Chapter 10. His Work and Influence. When friends talked about my husband, they spoke of him
as being polite, distinguished and gentle. The first two qualities were so obvious they
needed no discussion, but after the word gentle, I would like to put a question mark. He was
gentle with me because he loved me, but actually he was not gentle. He had a will of iron and
a mind like a steel blade. He could be unbelievably stubborn, but people would not detect that
in daily life, for he had excellent manners. He was brought up at a time when Austria was
an empire, and good manners and self-discipline were not only a prerequisite of the court,
but a must for a member of every cultured family. One does not lose good habits in later
years. On the contrary, not only does age show one's true character more distinctly,
but lifelong habits become more pronounced.
Lew would never sit down with me at mealtime, even on the hottest day, without wearing his
I tried to convince him that he would be more comfortable in shirt sleeves, but he would not listen. One evening, however, it was unfairly hot, one of those humid 90-degree days we have so often during the summer in New York City, and we had no air conditioning at that time. I prepared dinner, set the table, put on my most beautiful nightgown, and called him to dinner. He came, as usual, with his jacket on. I felt hot just looking at him, and we started to eat. He did not know what was going on.
What are you wearing there? he asked. I laughed and said, Don't you feel how hot it is? He understood and laughed so hard he had to wipe his eyes. Then he kissed me, took his jacket off, and for once I had won. But it was not a real victory, for to his last days he would never take his jacket off when he was with other people.
To make him change a decision he had reached was even more difficult. He hated the noise
of air conditioners. In those days they were not as quiet as they are now, and he simply
refused to have one installed in his studio. Nothing I said would change his mind. I finally
had to ask the help of his doctor to convince him that his health would suffer from the
heat in our apartment, which, he himself admitted, was tropically hot in summer and arctic cold
Once I spoke to Franz Machlup about his stubbornness, and he answered,
With a man like Ludwig von Mises you don't call it stubbornness, you call it character.
When the doctor advised Lew to give up smoking, I was sorry.
I liked to see him with a cigarette, for then he was relaxed and in a good mood.
He loved smoking, though it was not a passion.
Nevertheless, it was not easy for him to give up, especially while he worked.
Sometimes when I entered his studio I could tell he had been smoking.
I understood and would not have said a word, but he felt almost ashamed that the longing for a cigarette could overpower him and break his will.
Lew was so little interested in material things that it was difficult for me to give him a present.
But one day I hit it. I gave him a subscription to the Metropolitan Opera.
In the late 1940s it was very difficult to get a good seat, and only with the help of friends who had connections could I get an orchestra seat in the third row.
of the Third Row. This was still in the old opera house on Broadway. I did not have enough
money to buy two tickets, and for more than ten years my poor husband, with something
of a heavy heart, had to go alone, until one day he succeeded in getting a second seat.
And we had the same good seats in the new Met at the Lincoln Center until he died.
The opera are drives to the country and are long walks where the only diversion and relaxation
from the enormous amount of work he was doing. Other people in their 60s start to take life easier, slow down. With him it was just the opposite, and the simple explanation was that he loved his work.
It was a great satisfaction to him when the idea of a society for the free market and individual liberty, which he so often had discussed with Röpke and Hayek, came into being.
As a memorandum of the Society later explained, the Mont Pelerin Society was organized in 1947 at an informal meeting of a group of European and American scholars who had become seriously alarmed about imminent threats to the preservation of a free society.
The original group consisted of about 40 economists, historians, philosophers and journalists, invited, at the suggestion of F. A. Hayek and W. Röpke, by a group of men in Switzerland who shared concern about these problems.
The participation of 16 Americans was made possible by a donation of a similar American group.
After ten days discussion of the most burning topics at a place near Vevey called Mont Pelerin, the group decided to constitute itself into a permanent association for the study of these problems and to add gradually to its numbers by election of other persons holding the same basic beliefs.
My husband was one of the founding fathers of the society. He attended the first meetings without me, but in later years I usually went with him.
The meetings were held in the beginning of September, so we combined them with our annual
vacation and spent the summer in Europe.
I loved the Montpellier meetings.
They were not only intellectually and spiritually stimulating, but were also enjoyable social
affairs.
Held in a different country each year, they were beautifully arranged for many years by
our good friend, Dr. Albert Hünold, the society's first secretary.
Later Ralph Harris, now Lord Ralph H. Harris of High Cross, took over, and until recently
Finally, he was the indefatigable, always good-humored and diplomatic successor for
this difficult task.
At present, he devotes his time partially to his political activities in the House of
Lords and in part to the further development of the IEA Institute of Economic Affairs
in London and is now President of the Mont Pelerin Society.
Going through the Mont Pelerin reports, I have discovered that Lew delivered only four
One at Blumenthal, Holland in 1950, one in Berlin in 1956, the third in Princeton in 1958, and the last at Turin, Italy in 1961.
This does not mean that he was not active during other meetings. He participated in all discussions without any notes.
One of his frequent quotes was from Luther.
and Luther, Eine Rede soll keine Schreibe sein. A Speech is not an Essay.
These meetings were rather strenuous for Lew. Everyone wanted a discussion with him, or
at least to share his company during a meal. Few of the members attended the conferences
and reading of the papers as conscientiously as did my husband. He was in the conference
room all day long. But whenever a discussion or a speech bored him, he took out one of
the little scraps of paper he used to carry with him and started to write. People who
People who watched him must have thought he took notes, but he wrote nothing but irregular
rows of figures, and once in a while he added them up. They surely had no meaning at all,
and I considered them a sort of doodling, but I never asked him about it. The Montpelerin
meetings were important to Lou. He met old friends, made new ones, and from all over
the world streams of thought flowed in, unheard and undiscussed before. Friends like Jacques
Rolf, Louis Baudin, Ludwig Erhard, Hayek, Machlip, Helmut Schuch, Herberler, Roquepiquet,
Gaston Le Duc, W.H. Hutt and Louis Roger met and had the opportunity for long debates,
and all of these famous scholars were united in their dedication to human freedom.
Once in a while, however, someone, in my husband's opinion, must have taken a crossroad or made
a wrong turn. I remember a Mont Pelerin meeting that took place in Strasse. I sat next to
I asked to Lew in the conference room, listening to Maklup read a paper.
Suddenly I noticed Lew moving.
I looked at him and saw that he was very excited.
He seemed shocked by something Maklup was saying.
It was near the end of the speech.
When we got up and went out, Maklup joined us, saying some pleasant conventional words to me,
putting his arm around my shoulder.
When Lew saw this, he pulled me away from Maklup.
I don't want you to talk to him, he said.
I don't want you ever to talk to him again.
He was so excited that I became frightened, gave Moklup a sign and stayed behind with Lew.
We went to our room and I saw that Lew was really unhappy about Moklup.
He was in my seminar in Vienna, Lew said. He understands everything. He knows more than most of them and he knows exactly what he is doing.
As a matter of fact, I did not know what Moklup had said that hurt my husband so much, and I still do not know.
Moklup may remember and so may other scholars who attended this meeting.
It was a hard task for me to make Lew forget and agree to see Machluc again. Machluc may have become an intellectual apostate, but he never changed his feelings of personal devotion to his beloved teacher.
Two years later, when he and his wife Mitzi came up one day for tea, Lew really had forgiven and forgotten, and there was the same friendly atmosphere that had existed in former years.
More amusing may be the little story Dr. Albert Hahn told me at one of the Mont Pelerin meetings.
The other day said Hans, I was asked what really is the difference between Haveler and Mises. They both come from Austria, from the same university, from the same school of thought.
Hans said that he answered, Haveler says, tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. To understand everything means to pardon everything.
Mises says, tout comprendre, c'est rien pardonner. To understand everything means to pardon nothing.
Then Hans added, and of some economists you might say, rien comprendre, c'est rien pardonner. You can't pardon something if you don't understand anything.
At a 1953 Mont Pelerin meeting in Silisburg, Switzerland, the wife of J. Howard Pugh asked me one morning to do some shopping with her, which I did.
In the course of the conversation she told me, you know, Margit, I ought to be very angry with your husband, but of course I am not.
I asked, What is the matter, Mrs. Pugh? What has happened? She replied, It was in 1949.
I wanted so much to take a cruise with my husband, and finally he agreed. For months
I had been looking forward to this cruise, for I knew I would have him all to myself
for two weeks. And what happened? On the night of the departure he went out and bought Human
Action. We boarded the ship, he started reading, and that was the last I got to see of him.
He never stopped reading until we came back to New York. That was my cruise.
Every Mont Pelerin meeting brought new and interesting experiences. One day, during the
meeting and tour in Italy, we were invited by Italy's president, Luigi Iannotti, who
was a colleague and good friend of Lou's, to visit his summer house. The first thing
for my husband, as usual, was to have a look at the library, and when he noticed all the
familiar names of the famous economists, he said, What a rare occasion to see all economists
together in one corner.
The meeting in Turin had been arranged by Professor Bruno Leone, who at that time was
Secretary of the Mont Pelerin Society.
A gifted scholar and professor of law, Leone headed the Department of Political Science
at the University of Pavia and shared Lew's views on politics, the free market, and human
liberty.
My husband felt it deeply as a great tragedy when Bruno Leone was brutally murdered in
November 1967.
After 1965, Lew knew it would be too strenuous for him to attend further Mont Pelerin meetings.
He was especially sorry to miss the meeting in Japan, for in the early 30s he was offered
a chair at one of the most important universities in Japan. And he then had promised me never
to go to Japan without me. Now we could not go, even together. But there was an even more
important reason for him not to attend further conferences of the Mont Pelerin Society. He
He believed that the society's policy on admission of new members was not consistent with its
original statement of principles.
Nevertheless, their relationships with individual members of the society remained as friendly
as ever.
Whoever came through New York never failed to visit Lew, Hayek, Hunold, Hoot, the Ropekeys,
Roof, Arthur and Barbara Schenfield.
They often continued their discussions in our home.
Rebecca West and her husband Henry Maxwell Andrews also came to call on us.
I did not know that, that time, that her son, the writer Anthony West, called H. G. Wells
his father. I knew only that it was taboo to talk of Wells in Rebecca's presence. I
had read almost everything she had written, and I thought her report about the war trials
in Nuremberg was one of the finest pieces of journalism I knew. I admired her greatly.
She had indescribable charm and was a great lady. Another reason I liked her so much,
I confess it frankly, was her outspoken and genuine admiration for my husband.
Of all the Mont Pelerin members, we most frequently saw the late Frederic Nijmijer, who was an
enthusiastic and dynamic follower of my husband's ideas.
Fred Nijmijer first wrote Lew in 1946, when Fred was still a business counselor to many
large firms and had to travel a great deal.
Until his death in 1981, he lived in Chicago.
Reading Lew's books changed his life.
On January 12, 1951 he wrote to Lew, As you know, I have resolved to have a fling in the
publishing field, and I am interested in trying it out on Boehm-Bawerk. If I have any luck
at all, I shall be interested in expanding the endeavor in order to provide people in
this country with the whole framework of ideas with which you and associates of the same
school work. He started his new enterprise by promoting a speech my husband gave at the
The University Club in New York, April 18, 1950, Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads Socialism.
This speech was published in the Financial and Commercial Chronicle on May 4, 1950, under
a title Lew did not approve of. Neimeier sent out hundreds of letters along with a pamphlet
of the lecture text and the original title to awaken the public to the danger of interventionism.
Nijmijer's first great enterprise, however, an enterprise that led to the founding of the libertarian press in South Holland, Illinois, was publication of a translation of Boehm-Bawerk's Capital and Interest, for which my husband had recommended Hans Sennholz and George Hunke as the ideal translators.
The correspondence between Lew and Fred Nymeyer was frequent, detailed and extensive. Nymeyer,
who in the fifties came regularly to New York once a month, never failed to take us out
for dinner so he could talk quietly and at length with Lew. Being the gentleman he is,
he had to take us home to our door by taxi and convince himself with his own eyes that
we were safely indoors. While my husband was in the hospital in September 1973, Fred Nymeyer
Reader wrote me a few kind words almost daily to help me keep up my courage. He, just like
Lew, could never talk about his feelings.
Our financial situation improved in 1948, from the moment the Volcker Fund, through
the intervention of Leonard Reed and Larry Fertig, agreed with New York University to
underwrite Lew's seminar. H. W. Loonhow, president of the Volcker Fund, and the two brothers
Professor Kornuja, who worked with Loonhow for years, took a great interest in Lew's
ideas and teachings.
Besides providing the funds for the New York University Seminar, the fund arranged other
seminars for Lew.
The 1952 Seminar in California, the June 1954 Seminar on Economics and Freedom sponsored
by Wabash University, Indiana, and a 1956 seminar at Chapel Hill, North Carolina were
made possible by the fund's contributions.
The Volcker Fund also helped Lew to get a book by Louise Boudin translated.
Professor Boudin had spent his childhood in Peru, where his father was a French diplomat.
My husband considered Boudin's book on the Inca Socialist Society to be very valuable,
and he spent a great deal of time and effort to get it published, again with the help of
the Volcker Fund.
Lew also wrote the foreword for the book.
Nevertheless, it took five years until Van Nostrand published the English translation
under the title A Socialist Empire, the Incas of Peru.
The Volcker Fund went out of existence in 1964.
With the help of other foundations, Larry Furtig, who since 1952 had been on the board
of the New York University, kept Lew's seminar going until 1969.
I am afraid I have skipped a few years and must now return to the year 1949.
September 14th of that year must have been the equivalent of V-Day in Lew's life.
This was the day that Human Action was published.
Although we were in the Berkshires and spent the day as usual, hiking and sightseeing,
we both felt it was an important milestone.
All through the years, from the day Human Action came out, Lew had the book always near
him.
Almost daily he took it up, read a few words here, a passage there.
Had he done so before a speech or before his lectures, I certainly would have understood.
But with his wonderful memory, Lew must have remembered every word he wrote.
I never found an explanation. Why didn't you ask him, one might say? I could not. Everyone
has in his heart and in his mind a certain guarded territory that should stay untouched
and sacrosanct, even in a marriage partner. A question at the wrong time may mean trespassing
and should be avoided. Nevertheless, for the twenty-five years I tried to find the reason
for Lew's constant re-reading of his own book. It was not vanity or pride. He was too humble
In January 1950, Professor Hans Kelsen was in New York and became ill. He called us and we went to see him in the Roosevelt Hotel. In the course of the conversation, he said to Lew,
In January 1950, Professor Hans Kelsen was in New York and became ill. He called us and we went to see him in the Roosevelt Hotel. In the course of the conversation he said to Lew,
You know, Mises, one thing bothers me already today. What's that? asked Lew, that after your death the Austrians will define you in all biographies as one of theirs.
In 1950, Lew and I traveled to Peru on the invitation of Pedro Beltran. This was a lecture tour sponsored by the Banco Central de Reserva, of which Pedro was chairman of the board.
Pedro Beltran, who opposed the government's policy of interfering with the freedom of elections due later that year, realized his activities might lead to his having to resign from the bank, so he delayed writing to Lew and we had no idea whether we could make the trip or not.
Finally, on March 16th, 1950, Pedro was able to write to us confirming the invitation for March 31st.
Lew lectured on Plans for Economic Unification at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Lima.
These two weeks in Peru were very exciting, for Pedro Beltran was forced to resign, April 8th, 1950, as President of the Banco de Reserva.
He was a wonderful host, but it was also a very strenuous time for my husband.
Besides his regular lectures, he had to attend many official luncheons, meet many new people, answer many questions, and give frequent interviews to the press.
On top of that, we were shown everything that was worthwhile seeing in Lima and its surroundings.
At the end of the trip, we were both exhausted and glad to get back to New York.
Nevertheless, two days after our return, Lew made a speech at the University Club, the economics of middle-of-the-road policy.
Many of the previous and following summers we spent in Seefeld, Austria, which is very near Innsbruck.
We stayed in a charming hotel built right after the war with the help of the Marshall Plan.
Every room had a porch where breakfast was served in the morning with the view of the Austrian Alps.
Although we took many excursions, we spent a great deal of time on our private balcony.
There were many beautiful walks.
Often we went with the chairlift up three hundred meters to the Geschwankodel, a mountain with a restaurant and a sun terrace.
Usually we walked back. Some days we went up to the Wildmussalm, thirteen hundred meters high.
On the wide green meadows we saw nothing but cows grazing and chewing incessantly, watched over by a very young beautiful girl who was friendly and talkative.
She said she never felt lonely, but I could not believe it. After all, one cannot converse with a cow.
In later years Seafeld became so crowded and overrun by tourists that we did not like it anymore.
Traffic became heavy and it was dangerous to cross the streets.
One day my husband advised me,
cross the street only when you can either follow a woman with a pram or be behind a priest.
In both cases nothing will ever happen to you.
In 1953, after a few weeks in Seafeld, we left Innsbruck for Rome by train.
When we arrived in Verona, the conductor locked our compartment and, as usual, we took a bus that took us to the center of town.
We not only saw the house of the Capulets, but also the Piazza Brà, main center of Verona,
and we also saw the house of the Capulets.
When we arrived in Verona, the conductor locked our compartment and, as usual, we took a bus that took us to the center of town.
We not only saw the house of the Capulets, but also the Piazza Bra, main centre, and
the famous amphitheatre.
All the coffee houses were crowded, people sitting in the streets sipping their white
vermouth or drinking a demi-toss of strong sweet black coffee.
Crowds came out of a movie house, the streets got more and more jammed.
The screaming and all the loud voices made me nervous.
Lou flagged a taxi and we made it in time for our train and our friendly conductor.
We traveled all night and the next morning we arrived in Rome, blanketed by a heavy fog.
We stayed in the Hotel de Via, one minute away from the Piazza Trinita di Monti, with
its lovely church and the beautiful broad staircase that leads to the Fontana della
Baracchia on the Piazza di Spagna. Wherever we looked there were women selling flowers.
Lew was a wonderful guide. He had been in Rome before and he showed and explained everything
to me. We went to the pantheon, we saw the tombs of King Humberto, King Emanuele II,
and Raphael. For lunch on August 24th we were both invited by Luigi Aionati, the Italian
president. It was informal and intimate, and both the president and Lou spoke mostly about
politics and about the past. In the evening we had dinner at Carlo's, an elegant place
frequented by many well-dressed people. To my great amusement I discovered a bidet in
In the ladies' room, my husband laughed about my discovery. He said that it brought to mind
a story a friend once told him about an American businessman traveling to Argentina with his
secretary. The secretary had a bidet in her bathroom, and she asked her boss, is this
to wash babies in? The boss replied, on the contrary, it is to wash them out.
The next day we made an excursion to the Castel Gandolfo, the Pope's summer residence, and
When we passed the Anzio beachhead, until then I never realized how near it is to Rome.
In the evening we had dinner at Alfredo's, a must at that time for every visitor to Rome.
Alfredo's specialty was noodles and macaroni.
The owner himself prepared them, mixing them, whipped and beat them with a golden spoon
and a golden fork, and only after this imposing ritual was the waiter allowed to give everyone
his portion.
After this amusing ceremonious dinner we walked back to the hotel over the Piazza Augustus
in the beautiful moonlight shining on the tomb of Augustus.
We followed the Corso do Piazza del Popolo and back to the Piazza de Spagna where we
climbed 132 steps to the little church near our hotel.
On August 27th it was raining so hard that we could not get out of the hotel.
Part of the wall of the Vatican had tumbled, the lights and telephones were out of service,
The post office was flooded. In the afternoon, when we could go out, the shops in the streets
and the windows in the houses were all lit by candles, adding to the somewhat small town
impression we got walking through Rome's narrow streets. One day we visited the American
Library. At that time, Mrs. Claire Booth-Luce was the American ambassador to Italy. Lew
was shocked not a single book by a modern conservative or libertarian author was on
We stayed in Rome two weeks, and it would have been one of the happiest and most beautiful trips we ever made if my husband had been feeling better. He had stomach trouble all the time, and this frightened me so much that I could neither eat nor sleep. Only a year later, on a lecture trip, was I to learn what was wrong with him.
Lew was constantly working, but he never felt disturbed when Gitta, who at the time was
still living in New York, came to see us with Chris, her little son.
Chris and Lew had a very close relationship.
The little boy used to march right into my husband's study, and the best toy he knew
was Lew's library ladder, which he climbed up and down perhaps twenty times in a row,
Lew closely observing him, catching him in his open arms, both enjoying themselves enormously.
Later Lew might take a book with pictures of foreign cities and explain them to Chris
Chris until I came in to take him out, for I knew Lew needed his time.
Once in a while, however, he took time off from his work to go with Chris to the Metropolitan
Museum, where he showed him the armor and other collections interesting to a little
boy.
A few years later we were visiting London.
At the time, Chris was a boarding student at King's School in Canterbury.
The day before school vacation started, parents were invited to attend a student performance
of Macbeth.
John and Gitta decided that we would all drive out to Canterbury so we could see the show
and visit the beautiful cathedral. Chris was overjoyed when we arrived, and we asked him
what part he played in Macbeth. Proudly he answered, I am a knight.
Lew and I wondered whether we would recognize that knight among all the other fighters,
but we did discover him. A huge beard was plastered on his rosy cheeks, heavy high boots
covered his legs, and in his hands he held something like a weapon. It was not only fun
It was interesting to observe the intelligent way the English schoolmaster had produced his Shakespeare with these young actors, and it was really enjoyable to hear their excellent pronunciation.
We saw Chris afterwards, still in boots and beard, and we arranged for him to drive home with us the next morning.
When we met him at the planned time, he was still in his high boots. He could not get them off, so he had to sleep with them and wait for his father to help him.
In later years, I often wondered why Lew did not talk about serious problems with Chris.
I once asked him, and he said, I am not going to influence him. As soon as he is ready, he will start asking questions.
In 1954, Wabash College, with the help of the Volcker Fund, arranged the Conference on Economics and Freedom.
We made the 870-mile trip to French Lick, Indiana, by car, and on June 15th, Lew gave his first lecture.
He shared the platform with Professor Friedrich August Lutz of Zurich, and Professor George William Keaton of London University. His subject was the market and the role of saving.
I remember this summer so well because the second day after our arrival in Indiana, my husband got seriously ill. I had to call the doctor at night. He had to give Lew morphine to ease the pain.
But the following day, Lew continued his lecture, and again he had a very serious attack, caused, as we knew then, by the gallbladder.
Fred Nymeyer, who had heard of Lew's illness, flew in from Chicago, ready to help if necessary.
Every day Lew delivered his lecture in spite of pain and medication, and he had to go to bed immediately afterward.
It was a terrible ordeal for him, and the drive back to New York was also an ordeal for me.
Back in New York it took time and many medical consultations before Lew was admitted to the Harkness Pavilion to be operated on.
His surgeon, Dr. David Habith, proved to be not only a first-class surgeon, but also a good psychologist and a warm-feeling human being. Nowadays, people talk so much about the changed relationship between physicians and patients, with doctors coming more and more under attack. It is not my task to defend them, but I have to say that Dr. Habith earned my greatest respect and admiration, which was shared by Lew after he recovered.
The hospital met confinement, and his spirit would not take it. The third day after his operation, Dr. Habeef noticed that Lew rested quietly only when I was with him, so the doctor dismissed the private nurses and ordered the head nurse to show me everything I could do for Lew.
The doctor himself came every morning before he started operating, and he paid Lew another visit at night before leaving the hospital. I remember one evening it was very hot and humid, and Lew was perspiring profusely when Dr. Habeef came in.
He examined him, and without saying a word, he went to the drawer, took out a clean gown, and changed Lew, never calling for a nurse. Lew recovered very slowly. He had been in the hospital three weeks when Dr. Habeef told me, I want you to take your husband home tomorrow.
Doctor, I said, how can I? He is still draining.
Never mind, the doctor answered, you do what is needed.
You'll keep him home for a week and whether he wants to get out of bed or not, you pack everything.
Have the car at the door and take him to the Poconos.
You told me you have rented a house there for the summer.
I give you my word, in three days he will be all right.
I did what the doctor advised and it worked like a miracle.
Lew started walking the second day in the country and after a week he was completely well
In Frankfurt, whose monthly magazine, Freihetliche Wirtschaft Politik,
Lew thought to be an excellent content creator.
He wrote articles for The Free Man and for Dr. Howard E. Kirchner's Christian Economics.
Kirchner never could get enough of these contributions.
Besides these articles, he wrote several German articles for his friend, Dr. Volkmar Mutesius,
in Frankfurt, whose monthly magazine, Freihetliche Wirtschaft Politik,
The Great Catastrophes that befell Germany in the first part of our century were the inevitable effect of its political and economic policies.
They would not have happened at all or they would have been much less pernicious if there had been in the country any noticeable resistance to the fatal drift in the economic system.
and Economic Policies. They would not have happened at all, or they would have been much less pernicious, if there had been in the country any noticeable resistance to the fatal drift in the official policies.
But the characteristic mark of Germany in the age of Bismarck, as well as later in that of the Ludendorff and Hitler, was strict conformity.
There was practically no criticism of the interventionist economic policies, and still less of inflationism.
The great British economist Edwin Canaan wrote that if anyone had the impertinence to ask him what he did in the Great War, he would answer, I protested.
Germany's plight consisted in the fact that it did not have, either before the armistice of 1918 or later, anybody to protest against the follies of its monetary and financial management.
Before 1923, no German newspaper or magazine ever mentioned, in dealing with the rapidly
progressing fall in the Marx purchasing power, the boundless increase in the quantity of
banknotes printed. It was viewed as un-German not to accept one of the loyal interpretations
of this phenomenon that put all the blame on the policies of the Allies and the Treaty
of Versailles. In this regard, conditions in Germany certainly have changed. There is,
The Monat Blotter for Freie Herdliche Wirtschaft Politik
Dr. Mathesius and his friends are unswerving supporters of free trade, both in domestic and in foreign affairs.
They reject the lavish bounties doled out to agriculture at the expense of the urban population, the immense majority.
They are keen critics of the cheap demagogy of the government's alleged anti-monopoly campaign.
They unmask the dangers inherent in the privileges granted to the labor unions.
They refer the Adenauer regime to the only possible alternative, a cabinet of social democrats.
But they do not close their eyes to the shortcomings of the chancellor's policies.
And they are not afraid of repeating again and again that it is only thanks to the policies of President Eisenhower
that West Berlin is still free from Soviet rule.
A periodical that openly and without any reservations endorses the free enterprise system and the market economy.
This is certainly a remarkable achievement in the classical land of socialism, whether imperial or social democrat or nationalist.
Muthesius, well known and appreciated for his writings on economics and his editorial work, was an enthusiastic gote scholar,
And Mrs. Mithesius, born in Weimar and a descendant of the Goethe family, shared this interest.
Dr. Volkmar Mithesius died in 1979. His son, Peter Mithesius, became chief editor of the Natverlag, nurturing the same ideas and ideals as his late father.
Another seminar, sponsored by the Volker Fund, was held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1956.
This conference on free enterprise, freedom, and the good society took place September 5th to 14th and had been arranged by Clarence F. Philbrook, a long-standing friend of Lew's.
It was meant mainly for economists and other scholars. Armin A. Alchean, professor of economics at the University of California and Bertrand de Juvenal, president of an economic research organization in Paris and a well-known writer, participated in the lectures.
Lew spoke about the epistemological problems of economics.
Besides the work mentioned above, Lew was supervising the new Yale edition of The Theory of Money and Credit,
which had been published in German in 1912.
An English translation with a brilliant introduction by Professor Lionel Robbins was published in 1934.
In the spring of 1981, it was republished in English as a Liberty Classic,
This is a classic, with an excellent introduction by Murray Rothbard, who calls the book one of the outstanding contributions to economic thought in the 20th century, the culmination and fulfillment of the Austrian School of Economics.
At the same time, Lew started work on a new book, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, which was published in 1956 by Van Nostrand, and which received excellent reviews.
This book was translated into German in 1958 and published by the Nat Berlag, Frankfurt
and Maine. In 1979, it had a second English revised edition. On October 19, 1956, David
Lawrence reprinted the book almost in full in U.S. News and World Report. Lew had known
nothing of this beforehand, and I still remember his surprise when I brought him the mail and
the magazine with the headline on the front page, What's Behind the War on Business,
as revealed by Ludwig von Mises, world-famous economist.
In December 1956, Lew received a note from Van Nostrand.
You may be interested in the attached indication of interest behind the Iron Curtain.
This note showed an order for the anti-capitalistic mentality from a bookstore in Moscow.
Mention of the Russians reminds me of an incident that happened in 1959.
Fortune Magazine commenting on a lecture by Professor Nathan Reich wrote,
Communism has had no more fierce theoretical opponent than the Austrian economist Ludwig
von Mises, now in New York. Nevertheless, Communists may someday erect a monument to
him. That is, if they adopt a suggestion made by the Chief Advisor to Poland's State Planning
Council, Professor Oskar Lange. The story of Lange's paradoxical tribute to von Mises
Mises was told recently, in 1959, by economics professor Nathan Wright in a lecture to the
young ladies of Hunter College in New York.
In 1922, Wright recounted, five years after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, von
Mises published a devastating attack on the economics of Marxism, in which he exposed
its lack of any rational substitute for the functions of the market and the pricing process.
Von Mises argued that if the economic system is to function rationally, that is in accordance
with the free choices of consumers, it must have an institution which would constantly
and quickly register consumer preferences.
While the run-of-the-mill socialist politicians could eerily dismiss Von Mises' challenge
as another attack of a bourgeois economist, Lange could not fail to appreciate the relevance
of Von Mises' challenge, especially so since it came at a time when the new men in power
were floundering helplessly in search of some workable substitute for the private market
in their new society. They found no such blueprint in the voluminous Marxism literature.
Like a faithful soldier in the cause of socialism, Lang took up the challenge. Like a good professor,
he sat down and wrote a book in which he attempts to reconcile freedom of consumer's choice
and other attributes of a market economy with the concept of all-over socialist state planning.
The challenge itself compelled the socialist economist to acknowledge the problem and do
some more homework on the whole subject of direction of economic activity in a socialist
society.
By hurling that challenge in the faces of the socialist theorists, Mises performed a
useful service to the cause of socialism.
When in 1956, Lew received the William Volcker Distinguished Service Award, he received congratulatory
messages from all parts of the country.
There were two files full of letters. They and all his posthumous scripts are now in
the Boo Library of Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. Chancellor H. T.
Heelt of New York University wrote to him on June 21, 1956 as followed. I was delighted
to read that you have won the $15,000 William Volcker Award for your distinguished service
as a scholar and teacher. The reward is recognition of your demonstrated capacity for leadership
in your field, and of course also redounds to the credit of New York University. Please
accept our sincere congratulations. When I told Lew, Lew darling, even you have to agree,
you are famous. He smiled and answered, You can recognize the importance of an author
only by the frequency of references to his work by other scholars written at the end
of a page, under the line. Isn't it remarkable, he told me on another occasion, if a writer
If a writer copies something from one book, they call it plagiarism. If he takes material out of several books, he's doing research.
It was in 1956 that George Cotther had the idea that a bust should be made of lue for posterity.
He spoke to his good friend Nellie Erickson, a sculptress, who works mostly with wood and marble.
George had seen her portrait busts and he felt that she would be enthusiastic about doing the work.
and the work. Nellie was enthusiastic about the idea, but George told her,
There is one problem. Dr. von Mises is a very busy man. I must first get his permission
and see whether he is willing to have it done. So George invited Nellie and my husband for
lunch, and Nellie told Lou that she could do the work in six one-hour sessions.
Lou was horrified. He told her he could not spare that much time. But Nellie was persistent.
I will work while you will work at your desk, I won't disturb you at all.
Finally he agreed, and one or two days later they started.
She put her armature on rollers and pushed it around the desk, never talking to him,
never disturbing him.
He never really posed, but one day she had to come near to him, to take measurements
with her calipers, and suddenly his face, with the beautiful complexion he always had,
got dark red.
It embarrassed him terribly that a strange woman could come so near his face and touch him.
When he came home that night and told me about his adventure, I felt I had to see the woman who stayed for hours around my husband and had to touch his face to be able to work.
So the next day I went to his office in Gallatin House to meet Nellie, and immediately we became best of friends.
I liked her, I liked the bust, but I asked her to change the hair, which she did.
When the bus was finished, my husband looked at it approvingly, smiled and said, slowly,
yes, yes. He obviously was pleased. Nellie took the bus and worked at home on the details.
Then she cast it in plaster in her studio and took it to the foundry, where it was cast
into bronze by the lost wax process, the same process the old Greeks used centuries ago,
the only true and good reproduction for portraits. At a dinner party, George Cuthers presented
I gave the bust to my husband. It has its place of honor in our living room, a fresh rose or a coronation always next to it.
My husband, due to his books and lectures, has a far-reaching influence, and it extended to our wide circle of friends.
Who took great interest in Dr. J.B. Matthews, the well-known anti-communist?
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Matthews and his wife Ruth often included us in their parties, which were gatherings for many conservatives.
and Conservatives. For a brief period in the 1930s, Dr. Matthews had been a fellow traveler, a term he popularized when he became a staff member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
At a turning point in his life, J.B. wrote in a moving letter of gratitude to Lew how much he was influenced by his writing. Dr. Matthews fought the socialist trends in the United States until his death in 1966.
Over the years, Ruth became one of my best and most loyal personal friends, and still
is today. Among the many friends we had and kept for a lifetime was Sylvester Petro, for
years professor of labor law at NYU, now director of Wake Forest Institute for Labor Policy
Analysis in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We saw Syll and his wife Helen frequently,
and I remember well that wherever Syll lived he was always working, trying to make the
the walls of his studio soundproof. He could not stand any disturbance while he worked.
I asked still one day how he and Lew met for the first time. This was his reply.
Lew and I first met, I believe, in 1951 or 1952. The occasion of the meeting was a letter
of appreciation which I had written to him about human action. I told him in that letter
that I had never encountered such a work and thought it should easily rank among the greatest
The main things that attracted me to Lew were the virtually superhuman qualities of intellect, of judgment, and of wisdom that he possessed in such extraordinary abundance.
I have done my fair share of reading in the classics, in logic, in philosophy, in epistemology, in law, in economics, in social theory, in politics, and all the rest.
and all the rest.
In spite of this rather wide reading, Lew's work seemed to stand out sharply and brilliantly.
It was on a different level from anything I had ever read before.
Even Adam Smith's great work, The Wealth of Nations, when compared with Human Action,
seemed primitive and elementary.
After reading Human Action, I read every other book of Lew's that I could get my hands on.
Those that I could not buy, I borrowed.
As shameful as it is for me to say so, I think I even stole one. That is to say, I never returned it to the person from whom I had borrowed it.
Lew was on excellent terms with Sill, and on February 26, 1957, Lew, to the excitement of the class, substituted for Sill in the law school when Sill was on another important assignment.
Another example of Lew's influence is Anthony Fisher, who founded Institutes for Economic Research in London, Vancouver, British Columbia, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and, recently, in New York.
All my efforts, he once wrote me, originally stemmed from Lew's teaching, writings and activities. Ideas have consequences.
It would not have been astonishing, with all the admiration and many honors he received in the course of time, if Lew had changed.
Human Action and the Anti-Capitalist Mentality were translated into Spanish by Joaquin Reig, a lawyer who lives in Madrid.
One day I told him, you pay so little attention to human beings, it is only history that really interests you.
How wrong you are, he answered, your presence means much more to me than any event in the past.
Yes, he did love me.
Human Action and the Anti-Capitalist Mentality were translated into Spanish by Joaquin Reig, a lawyer who lives in Madrid.
in Madrid. When he read a Hazlitt article about Human Action in Newsweek, he got in
touch with my husband and met him personally for the first time at the Mont Pelerin meeting
in Kassel, Germany. From that day on, a warm friendship developed based on Felti to the
same ideals. In Strasse, during the 1965 Mont Pelerin meeting, Riggs once spoke to Lou about
Monopoly and Rothbard's Man, Economy and State, which had been published in 1962. Riggs directed
Did Lew's attention to the fact that Rothbard, one of Lew's most able and admiring pupils,
did not completely agree with Lew's analysis and monopoly? Lew replied, whatever Rothbard
has written in this work is of the greatest importance. About this, Rigg told me, that
was such a generous statement of Dr. von Mises that my admiration for this man jumped sky
high. Israel Kirzner, Murray Rothbard and Hans Sennholz became leaders of many young
and among devotees of the Austrian School.
Each of these scholars gave their students a living fund of Mises' ideas.
By developing them, these disciples are now able to generate new ideas
and share their knowledge with still another coming generation of Austrian students.
This is the way ideas work.
Men like Pierre Hameles, Luxembourg, one of the ablest defenders of Lew's teachings
and former editor of the Mont Pelerin Quarterly,
Ludwig von Lachmann, South Africa, Toshio Murata, Japan, George Roche, Hillsdale College, Michigan, as well as the young, gifted Richard Abeling, are other notable adherents of the Austrian School.
The Austrians in these last years have made major progress. The past became the future. For many universities, Austrian economic conferences are now an annual event.
In 1980, followers of the Austrian School held their first conference in Graz, Austria, in my husband's beloved native country.
In addition to our four trips to Mexico and our invitation to Peru, we also went to Argentina, Guatemala and Costa Rica.
The trip to Buenos Aires in June 1959 was especially exciting, as it took place immediately after the dictatorship of Perón had ended.
The country was in political turmoil. We arrived there on June 1st after a trip of 29 hours, interrupted by a 2-hour stay in Caracas, where we met Guido, my son.
At the airport in Buenos Aires there was the usual reception, although it was the middle of the night. But thanks to Dr. Alberto Benegas-Ninch, our host, everything went smoothly, and one hour later we went to bed and slept until 10 o'clock the next morning.
The first day was fully devoted to sight-seeing. The traffic was unbelievable. There were no traffic lights and no policemen. Once we got into a traffic snarl, everything was tied up. Suddenly a man jumped out of his car and started to regulate the traffic. Cars backed up until they reached a side road, where they disappeared. It must have taken hours until order was restored. Lew's first lecture was preceded by a reception given by Dean Chapman of the University of Argentina. The entire faculty was present.
The lecture hall, tremendously large, consisted of two rooms, one for the original English lecture, the other where only Spanish translators' voice could be heard.
Both rooms were crowded to the bursting point, not even standing room was left.
Rarely had I heard my husband talk so well. His voice was strong and the audience listened quietly.
The text of Lew's lectures in Argentina has been published in Regnery's Gateway Editions in 1979.
The title is Economic Policy, Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow, with the forward by myself.
The book has had wide distribution in colleges.
There are Japanese, French, Chinese and Spanish translations.
A German translation has appeared recently, edited and published by Dr. Horst Poehler of Bon Actuel, Stuttgart.
Lew lectured every third day, and the other days were filled with parties and receptions.
You really was disappointed about the Argentine custom of separating men and women at parties,
which meant that we were never invited together in the afternoons or evenings. When it had
happened for the third time, I made a remark to Sofia Benegas Lynch, Alberto's wife, with
whom I was very well acquainted by then. I explained to her that this was a custom unknown
in the U.S. and Europe, and that my husband didn't like to be separated from me. The next
day at the next cocktail party, I was invited together with Lou, but was asked not to tell
I was the only woman present except the hostess. A few years later, through Lew's recommendation, the same group invited Sylvester Petro and his wife. By then everything was changed. There was no separation between men and women anymore, and Helen was invited to every party with Syl.
Every time Lew lectured in Buenos Aires, the rooms were overcrowded. They even had to add a third room for the many people who came to listen to him.
Lew spoke about interventionism and about capitalism, subjects that for years the professors and students were not even allowed to read about.
If anyone in Peron's times would have dared to attack the Communism as my husband did, the police would have come in, taken hold of him immediately, and the assembly would have been broken up.
I had suggested to Banegas Lynch that he should show Lew's books to the audience. The next day, neatly piled up in a glass case, all his books were there, translations and originals, everything Banegas Lynch could get hold of in one day. He had an outstanding gift for organization, and if ever a man was talented for a political career, it was he.
One morning, June 9th, after a reception at Dean Chapman's office, Lew spoke to the professors in a round aula.
Inside this room was a sort of small cabinet with a table.
Formerly this aula was part of the medical college, and the round table had been reserved for the post-mortem examination of the corpses.
Lew spoke about economic calculation, a subject that most left-learn economists do not like.
How Lew stayed alive through all these lectures, cocktail parties and interviews is still a miracle to me.
One of my nicest memories of Buenos Aires is a telephone call I received one afternoon.
It was Renata Ropke, one of the twin daughters of Wilhelm Ropke.
She was married to a French landowner and I immediately invited them for dinner.
We had last seen Renata in 1940 in Geneva before we left to flee for the United States.
She was then about 14 years old.
She had become a beautiful, tall, slim woman with a striking resemblance to Ingrid Bergman,
especially when she laughed. Her husband, strong, healthy, sensual, seemed to be one
of those men who enjoyed the presence of women more than that of men. One felt the electricity
between these two young people. It was a charming evening. We had much to talk about, in French,
for Pierre did not know a word of English. They had their own plane and came over from
One day, Benegas Lynch sent his chauffeur, his car, and his secretary, a young Viennese girl, to show us Buenos Aires. We saw the beautiful harbor, the Rio de la Plata, which is an enormous river, Uruguay on one side, Argentina on the other. The width of the stream makes it seem like an ocean. We saw also the districts where the poor lived, in shacks without water, wells in the surface of the sea.
It was Sunday and the people were clean and neatly dressed, but I saw men washing themselves in the rain puddles of the road, using soap and small towels. Everywhere we noticed dumps with an indescribable smell.
It certainly will be one of the main tasks of mankind to lessen the contrast between rich and poor.
However, this should not be done by taking possession of the wealth of the rich and making them poor, but by giving productive work and income to the poor who are able to work.
This will enable them to develop self-respect and give them self-confidence.
We left Buenos Aires on June 16th and on our way back spent three days in Caracas to be with my son Guido.
Lew's last lecture trip out of the country was in 1964, on the invitation of Dr. Manuel
Ayahu and a group of his friends who share his views and principles.
On November 16th we went to Miami on our way to Costa Rica and Guatemala.
As usual, we took a bus and crossed Miami at night.
Early next morning we met the Sennholzes at the airport, had breakfast and flew with them
to San Jose, Costa Rica, where we were honored with a big reception at the Grand Hotel.
Our host in Costa Rica was the Asociación Nacional de Fomento Económico.
Dr. Ayayu had come over from Guatemala to introduce Lew and Hans Sennholz, who delivered
his first lecture in Spanish, but wisely decided later to return to the more familiar English
language.
Each of them gave three lectures, and there were plenty of microphones, earphones, and
translators for everyone.
But at Lew's third lecture, the power system broke down, and the dean of the philosophy
The History Department, who was chairing the meeting, translated Lew's lecture, paragraph
by paragraph, to the fanatic enthusiasm of the listeners.
On November 20th, we left for Guatemala.
Dr. Ayayu had done for Guatemala what Montes de Oca, Velasco and Navarro had done for Mexico.
In 1964, Lew and Senholtz lectured at a small conference in Guatemala City.
Ayayu, a few years earlier, had started to introduce Lew's writings and those of other
and other libertarians to the public. He printed and mailed leaflets and pamphlets, and the interest grew so strong that in 1971 he could establish, with the help of some friends, his own university. He named it the University Francesco Marquin after the 16th century teacher of free education. President Ayayu considers it his life's task to teach the country the economics of a free society, and he follows his goal with never ceasing zeal and patience.
named after Lew, and some of the professors were former students of his. As Henry Adams
said, a teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence stops.
In April 1975, the University of Francesco American celebrated its first commencement.
Eight students were graduated. They gave the university a bronze bust of my husband, and
I was invited to unveil it. Joaquin Rake, our good friend and Spanish translator of
The anti-capitalist mentality in human action was rewarded for his outstanding work and
his love of freedom with an honorary doctorate.
All of this was happening in a small state of Central America, in a city where there
were already four other universities.
A story I was told by Dr. Ayayu when I was in Guatemala comes to mind.
Ayayu remembered that he, sometime after we had been in Guatemala in 1964, had invited
Gottfried Haberler worked for some lectures. Haberler asked for a fee of $1,000.
How come, Ayayu answered, that you asked for $1,000 and Professor von Mises only asked for $600?
If Mises did it for $600, Haberler answered, I will do it for the same price.
Years ago, through Larry Furtig, we met Robert Morris, who was counsel for the Subcommittee on Internal Security of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Later, he went to Texas and settled there with his family. In 1964, he founded a college
of liberal arts, the University of Plano, 20 miles north of downtown Dallas. Since the
buildings had not been completed, the first semester was conducted in Dallas. Bob Morris
asked Lew to come to Dallas for some guest lectures, which would mark the beginning of
a course on economics, and which could then, on Lew's recommendation, be continued by
by Percy Greaves. The first year, 1965, Lew gave two lectures. I looked through the few
little notes he had made. In the first lecture he spoke about the origins of capitalism,
the conflict between private and public ownership of the factories of production, and about
underdeveloped countries. In the second lecture he told the students how the system works,
and what it means to have a capital shortage. He also spoke about the danger of inflation,
And one of his notes reads,
The Croesus of the past is the common man today.
As usual, this lecture was followed by a question period,
and Lew kept the written questions of the young students.
Some of them are interesting.
How would the world be made safe for foreign investments in view of the socialist governments
of most underdeveloped countries?
Do you think that there is a possibility of economic collapse in this country as bad as
the crash in 1929?
But clearly Lew must have shown them, in 1965, the dangers of inflation.
We returned to Plano in 1966, 1967, and 1969.
Sometimes Percy Greaves came with us, sometimes he arrived later, but he always continued
the course.
One day I called Lew's attention to a little story in a magazine, which reported that so
many girls nowadays are college girls.
It lifts their profession, my husband remarked, but it will degrade the colleges.
Once Lew told me about a professor who, during his lectures, always looked at one and the
same person.
Asked why he did this, he answered,
Before I start my lecture, I look for the face that seems to me the least intelligent.
When I see a glimpse of understanding and interest in this face, I know I am presenting
my subject in the right way.
Over the years, Lew was recognized and honored in many ways.
Austria, the country he had loved so deeply that he could never shrug off or forget the
and the stabs and bruises he had received. Austria, the land of his birth, in 1956 sent him through the Dean of the University of Vienna's Faculty of Law and Political Science, a parchment renewing his doctorate of 1906. This was, according to the Dean's letter, a special honor, given only to the most meritorious of Austrian doctoral recipients. Dear colleague, as you probably know, the Austrian universities customarily honor their doctors who made significant contributions
to Scientific Progress or Public Life 50 years after their commencement they are honored through
renewal of their doctorate. In your case the necessary qualifications for this honor are
signally met for you belong to those scholars who, through their outstanding achievements,
have helped to enhance the prestige of Austrian scholarship, especially abroad. Your publications
in the field of economic epistemology, monetary theory and policy have made your name universally
The Renewal of Lew's doctorate presented a fitting opportunity for his many friends to honor him, not only with the support of his family and friends, but also with the support of his family and friends.
with a fifth shift titled On Freedom and Free Enterprise, published by the Institute for
Humane Studies and edited by Mary Senholtz, with contributions from 19 of his most famous
colleagues and friends, but also with a banquet, arranged by Leonard Reed in the University
Club.
It was a grand evening in March 1956, with remarkable speeches by Reed, Machlup and Hayek.
Hayek had received advance information about the planned honoring of his former teacher
by the University of Vienna, and considered the party a good occasion to tell Lew and
his guests about it.
On June 8, 1957, Grove City College granted Lew an honorary Doctor of Law degree, LLD,
at its 77th commencement.
The college, founded and sustained by Howard Pugh, had arranged with the help of Mary and
Hans Senholtz an exceptional celebration in honor of Lew, and we spent a few remarkable
In 1961, when Lew turned 80, the Wall Street Journal honored him with an extraordinary editorial by William Henry Chamberlain.
Austrian-born Ludwig von Mises, long a resident of the United States, received a variety of tributes marking his 80th birthday.
In these tributes there was something more than an appreciation of highly erudite economists and a teacher of remarkable brilliance and charm.
For von Mises has been an evangel, a banner, a rallying point for all who believe in the superiority of the free market economy over state interventionism and collectivist planning.
In an age when collectivism has pounded so many breaches in the walls of economic principle, there is something inspiring in the spectacle of a man who, on the basis of an almost unsurpassed knowledge of economic history and theory, puts his foot down and says,
No! To quit the sure automatic judgment of the free market, the free play of prices against
the background of sound currency is to leave a sure road for a morass. For every problem
that state interference with the free market may seem to solve, two or three others, probably
more serious, will come up. Here is the octogenarian economist, amazingly young and fresh in his
and his attitude towards work and life, speaking for himself, in excerpts from his addresses and books.
The alternative is not plan or no plan. The question is, whose plan?
Should each member of society plan for himself, or should a benevolent government alone plan for them all?
Laissez-faire means let each individual choose how he, individually, wants to cooperate in the social division of labor.
Let the consumer determine what the entrepreneur should produce.
Where control of production is shifted from the hands of the entrepreneurs daily re-elected
by a plebiscite of the consumers, into the hands of the supreme commander of the industrial
armies, Marx and Engels, or in those of the armed workers, Lenin, neither representative
government nor individual rights can survive. Wall Street, against which the self-styled
idealists are battling, is merely a symbol, but the walls of the Soviet prisons, within
Von Mises has been a very persuasive evangel of his cause, which would have been called liberalism in the 19th century and might be more clearly described as conservativism in the 20th.
He is one of the most influential members of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international association of economists, political scientists, historians and journalists,
set up in 1947 on principles emphasizing the integral nature of freedom, the inseparable
connection between a free economy, a free society, and a free way of life.
William Röpke, the noted German economist, now a resident of Switzerland, author of many
books about the basis of a free economy and now president of the Mont Pelerin Society,
said in congratulating von Mises on his 80th birthday, I would like to stress on this occasion
How immense is my debt to Ludwig von Mises for having rendered me immune at a very early
date from the virus of socialism with which most of us came back from World War I.
Austrian-born Professor Gottfried Haveler of Harvard describes the rare stimulation
which he and other then-scholars derived from the seminar which Mises held in Vienna before
the war.
First, there would be hours of serious discussion, then the participants would adjourn to a well-known
500 guests attended. Hayek was chairman and Bettina Bien gave Lew as a special present
a leather-bound copy of her bibliography of his work. The Mont Pelerin Society published
a special quarterly journal, edited by Hunold, as a tribute to my husband, with contributions
by Fertig, Habelaire, Haslett, Hunold, Felix Kaufmann and Röpke. The tokens of honor increased.
In 1962, Austria awarded Lew another distinction. According to an Austrian information sheet
of October 31, 1962, the Austrian Ambassador to the United States, Mr. Wilfried Platzer,
presented the Austrian Medal of Honor for Science and Arts, Österreichisches Ehrenzeichen
für Wissenschaft und Kunst, to Ludwig von Mises on behalf of Austrian Federal President
Adolf Scharf. The award expresses Austria's gratitude to her son for his distinguished
activities as scholar and teacher, and for his internationally recognized work in the
and the fields of political science and economics.
Ambassador Platzer invited us to a luncheon in Washington,
and many friends and former students of my husband attended this party.
The Medal of Honor is the highest decoration that Austria can bestow on one of her sons,
such a distinction that it is only lent to the person so honored,
for when he receives it he gets at the same time a printed request to have it returned to Austria after his death.
This I have done.
In 1963, New York University awarded Lew an honorary doctorate of law, and the Wall Street Journal reported,
Of all the academic honors bestowed this month, as tradition prescribes, one struck us as particularly noteworthy.
It was presented by New York University to Ludwig von Mises, the Austrian-born economist, long since a U.S. citizen, now 81 years old.
The citation is self-explanatory.
Author of literally hundreds of books and articles, his major works are recognized as classics of economic thought.
He has brought one of the most powerful minds of his age to bear on his subject, and has clarified it with philosophic conscience and a scientific integrity of rare order.
He is an eloquent scholar, a scholar-scholar, and the force of his ideas has been multiplied many fold by the able economist he has trained and influenced.
For his great scholarship, his exposition of the philosophy of a free market, and his advocacy of a free society, he is here presented with our doctorate of law.
How much this award reveals about the current academic climate in America, we would not try to guess.
But it is interesting, in an age of encroaching regimentation, that it was given specifically with reference to von Mises' philosophy.
For one of his greatest contributions is his demonstration that socialism, or the planned economy by any other name, cannot provide a rational substitute for the functions of the free market.
More than that, the free market and the free society are indissoluble.
In this sense, von Mises is the champion not merely of an economic philosophy, but of the potential of man.
In July 1964 we flew via London to Freiburg, Germany, where Hayek picked us up at the airport
and took us to a small but excellent hotel.
On July 27th, Lew received from Dean Ritner of Freiburg University the honorary degree
of Doctor of Political Science.
Lew made his reception speech that evening.
It was a friendly and intimate celebration, and in the following days the Hayeks took
us around and showed us the beautiful old city.
Lew, as usual, took special interest in the library, which consisted of 28,000 volumes,
guarded anxiously by a 93-year-old librarian who knew where to find every book without
the help of a catalogue.
We went one evening with Edith Yukin, the widow of the well-known economist Walter Yukin,
who had been a good friend of Lew's.
Mrs. Yukin, a scholar in her own right, was once described by Lew as the Jacqueline Kennedy
of the Mont Pelerin Society, not only because she talked eloquently and amusingly, but because
she was always dressed with special good taste.
Looking back, I don't remember any signs of excitement, joy or satisfaction by my husband
from receiving these various honors.
When he was happy, it was only because I showed him that I was happy.
I knew he deserved every honor he got, and I made no secret of my joy.
In 1967, Lew was invited to go to Vienna for the 40th anniversary of the Austrian Institute
of Business Cycle Research, as they now called the Institut für Konjunktforschung, which
Lew had founded in 1927. But Lew could not attend. Five of his former students were present
at the celebration, Professors Hayek, Morgenstern, Habeler, Machlap and Tintner. The present
head of the institute, Professor Dr. Franz Nemschank, sent Lew a little booklet and with
He wrote, If you look at this book, I hope you will feel joy and satisfaction over what has become your child in the last 30 years. We feel most gratefully towards you, the founder of the Institute. You live on in your creation.
On March 15, 1969, my husband received a letter from Dr. William Felner, then President of the American Economic Association.
Dear Professor Mises, I take great pleasure in informing you that the nominating committee of the American Economic Association nominates you for election as Distinguished Fellow.
The committee met with the Executive Committee as an Electoral College of the Association and elected you on March 7th as recipient of this honorable award.
Award. The Award of Distinguished Fellow was instituted by the association in 1965, and
it may be granted annually to not more than two economists of high distinction in the United
States or Canada. This was accompanied by a citation praising Lew's work. I hugged
and congratulated him, and asked how he felt about this great distinction. If it makes
you happy, he answered, I am happy. Nine months after Lew had left me forever, I opened his
was at his desk and found among his scripts a stamped and signed envelope with an attached copy addressed to Professor William von Fellner, President of the American Economic Association dated March 20, 1969.
It read, Dear Professor Fellner, I heartily thank you and all the members of the Economic Association for the great honor of being elected distinguished fellow of the Association, with all good wishes for the future activities of the Association and its members.
I have forwarded the letter with a few accompanying words to Professor Fellner, who very graciously thanked me with some kind words. I will always wonder why Lew forgot, or neglected, to mail that letter.