Chapter 1, My Youth Many readers will be astonished that the author
of this book, the title of which is My Years with Ludwig von Mises, writes a whole chapter
about her own youth. Others, however, would like to know more about this woman, whom Professor
Mises met when he was 44 years old, asked to marry him the next year, though he did
not sign that scrap of paper, as he expressed himself, before he was 58 years old. It is
It's not easy for me to talk about myself, but I think the reader has to know more about
me, because otherwise Ludwig von Mises' decision to marry so late in his life would not be
easy to comprehend. A knowledge of my own life will also explain why our marriage was
happy. From my book, the reader will get an insight of what each of us brought to our
marriage.
I was born in Hamburg. Hamburg was then, and I believe it still is today, one of the most
Hamburg was one of those three Hansestadt, Hamburg, Lubeck, Bremen, whose life differed
greatly from all other cities in Germany. Hamburg had its own senate and its own judiciary,
and its people had the reputation of being haughty and arrogant. They admired England
and the English People, and they displayed a great similarity to the English in their
living habits and customs. Whereas most Germans ate their main meal at noon, the Hamburg citizen
followed the English custom and dined after business hours, when the day's work was over.
At noon, the well-to-do merchants and bankers, dressed in their frock coats, top hats on
their heads, walked along Alsterbeisen, on Jungfurtstike, the most beautiful street in
in Hamburg to attend the stock exchange. Then they went home to their elegant houses, all
surrounded by park-like gardens, to enjoy their money, and sometimes also their families.
I did not know my maternal grandfather and I do not remember much of my grandmother.
My mother's family was well known and rather wealthy. Two stories were told about them.
One story was that my grandfather owned a mill and made his money with it. The second
My story, which interested me far more since it captured my imagination, was that my grandfather,
for some time at least, was a co-owner and administrator of the Hamburg City Opera. What
I know for certain, however, is that my grandmother was an opera fan, and that one night she went
to the opera in a far advanced state of pregnancy to hear Diakoma Meyerbeer's La Friquenne.
The same night her third little girl, my mother, was born, and she rewarded the baby for arriving
promptly by naming her Selica, after the heroine of Lafricaine. My mother did not resent this
name as much as I did. On the contrary, she was very proud of it, and felt obliged to
study music as a career and become a pianist. But she never played in public.
My father's family lived in Hanover, Germany. My father and his family were not very close,
So I know little about these relatives. Father, whom I adored, died at a very young age. He
was restless, gay, very intelligent, witty and enterprising. My parents had married when
young and the first baby was a boy. When I was six months old they went to America and
my father studied orthodontics in Chicago. He intended to stay in the United States but
my mother got homesick and after almost five years they returned to Hamburg where father
Robert became one of the first dentists ever to work exclusively on children.
So it was that I learned English before I learned German.
My mother, who was ambitious for her children, my older brother died in the First World War,
insisted that we speak English at home and employed an English governess for us.
She did not want us to forget the English language.
That proved to be one of the wisest things she could have done for us.
I was sent to one of the best private schools in Hamburg, Elizabeth Goethe-Texter School
in Harvesterhood.
My mother was convinced that it would be necessary to learn foreign languages, and when I was
about 12 or 13 years old she engaged for us a French mademoiselle.
But apparently she did not choose very well.
Once in spring my parents traveled to Brussels to see an exhibition.
I came back unexpectedly wanting to surprise me in the park with Mademoiselle. It was a
welcome surprise for me, but not exactly for Mademoiselle. Every afternoon she had left
me sitting on a bench with a book while she went shopping for one or two hours. So it
was on the day when my parents came. I seem to remember that was her last afternoon with
me in the park.
I loved school and became a fanatical reader. This surely was a heritage from my father.
One night, when my parents had retired, I went into the living room and took the books
he had read that day and brought them to my bedroom. I read them by candlelight, putting
a blanket at the bottom of the door to hide the light. My parents never found out.
When I was through with school, my father wanted me to study medicine, in which I had
always shown a great interest. At that time there were no special high schools for girls.
So my parents discovered the quickest way for me to get a degree was to attend the teacher
When I was 17, I was invited to take the junior lead in an amateur performance, and by chance a reporter attended the play and wrote about me. That decided my future. From that day on, nothing interested me but the stage. I dropped out of the seminar one year before the final exams and refused to go back.
My father had always been a great enthusiast of the theater. He knew his Schiller, Goethe
and Shakespeare by heart. Almost every Sunday he attended a performance of a classic, and
I was usually allowed to go with him. So he was not surprised by my decision. But my mother
objected strongly. In those days a bourgeois family looked upon an actress as a lost sheep.
One admired actresses, that was at that time as it is today, but certain narrow-thinking
bourgeois were convinced that actresses were a better class of call girls, whom one envied
on account of their elegance and their appearance, but to whom one felt morally superior.
It was different with singers, perhaps because one knew that they received higher wages.
Strangely enough, their private lives were not so much discussed as they are today. Home
Home life became unbearable. My mother made life so difficult for me that one day I secretly
put an ad in the newspaper and got a job as a tutor for an 11-year-old girl, the daughter
of a banker in Cologne. I left home, but that was too much for my father. I assumed there
must have been some high words between my parents. Anyhow, some weeks later my father
wrote and asked me to come home. He said he would not object to my following the career
of My Choice.
The first thing for me to do was to see Carl Hegemann, who at that time was the director
and chief manager of the Deutsch-Schossbrilhaus, the foremost theater in Hamburg.
He took a liking to me and accepted me as a student actress without pay, even though
I had no formal training.
I was allowed to attend all rehearsals and performances, and was promised small parts
when they would come up.
Hagemann also made me take speech lessons with the official instructor of the theater.
I attended rehearsals from morning to night. At that time, and I think it is most likely
still today, all the theaters in Germany and Austria were repertory theaters, and young
actors and actresses had to study about 12 to 15 leading parts that came up regularly
at certain intervals in every theater. My honest enthusiasm excited the interest of
by one of the leading stage directors, Ludwig Max, who also acted in classics. He was a
tall, beautiful, white-haired old man, adored by the public. As is so often the case with
comedians, he was a rather serious and reflective man. He studied with me once a week, never
asked for a fee, and no one in later years was prouder of my success than he. He also
He also regularly cast me in small parts in the plays he produced. Carl Hegeman was the first personality who really influenced my life. He opened my eyes to everything that was beautiful. He gave me books about art. He made me visit the old painters who were sources of ideas and colors for his productions. He showed me the close connection between music and the spoken word. Later, shortly before the Second World War, he conducted operas in Berlin.
In later years, I played this role on every stage I appeared. There were two or three young actresses in whose future Hageman was interested. He used to call us his children. He himself had no family. Nothing concerning us was unimportant to him. He even tried to improve our taste in fashion. If a young woman has talent, he can do it.
He used to say, she does not need to prove this by fancy clothes or make-up. Harmony
in colors and taste is the main thing.
Without knowing, Hageman did even more for me. He showed me the way to a second career
which I took up later in Vienna after the death of my first husband. He knew about my
upbringing and my knowledge of English, which he could not speak, and since he was interested
at that time in a new adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan. Oscar Wilde
was one of his favorite modern authors. He asked me to do a rough translation of it.
That was a big task, and my work must have been to his liking. He corrected and adapted
it, and twenty years after its first publication, Lady Windermere's Fan was printed in a new
translation. Hageman gave me a leather-bound copy inscribed to Greta. Greta was the name
I was called as a child, for her intelligent and sensitive help, the publisher. I still
have the book.
One of Hagerman's most brilliant productions was Oscar Wilde's Salome, and one of his
greatest discoveries was a young Polish actress, Maria Orska. She claimed to be, how the relationship
came about I never knew, the niece of the late Justice Felix Frankfurter, who was Austrian
This young woman had the most beautiful eyes and most delicate and expressive hands I have
ever seen. But she was far too heavy for her height. Haggemann wanted her to play the lead
in Salome, but three weeks before her debut he told her he would not let her go on stage
and dance unless she lost 15 pounds. Maria went on a diet and she was a sensational success
on opening night. But it was the beginning of the end. She had taken to drugs and one
One love affair followed another. A well-known banker, who was married but in love with
Maria, committed suicide. He could not stand life without her. Maria Orska played a big
part in my life. Because of her frequent indisposition, I got my first chance in the theater. Hageman
was producing a new play, Gudrun by Ernst Hart. It was the old story of Gudrun and Siegfried
Scene from Another Angle
Originally I had a small part in the play, one of Gudrun's maidens. Maria Orska played
Singend, the supporting lead, a young woman full of passion.
One afternoon my telephone rang.
Deutcheasvillhaus, Orska is sick. Could you take over her part tonight?
Of course, I said.
Be here half an hour earlier, came the reply. We'll give you a short rehearsal. We are sure
you know the part.
I came through all right. The next day I got a letter from the theater and a check for
fifty marks. It was the first money I had earned in my life. I knew now that the world
was open to me. Hageman advised me I would do better at a smaller theater where I would
have the opportunity to play all the parts I had been studying. My agent looked around
for an opening and, as a start, made a contract for me with the Stadttheater in Bremerhaven.
The summer before, however, I had a job with Leopold Jesner at the Talia Theater, the second
outstanding theater in Hamburg. Jesner was one of the three producer stars famous at
that time all over Europe, Reinhard Hagemann Jesner. He was the original founder of the
People's Theater, first-class literature with a good cast at popular prices. Among the actresses
he had under contract was a young beginner whom I had met before. She was the daughter
One day, when the Superintendent took me down in the elevator from Hageman's apartment, he asked me to meet his daughter, who wanted to become an actress. Her name was Emmy Sonneman. She was a slim, shy, blonde girl with regular features. Her talent never impressed me, but I shall always remember her wearing a starched white blouse and a blue pleated skirt. We spoke to each other frequently, and I liked her. She later became a woman.
Well-Known Actress, but even better known when she became the wife of Hermann Göring
and as such Germany's first lady during the Nazi regime. Bremerhaven, where I spent the
next winter, is a small seaport near Bremen. Most of the big transatlantic vessels of the
Hattberg, Hamburg-American line, landed there or in Cuxhaven, the seaport of Hamburg. I
I was very busy that winter, on stage almost every night. I played Desdemona, Julia, Gretchen from Faust, Ibsen's Nora and more.
I only stayed one year, then went to Lubeck, which had a beautiful new theatre, its interior all paneled in cherry wood.
It also had a keen-minded director. There I was allowed to play almost every part of my repertoire,
The director even had me play the Henriette and Strindberg's Rache, or Ecstasy, and the
emotionally complicated Clara-Hunerwadel and Weidekind's Music.
This little treasure of a theatre was burned down during the Second World War when struck
by a bomb.
From Lübeck I was called to Vienna with a very good contract for the Deutschwuchstheater,
which at that time, after the Bergtheater, was the leading stage in Austria.
When the public in Lubeck realized that a young actress from their provincial town was
called to Vienna for leading parts, the theater was sold out whenever I'd played.
My debut in Vienna was as rawhead and grill posers Euden von Toledo.
I had a great success in this part, although one or another critic was disturbed by my
North German accent.
That would change, though, they said.
My second part was Princess Ebolie in Schiller's Don Carlos.
I was the youngest eboli ever on the Austrian stage. With me in this play were Fritz Kortner,
King Philip, who later went to Hollywood, and Erika von Wagner, Queen Elizabeth, who
a few years later married Fritz Steidri, conductor of the Metropolitan Opera. One of my favorite
roles was the gypsy girl Masha in Tolstoy's Living Corpse. Another was Regine in Ibsen's
Both parts I played with Moisey, the most famous actor of the time.
Through friends I was introduced to Professor Emil Reich, the well-known Ibsen and Grill
parser expert. When he heard that my stage debut in Vienna would be Rahel, Euden von
Delito was the opening performance of the season, he offered to study the part once
more with me. But you must never tell anyone about it, he said. As a trustee of the Volkstheater,
Professor Rice was a small and, it seemed to me, very old man with a long beard. He
was recently divorced from his wife. He gave me much useful advice and I was very grateful
for his interest, but actually I did not like him very much. He was always in a bad mood,
He was always negative about everything, but he worked with me on every part I played and
explained and deepened my understanding and feeling. During my first weeks in Vienna,
in 1916, I met my first husband, Ferdinand G. Serenny. He was Hungarian and much older
than I. He was a man of the world and had a wonderful way with women. This and his intelligence,
combined with his great concern for my well-being, made me fall in love with him. I called him
We were secretly married in Budapest in February 1917. This secrecy had good reasons. In those days, every actress had a clause in her contract, which forbade her to marry without consent of her director. As I had not thought of marriage, I had not taken any notice of this paragraph when signing my contract. But now this prohibition against marriage seemed to me almost indecent, and I rebelled.
I did not ask Director Vollner's permission to marry, and so my marriage had to be in secret, but very soon I got pregnant. Yet I had to go on acting. My roles were mostly young, innocent, seductive women, and I had to represent them with the knowledge of a swelling tummy. But I must have carried my baby well, for no one noticed anything, at least they made no remarks.
I was six months pregnant when the theater closed for summer vacations.
Ferry and I went to Carlsbad and later to Budapest, where my little boy Guido was born.
From that very moment I changed.
It was as if a cover had fallen from my soul, and love became another meaning for me.
I felt the mystery of love a mother feels for her child.
It came with the first cry of the baby, and will stay as long as I live.
Shortly after Guido's birth, I wrote director Valner, was forgiven for my marriage, and asked to return to the theater immediately. And from then on I had to work as usual. It was hard on me. There was the baby who gave me so much warmth and happiness. And there was the theater of my work, which I loved and could not and did not want to neglect.
The living conditions did not soothe my inner conflict either. It was the last year of World War I, and the economic situation in Austria was very bad. People stood in line at bakeries, meat shops, and groceries. Even milk for babies was scarce. In the restaurants, more and more ersatz was being served, and the Austrian people, always great lovers of good food, began to revolt. In Budapest, I had not noticed the misery so much. Hungary, though still part of the great Austria,
and the Austrian Empire, was better off, since it was an agrarian society, and there was always plenty of milk and butter.
And all the time I had no real home.
Ferry and I could not live together. He had to stay in his apartment, which was too small for a family.
The baby, the nurse and I lived in the Hotel Bristol.
I nursed the baby myself, and when I came home from rehearsals or performances, the nurse and the baby were always waiting for me, the nurse scolding the baby crying.
My physician was Dr. Ludwig Adler, who later became the director of the Elizabeth Hospital in Vienna. He also was my doctor later in New York. He often recalled to my memory how he met me for the first time. It was four weeks after Guido was born when we returned to Vienna. I got ill and my husband asked him to come to the Hotel Bristol.
I shall never forget, he told me, in the fireplace a wood fire was burning. An elegant nurse with a blue veiling cap received me in the living room. All over the golden chairs wet baby diapers were hanging.
At that time one had to wash thirty to forty diapers every day. A difficult task for soap was scarce and so were coal and wood.
It was impossible to get a good apartment as hard as fairy tried. There was no peace in the world, no peace in my heart, and other events added to the inner turmoil.
That season, a rather sensational charge was brought against director Volner of the Volkstheater, and without any intention of mine, I became involved in it.
For personal reasons, certain older actors and actresses felt animosity toward Volner and accused him of morally questionable behavior toward young actresses, me among them.
He was, so they said, directing Euden Fontolito in a morally offensive and improper way.
When the case came before the jury, the old actors and actresses were not allowed to take the oath. I was sworn in.
I declared that I never felt any misgivings about Director Vollner or his manners, and whatever he said and whatever explanatory movements he may have made during rehearsals, it was done, I said, in the keenness and enthusiasm of artistic work.
Why do I tell this story? At that time I did not know Professor von Mises, who was still
in the Austrian Army. But when later, after the death of my first husband, Ludwig von
Mises and I met in Vienna and became friends, I told him about it. Some time later he surprised
me by telling me that he had gone to the archives of the Neue Freie Presse and looked up all
the records about the case. He had to assure himself that I had spoken the truth. I did
not renew my contract and the newspaper said that I had resigned for reasons of health.
I was, of course, in perfect health, and was offered immediately an excellent contract
for the Talia Theater in Hamburg.
Barry asked me to stay, but I was still too selfish to be able to give up my career.
I accepted the offer, though I realized I would have to leave my child also, at least
for a while.
The war was over, the Austrian Empire was torn to pieces, Germany was defeated.
Traveling from one country to the other was now very difficult.
There was not even a direct train connection between Vienna and Hamburg. One had to change
trains at the border, and the trip took 29 hours. The cars were not heated, there were
few train personnel, and there was no food, no milk at any of the stations. I could not
subject my child to that. I first had to find suitable quarters before I could have him
stay with me. I left.
In Hamburg I played the same roles I had played in Vienna, again with Moissy as a guest. But
one evening there was trouble in the theater. Moissy, in director's garb, had attended,
with permission of the resident physician, a child's birth in a hospital, and students
and women revolted against him. There was such a commotion at the end of the performance
that the actors could not take their bows, the stagehands did not dare raise the curtain,
And Moissy never again came to Hamburg. I was very lucky. I found a furnished apartment,
modern, heated, in a good neighborhood. Ferry was so hurt and unhappy when I left that he
could not work in Vienna. I felt guilty about it, but I was not yet ready to give in. When
the train situation improved, it was around Christmas. He came with Guido and the nurse
to Hamburg and stayed with me for four months. When he left, I soon discovered that I was
I was pregnant again, and now Ferry implored me to come back to Vienna when my contract
expired. He finally had found an apartment, and it was to be ready by the time we returned.
The apartment was beautiful, located on the sixth floor of one of the few buildings that
had central heating, at that time still a great luxury in Austria. From the windows
we looked far over the roofs of the old buildings to the tower of St. Stephen's Cathedral. At
At all times we heard the big clock chiming, and on Sundays and holidays the bells were
ringing. I loved that apartment. For the first time I had a home. Finally I was at peace
with myself. For some time at least. When my daughter Gitta was born I took care of
her myself, and when I caught our cook cheating us by selling our eggs and groceries, which
were so hard to get, for lots of money to other people, I dismissed her and started
I had plenty of help in the house otherwise. We traveled a great deal, but always in Austria, and the children were with us wherever we went.
Ferry was a wonderful father, happy and proud about his family.
In the summer of 1923 I took the children to Travemunde, a bathing resort on the Baltic Sea.
Ferry could not get away immediately, but was supposed to come a few weeks later.
That was the worst year of the runaway inflation in Germany and Austria.
I carried a suitcase with me, containing money for one day. Every evening my husband had to cable fresh money for the value of the crone decreased daily.
One day I got a telegram from Ferry's secretary telling me to come back immediately. Ferry was seriously ill. I rushed home and hardly recognized him. He died at home a few weeks later of a lung sarcoma. He was a chain smoker.
His physician was Dr. Rudolf Streisauer, a second cousin of my future husband, Professor
von Mises.
I was twenty-seven years old when I became a widow for the first time, with two small
children and the inflation raging.
Ferry had left a letter in which he begged me to stay with the children and not return
to the stage.
The letter was surely meant for the best interest of the children, but Ferry could not foresee
the outcome of the economic situation.
Schilling had consumed the value of all savings. I remember how I found, some months after
Ferry's death, a wallet of his containing large sums of Austrian Kronen, the old currency
that had since been changed into Schillings. The time allowance for exchanging Kronen into
Schillings had expired. The value of the money was totally lost. Though we still had some
real estate, it was not the right time to sell. I knew I would have to work to earn
our living.
One day that winter the Deutsch Volkstheater called. Maria Orska was supposed to perform
that night as a guest Rachel in Juden von Toledo. She was in such a bad state, they said,
that she was incapable of going on stage. Would I take over? I could not. I had to let
them down. Ferry's letter haunted me. I tried various times. I got interesting offers, but
I never had the courage to go on stage again. I could not forget that letter. Today I know
that he never should have written it.