by Germany, better than mine.
On October 15, 1926, his magnificence, Dr. Ernst Kornemann, magnificence is the title
of a president of a German university or Austrian university, delivered a lecture and we said
of course we have suffered the loss of valuable provinces, we have suffered the loss of Aisles-Lorraine
of Eastern Germany to Poland, and our middle class was nearly destroyed and brought to starvation
and ruin, but we have won the war.
We bordered on three major powers, France, Austria, Hungary and Russia, now we only border
on France.
And between us and Russia, there's a whole cluster of new, mostly, except Poland, un-historical
countries, small and defenseless, and when the time comes, we take our picking.
Of course, Hitler followed that.
It's a result of not knowing geography.
So that was this frightful heritage.
Now then comes World War II, the result of World War II, the quasi dominance of Sovietism,
of Communism, and then the rallying for the few surviving, I must say, the whole few surviving
liberals who are drawing together in 1927, they are forming then near Vevey in Switzerland,
and the Mont Pelerin Society of which Mises was one of the founders.
Mises and Hayek and Röpke, I mean, these three men really had banded together and organized
and had quite a cluster of men who came together.
But then again, something very, very typically happened, and that is that they made these
the proposition to call the society, first of all, not a more parallel society, but the
talk will act in society.
And then Professor Knight of the University of Chicago rose up, panned the table and said,
if you call that society after two Roman Catholic aristocrats, I'll quit.
Then in the despair, what should we do?
But you see here the aristocratic aspect, very, very important, and the
nobilitarian aspect of the liberal idea.
Chesterton said all aristocrats are born anarchists.
And never forget here, you see, never forget if I used the word anarchist, bear in mind
that an anarchist is a liberal, in the real sense of the word, not in the American sense.
A liberal run wild is an anarchist, and you find anarchism, obviously, therefore, you
find it only really in the Catholic and in the Russian, in the Russian orbit.
You don't find them anywhere else.
You remember the Sacco and Vanzetti case, probably, the older one of yours, Sacco was
probably guilty, Vanzetti in all likelihood innocent.
What happened to the ashes of Vanzetti?
Here we go back to Italian fascism.
The Vanzetti ashes were brought back to Italy, were buried, and became a center of pilgrimages
under the observance of the fascist authorities, and even the Pope, even Mussolini, had really
protested against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, and a man called Luigi Rustigucci
wrote a book, Tragedia e Suplizio di Sacco e Vanzetti, Tragedy and Martyrdom of Sacco
and Vanzetti, and the preface was written to that book by Arnaldo Mussolini.
Mussolini, of course, has declared, of course, I despise socialists, but anarchists, we all
really are anarchists, you see, from Romanism and rebellion, leveled against the Irish.
There are no Danish or Norwegian anarchists, I can assure you, or Prussian anarchists.
And that's the growth of the Catholic world, because you see, the Catholic theology is
is profoundly personalistic.
The first idea, of course, is the idea of free will, which reformers denied, of course,
or free will and the denial of predestination.
You are really responsible for yourself.
You are not a puppet in the hands of a creator.
and the personalistic aspect, and of course that always has been also the strength of
the nobility in general, and of course of the Catholic nobility in particular, the man
who tries to slay the beast, Count Stauffenberg, is of course a Catholic aristocrat.
So you go back to that, and then you see the interesting phenomenon of the whole Austrian
school.
Now if you take the Austrian School, that would be Menger, and Wieser, and Boehm-Bawerk,
and Hayek, and Mises, and Haberer, and then finally the only man who is not a noble man
is Machlub of the original.
The whole Austrian School consists of noble men, and all of them hereditary.
That means they were not ennobled, they inherited.
They had already the noble father house, Rany Mead, 1215, the barons who were trying to
get rights and resist the monarch.
The front in France is against the nobility, the nobility always against an almighty and
over-mighty king.
So, see, that is the thing which Americans do not realize apart from the fact that you
see, nobilitation was an instrument for social mobility, because you get always new, now
no longer possible, of course.
Now the only inheritance you can have is hard cash, so no more nobilitations are taking place,
You know, the son of the, even sometimes a great actor, the son of a great artist, the
son of a great professor, the son of a great general, it's only the son of the manufacturer
who can act, or the banker who can inherit the father's strength or the father's achievement
if you like.
And all that was always realized by, all that was really realized by our…
And I get to know him, I get to know him through the Archduke Otto of Austria, because he
was obviously, I mean, a man entirely open to the monarchical idea.
He knew very well how Francis Joseph, when anti-Semitism rose in Austria, and it did rise
in Austria as it rose elsewhere too, I mean, not only in Austria, that Francis Joseph in
In a letter to his empress, which has been preserved, went out in violent terms against
anti-Semitism.
The Jews, they are my subject, like everybody else, I mean, he felt to be the pater patrie.
In other words, a non-political entity.
You see, when Teddy Roosevelt visited Francis Joseph around 1908 or 1909 or 1910, anyhow
Now, in the beginning of the century, he asked Francis Joseph, the majesty, do tell me what
after all is the role of a monarch in this progressive 20th century.
And of course, in 1910, you still could think that this could be a progressive century,
which it indeed wasn't.
And Francis Joseph said, well, it's my task to protect my peoples from the governments,
for the protection of the nations apart from political convictions.
So you see here the role of Mises.
Of course he was very sad about the break between the old liberals and the new liberals.
That happened in 1961.
I was present, I was a member of the Montpellier Society for only two years, 1960, I lectured
there, 1961.
There were many personal reasons, but many impersonal reasons.
The neoliberals really harked back and looked back at the early liberals.
And the neoliberals were adverse to what they call mammothism, in other words, to monopolies
and cartels and so on, because they said, we must have freedom, and freedom means there
must be several enterprises, not one big enterprise, and we end up, of course, we're having no
freedom.
We must have the right of choice, buying this good or that good, or supporting this
or supporting that, and poor Röpke had the first heart attack in 1961, in 1963 I participated
still in the neo-liberal, catholic discussion which took place in Augsburg, but you see
here the confusion.
You get for instance, I know encyclopedias you find at Montpellier society being neo-liberal
which it was mixed until 61, then it became old liberal really.
The old liberals, on the other hand, started slightly to lean towards the neoliberal side,
but Mises weathered that through.
What sort of man was he?
Well, not very tall, sharp features, as you know by his bust and by his pictures, very
He was decisionary in his words, this is right, this is wrong, this is nonsense, this is good.
He was not conciliatory, neither am I, of course, I like that, I admire that.
Not adverse to extremes, il n'y a de supportable que les choses extrêmes, there's only the
The extreme things are bearable, as Anatole Valls used to say.
He was a man of that sort, steadfast, he was a steadfast man, and he gave you the impression
to be a steadfast man, of course, profoundly interested in cultural values.
You see, as I told you when I met him, how he deplored the fact that the death of Robert
The theater, music, everything was near to him, also of course to Hayek.
In many ways the men were of very similar opinion.
The neoliberals were somehow, let us say, more culturally conscious.
The man like Hoppe was very near, let us say, the Catholic outlook, specifically the Catholic
outlook.
Hoppe was a member of the Papal Academy of Sciences.
Hayek, I know, had a short little discussion with Paul II in Latin, and the Pope said,
A long glass of civilized language.
You see, in other words, that they all had a sense of humor, our great liberals.
And of course, I mean, as a final judgment, I must say that both Röpke, the neoliberal,
as well as Hayek, both told me, expressed his verbus, we all are disciples of Ludwig
Ludwig von Mises.
I mean, they were very emphatic about it, that they got their basic ideas from Ludwig
von Mises.
In my case, it was somehow different.
I believed so many young people on the right, that was anti-capitalist and anti-socialist
at the same time, there must be a third way.
But there ain't no such animal, you know?
is no third way.
In other words, we have to look towards free enterprise, I usually don't use the word capitalism,
I say free enterprise, or free market economy, because actually Bolshevism is also capitalism,
only state capitalism or private capitalism, that's the whole difference.
So we have to look at these differences, but certainly therefore, if you take the teaching
The teaching role which Ludwig von Mises had, I think the teaching role he set in this world
is something permanent.
He's something permanent.
He was not a man of my faith.
Hayek was more or less an agnostic, both respected the Catholic faith, probably more than anybody
Hayek wanted a Catholic funeral, and the funeral speech was held by a Jesuit whom I know, Shashynk,
but who was not an ordinary Jesuit, he was a specialist in economics.
So he had the funeral oration at his burial in Freiburg in Breisgau, but let us finally
honor the memory of Mises, who was a fine man and a real character, a real character.
And as a real character, he remains in my memory.
Thank you so much.
64,000 dollar questions, I'm expecting.
I won't pay them to you, but I would like to, yes, please.
I'm not aware of the 1961 split, and then I thought also, can you explain a little more
about that?
Yeah, that is very difficult because there were personal reasons, the loyalty of Röpke
to the then secretary, not the president, the secretary, called Honnold, but actually
it was also the fact, I would say that, you know my one, two, three, four stages of liberalism,
That the old liberals really harked back purely to Adam Smith, whereas the neoliberals harked
back, in other words, three to one and four to two.
That means the neoliberals really harked back to the early liberals.
They helped them, and they then forget that the early liberals had a very distinct religious
is coloration, and Menlaib Röpke, now even Rüstow, who is a real giant, I'm afraid that
you probably know hardly anybody if you know much about Rüstow, who was a neoliberal.
He has a son in America, I think he teaches John Hopkins, who published that more new
mental work of Rüstow, orstbestimmungtegegenwart, difficult to translate, effort to establish
the momentary moment in our history in three large volumes with an enormous material.
And Rüstow, immensely close friend of Röpke, also with an agnostic, but with enormous admiration
for the Catholic Church, a very interesting person, son of a Prussian general who became
an anarchist and then was saved from starvation by a famous Catholic priest who also was a
literary person who provided him with a bed and a typewriter and a chair and a table and
paper and so on, who then emigrated to Constantinople, so did Röpke.
Röpke and Rüstow were both in Constantinople, but then Rüstow stayed in Constantinople
and Röpke went to Geneva.
Röpke spent the war years in Geneva.
Röpke also wrote a memorandum for the Allied powers to restore the monarchy in Germany
after the war.
And they did not go to America.
In other words, they wanted to stay as close as they could to the frightful center of infection,
which was the heart of Europe.
Now you see, in other words, it is the anti-mammothism.
I think I already used the expression of the neo-liberals which bothered.
Mises said, Mammothism is perfectly avoidable.
We need no state intervention, in other words, antitrust laws or anything of that order.
Of course, at the same time, I can assure you, a man like Röpke would certainly not
have approved of the specifically American antitrust laws, who to him seemed often very,
very silly, and as you probably also realize, but he wanted to keep the idea, his idea was
keep competition open.
And of course, if nobody else can do it, well, we must rely on the state to keep competition
open.
There is nobody else who can assure that, which was denied by Hayek and denied by Mises.
That is the main, I think that was really the main ideological difference between the
two.
Other questions, please?
No one.
Yes, please.
The book of 1919, Mises was very much a Democrat, and he sort of ridiculed on the hereditary monarchies.
He regretted that democracy couldn't really gain hope in Prussia and in Austria, but he blundered on the mix-up of different nationalities all living together in the same territory.
But he thought that in countries where you could have democracy, well of course the people would vote for the policies, but that's not their issue.
The change came about through history.
You see history took all these nations of Central Europe over their knees and spanked them.
And I felt this so vividly about four years ago, the pan-Europe union, you must know the
The Pan-Europe Union is a private organization founded by Count Kudenhof Kalerje in the 1920s,
and that is really the source and the father of the present tendency, no, tendency, I mean,
it's the flow now to unite Europe.
And in 1900, and I must pinpoint that, no, in 1993, yes, yes, four years ago, in Prague
We had a great meeting, the Pan-Europe Union.
I spoke, I read speeches in a variety of languages, I don't master at all, but I'm a very good parent.
And then spoke Otto, the oldest son of the last emperor.
And there the Czechs gave him a standing ovation.
They had experience.
First the corrupt republic, and then the Nazi rule, and then the communist rule, and they
had bitterly learned the lesson, at least the people who were there.
Now the standing ovation would have been unthinkable 100 years ago or 50 years ago.
In other words, history also taught Mises.
And I've changed my mind also because I actually, in my novel called Gates of Hell, I have three
pages in a novel against capitalism.
But I got the good education by Röpke, Röpke took me by the ear and converted me to free
enterprise.
Now that was very obvious in the case of Mises, yeah.
Anybody else?
Yes?
This is a small question.
Did Mises continue as the financial advisor in the Khrushchev regime or not?
Yes, also he continued with Mises, but only until 1936, because by 1936 he realized in
all likelihood that Austria was lost, that Austria had lost its protection in Italy, because
Because Italy had been driven into the arms and, of course, to save his skin.
Unlike Freud, Freud, for instance, who was also, I mean, if you like, a supporter, very
much an anti-democrat, Freud, never forget, and politically was a man of the right.
Freud was a man who, as a man who admired Christianity, I mean, he was against promiscuity
Jean Freud was terrified about the idea that his theories might fall into the hand of psychiatrists,
because he said, I mean, the treatment of people for years and high expenses perfectly,
it should only be used for the education of children and for cultural analysis.
That was Freud.
But the people are very often misunderstood what they're after.
But then, of course, he went over to Geneva and kept up his connection with the Handelskammer,
that is the Chamber of Commerce.
And in the Chamber of Commerce, he collected young people, young and old people, no, no,
people and men and women, and held seminars in the Chamber of Commerce.
It was a very important thing.
But he never got really the full professorship of Vienna, but he got the title of professor.
He was a very highly prized professor in Europe, he's a man who can only be compared in prestige
with diplomacy or with the general staff.
He got it from the emperor, from Francis Joseph, made him professor, Freud, I'm speaking about
Freud.
And the role of Mises was only that of, well, you could say, by American standards of an
assistant professor.
He didn't get the full professorship.
I mean, he was treated badly by the University of Vienna as, finally, by the universities
in this country here.
He had to swim always against the current, but he swam courageously.
That's the wonderful thing about him.
He never gave in.
He fought his noble fight.
Other questions?
Nobody, nobody.
Well, I think I have to thank you then for your attention.
Thank you very much.