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NOTE 2. School Years

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CHAPTER II School Years

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The Mises family moved to Vienna sometime between 1883, when Ludwig's brother Richard

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was born, and 1891. The move probably occurred before the fall of 1887, when six-year-old

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Ludwig began the mandatory four years of elementary schooling. The family settled in a suburban

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apartment in close proximity to what was then the city of Vienna, and today is its first

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Vienna

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For many centuries Vienna had been the administrative centre of the Habsburg Empire. After the revolution

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of 1848 to 1849 and Franz Josef's abortive attempt to reintroduce royal absolutism, the

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The Austrian liberals had risen to power at the end of the 1850s. Their reign lasted about

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30 years, enough time to reshape the city to reflect their ideals. They demolished ramparts

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that separated the old city of Vienna from the surrounding suburbs, replacing them with

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the Ringstrasse, a magnificent U-shaped boulevard that now enclosed the old centre from three

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sides. The fourth border was an arm of the Danube River. The Ringstrasse became an architectural

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and Aesthetic Triumph, which, by virtue of its geographical concentration, surpassed

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in visual impact any urban reconstruction of the 19th century, even that of Paris.

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The nobility too had its palaces on the new boulevard, but the dominant edifices embodied

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the liberal bourgeoisie's political and cultural values. On the very spot were the

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large city ramparts had once symbolised the military presence of monarchial rule, now

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Now an opera and a Hofburg theatre celebrated the performing arts.

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Splendid museums for natural history and art displayed human achievements and discoveries.

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Parliament buildings hosted the new political forces present in the Reichsrat, new buildings

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for the University and the Stock Exchange represented the forces of economic progress.

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And a magnificent neo-Gothic city hall symbolised the rebirth of municipal autonomy after ages

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of Imperial Supremacy. Young Mises could reach all of these places within a 20-minute walk.

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Unlike most other major European capitals, the city of Vienna was surprisingly small.

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Until the 1890s, Vienna counted barely more than 60,000 inhabitants. Felix Umari recalls

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everything outside the center was known as Vorstadt, the suburbs, which almost meant

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the same as provinces. After 1900, a municipal reform merged Vienna with its proximate suburbs.

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The old Vienna thereafter became the first district of the new city. Vienna hosted all

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central political institutions and administrations, the most important cultural centres and the

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headquarters of the largest corporations of the entire empire, but one could walk across

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the entire concentration in a half-hour stroll. By comparison, it takes more than two hours

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of walking to cross Paris within the boulevard périphérique, and it takes roughly the same

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time to walk through the city of London. It was easy to encounter the Empire's most famous

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and powerful people on the streets of Vienna. It was almost impossible not to see someone

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in some eminent position. Among the most popular individuals were opera singers, stage actors

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and Members of the Royal Family. When a famous singer walked by, or one of the more than

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sixty archdukes or archduchesses drove by in their carriage, people would greet them

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with spontaneous applause, and when the star from the opera or Hofburg theatre died, flags

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flew at half mast. Johnson observes that even simple members of the opera or philharmonic

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orchestras were greeted in public, and that many of them performed chamber music in the

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Salons of the Wealthy. Yet the best example, and almost unbelievable

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for us today, was Franz Josef himself, who frequently departed in just his carriage, from

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the Hofburg Theater in the city to Schönbrunn Palace on the outskirts of Vienna. Anyone could

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walk within reach of the carriage and lift his hat to the white-haired emperor. It was

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similarly impossible not to meet one's friends, relatives and colleagues on the way to or

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The Viennese cultural elites did not live in secluded social circles. They perceived

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themselves as taking part in an all-encompassing social life that brought together ministers

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Workers and students, opera singers and scientists, stockbrokers and historians of art, philosophers

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and painters, psychologists and novelists, office clerks and architects and so on, in

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countless variations. Having so many people in so small a city contributed to making Vienna

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from the 1870s to the 1930s a cultural hothouse that would shape much of what was most valuable

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in 20th century civilization. In those years Vienna became the birthplace

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of phenomenology, medicine, psychoanalysis, Zionism and Jugendstil en Nouveau. It was

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one of the cradles of modern analytical philosophy and, most importantly, it was the birthplace

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and home of Austrian economics, that school of thought that Ludwig von Mises was to lead

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and Transform.

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In the words of cultural historian Karl Schorske, in London, Paris or Berlin, the intellectuals

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in the various branches of high culture, whether academic or aesthetic, journalistic or literary,

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political or intellectual, scarcely knew each other. They lived in relatively segregated

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professional communities. In Vienna, by contrast, until about 1900 the cohesiveness of the

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The whole elite was strong. The Salon and the Café retained their vitality as institutions

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where intellectuals of different kinds shared ideas and values with each other and still

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mingled with a business and professional elite proud of its general education and artistic

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culture.

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The Cafés had a decisive impact on the education of Vienna's young intellectuals. The Café

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was of course a place to have coffee or a small meal, but it was also where professional

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people met to talk business, and everyone else met to discuss current interests.

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For students, the café was also an institution of learning. The better café subscribed to

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the major international journals of science, art and literature. Designed for the entertainment

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of customers, these subscriptions made the café's function as a kind of private library.

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As a teenager, Mises must have spent many afternoon hours here, reading the latest articles

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in all fields of knowledge and achievement and discussing them with his peers. It was

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probably here that he first encountered the writings of the German Historical School under

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Gustav Schmoller and found them less than fully convincing. He later recalled,

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I was still in high school when I noticed a contradiction in the position of the Schmoller

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School. On the one hand, they rejected the positivistic demand for a science of law that

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was to be built from the historical experiences of society. On the other hand, they believed

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that economic theory was to be abstracted from economic experiences. It was astonishing

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to me that this contradiction was barely noticed and rarely mentioned.

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He was equally bewildered by the way the historical school presented its case against laissez-faire,

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liberalism, Schmoller and his friends seemed to argue that the modern liberal era contrasted

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unfavourably with older collectivist times. But this made no sense. At that time I did

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not yet understand the significance of liberalism, but to me the fact alone that liberalism was

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an achievement of the eighteenth century, and that it was not known in former times,

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was no cogent argument against it. It was not quite clear to me how an argument could

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should be derived from the fact that in the distant past there had been community property

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in land, nor could I understand why monogamy and family should be abolished because there

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had been promiscuity in the past. To me, such arguments were nothing but nonsense.

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The sheer cultural density of the city almost forced the Viennese to take an interest in

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science, beauty and art. Thinking and talking about such things were not reserved for the

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for the elite or particular occasions. They were a part of Vienna's daily common life.

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Virtually everybody from the emperor to the housewife knew something about the latest

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achievements of science and held some opinion about this actor or that novel. In fact, any

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kind of culinary, artistic, scientific or technological achievement met with well-informed

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appreciation and critique. This permanent criticism, the famous Viennese Gruntern, sharpened

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everyone's minds and attain standards virtually without equal. While the Viennese were interested

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in all fields of endeavour and refinement, what they were truly enthusiastic about was

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music. From about 1770 to 1810 they had witnessed the most extraordinary explosion of musical

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creation the world has ever experienced, when the geniuses of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and

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and Schubert burst onto Vienna's stages in rapid succession.

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Johnston writes in Vienna Vienna, The concentration of the supreme genius of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven

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and Schubert in one city over two generations has no parallel in the entire history of culture.

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The closest parallel would be the Rome of Raphael and Michelangelo, or the Athens of

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Sophocles and Euripides. Yet in no other art do the greatest geniuses so outstrip lesser

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The City on the Danube became the world capital of music and remained so into the 20th century.

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Passion for music united all ethnic, social and political strata of the population. Differences

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that made them opponents in politics could not separate them when it came to enjoying

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old and new masters in music. And in distinct contrast to politics, where irreconcilable

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In the words of William Johnston, slovenliness, schlumperei, might be tolerated in politics,

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but not in musical or theatrical performance.

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Mises did not share the Viennese acceptance of schlumperei when it came to politics, but

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he did share their passion for music. It would endure throughout his life. His stepdaughter

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Gita Sireni recalled her 90-year-old stepfather sitting next to her at a performance of Strauss's

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Blue Danube in New York City. The old man's eyes were shining as he hummed along with

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the music.

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Viennese Jews

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Ludwig's parents could rely on a closely-knit network of relatives that greatly helped their

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integration in Vienna. In particular, Arthur and Adele could build on blood ties with the

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local members of the Mises and Landau clans, as well as with the Nierensteins and Kaliers.

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Ludwig and Richard would have lifelong friendships with the young Nierensteins and Kaliers.

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On weekends Ludwig often saw his maternal grandfather Fischerlandau, whom he admired

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very much. His paternal grandfather had died before he entered the gymnasium. Summer vacations

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were spent in the countryside with the Nierensteins and other cousins. Social contacts outside

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the network of Jewish families must have been rare. The old Viennese establishment remained

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closed to newcomers, and even the noble pedigree of the Mises family was too recent to be taken

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and seriously by them. Ludwig would see the day when titles no longer counted, officially

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at least. After the destruction of the monarchy in November 1918, the new republican government

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abolished all titles and banned their use in print. Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises

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became Ludwig Mises, according to Austrian law. Outside the country, however, he would

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and continue to use the title that his great-grandfather had earned for his family.

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The liberal era in Austria had reached its peak in the 1870s. While the following decades

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would see its decline, it remained strong enough to accommodate the Galician and Moravian

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Jewish migration to Vienna. All great metropolitan cities of the world derive their dynamics

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through the influx of new blood from rural provinces. Ambitious young people bring with

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them innovations in art, science and business. William Johnston observes that the majority

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of great Viennese pioneers had been born outside of Vienna. In the case of Austria-Hungary,

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the eagerness of the provincial newcomer was compounded by the motivation of the Jewish

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upstart, who for the first time ever had the opportunity to integrate himself into a cosmopolitan

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Society. Art and science offered opportunities for social mobility that Jews enjoyed in no

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other area. Business, the press, literature and theatre, music and opera, and the sciences

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became the great vehicles for the integration of secular Jews.

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Heinrich Gretz reports that the first cautious steps to a Jewish integration into Viennese

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social life were undertaken when Fanny Itzik, a Jewish woman from Berlin, that is from the

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The Mendelssohn Circle moved to Vienna in the 1780s and opened a brilliant salon.

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By the 1890s, the Jewish impact on Viennese culture could not be overlooked. William Johnston

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remarks that at the turn of the century, when the Jewish population represented less than

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nine per cent of Vienna, it was responsible for almost half of the overall artistic and

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and Scientific Achievement. This overwhelming success was due in part to the absence of

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a ghetto mentality among the new immigrants. The Jews from Arabia, Bohemia and Galicia

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had been living for centuries under an oppressive, rabbinical order, but they had not yet experienced

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any similar constraints in their dealings with Gentiles.

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In contrast to German cities like Frankfurt and Berlin, which had long had a Jewish settlement,

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Vienna first attracted Jews in large numbers after 1848. They came from small villages

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in Bohemia, Moravia and Galicia, where Jewish culture had been preserved in relative isolation

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for hundreds of years. These were Jews who had lived in the countryside. In Bohemia some

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of them had been farmers and few had been touched by city life. They had been small

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merchants, often trading between towns or providing financial services to gentile landowners.

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Gentisemitism had been rare in these regions because the Jews provided services that the

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gentile lords and peasants wanted but would not perform themselves. The economic complementarity

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of the countryside had guaranteed the Jews security and modest prosperity. The Jewish

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families who moved to Vienna from the eastern provinces formed the nucleus of a new progressive

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and Liberal Society. Vienna offered them the best schools in the world and equally unique

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cultural facilities, and the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the country's largest city

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offered progressive Jews the prospect of escaping the narrow confines of a life directed by

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the traditional precepts of their religion. The leading organ of this liberal Jewish immigrant

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community was the Neue Freie Presse, which relied on the financial backing of the credit

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Anstaltbank, the Austrian flagship of the House of Rothschild. The paper took an increasingly

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pro-German and anti-Slav stand. Under its mentor and editor Moritz Benedikt, 1849-1920,

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it fanned anti-Slav feelings among Austro-Germans, it lauded the post-1880 alliance with Germany,

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and in 1914 positively welcomed war as an ally of Wilhelm II. The Neue Freie Presse

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Professor resembled the liberal bourgeoisie who read it. Exquisite taste in culture, accompanied

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by naïveté in politics.

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Although the Miseses were more conservative than most other Jewish families in Vienna,

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Artur was a board member of the Vienna Jewish cultural community, and Adele was very religious.

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Ludwig grew up in an atmosphere that tended to equate progress and secularisation, where

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Where prophets and saints were increasingly replaced by the inventors of engines and the

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heroes of philosophy, art and science.

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What Schoska says about Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, also applies

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to Ludwig von Mises. When Theodor was born in 1860, his family was well out of the ghetto

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— economically established, religiously enlightened, politically liberal and culturally

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Germany. Their Judaism amounted to little more than what Theodor Gompatz, the assimilated

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Jewish classicist, liked to call un plus souvenir de famille. Shorska's parents even liked

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to call his bar mitzvah his confirmation. For young Mises, the transformation of Vienna

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through the exploits of science and technology was a continual process of never-ending improvements.

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When he arrived in the city as a young boy, the liberal governments had already put their

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stamp on the streets and architecture. Everything was new. Everything breathed the spirit of

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the time. As a young man, Ludwig saw gas lamps replaced by electric lighting, horse and carriage

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by motorised vehicles, the daily excursion to the public water fountain by new plumbing

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systems. He saw telephone lines installed throughout the city, and eventually saw airplanes

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taking off and landing in Vienna. The famous writer Stefan Zweig, one of Mises's contemporaries,

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claimed that the same progress seemed to manifest itself in social and political matters, for

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example, in the extension of suffrage and in pro-labour legislation. The new urban middle

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class came to believe that all social and political problems would disappear in due

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New Course, Conflicts between ethnic and religious groups would vanish, and mankind would eventually

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reach the state of universal brotherhood.

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Zweig was born in the same year as Mises, 1881, and also was a Jewish intellectual whose

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family had settled in Vienna only recently.

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Zweig's testimony is therefore representative of experiences and sentiments of the milieu

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in which Mises spent his childhood.

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It was no accident that the overwhelming majority of the Jewish immigrants to Vienna were liberals.

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Happy to have escaped the religious and moral constraints of their rural hometowns, they

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tended to oppose the limitations of their new environment as well. This concerned not

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only the political order, which officially privileged Catholics of German ethnicity,

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but also the social role of the Catholic Church, whose prominence painfully reminded them of

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and the rabbinical order at home. Two issues united Jewish and gentile liberals – opposition

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to the Church and the fight against censorship. The latter had survived from the times of

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Funds I, who after the Napoleonic Wars had turned Austria and Vienna in particular into

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a police state that sought to monitor all the intellectual activities of its citizens.

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These spies infiltrated the cafes and theatres, and concertos acted as informers. Foreign

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books had to be approved before they could be released on the Austrian market, and many

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foreign authors were prohibited. Newspapers were monitored as a matter of course, and

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even theatrical productions needed the authorities' prior approval. Newspaper censorship continued

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in force until after 1900. When the Mises family moved to Vienna in the 1880s, the stringency

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of the censorship laws had already faded under the impact of the liberal 1848 revolution,

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but the effects of the old laws on the Viennese mentality remained. Traditional city dwellers

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were reluctant to pursue what were possibly unbecoming innovations in business, science

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and art. They were educated men and women of good taste and manners, but they lacked

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the initiative and drive necessary to realise projects against the resistance of a conformist

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Why had France's police state tamed the Viennese more than the provincials? Johnston gives

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this explanation. Vienna suffered far more harshly from censorship and police surveillance

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than any other region of the Habsburg Empire. In the days before the electric telegraph

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and the Railroad, it was nearly impossible to harass a hinterland as effectively as a

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capital city. At no other time since Maria Theresa's centralised Austrian administration

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did the provinces compete so successfully with the capital in cultural prominence as during

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the Biedermeyer period. These men cared far less about social disapproval than the old

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Viennese. Their rugged individualism transformed Vienna and Western culture in the course of

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Academician's Gymnasium In September 1892, shortly before his eleventh

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birthday, Mises entered the Academician's Gymnasium, where he would be schooled for

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the next eight years. The gymnasium schools were very particular institutions, more demanding

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and quite dissimilar from their present-day successes. A product of the nineteenth-century

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Continental System of Education, they can best be described as a combination of high

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school and college. The children of ambitious and well-to-do parents began attending around

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the age of ten after four years of elementary training. Three gymnasium models were available,

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a classical model featuring eight years of Latin and six of Greek, a semi-classical with

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Latin and one or two modern languages, and a thoroughly modern option with only modern

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Ideas, Eric von Künfeld-Ledin states that the classical model had more prestige than

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the others, but they were all demanding. He writes, Often these very hard school years

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hung like a black cloud over families. Failure in just one subject required repetition of

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a whole year. This was the fate of Nietzsche, of Albert Einstein, and also of Friedrich

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August von Hayek. Young Mises, of course, got a classical education, the modern languages

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he learned privately. While at the Akademischen Gymnasium, Mises read Caesar, Livy, Ovid,

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Sallust, Jugurta, Cicero, Virgil and Tacitus in Latin. In Greek he studied Xenophon, Homer,

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Herodotus, Demosthenes, Plato and Sophocles. One verse from Virgil so deeply impressed

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him that it became his maxim for a lifetime, tu ne sede malis, set contra audensiorito,

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do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.

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Many years later he pointed out the crucial role that the immersion in classical literature

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and the writings of the ancient Greeks in particular played for the emergence of liberal

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Social Philosophy, and thus in his own intellectual development.

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Mises It was the political literature of the ancient

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Greeks that begot the idea of the Monarchal Acts, the philosophy of the Whigs, the doctrines

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of Althusius, Grotius and John Locke, and the ideology of the fathers of modern constitutions

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and bills of rights. It was the classical studies, the essential feature of a liberal

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School Education that kept awake the spirit of freedom in the England of the Stuarts,

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in the France of the Bourbons, and in Italy, subject to the despotism of a galaxy of princes.

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No less a man than Bismarck, among the nineteenth-century statesmen next to Metternich, the foremost

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foe of liberty, bears witness to the fact that, even in the Prussia of Frederick William

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III, the gymnasium, the education based on Greek and Roman literature, was a stronghold

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of Republicanism. Mises argued, The liberty which the Greek statesmen, philosophers and

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historians glorified as the most precious good of man, was a privilege reserved to a

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minority. In denying it to medics and slaves, they virtually advocated the despotic rule

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of a hereditary caste of oligarchs. Yet it would be a grave error to dismiss their hymns

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to Liberty as Mandacious. They were no less sincere in their praise and quest of freedom

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than were, two thousand years later, the slaveholders among the signers of the American Declaration

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of Independence. And he went on, The passionate endeavours to eliminate the classical studies

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from the curriculum of the liberal education, and thus, virtually to destroy its very character,

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were one of the major manifestations of the revival of the servile ideology.

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For a diametrically opposed assessment of the relationship between classical literature

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and liberty, see Frederic Bastiat in his work Baccalaurea et Socialisme. Bastiat argues in

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particular that the classics have bequeathed to us the notion that society is a purely

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conventional construct, as well as the idea that legislation could fabricate society according

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According to Just Any Design

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The Austrian schools had been reformed in 1851 at the beginning of the absolutist phase

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of Franz Josef Rhein. Under the leadership of Count Leo Thun von Hornstein, the government

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seized control of secondary education, which had been the exclusive domain of the Catholic

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Church, and imposed a new curriculum that was meant to prepare the graduates for scientific

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studies and executive positions within the Austrian bureaucracy. The teaching of religion

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had become compulsory in 1869. Children had to have four years of elementary school, which

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prepared them to be good subjects of the state before they could enter a secondary

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school. The gymnasium taught the humanities to the future elite of the country. Only about

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5% of an age group was admitted. This number tells more about the nature of the gymnasium

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than any description of its curricula. To be admitted to a gymnasium was to be part

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of a tiny intellectual elite. It meant learning from teachers who were respectfully called

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about Herr Professor, and who were in fact the peers of today's college and university

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professors rather than of today's high school teachers. Positions at the universities were

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extremely rare, and it meant being measured by standards that were incomparably higher

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than those of modern high schools. Being among the best students did not guarantee a place

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in the gymnasium. Tuition was high and outside assistance was rare. Only one of Mises' classmates

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Mises had such assistants, but because the schools competed for the best pupils, they

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often waived the fees for exceptional young men who could not afford them, about 20% of

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the pupils in Mises's class. The typical gymnasium pupil was the intelligent

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son of middle-class or wealthy parents. Pupils with a working-class background were in exception.

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While the gymnasium was the best type of school, the various gymnasium were not equal in quality

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or Reputation. The best schools were in Vienna, both in terms of the family background of

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the pupils and of the quality of the professors. The latter were often published scholars who

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actively engaged in research and made important contributions in their fields. For example,

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Ludwig's Latin teacher, Dr. Valentin Hintner, was a member of the Royal Prussian Academy

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of the Socially Beneficial Sciences in Erfurt. In Vienna, three schools stood above the rest,

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The Theresianum, the Schottengymnasium and the Akademische Gymnasium. These were all

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male schools. Viennagos were taught in separate gymnasium, yet they could take the graduation

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exam in one of the top schools.

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Empress Maria Theresa had created the Theresianum in the mid-1700s as a Knights Academy, a school

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to prepare young aristocrats for future responsibilities as administrative and political leaders of

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and the Empire. In Mises' day, it remained a school for the sons of the high aristocracy

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and admitted bourgeois pupils only as day students. Among the latter were Karl Lüger,

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who eventually became the first non-liberal mayor of Vienna, Rudolf Hilferding and Josef

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Schumpeter. There were, however, many families who abhorred the snobbish atmosphere of the

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Theresianum and preferred other schools, such as the Benediktine-Schotten-Gymnasium and

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The Akademische Gymnasium The Akademische Gymnasium was the most thoroughly

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secularised secondary school in Vienna. It was therefore the favourite place of education

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for the sons of the liberal bourgeoisie and in particular of Vienna's better Jewish families.

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In Ludwig's terminal class, nineteen out of thirty-five pupils were Jewish, thirteen

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Catholic and two Protestant. The school had been established in 1453. Today it is located

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on Beethovenplatz, near the Eastern Ringstrasse. The tall neo-Gothic building was constructed

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in the 1860s, with romantic towers and high windows on ivied brick walls. This is where

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Ludwig spent the next eight years. His weekly schedule in the first year, religion, two

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hours, Latin, eight hours, German, four hours, geography, three hours, mathematics, three

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3 hours, natural history 2 hours, calligraphy 1 hour. By and large, the same subjects were

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taught throughout the entire 8-year programme. The only major exception was Greek, which

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was taught starting in the third year. Mises was one of the best students, although not

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at the very top. The only class where he truly excelled was history, and he eventually graduated

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sixth out of 33 pupils. The pupils were, however, somewhat disenchanted with their school, because

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because of the dour indifference of their teachers. Before the 1851 liberal education

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reform under Thun Hohenstein, the Austrian schools had been run by Catholic clerics.

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Accordingly, classroom instruction featured mainly church history and filosofia perennis.

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After the reform, civil servants replaced the clerics. These new secular professors

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were entirely steeped in the traditions and mentality of the Austrian bureaucracy and performed

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in the classroom with the same detached attitude of other state bureaucrats. Their main interest

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was not to educate students, but to present their material efficiently. Apart from the

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insufficient motivation of the teachers, there was another reason for student dissatisfaction,

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a reason that also explains the explosion of creative energies in Vienna that began

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in the liberal era. The schools did not offer enough intellectual stimulation for the Jewish

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Boys who came from families nurturing a long tradition of literacy and of careful and sustained

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intellectual work. Then, as now, young students endured school as a routine. It was not where

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they found their interests or passions, but while students today might look forward to

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sports or movies after school, their Viennese counterparts at the end of the 19th century

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looked forward to reading and writing what was not taught in school, in other words,

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to their real educations. In school, a fourteen-year-old would read the Latin and Greek classics.

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He stuffed his brain with the minutiae of German and European history, and he did so

340
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without enthusiasm. But after school he would devour modern writings on science and the

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arts. Why did these Viennese boys have such a different notion of having a good time from

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virtually all other generations and virtually all other places? The answer is, in brief,

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Traditionalist Jewish culture let loose in a secular environment.

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William Johnston observed, Jews had enjoyed many centuries of literacy before the rest

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of Europe started to become literate in the eighteenth century. Thereafter, Jews entered

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as if by predestination into professions that required facility with words. The true passion

347
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of these young men who came from families that just a generation before had left the

348
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The rural rabbinical order was intellectual adventure in the secular realm, a pursuit

349
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unavailable to their ancestors. They threw themselves into literature, theatre, opera,

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whatever aroused their curiosity. Raised to value religious scholarship, they found in

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Vienna the intellectual delights of the secular world.

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Ludwig von Mises seems to have been a typical specimen of this generation. He recalled that

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But his interest in history was peaked in 1888, when he read articles in a family journal

354
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on the lives of the German kaisers Wilhelm I and Friedrich III, who had died that year.

355
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He was then barely seven years old. According to his wife, he set out to write a history

356
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of the Crimean War when he was ten. After writing his first page, however, he abandoned

357
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the project when he discovered that an English historian had published ten volumes on the

358
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topic. During his gymnasium years he devoured the writings of the German historians, justifying

359
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the new Prussian supremacy in German lands. These readings provided a lifelong lesson.

360
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He realised that the acclaimed authors were in fact writing with a distinct bias. In his

361
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Erinnerungen he states, As an Austrian it was not difficult for me to realise the overtones

362
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of these writers, and I soon discerned the method of their analysis, which had rudely

363
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The Forcification of History

364
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Thus, early on, he trained the critical mind that would serve him so well throughout his

365
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life and eventually turn him into the twentieth century's greatest intellectual champion

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of liberty. One of the few surviving photographs from his youth seems to forebode these events.

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Lew Rockwell comments,

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I often think back to a photograph of Mises when he was a young boy of perhaps twelve

369
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Standing with his father. He was wearing the traditional Austrian garb popular in the 1890s

370
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and holding a racket for sports. The picture was grainy and distant, and yet you sensed

371
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that there was something in Mises' eyes, a certain determination and intellectual fire,

372
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even at such a young age. His eyes seemed knowing, as if he were already preparing himself

373
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for what he might face. We look and try to discern what it was about him that caused

374
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caused him to be such a fighter that caused him to stand while others fell, that gave

375
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him that sense of moral certitude to fight for enduring truths, regardless of the political

376
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winds. Even in that grainy photograph we have some sense that we see it in his eyes, that

377
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glimmer that reflects a heart that would never compromise with despotism, but rather advance

378
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the truth of human freedom until his last breath.

379
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These things appear clearer today than they were at the time.

380
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Ludwig's passionate interest in the sciences was typical for boys of his background and

381
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generation. So was his enthusiasm for the arts. We must imagine him as a teenager standing

382
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in line before premieres at the Hofburgtheater or Volkstheater. After school he would meet

383
00:37:43.940 --> 00:37:50.640
friends such as Hans Kelsen at a café to read journals and discuss their discoveries.

384
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The lives of Mises and Kelsen bear many surprising parallels that make this friendship particularly

385
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interesting. They were born in the same year and attended the same school. Later they would

386
00:38:02.360 --> 00:38:07.440
enter the same department at the University of Vienna, prepare for a scholarly career

387
00:38:07.440 --> 00:38:14.400
and publish their first major treatises shortly before World War I. Both became ardent defenders

388
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of the notion that there is no such thing as a science of ethics, but that all judgments

389
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of Value are merely subjective.

390
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While Mises would become famous for his studies of a priori laws in economics, Kelsen became

391
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a pioneer of the pure theory of law. Also, both would marry women named Grete, move to

392
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the United States at the advent of World War II, and eventually die in the same year, far

393
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from Vienna. Mises in New York and Kelsen in California.

394
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Kelsen's family background was lower than average academician gymnasium standards, while

395
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Mises's was higher. Mises was the only aristocrat in his class. This did not prevent the ambitious

396
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nobleman from befriending the ambitious son of a clerk and remaining his friend for a

397
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lifetime.

398
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It is likely that they became acquainted with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and especially

399
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with Kant's epistemology at the same time when they were about sixteen years old. German

400
00:39:15.560 --> 00:39:22.000
idealistic philosophy, the philosophy of Kant, Fichte, Hegel and their followers exercised

401
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an enormous influence on many young minds in Vienna, not least of all because these

402
00:39:26.620 --> 00:39:32.280
books had been on the Catholic index of forbidden works.

403
00:39:32.280 --> 00:39:38.480
Kelsen was profoundly shaken by his confrontation with idealist philosophy. Through his reading

404
00:39:38.480 --> 00:39:42.920
In his reading of Kant, Kelsen had come to the conclusion that the reality of the exterior

405
00:39:42.920 --> 00:39:48.080
world was problematic. During the rest of his life he seems to have applied his early

406
00:39:48.080 --> 00:39:53.920
subjectivist interpretation of Kant to the field of law. As an old man, Kelsen still

407
00:39:53.920 --> 00:40:00.040
recalled his reading of Kant as a crucial juncture in his intellectual development.

408
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The philosopher from Königsberg did not have the same impact on Mises. In distinct contrast

409
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To Kelsen, Mises did not have a Kantian epiphany and then set out to reconstruct economic science

410
00:40:11.980 --> 00:40:17.300
in the light of this idealist philosophy. Rather, Mises started from case studies and

411
00:40:17.300 --> 00:40:23.140
moved up to ever-wider generalisations and greater abstractions.

412
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Eventually he would realise that he could not avoid dealing with epistemological questions

413
00:40:27.980 --> 00:40:33.760
and then stress the a priori nature of economic laws, but even at this point Kantian epistemology

414
00:40:33.760 --> 00:40:39.960
did not have a noticeable impact on his thought. Many years later he had nothing favourable

415
00:40:39.960 --> 00:40:45.440
to say about the neo-Cantean movement, in particular Cohn and Natob, which blossomed

416
00:40:45.440 --> 00:40:50.640
at the turn of this century. He said it was an era of decline and neo-Canteanism was its

417
00:40:50.640 --> 00:40:56.780
philosophical reflection. Mises's true primary interest was in political history and political

418
00:40:56.780 --> 00:41:02.960
action. All the other disciplines he eventually came to master – law, economics, epistemology,

419
00:41:02.960 --> 00:41:09.040
philosophy were subservient to these primary goals. In his final exam in German at the

420
00:41:09.040 --> 00:41:14.760
Akademischen Gymnasium, he had to write an essay on the following question. What are

421
00:41:14.760 --> 00:41:20.480
the moral inspirations that we derive from the study of the history of Austria? The written

422
00:41:20.480 --> 00:41:25.200
part of the exam also included mathematics and geometry, requiring among other things

423
00:41:25.200 --> 00:41:31.720
that he deliver a mathematical proof of a geometric theorem, as well as translations.

424
00:41:31.720 --> 00:41:36.460
Mises had to translate from Latin into German, from German into Latin and from Greek into

425
00:41:36.460 --> 00:41:41.600
German. Though his answer to, what are the moral inspirations that we derive from the

426
00:41:41.600 --> 00:41:46.520
study of the history of Austria, is lost, a statement that he made many years later

427
00:41:46.520 --> 00:41:51.640
gives us a hint as to what he might have written in May 1900.

428
00:41:51.640 --> 00:41:57.440
Speaking of the benefits of studying history, Mises wrote, It opens the mind toward an understanding

429
00:41:57.440 --> 00:42:03.680
Building of Human Nature and Destiny. It increases wisdom. It is the very essence of that much

430
00:42:03.680 --> 00:42:10.400
misinterpreted concept, a liberal education. It is the foremost approach to humanism, the

431
00:42:10.400 --> 00:42:17.080
law of the specifically human concerns that distinguish man from other living beings.

432
00:42:17.080 --> 00:42:21.520
Personal culture is more than mere familiarity with the present state of science, technology

433
00:42:21.520 --> 00:42:27.320
and civic affairs. It is more than acquaintance with books and paintings and the experience

434
00:42:27.320 --> 00:42:33.720
of travel and of visits to museums. It is the assimilation of the ideas that roused

435
00:42:33.720 --> 00:42:39.760
mankind from the inert routine of a merely animal existence to a life of reasoning and

436
00:42:39.760 --> 00:42:46.200
speculating. It is the individual's effort to humanise himself by partaking in the tradition

437
00:42:46.200 --> 00:42:51.600
of all the best that earlier generations have bequeathed.

438
00:42:51.600 --> 00:42:55.640
The complicated political history of Austria was certainly interesting enough to attract

439
00:42:55.640 --> 00:43:01.040
the attention of a bright teenager. In fact, much of Mises' later work can be seen as

440
00:43:01.040 --> 00:43:06.240
an attempt to understand the problems of his age from the point of view of economic theory

441
00:43:06.240 --> 00:43:12.320
and social philosophy. But even more fundamentally, he was interested in practical questions.

442
00:43:12.320 --> 00:43:17.020
What could governments do to make their country a better place? Mises was never interested

443
00:43:17.020 --> 00:43:23.640
in merely collecting historical data. He wanted to explain history, to trace, observe events

444
00:43:23.640 --> 00:43:29.060
back to their causes and he wanted to apply these insights in practice. How did the political

445
00:43:29.060 --> 00:43:34.420
and social institutions of his fatherland come into being? What were the causes of ethnic

446
00:43:34.420 --> 00:43:41.260
and social strife and how could one combat them? What were the roots of imperialism?

447
00:43:41.260 --> 00:43:47.060
What were the causes of the great social progress of the 19th century in rising literacy, declining

448
00:43:47.060 --> 00:43:52.420
infant mortality and higher mass consumption? All these questions and their answers were

449
00:43:52.420 --> 00:43:58.860
The preliminaries to action. Given our knowledge about causes and effects in social life, what

450
00:43:58.860 --> 00:44:04.940
is to be done now? For example, how could one promote the welfare of the working classes

451
00:44:04.940 --> 00:44:09.940
now more than in the past decades? A family tradition of commerce and social leadership

452
00:44:09.940 --> 00:44:15.860
had made young Mises used to seeing and seeking the bottom line. He brought this emphasis

453
00:44:15.860 --> 00:44:21.540
on results to the study of social life and social strife, which prepared him, as he would

454
00:44:21.540 --> 00:44:26.860
Say, to take an active part in the great issues of his age.

455
00:44:26.860 --> 00:44:31.700
Thus, he turned to the study of intellectual disciplines that promised to give guidance

456
00:44:31.700 --> 00:44:37.420
in political matters, and because the conflicts of his era and ours were largely economic

457
00:44:37.420 --> 00:44:43.780
ones, Mises ultimately became an economist. Many years later, he wrote these lines.

458
00:44:43.780 --> 00:44:50.420
All the political antagonisms and conflicts of our age turn on economic issues. It has

459
00:44:50.420 --> 00:44:56.060
has not always been so. In the 16th and 17th century, the controversies that split the

460
00:44:56.060 --> 00:45:01.460
peoples of Western civilisation into feuding parties were religious. Protestantism stood

461
00:45:01.460 --> 00:45:06.220
against Catholicism, and within the Protestant camp, various interpretations of the Gospels

462
00:45:06.220 --> 00:45:12.140
begot discourse. In the 18th century and in a great part of the 19th century, constitutional

463
00:45:12.140 --> 00:45:18.720
conflicts prevailed in politics. The principles of royal absolutism and oligarchic government

464
00:45:18.720 --> 00:45:24.900
resisted by liberalism in the classical European meaning of the term that advocated representative

465
00:45:24.900 --> 00:45:30.060
government. In those days a man who wanted to take an active part in the great issues

466
00:45:30.060 --> 00:45:36.580
of his age had to study seriously the matters of these controversies. Only boers neglected

467
00:45:36.580 --> 00:45:42.000
to inform themselves about the great problems that agitated the minds of their contemporaries.

468
00:45:42.000 --> 00:45:48.520
In our age the conflict between economic freedom as represented in the market economy and totalitarian

469
00:45:48.520 --> 00:45:54.640
In government omnipotence, as realized by socialism, is the paramount matter. All political

470
00:45:54.640 --> 00:46:00.520
controversies refer to these economic problems. Only the study of economics can tell a man

471
00:46:00.520 --> 00:46:06.300
what all these conflicts mean. Nothing can be known about such matters as inflation,

472
00:46:06.300 --> 00:46:12.000
economic crises, unemployment, unionism, protectionism, taxation, economic controls, and all similar

473
00:46:12.000 --> 00:46:17.600
are issues that does not involve and presuppose economic analysis.

474
00:46:17.600 --> 00:46:21.880
A man who talks about these problems without having acquainted himself with the fundamental

475
00:46:21.880 --> 00:46:27.480
ideas of economic theory is simply a babbler who parrot-like repeats what he has picked

476
00:46:27.480 --> 00:46:33.440
up incidentally from other fellows who are not better informed than he himself. A citizen

477
00:46:33.440 --> 00:46:38.240
who casts his ballot without having to the best of his ability studied as much economics

478
00:46:38.240 --> 00:46:44.400
Conflicts as he can, fails in his civic duties. Economic conflicts were at the forefront of

479
00:46:44.400 --> 00:46:49.440
social dissension in Austria-Hungary during Mises' early years, and were debated each

480
00:46:49.440 --> 00:46:55.240
day in the press, in new books, in cafés and in the streets. Let us look more closely,

481
00:46:55.240 --> 00:47:00.640
then, at the fundamental political problems of Fein der Zirke Austria.

482
00:47:00.640 --> 00:47:05.400
Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary as a political entity came

483
00:47:05.400 --> 00:47:12.000
came into being after the defeat of the older Austrian Empire in 1866 by the Prussian armies

484
00:47:12.000 --> 00:47:17.500
at the Bohemian town of König-Gretz. The conflict with Prussia was over supremacy within

485
00:47:17.500 --> 00:47:22.760
the Germanys. The military defeat settled the question in favour of Prussia, but the

486
00:47:22.760 --> 00:47:28.880
Habsburg family did not abandon its plans to regain its traditional position of leadership.

487
00:47:28.880 --> 00:47:34.060
The greatest problem for the Habsburgs' ambitions in the age of the nation-state was

488
00:47:34.060 --> 00:47:39.620
that their empire was not predominantly German. The Hungarian population was approximately

489
00:47:39.620 --> 00:47:45.620
the same size as the Austro-German population, and the empire contained several million each

490
00:47:45.620 --> 00:47:52.820
of Czechs, Poles, Romanians and Ruthenians, as well as a handful of smaller nationalities.

491
00:47:52.820 --> 00:47:57.660
In the eyes of the liberals, in those days the strongest political force in the Germanys,

492
00:47:57.660 --> 00:48:03.540
this hodgepodge of nationalities disqualified the Habsburg family from leadership of the

493
00:48:03.540 --> 00:48:10.620
After the defeat in the 1859 Italian campaign, various Austrian governments sought ways to

494
00:48:10.620 --> 00:48:17.900
make the empire more German and more liberal to emulate the idea of a liberal nation-state.

495
00:48:17.900 --> 00:48:24.820
A constitutional reform in February 1861 under Prime Minister Schmirling addressed the nationalities

496
00:48:24.820 --> 00:48:30.520
problem through the introduction of estate parliaments, Kurienparlamente. The idea was

497
00:48:30.520 --> 00:48:35.200
is to use parliamentary representation as a means to settle political conflicts between

498
00:48:35.200 --> 00:48:40.460
different ethnicities and different social classes without resorting to the nefarious

499
00:48:40.460 --> 00:48:45.920
one-man, one-vote principle. The Constitution guaranteed a majority of seats to the political

500
00:48:45.920 --> 00:48:52.760
and economic establishment. Primarily it guaranteed the ethnic Germans and their allies a majority

501
00:48:52.760 --> 00:48:58.960
of seats, even where they were in the numerical minority. The Schmerling Constitution tried

502
00:48:58.960 --> 00:49:03.320
trying to make up for Austria's lack of German character, but with the military defeat

503
00:49:03.320 --> 00:49:09.400
at the hands of Prussia, a more pressing problem suddenly appeared, separatism. The Habsburgs

504
00:49:09.400 --> 00:49:14.800
felt they had to secure their power base by finding a way to guarantee the continued loyalty

505
00:49:14.800 --> 00:49:20.960
of the Hungarians. This was done in the so-called Ausgleich, settlement, that was hurriedly

506
00:49:20.960 --> 00:49:27.640
crafted and ratified within weeks after Königgräts. The Austrian Reichsrat voted a new constitution

507
00:49:27.640 --> 00:49:34.240
on December 21, 1867 The Asgleich established the principle of

508
00:49:34.240 --> 00:49:40.520
political dualism in Habsburg lands, the subdivision of the empire into two spheres of influence,

509
00:49:40.520 --> 00:49:46.600
one under German rule, the other Hungarian. The Asgleich granted far-reaching autonomy

510
00:49:46.600 --> 00:49:51.960
to the Hungarian gentry and made them de facto rulers over other peoples within the confines

511
00:49:51.960 --> 00:49:57.560
of Hungary. This concerned in particular Slovaks and Romanians. The Kingdom of Croatia and

512
00:49:57.560 --> 00:50:02.720
and Slavonia was also part of Hungary, but it was relatively autonomous.

513
00:50:02.720 --> 00:50:07.720
In exchange, the Hungarian establishment did not contest German hegemony in the other lands

514
00:50:07.720 --> 00:50:13.240
of the Empire and they consented to the continued existence of a common dynasty, a common foreign

515
00:50:13.240 --> 00:50:21.040
policy and a common army. The Ausgleich also guaranteed the economic unity of the Empire.

516
00:50:21.040 --> 00:50:26.260
From its very inception, however, the Ausgleich was prevented from securing internal peace

517
00:50:26.260 --> 00:50:30.980
because its stipulations were interpreted in fundamentally different ways.

518
00:50:30.980 --> 00:50:35.420
In the eyes of the German side, the Ausgleich was an agreement reached between the different

519
00:50:35.420 --> 00:50:40.320
nations of the Empire which implied that the signatories from the very outset conceived

520
00:50:40.320 --> 00:50:45.980
of themselves as part of a larger political entity. The Emperor was not one of the contracting

521
00:50:45.980 --> 00:50:51.180
parties, rather he presided over the whole political entity and the contract was between

522
00:50:51.180 --> 00:50:58.980
In contrast, the Hungarians saw the Ausgleich as a bilateral affair between themselves and

523
00:50:58.980 --> 00:51:03.580
the King of Hungary, who also happened to be the ruler of Austria and various other

524
00:51:03.580 --> 00:51:08.060
foreign countries. It was only incidental that the agreement with their monarch was

525
00:51:08.060 --> 00:51:13.420
mirrored by a parallel agreement between the Austrians and their emperor. In short, the

526
00:51:13.420 --> 00:51:18.780
Hungarians considered themselves a sovereign nation on its way to full autonomy, and the

527
00:51:18.780 --> 00:51:23.860
The Ausgleich merely one step on this path. They were pressing these demands on their

528
00:51:23.860 --> 00:51:29.100
legal representative, the King of Hungary. The King was of course Franz Josef himself.

529
00:51:29.100 --> 00:51:33.940
For this reason alone the Ausgleich failed miserably in providing a basis for the continued

530
00:51:33.940 --> 00:51:40.340
peaceful coexistence of the various Austrian nations, and thus for Habsburg power. Year

531
00:51:40.340 --> 00:51:45.700
after year the Hungarians presented new claims and reached new compromises at the cost of

532
00:51:45.700 --> 00:51:50.900
and the rest of the Empire. German-Austrians interpreted these ever-increasing demands

533
00:51:50.900 --> 00:51:56.540
as political extortion. They despaired over the disputatious behaviour of the Hungarians,

534
00:51:56.540 --> 00:52:01.020
which undermined the very existence of the Empire, but the Hungarian campaign did not

535
00:52:01.020 --> 00:52:07.620
suffer the slightest trace of remorse, and it steadily gained ground. How successful

536
00:52:07.620 --> 00:52:13.360
it was can be inferred from its impact on political language. The words Austria and

537
00:52:13.360 --> 00:52:19.360
and Reich were increasingly abandoned to suit Hungarian-style political correctness. Common

538
00:52:19.360 --> 00:52:26.600
institutions of the Empire were no longer called by the prefix Reich as in Reichskriegsminister,

539
00:52:26.600 --> 00:52:36.800
but by the prefix KUK, kaiserlich und königlich, imperial and royal, thus KUK Kriegsminister.

540
00:52:36.800 --> 00:52:42.760
By contrast, Hungarian state institutions were prefixed with K as in kingly, referring to

541
00:52:42.760 --> 00:52:48.660
to the Hungarian Crown and the state institutions of the other non-Hungarian territories which

542
00:52:48.660 --> 00:52:55.540
shared a common parliament under German supremacy, the Reichsrat, were prefixed with KK, Imperial

543
00:52:55.540 --> 00:53:01.280
Royal. Curiously, these other territories did not even have a common name. They were

544
00:53:01.280 --> 00:53:06.780
only the kingdoms and lands represented in the Reichsrat.

545
00:53:06.780 --> 00:53:12.920
In a great satire on this abbreviation orgy, Robert Musil, in his famous fernesiaque novel

546
00:53:12.920 --> 00:53:19.320
The Man Without Qualities, called the country of his hero, Cacanian, Cacaland, and said

547
00:53:19.320 --> 00:53:23.420
it was the only country that declined for lack of a name.

548
00:53:23.420 --> 00:53:28.020
The Ausgleich also provoked resistance from others, most notably from the Croats and the

549
00:53:28.020 --> 00:53:34.140
Czechs. Support for the Ausgleich came from the Poles and the Italians. Both nations were

550
00:53:34.140 --> 00:53:38.140
Both settled predominantly in areas where they had the economic and political power,

551
00:53:38.140 --> 00:53:44.140
but were numerically inferior to other local nations, Ruthenians, Southern Slavs.

552
00:53:44.140 --> 00:53:52.140
Both saw the Ausgleich correctly as a scheme to perpetuate the current political privileges of Germans and Hungarians.

553
00:53:52.140 --> 00:53:59.140
The Czech radicals, calling themselves the Young Czechs, became famous for their ruthlessness in adopting the Hungarian strategy.

554
00:53:59.140 --> 00:54:17.140
Their representatives boycotted the sessions of the Reichsrat, the parliament of the Austrian half of the Empire, and claimed to be one sovereign nation, which would deal only with its own King of Bohemia, who happened also to be the Emperor, and they would do so only to secure more liberties for the Czechs.

555
00:54:17.140 --> 00:54:23.140
The ultimate effect of the Ausgleich was to alienate step-by-step all nations from the Empire.

556
00:54:23.140 --> 00:54:29.140
A radical element in each nation increasingly refused to perceive themselves as part of a larger whole.

557
00:54:29.140 --> 00:54:38.140
They considered disputes with other nations of the Habsburg crowned to be matters of their own foreign policy that did not involve the Empire or the monarchy.

558
00:54:38.140 --> 00:54:44.260
This tendency was reinforced in a fateful way when, in 1878, the southern Slav lands of

559
00:54:44.260 --> 00:54:50.840
Bosnia and Herzegovina fell under the dominion of Austria-Hungary. This was one of the stipulations

560
00:54:50.840 --> 00:54:56.320
of an agreement of seven governments at a congress in Berlin in August 1878. The Berlin

561
00:54:56.320 --> 00:55:02.500
congress dealt with territorial questions in south-eastern Europe and the Middle East.

562
00:55:02.500 --> 00:55:07.260
It was prompted by a crushing Russian victory over Turkey, and signed by these two states

563
00:55:07.260 --> 00:55:12.740
as well as by the governments of Austria, Hungary, Germany, France, England and Italy.

564
00:55:12.740 --> 00:55:17.540
Rather than granting autonomous status to the new territories, the Hungarians immediately

565
00:55:17.540 --> 00:55:22.540
claimed the right to rule them, arguing that at some point in the distant past they had

566
00:55:22.540 --> 00:55:28.860
been conquered by a Hungarian king. Bosnia-Herzegovina therefore came under the co-dominion of Hungary

567
00:55:28.860 --> 00:55:34.500
and the kingdoms and lands represented in the Reichsrat. Over the next 30 years this

568
00:55:34.500 --> 00:55:40.300
This divided rule from Vienna and Budapest created fertile ground for Southern Slav nationalism

569
00:55:40.300 --> 00:55:45.940
and Serb agitation. It was a major factor in the events that eventually precipitated

570
00:55:45.940 --> 00:55:51.380
the world into the Great War and destroyed the Austrian monarchy.

571
00:55:51.380 --> 00:55:55.620
Following the Hungarian strategy, the radicals of all nations eventually refused to deal

572
00:55:55.620 --> 00:56:01.100
with any other nation at all. The central government in Vienna made concessions concerning

573
00:56:01.100 --> 00:56:06.820
and the use of language in the local branch offices of its bureaucracy. And so, around

574
00:56:06.820 --> 00:56:13.280
the year 1900, German, Hungarian, Italian, Czech, Polish and Serbo-Croatian were all

575
00:56:13.280 --> 00:56:19.160
in official use. But such concessions could not satisfy the aspirations of the radical.

576
00:56:19.160 --> 00:56:25.020
At the turn of the century many Italians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians, Magyars,

577
00:56:25.020 --> 00:56:30.580
Romanians, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes strove for national independence. They insisted on

578
00:56:30.580 --> 00:56:35.820
and the sovereign status of their ethnic group, and argued that matters of domestic policy

579
00:56:35.820 --> 00:56:41.540
existed only insofar as they pertained to their relationship with the local monarch.

580
00:56:41.540 --> 00:56:45.820
The greatest problem of this stance was that the traditional political territories, the

581
00:56:45.820 --> 00:56:51.420
kingdoms and lands, did not have nationally homogenous populations. Except for some of

582
00:56:51.420 --> 00:56:56.620
the alpine regions, all these traditional territories hosted at least two nationalities,

583
00:56:56.620 --> 00:56:57.620
and more.

584
00:56:57.620 --> 00:57:03.140
Von Joseph slipped more and more into the impossible situation of being the sole embodiment

585
00:57:03.140 --> 00:57:09.860
of a political entity scorned by millions of his subjects, the Empire.

586
00:57:09.860 --> 00:57:15.780
He was still acceptable as a political partner, but only in his capacity as a king, that is,

587
00:57:15.780 --> 00:57:20.200
as King of Bohemia, King of Hungary, King of Croatia, etc.

588
00:57:20.200 --> 00:57:24.300
In the minds of his subjects, the monarch was the only element that tied together the

589
00:57:24.300 --> 00:57:30.300
The various lands and nations who felt no desire or no need to come to terms with one another.

590
00:57:30.300 --> 00:57:33.300
One of Mises' fellow students recalled,

591
00:57:33.300 --> 00:57:39.300
No more than three hundred meters separated the university from the parliament building in the Vienna Ringstrasse.

592
00:57:39.300 --> 00:57:43.300
If the young people fought almost daily at the university,

593
00:57:43.300 --> 00:57:46.300
the conflicts of the deputies were of equal violence,

594
00:57:46.300 --> 00:57:50.300
and were battled with a fanatical passion unknown in other countries.

595
00:57:50.300 --> 00:57:55.660
countries. If you went only a hundred steps further on from Parliament, you could see

596
00:57:55.660 --> 00:58:01.920
every day and usually more often a carriage drawn by two horses drive out of the Hofburg.

597
00:58:01.920 --> 00:58:07.580
In it sat the old Emperor and his equally elderly adjutant, and they would set out for

598
00:58:07.580 --> 00:58:14.120
Schönbrunn at an easy trot, always at the same hour and always down the same street.

599
00:58:14.120 --> 00:58:19.820
There was no security escort ahead or behind the carriage. No policeman sat in the vehicle

600
00:58:19.820 --> 00:58:27.440
itself, any assassin would have had an easy job, but nobody took the opportunity.

601
00:58:27.440 --> 00:58:32.380
The fellow student goes on to observe, The leaders of our modern great empires are driven

602
00:58:32.380 --> 00:58:39.160
rapidly in bullet-proof cars, protected by countless bodyguards. Aristotle thus defined

603
00:58:39.160 --> 00:58:45.100
the difference between a monarch and a tyrant. The monarch protects his people, the tyrant

604
00:58:45.100 --> 00:58:48.280
has to protect himself from them.

605
00:58:48.280 --> 00:58:54.580
Franz Josef, who had begun his reign as an arch-reactionary and gave his consent to constitutional

606
00:58:54.580 --> 00:59:00.800
government only after two lost wars, eventually became the glorified, almost mystic embodiment

607
00:59:00.800 --> 00:59:06.920
of a state that few of his subjects really desired. He presided over the radical transformation

608
00:59:06.920 --> 00:59:12.720
of Austria that started after the revolution of 1848 and stretched until the very end of

609
00:59:12.720 --> 00:59:18.760
of his reign in 1916, a transformation that left no sphere of social life untouched.

610
00:59:18.760 --> 00:59:23.240
The contemporary witness, himself a democrat, born around the time Franz Joseph ascended

611
00:59:23.240 --> 00:59:29.520
the throne, recalls the awe that the Emperor inspired in all his subjects. And the Kaiser

612
00:59:29.520 --> 00:59:36.240
had lived through, in fact co-sponsored, truly monumental changes. The almost feudal landed

613
00:59:36.240 --> 00:59:42.680
lordship, with its peasant subject to the estate, sleepy little towns with their handicrafts

614
00:59:42.680 --> 00:59:49.240
organized in guild, a capital city with concentric walls and bastions, with large ramparts and

615
00:59:49.240 --> 00:59:55.840
glaces, a society the ruling intellectual power of which was the church and the materially

616
00:59:55.840 --> 01:00:01.720
moving power of which was still the stagecoach and the horse, all this formed the environment

617
01:00:01.720 --> 01:00:06.760
of the beginning reign of Francis Joseph, which was to encounter so many material and

618
01:00:06.760 --> 01:00:09.160
intellectual innovations.

619
01:00:09.160 --> 01:00:14.260
Almost all laws that created or made possible landed property for citizens, free peasants

620
01:00:14.260 --> 01:00:20.480
and country workers, handicrafts and industry, large-scale trade, railroads and steamship

621
01:00:20.480 --> 01:00:27.340
transport and insurance and banking services were signed with his name. The tremendous

622
01:00:27.340 --> 01:00:33.360
development of modern capitalism fell into the period of his reign and thereby the transformation

623
01:00:33.360 --> 01:00:39.960
of the Absolutistic Patrimonial State into a Constitutional Monarchy, the rise of the

624
01:00:39.960 --> 01:00:45.520
free citizenry, the flowering of the citizens' parliament, the cultural unfolding of all

625
01:00:45.520 --> 01:00:51.800
nations of the Reich, along with the inevitable frictions of the maturing process and finally

626
01:00:51.800 --> 01:00:57.120
the rise of the working class, the spreading of the social idea, and the beginnings of

627
01:00:57.120 --> 01:00:59.640
social legislation.

628
01:00:59.640 --> 01:01:05.180
Whoever met Francis Josef at my time felt the breadth of a long and grand period of

629
01:01:05.180 --> 01:01:13.840
history that he has carried on. Seldom a single human life has encompassed such immensity.

630
01:01:13.840 --> 01:01:18.380
But even those who had not inherited sentimental feelings for the Emperor could hardly fail

631
01:01:18.380 --> 01:01:25.140
to perceive his pivotal role within Austria-Hungary's political system. Ludwig von Mises's contemporary

632
01:01:25.140 --> 01:01:29.460
and fellow student, Felix Zumary, recalled his father telling him,

633
01:01:29.460 --> 01:01:32.980
This empire is quite different from the rest of the world.

634
01:01:32.980 --> 01:01:38.820
Imagine the emperor and his government gone for even one year, and the nationalists would

635
01:01:38.820 --> 01:01:40.860
tear each other to pieces.

636
01:01:40.860 --> 01:01:46.100
The government is the fence that separates the zoo of wild animals from the outside world,

637
01:01:46.100 --> 01:01:52.100
and nowhere else are there so many and such dangerous political beasts as we have.

638
01:01:52.100 --> 01:01:56.740
Young lads such as Felix learned early on to appreciate the benefits of the monarchial

639
01:01:56.740 --> 01:02:02.660
order in Austria, understanding that the monarchy was not some historical relic, but the sole

640
01:02:02.660 --> 01:02:07.860
possible institutional framework for holding eight nationalities together on Europe's

641
01:02:07.860 --> 01:02:12.700
most dangerous frontier. It was to no avail.

642
01:02:12.700 --> 01:02:19.040
Imitation of the Hungarian strategy mushroomed after 1867, and culminated in the late 1890s

643
01:02:19.040 --> 01:02:24.000
German Prime Minister Count Bardeni saw to solve national conflicts between Germans and

644
01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:28.840
Czechs through legislation that put the two languages on an equal footing within the Bohemian

645
01:02:28.840 --> 01:02:30.840
government.

646
01:02:30.840 --> 01:02:35.920
Ethnic Germans saw the ordinance as the last straw in an ongoing series of concessions

647
01:02:35.920 --> 01:02:37.680
to the Czechs.

648
01:02:37.680 --> 01:02:42.660
Bardeni was not prepared for the level of animosity the Germans of Bohemia and the rest

649
01:02:42.660 --> 01:02:46.440
of the empire directed at him as a result of his legislation.

650
01:02:46.440 --> 01:02:53.080
They began disrupting parliamentary proceedings and instigated violent protests. The Emperor,

651
01:02:53.080 --> 01:02:58.680
frightened by the mass agitation of some of the most important segments of society, dismissed

652
01:02:58.680 --> 01:03:02.900
by Dany in November 1897.

653
01:03:02.900 --> 01:03:05.340
Socialism Austrian Style

654
01:03:05.340 --> 01:03:10.280
The national conflicts within the Empire were compounded by social conflicts resulting directly

655
01:03:10.280 --> 01:03:21.320
The liberalisation of trade, transport, banking and industry had completely transformed the

656
01:03:21.320 --> 01:03:26.920
Austrian economy, undermining the social and political position of the old elites.

657
01:03:26.920 --> 01:03:32.960
The aristocracy and clergy despised the emerging coterie of capitalist upstarts, and in their

658
01:03:32.960 --> 01:03:37.960
political rearguard action against liberalism and capitalism, they allied themselves with

659
01:03:37.960 --> 01:03:42.680
and the economic losers of the transformational process. The great number of people employed

660
01:03:42.680 --> 01:03:48.000
in traditional forms of production, including small-scale farming and those handicrafts

661
01:03:48.000 --> 01:03:52.360
that had become obsolete in an era of more efficient factory production. They were not

662
01:03:52.360 --> 01:03:58.000
necessarily losers in the sense that their income had been reduced in absolute terms.

663
01:03:58.000 --> 01:04:03.320
It was rather that their relative economic and social positions had deteriorated in comparison

664
01:04:03.320 --> 01:04:07.720
and to those of their relatives, friends and neighbours who had found employment in the

665
01:04:07.720 --> 01:04:13.360
new capitalist corporations. Petits bourgeois residents of fin de siècle

666
01:04:13.360 --> 01:04:19.440
Vienna especially resented the success of the new Jewish middle and upper classes, which

667
01:04:19.440 --> 01:04:25.640
most visibly represented the changes in Austrian society induced by the liberal reforms. There

668
01:04:25.640 --> 01:04:30.600
had been virtually no Jewish residents in Vienna before 1848 because Jews were not allowed

669
01:04:30.600 --> 01:04:36.180
to own land in the city or to stay longer than three days within its walls. Only about

670
01:04:36.180 --> 01:04:41.080
two hundred distinguished Jewish families, such as Rothschilds, had obtained an exemption

671
01:04:41.080 --> 01:04:46.360
from this policy. All others had to leave the city after three days and re-enter it

672
01:04:46.360 --> 01:04:51.780
at another gate to obtain a new visa. As a consequence, Jews were virtually unknown to

673
01:04:51.780 --> 01:04:56.700
the general population, and those who had actually met Jews in person remembered them

674
01:04:56.700 --> 01:05:02.940
as impoverished Talmud students in Galicia and other rural regions of the empire.

675
01:05:02.940 --> 01:05:07.460
Things changed radically in the wake of the revolution of 1848, when the restrictions

676
01:05:07.460 --> 01:05:14.660
on Jewish real estate ownership were abolished. By 1857 about 7,000 Jews had settled in Vienna.

677
01:05:14.660 --> 01:05:19.820
This was the beginning of a great wave of Jewish middle and upper class immigration.

678
01:05:19.820 --> 01:05:25.060
Starting in the 1860s, well-to-do Jewish families flocked into the capital. By the turn of the

679
01:05:25.060 --> 01:05:34.540
In the century there were 145,000 Jews in Vienna. By 1910 it was 175,000. Only Warsaw

680
01:05:34.540 --> 01:05:40.140
hosted a larger Jewish population. In a city as small as Vienna it was now impossible to

681
01:05:40.140 --> 01:05:45.780
overlook the Jewish presence. The new wealthy Jewish residents clearly outnumbered the Catholic

682
01:05:45.780 --> 01:05:52.700
Nouveau-Riche. For traditional city dwellers, liberalism, capitalism and Jews were all alien

683
01:05:52.700 --> 01:05:57.980
and intruders. These urban masses in Vienna were easy prey to the old elites where they

684
01:05:57.980 --> 01:06:04.700
began to organise a political backlash against the capitalist movement. Two parties were particularly

685
01:06:04.700 --> 01:06:10.680
effective, the German Nationalists and the Christian Socialists. As a schoolboy, Ludwig

686
01:06:10.680 --> 01:06:16.460
von Mises witnessed first-hand the rise of the Christian Social Party in Vienna. In 1882

687
01:06:16.460 --> 01:06:22.340
the Vienna election law had been modified to extend suffrage to lower income groups.

688
01:06:22.340 --> 01:06:26.620
These voters eventually secured the sweeping victory of the Christian Socialists under Carl

689
01:06:26.620 --> 01:06:33.940
Luger in the communal elections of 1895. Luger, commonly called Handsome Carl, their Schöne

690
01:06:33.940 --> 01:06:40.740
Carl, was the incarnation of the modern politician. He knew how to flatter the man on the street.

691
01:06:40.740 --> 01:06:45.820
He did not count on winning by argument, but relied entirely on appeals to voters' feelings,

692
01:06:45.820 --> 01:06:52.060
fears and resentments. Although he had risen from lower-class origins in the liberal age,

693
01:06:52.060 --> 01:07:01.060
and harboured no personal ill-will to a Jew, he built his election campaign squarely on anti-capitalism and anti-semitism.

694
01:07:01.060 --> 01:07:07.060
The emperor despised Luger's anti-semitic tactics and refused to appoint him mayor of Vienna,

695
01:07:07.060 --> 01:07:17.060
but after three consecutive election victories Franz Joseph eventually gave in and Hanson Carl became mayor on April 20, 1897.

696
01:07:17.060 --> 01:07:22.160
Luger immediately proceeded to enlarge his power base by incorporating many suburbs into

697
01:07:22.160 --> 01:07:28.240
the city of Vienna. After the incorporation had been completed in 1902, Vienna became

698
01:07:28.240 --> 01:07:33.500
a secure dominion of the Christian Social Party. It would remain so until the end of

699
01:07:33.500 --> 01:07:38.340
World War I, when the Red Socialists won the majority in the city and started one of the

700
01:07:38.340 --> 01:07:43.360
greatest experiments in communal socialism ever, turning the capital of Austria into

701
01:07:43.360 --> 01:07:46.320
Red Vienna.

702
01:07:46.320 --> 01:07:51.120
Like the Christian socialists and the German nationalists, the socialist movement was ultimately

703
01:07:51.120 --> 01:07:55.660
an offshoot of the liberal transformation of Austria-Hungary. But whereas the former

704
01:07:55.660 --> 01:08:01.000
groups resisted this transformation, the socialists were carried along with it, and its leaders

705
01:08:01.000 --> 01:08:06.600
were quite conscious of the irony, or as they would say, dialectics, that they were children

706
01:08:06.600 --> 01:08:12.800
of the capitalist revolution. They were spoiled brats bound for patricide, praising the economic

707
01:08:12.800 --> 01:08:24.580
Socialism and Capitalism were but two faces of the same radical and rapid transformation

708
01:08:24.580 --> 01:08:30.580
of the economy, society and politics. For this very reason both of them lent themselves

709
01:08:30.580 --> 01:08:36.780
to the integration of Jewish elites into leadership positions. Just as capitalism enabled a greater

710
01:08:36.780 --> 01:08:42.440
number of Jewish entrepreneurs, statesmen and intellectuals such as David Ricardo, Disraeli

711
01:08:42.440 --> 01:08:47.960
and Ludwig Bumberger to rise to wealth and influence. So the socialist movement was a

712
01:08:47.960 --> 01:08:53.720
predominantly Jewish movement at the leadership level. La Salle and Luxembourg in Germany,

713
01:08:53.720 --> 01:09:00.120
as well as Kautzky-Bauer and the Adlers in Austria, were all of Jewish origin. In short,

714
01:09:00.120 --> 01:09:06.160
liberalism had paved the way for freely experimenting with new modes of production, and thus led

715
01:09:06.160 --> 01:09:09.360
to the emergence of the factory system.

716
01:09:09.360 --> 01:09:14.960
With the large factories came many Jewish capitalists and a proletariat with a Jewish

717
01:09:14.960 --> 01:09:21.440
leadership. Georg Franz has argued that the rising Austro-Jewish establishment was instrumental

718
01:09:21.440 --> 01:09:27.760
in promoting a homegrown brand of classical liberal doctrine. In contrast, the new urban

719
01:09:27.760 --> 01:09:33.400
proletariat was a largely non-Jewish group without traditions. It therefore lacked social

720
01:09:33.400 --> 01:09:39.300
and political institutions and quite naturally became fair game for politicians and political

721
01:09:39.300 --> 01:09:45.020
movements, all parties tried to mobilize the new urban masses for their causes, and until

722
01:09:45.020 --> 01:09:50.740
the 1880s the German nationalists and the Christian socialists had the upper hand in

723
01:09:50.740 --> 01:09:57.140
this endeavour. Things changed only when the socialists triumphed in German elections.

724
01:09:57.140 --> 01:10:02.220
Their popularity extended to the Austrian proletariat, winning many over to the socialist

725
01:10:02.220 --> 01:10:05.540
cause, but not all of them.

726
01:10:05.540 --> 01:10:11.760
When handsome Karl made anti-Semitic slurs at election rallies, he knew what he was doing.

727
01:10:11.760 --> 01:10:17.540
It was the one sure way to lure voters away from both the liberals and the socialists.

728
01:10:17.540 --> 01:10:22.140
Like all social democratic parties in Central Europe, the Austrian organisation was entirely

729
01:10:22.140 --> 01:10:25.420
under the sway of Karl Marx's doctrines.

730
01:10:25.420 --> 01:10:30.220
Marx had reconstructed the theory of socialism in a way that made it especially appealing

731
01:10:30.220 --> 01:10:32.740
to the urban proletarian masses.

732
01:10:32.740 --> 01:10:38.980
In his account, the proletariat was the social class that embodied the future of socialism.

733
01:10:38.980 --> 01:10:44.700
Liberalism and capitalism, Marx argued, were merely an intermediate phase of social evolution.

734
01:10:44.700 --> 01:10:49.540
Their main function was to give birth to the proletariat and then to impoverish it, thus

735
01:10:49.540 --> 01:10:55.180
inciting the working masses to the final revolution which would create a classless society and

736
01:10:55.180 --> 01:10:58.580
bring about the end of history.

737
01:10:58.580 --> 01:11:05.120
By the time twelve-year-old Mises had completed his first year of school in Vienna in 1893,

738
01:11:05.120 --> 01:11:10.180
Marxism had already lost much respect and attraction. Twenty-five years had passed since

739
01:11:10.180 --> 01:11:15.240
the first publication of Das Kapital, and events had clearly refuted Marx's predictions

740
01:11:15.240 --> 01:11:21.560
about capitalism's propensity to create misery among the working classes. The uncomfortable

741
01:11:21.560 --> 01:11:28.080
evidence induced a split among socialist intellectual leaders. Edvard Bernstein criticized Marxism

742
01:11:28.080 --> 01:11:33.900
and proposed a revised theory of socialism. He recognised the ability of capitalism to

743
01:11:33.900 --> 01:11:39.400
improve the material lot of the proletariat. Rather than seeking to overhaul capitalism,

744
01:11:39.400 --> 01:11:47.400
he argued socialists should strive to correct its flaws through democratically elected governments.

745
01:11:47.400 --> 01:11:51.460
Bernsteinian revisionism was part of a more general effort to turn the socialist movement

746
01:11:51.460 --> 01:11:58.500
away from its Marxist fixation on the violent overthrow of present social conditions.

747
01:11:58.500 --> 01:12:03.020
Under the leadership of the Vienna doctor Viktor Adler and of the Marxist theoretician

748
01:12:03.020 --> 01:12:07.980
Karl Kautsky, the Austrian Social Democrats gave a clear endorsement of the principles

749
01:12:07.980 --> 01:12:13.860
of non-violence and legality in political struggle. Kautsky distinguished himself by

750
01:12:13.860 --> 01:12:19.520
advocating a determinist brand of Marxism, that is, he believed that Marx had discovered

751
01:12:19.520 --> 01:12:25.920
strict laws of social evolution. Capitalism necessarily led to Socialism and Communism,

752
01:12:25.920 --> 01:12:31.840
and it was therefore devoid of sense to try to push things through violent overhaul. Norbert

753
01:12:31.840 --> 01:12:38.360
Leys argued that Kautsky thereby exercised a nefarious influence on Austrian Socialism.

754
01:12:38.360 --> 01:12:45.880
Kautsky's determinist views spread fatalism and paralysed the activities of socialist practitioners.

755
01:12:45.880 --> 01:12:52.440
At the Heinfeldt Party Congress in 1888-89, which united the violence-prone ideological

756
01:12:52.440 --> 01:12:58.400
radicals and the union-dominated moderates Adler and Koutsky, championed piecemeal social

757
01:12:58.400 --> 01:13:05.080
reform through universal suffrage and parliamentary legislation, Marxist radicals in other countries

758
01:13:05.080 --> 01:13:11.400
heaped ridicule on this affirmation of the legitimacy of the state and its organs, calling

759
01:13:11.400 --> 01:13:17.600
and the approach of their moderate Austrian comrades K.K. Social Democracy.

760
01:13:17.600 --> 01:13:22.760
German pronunciation of the letter K renders the epiphant identical to international slang

761
01:13:22.760 --> 01:13:29.100
for excrement. But the new strategy was undeniably successful. During his school years, Mises

762
01:13:29.100 --> 01:13:34.500
followed the progress of the social democratic agitation in favour of universal suffrage.

763
01:13:34.500 --> 01:13:39.760
He left first-hand the conflicts he would later spend so much time analysing. His contemporary

764
01:13:39.760 --> 01:13:46.860
It had been eighty-four years since the Congress of Vienna and both Europe and America basked

765
01:13:46.860 --> 01:13:52.400
in the long peace and looked down on the Austrians as incompetent, immature, patiently enduring

766
01:13:52.400 --> 01:13:57.360
a tyrant's yoke. The reality was quite different, for the big issues that were struggling over

767
01:13:57.360 --> 01:14:03.120
in Austria had not been dealt with in other countries. On the contrary, they had not even

768
01:14:03.120 --> 01:14:09.120
surfaced in those countries and were to do so only decades later. Nationalism, political

769
01:14:09.120 --> 01:14:13.680
While anti-Semitism, even communism were already fighting issues with us, while in the rest

770
01:14:13.680 --> 01:14:19.800
of the world the curious duality of liberalism and imperialism still held sway.

771
01:14:19.800 --> 01:14:24.360
While all the rest in their smug peace and quiet looked down at the Austrian turmoil

772
01:14:24.360 --> 01:14:30.120
as if at some curiosity, we young people felt ourselves at the very centre of political

773
01:14:30.120 --> 01:14:35.760
events, for our world was far more real than the other. We didn't discuss, we fought,

774
01:14:35.760 --> 01:14:40.140
not as outsiders imagined over the questions of the day before yesterday, but about those

775
01:14:40.140 --> 01:14:42.280
of the day after tomorrow.

776
01:14:42.280 --> 01:14:47.760
When in later decades the new barbarianism came flooding in, it surprised the West.

777
01:14:47.760 --> 01:14:50.280
For us, it was a familiar phenomenon.

778
01:14:50.280 --> 01:14:55.500
We had seen it churning with wild and uninterrupted turbulence at the heart of a highly developed

779
01:14:55.500 --> 01:14:57.340
and refined civilization.

780
01:14:57.340 --> 01:15:02.120
I say we, meaning the entire intellectual youth of Vienna at that time.

781
01:15:02.120 --> 01:15:09.340
We stood at a decisive turning point in history and felt it in our innermost being.

782
01:15:09.340 --> 01:15:13.680
Which Career As the nineteenth century drew to a close and

783
01:15:13.680 --> 01:15:18.540
Ludwig reached the age of legal maturity, he took some time to consider the path that

784
01:15:18.540 --> 01:15:24.540
day ahead. Austria-Hungary offered four career options for well-educated young men. These

785
01:15:24.540 --> 01:15:31.660
were in order of their prestige, the military, public service, the liberal arts and commerce.

786
01:15:31.660 --> 01:15:36.420
In liberal post-1848 Austria, industry and commerce were, with some exceptions, open

787
01:15:36.420 --> 01:15:41.140
to anyone, even though they were often subject to countless regulations, remnants of the

788
01:15:41.140 --> 01:15:49.060
pre-1848 police state. Activity in these fields attracted the educated young men of the bourgeoisie,

789
01:15:49.060 --> 01:15:53.780
and entrepreneurial leadership was exercised by the most daring strata of the population,

790
01:15:53.780 --> 01:15:59.980
including Jews who excelled as merchants, bankers and insurers. The liberal economy

791
01:15:59.980 --> 01:16:05.180
had given these entrepreneurs great opportunities to serve their fellow citizens and thereby

792
01:16:05.180 --> 01:16:11.340
earn great fortunes for themselves. They usually started in a province of the Empire and then

793
01:16:11.340 --> 01:16:17.220
expanded to all of Austria-Hungary and sometimes to an international scale. Once they reached

794
01:16:17.220 --> 01:16:24.140
this size, they transferred company headquarters and moved their families to Vienna. However,

795
01:16:24.140 --> 01:16:29.340
the great majority of the sons of provincial engineers and entrepreneurs did not aspire

796
01:16:29.340 --> 01:16:34.980
to follow in the footsteps of their fathers. Encouraged by their parents and with the constant

797
01:16:34.980 --> 01:16:40.100
personal support of their mothers, they sought to become lawyers, physicians, scientists,

798
01:16:40.100 --> 01:16:46.180
artists, public servants or politicians. Young Ludwig was no exception. His father's example

799
01:16:46.180 --> 01:16:51.500
had inspired him with respect for the civil service and with a desire to use his energies

800
01:16:51.500 --> 01:16:56.700
to the benefit of the commonwealth. Philosophy, politics and history were more attractive

801
01:16:56.700 --> 01:17:02.620
to him than the old trades of his family. He decided to study at the University of Vienna,

802
01:17:02.620 --> 01:17:07.580
get a degree and seek employment in the civil service. He passed the final written exam

803
01:17:07.580 --> 01:17:13.380
at the Akademischen Gymnasium in May 1900 and the Orals in mid-July of that year. In

804
01:17:13.380 --> 01:17:18.620
the fall, together with his classmates Hans Kelsen and Eugen Engel, Mises enrolled in

805
01:17:18.620 --> 01:17:22.380
the Department of Law and Government Science.

806
01:17:22.380 --> 01:17:29.580
He was a handsome young man with blue eyes, 5 feet 8 and a half inches tall, 171 centimeters.

807
01:17:29.580 --> 01:17:35.340
He came with a great education, a razor sharp mind and passion for ideas that could be applied

808
01:17:35.340 --> 01:17:37.260
for social progress.

809
01:17:37.260 --> 01:17:39.420
He was made for the university.