Chapter 3 Life in Geneva
Lew was at the station in Zurich to meet us. In the 13 years we shared before our marriage,
I had never seen Lew cry, nor did I ever see him cry in all the 35 years of our married
life. He wept, unrestrained and unabashed. Tears were streaming down his face and he
was not ashamed of them. He took me in his arms, he kissed Gitta, he embraced me again
Again and again, as if he would never let me go. The happenings of the recent weeks,
the horrible fate of Austria, the anxiety he had gone through, all this must have been
an unbearable strain on him, worsened by the distance between us and the feeling of helplessness
at not being able to act. In Geneva, Lew had taken rooms for Gitta and me in a comfortable
boarding house. It could have been less comfortable, and we would have enjoyed it. The terror of
The past few weeks still lingered in my mind. Though nothing really had happened to me, I had been constantly conscious of the danger around us. Our freedom was at stake. I could not do what I wanted to do. There were spies everywhere, spies who watched you, misinterpreted the simplest of your actions, and reported you. Household employees who had grown old with families they lived with, suddenly became enemies. Children were taught to observe their parents and report on them.
The Germans had organized everything so thoroughly beforehand that it only took a few days for
freedom to turn into tyranny.
But now we were free again and I felt easier.
Lew showed us the apartment he lived in and which, he thought, I could share.
The furniture was first class and beautifully kept, but the whole apartment looked to me
like a display in a department store.
It was cold and impersonal.
For the first time I saw our refrigerator. We did not have them yet in Vienna, and it
was a real marvel to me. I loved Lew's sparkling kitchen, but otherwise I had my doubts. The
apartment was small, just large enough for a bachelor. I would not have known where to
put my belongings. We soon arranged to send Gitta to a French boarding school in Lucerne
to learn the language thoroughly. She had studied French for eight years, and in the
In the past few years, I had retained a charming French lady to practice conversation with Gitta and me at home, but I wanted her to know the language as well as she knew English. Both Lew and I appreciated the power of languages.
I did not tell him my feeling about the apartment. There was too much on his mind right then.
He wanted to procure all the documents for our marriage certificate, and, if I remember well, he needed 19 documents, 5 lawyers, and 3 months and 10 days of preparation before we could marry.
But these 3 months were a happy time for the three of us. Lew showed us Geneva and its lovely surroundings. Geneva may well be called one of the most beautiful cities of the world.
Here he overlooks Lake Geneva and the Rhone River and you can see the Cathedral of St. Pierre, built in the 12th century, from wherever you are.
It was in the cathedral that Calvin delivered his thunderous sermons more than 400 years ago.
All around the lake are gardens and parks in which to promenade or to enjoy an afternoon snack at one of the coffee houses or pastry shops.
Geneva is also one of the cleanest cities I know.
I was amazed to see building superintendents hose the streets every morning until they were as clean and sparkling as linen sheets.
The frankness and honesty of the Swiss population was a steady source of wonder to me.
You could leave a baby for hours unattended in a perambulator in the street. Nothing would happen.
In Austria they would empty the baby carriage but leave the child undisturbed.
In America, according to my later experiences, they would most probably kidnap the baby.
Every Sunday, as all the Genovois did, we went by car, Lou owned a Ford, over the border into France, almost as easy a procedure as driving from New York City to Connecticut.
Although you had to stop at the border where a customs officer would look at your passport and your car and note down the license number,
In Switzerland, the Guide Michelin played the same important part as it did in France.
Even among the many learned men I met in my two-year stay in Geneva, Michelin's recommendations
were of great importance for the regular Sunday excursions.
They were as indispensable to them as the thesauruses to the linguists.
It was sometimes amusing, and almost a relief for me, when these prominent scholars interrupted
or ended their serious discussions with plans and suggestions for next Sunday's dinner excursion.
But it was less amusing when Lew one day prepared me for our future social contacts and told
me, here in Geneva, when men talk, women have to be silent, they only listen. I would not
It seemed most odd to me in a modern cultivated society, but it was like this with the professors of the institute, and I do hope it has changed by now.
Lew gave me another piece of advice. Never ask an economist about his wife. He may already be divorced.
One afternoon, Lew and I went to buy our wedding rings. He took as much time and care in choosing a small, thin, golden wedding ring
In late June, shortly before our wedding day, while we were having tea at one of the restaurants on the lake, we met Prof. Hans Kelsen. Lew had spoken often of Kelsen and considered him a good friend. They were born in the same year, they went to primary school together, they had been classmates at the Vienna Academic Gymnasium, they had studied for some time at the same university in Vienna, and now they both taught at the same university.
Hans Kelsen was a professor of international law and was world famous. In 1920 he had written the New Austrian Constitution, and from 1920 to 1930 he was the senior judge of the Austrian Constitutional Court. He was small and slim but well proportioned. His eyes, under sharp glasses, always had a humorous twinkle. He was kind and easy to talk to. Lew introduced me, told him about our marriage plans,
and asked him to be one of our witnesses.
Never have I seen anyone more surprised than Kelsen.
He was speechless.
I can't believe it, he said.
No one ever would have expected Mises to marry.
He always spoke of Lewis Mises,
apparently a reminiscence from their school years.
Everyone expected him to be a bachelor for life.
But Kelsen was a pleasant man, and I felt I had won a new friend.
Finally, Lew had the rings and the necessary documents.
The marriage was fixed for July 6th at 11 am. The day before I told him that it was customary for the groom to give the bride a small bouquet of flowers. I knew he would not have known. The next day I received a beautiful bouquet of blue and pink sweet peas, my favorite flowers.
Our second witness was Professor Gottfried von Haberler, also from Vienna, a former student of Luz, and at that time working as a financial expert at the League of Nations.
Prof. Habeler had gotten his first job with Lew's help, as had many others. At a time when jobs were almost impossible to get, Lew had secured a job for Habeler with the Chamber of Commerce in Vienna.
It was five minutes to eleven when we entered the registry office to be married. Lew, clad in a formal dark suit, was very quiet, his face almost emotionless.
I wore a royal blue outfit made in Vienna for this occasion. My heart was beating so hard I thought everyone could hear it. The registry office was somber and dull as all public offices are. I was astonished that it did not smell of Lysol. My flowers brought the only touch of Gaiety and color to the disappointingly depressing ceremony. At 11.05 a.m. everyone had signed the certificate. I was Mrs. Ludwig von Mises.
And then everyone congratulated us and kissed my hand.
Lew had invited some friends for luncheon at the Hotel des Berges.
Everything was carefully arranged and the little party was a great success.
For the first time I met more of the colleagues with whom he was in close contact.
The Professors Gottfried von Haberler, Hans Kelsen, William Rappard, Wilhelm Röpke and
their wives.
Of all the people I met in Geneva, Professor Rappard was my favorite.
He, like Churchill, had an American mother.
His father was Swiss.
He spoke four languages fluently, without the least bit of accent.
He was the founder of the Institut des Autitudes, and a great thinker and writer, but also devoted
family man.
Everything about him was elegant, his movements, his appearance, his way of walking, his speeches,
his way of living.
It was an inborn elegance, a gift of nature.
You have it or you don't.
One cannot acquire it.
He had a great admiration for Lew and showed it with frequent invitations for us to visit
his lovely home far from the center of town.
Madame Rothbard was the motherly type, a wonderful, warm personality, mostly interested in the
and the well-being of her family.
After our marriage, I moved in with Lou.
Gitta, as already mentioned, had been enrolled some weeks before at La Marjolaine, un pension
de jeunes filles in Lucerne.
Without a word, Lou took care of all financial matters concerning the children.
Gitta liked her school in Lucerne, but she preferred to stay with us, and she came as
often as possible.
When the time Lew first came to Geneva in 1934 he had a housekeeper, Tiny, whom he had inherited
from the Kelson family. Lew had often told me about her before I left Vienna, what an
excellent worker she was, and how she terrorized him. She came in the morning and left around
five in the evening. She had a lover on whom she was completely dependent. The lover stayed
in the background, no one ever saw him or knew his name or occupation, but he was a
There was a force with whom I had to contend. If he needed money, usually toward the end of the month, Tiny had a special method of attaining her end. She banged the doors from the moment she came in and never stopped using the vacuum cleaner, a terror to Lou when he was writing. Then he knew she would come and demand more money. Being alone and in need of her services, he always gave in. When we married, no one thought I would be able to get along with her, in spite of all her good qualities.
I appreciated her. She was the neatest person I ever had working for me, and she was a perfect cook. I did not want to lose her, when, after a short time, I found she had been charging us quite a bit extra for household shopping purchases, I very kindly advised her that in the future I would help her with the shopping. After all, she had so much extra work now because of me. I would also try to get her off earlier in the afternoon, I told her, so she could have more of a home life herself.
She was so frail and thin, so unattractive, that I could hardly imagine the relationship between her and a lover. It must have been a one-sided affair.
When we were in New York during the war, I tried to reach her. I wanted to help, send her things she might need, but she had disappeared. No one, not even the police, could find a trace of her.
Something terrible must have happened, and I still think of her with great pity.
She stayed with us until our last day in Geneva.
She even brought us to the bus that took us to France.
The evening after our marriage, when Lew and I took our first dinner at home, Tiny, of
course, was not in.
From the day of our marriage, Lew was a changed person.
Not that he spoiled me with gifts or presents, he would not have known how to do that.
But he was relaxed, affectionate, and his eyes were sparkling with happiness.
Every little thing I did was of interest to him.
The world had changed for him.
He once told me, You are like a kitten, so soft and tender.
I only hope you won't show the claws later on.
How often he had teased me.
I hope you are not like so many women.
Once they get that certain little piece of paper, they give up.
During our first month together, when we were invited out, he even chose the dress he wanted
But slowly he convinced himself that I could do no wrong, and he left the choice to me.
But there was one thing about him that I never understood and still don't understand.
From the day of our marriage he refused to talk about our past.
If I reminded him now and then of something, he cut me short.
It was as if he had put the past in a trunk, stored it in the attic, and thrown away the key.
In 35 years of marriage he never, never, not with a single word, referred to our life together during the 13 years before our marriage.
As the past was part of my life, part of the person I became, I could not forget.
His silence about the past remains in my mind like a crossword puzzle that one cannot solve because one needed letter is missing.
Lew was overpowering in his love and affection for me.
never was he cross or dissatisfied with anything I did he could not nag there was
not one day to the very end of his life that he did not tell me I love you
darling oh how I love you it seemed to me after our marriage that for the first
time in his life he really felt fulfilled and happy I often asked myself
why does he love me so much the answer I felt was the contrast between us that
I sometimes joked and said, I am the human touch in your life. And then he would say, you are more than that. And there are more reasons that I love you so much. One of the reasons is that you have an even temper. You are always in a good mood. It certainly is enough if one in the family is gloomy and loses his temper. And that was true. His temper was as astonishing as it was frightening. Occasionally he showed that his temper was not good enough.
I do not really know what else to call them. I had already experienced them in Vienna on various occasions. Suddenly his temper would flare up, mostly about a small, unimportant happening. He would lose control of himself, start to shout and say things, which coming from him were so unexpected, so unbelievable, that when it happened the first few times I was frightened to death. Whatever I said would enrage him even more. It was impossible to reach him.
I took no reason with him, so I kept silent or went out of the room.
Sometimes I could not help myself and cried when I was alone.
But it never took long, and he followed me to my room or wherever I was.
He could not bear to see me crying. He took me in his arms, he kissed me again and again, and started to apologize.
I stopped him. I could not be angry with him. I pitied him too much.
I gradually realized that these outbursts had nothing to do with me.
I belonged to him, I loved him, and in my presence he could find relief from his suffering,
and I learned to understand that these terrible attacks were really a sign of depression,
a hidden dissatisfaction, and the sign of a great, great need for love. These occurrences
became less frequent after we were married, and after a few years they disappeared completely.
In retrospect, I judge these attacks differently, and I believe I understand the reason for
Lew wrote some notes in 1940, and I read them again and again. He wrote of Austria and of Carl Menger, who as early as 1910 recognized that not only Austria, but the whole world was getting nearer to a catastrophe.
Lew, thinking alike, tried to fight this with all the means he had at his disposal, but he recognized the fight would be hopeless and he got depressed, as were all the best minds in Europe in the 20s and the 30s.
Heen knew that if the world would turn its back to capitalism and liberalism, in the old sense of the word, it would tumble into wars and destruction that would mean the end of civilization.
This terrible fight against corruption, against the foes of liberty and free market, had broken the spirit of Menger, had thrown a dark shadow over the life of Lew's teacher and friend, Max Weber, and had destroyed the vitality and the will to live of his friend and collaborator, Wilhelm Rosenberg.
Theirs was a fight for a world that did not want to be helped.
Few people recognized the danger, and even fewer were ready to fight alongside Lew.
It was like being on a sinking ship on which people were dancing, though the end was near.
Lew recognized the danger. He knew how to help his fellow passengers.
He tried to lead them to the right exit, but they did not follow him, and now doom knocked at the door.
When Lew and I came to the United States, he saw the greatness of the country, and he believed in the future of America. He hoped he would be able to resist socialists, communists, and inflationists alike. Inflation was the great peril he had always warned of. He got new hope. The attacks I mentioned above disappeared. The veil of depression left his soul, and with new hope and energy he took up his work in this country. How he would judge the situation today, I don't dare say.
As astonishing as it may sound, Lew adapted more quickly to marriage than I did. For me, life had changed completely. I was living in another country in an environment completely different from my circle of friends in Vienna.
I had to live in an apartment large enough for a bachelor but far too small for a couple. Lew actually never realized it. He had his studio, his books and his desk.
from the beginning, his room was a sanctuary that could not and must not be changed.
What made it so difficult for me was the awareness that I had to change my pattern of life completely if I wanted to make him happy.
And that was what I wanted. He knew this could only be done if I could make his life my work.
His work should be more important to me than anything I could do.
I grew very close to Mrs. Rebke. Whenever she could help me with advice, she did so. We met the Rebkes socially, very often. Lew thought highly of Professor Rebke. He had shown the courage to resist the Nazis openly, though he knew very well that he could never return to Germany until the war was over.
The Rebkes had twin daughters, very pretty young girls, who were always moving around on their bicycles, even going to the border into France to shop for their mother. Never before had I seen so many bicycles. At lunchtime, when the people went home from office in the morning, the Rebkes were very happy to see them.
Bicycles, even going to the border into France to shop for their mother. Never before had
I seen so many bicycles. At lunchtime, when the people went home from offices, shops and
schools, hordes of bicycle riders were moving over the bridges and around the lake. Lovers
would often ride together, the boy holding his arm around the shoulder of the girl, a
terror to the motorists. Driving was more dangerous in Geneva than it is at rush hour
in New York. Besides the professors Rappard, Kelsen and Ruppke, there were many famous
scholars teaching at the Institute. Professor Paul Manteau, co-director of the Institute,
whose son Etienne was Lew's special favorite. Then there were professors Louis Baudin, Guglielmo
Ferraro and Pitman Potter. Most of these scholars seemed to me a newcomer and complete stranger,
Like the gods in Greek mythology, distant, remote, and impenetrable.
In retrospect, I am sure that I was completely wrong.
I simply looked upon them with the same awe that students who did not know Lew looked
upon him.
I was wrong because, like all human beings, these men had gone through suffering.
All of them had their share of personal disappointments.
Professor Ferraro, the famous historian and author, was very tall, with a tiny goatee,
Always impeccably dressed in a dark gray or black suit. He had not only lost his country
when Mussolini had come to power, he had lost his only son. Neither he nor his wife would
ever smile again. Then there was Professor Maurice Bourquin, who was head of the International
Department of Law at the University of Geneva and who taught diplomatic history at the Institute.
His marital difficulties were known to everyone at the Institute, but they were discreetly
were fully concealed until he and his beautiful elegant wife were finally reconciled.
Often well-known politicians and scholars were invited for lectures at the Institute.
Among them was Professor Lionel Robbins, and he made a special impression on me.
Not only his interesting face, crowned by a beautiful head of hair shining like silver,
and his vigorous and spirited speeches, but also his reverence for Lew and his ideas affected me deeply.
In 1934 he had written a brilliant foreword for my husband's Theory of Money and Credit, which was published in Germany in 1912, and was republished in 1981 by the Liberty Fund in Indianapolis.
Whenever we came to London and met Lionel Robbins, later Lord Robbins, he always proved himself to be a specially charming host.
Two weeks after Lew and I were married, we invited the students in Lew's summer course for tea.
There were many Americans among them. I remember one of them was the niece of Christopher Morley.
It was a gay afternoon, and the windows were open to let the warm summer breeze flow through the rooms.
When the lights were turned on, all the young people were still with us.
Some neighbors called up to complain about the noise.
In the four years he had lived in his apartment, that had never before happened to Professor von Mises.
I was amused about it, but I knew I had to be more careful in the future, for Lew was not amused at all.
In spite of the gay parties, the atmosphere in Geneva was becoming more gloomy.
Every night we listened to the radio and followed the political events in Germany.
Austria had been swallowed up, and Hitler made no secret of his intentions toward Czechoslovakia.
I got letters from people all over the world asking me to send tea, coffee, or chocolate
to their relatives and friends in Germany and Austria. Sometimes we even sent hard-boiled eggs. We helped whenever we could. Our living room looked like a miniature Red Cross office. I was always writing, packing, shipping.
In August we went on vacation, first to Plombier in France, a beautiful summer resort where Gitta stayed with us, then via Nancy to Paris, where Lew had to attend a meeting.
Lew drove all the way, and as much as I love him and admire his genius, I must confess I never felt safe with him in a car. He was not a good driver. He was so tense at the wheel that a conversation was impossible. His lips were firmly pressed together as if he were about to challenge the most dangerous obstacle. Heavy traffic made him nervous, but he would never confess his difficulties or let me drive, though he knew I had a license. Believe it or not, he loved to drive.
And I did not want to take this pleasure away from him, though sometimes we were in real
danger. I remember once when we went up a narrow curving road to the top of a mountain.
The car suddenly was half hanging over a precipice, only the back part still on the ground. Trembling
we got out of the car. Other people had to help us back up. We drove on. Lew never said
a word about the danger we had been in. Neither did I.
On the trip through France everything went well. When we came to Paris, Lou parked the
car on the outskirts of town to avoid the traffic. Here for the first time I met Dr.
Lucy Friedman, a former professor of French in Vienna, who later became a very close friend
of mine and who, three years later, married Professor Louis Rougier, an outstanding scholar
in personality, one of Lou's closest friends. Lucy is one of the most feminine women I know.
With clear blue eyes, her face bears the expression of a naughty Madonna. I had met Professor
Rougier before, in Geneva, when he came to see Lew, and I quietly listened when he spoke
to Lew about Benjamin Constant and the book he was writing about him. Lew had asked Lucy,
who knew Paris almost better than she knew Vienna, to reserve a room for us in a good
hotel. She made a reservation in a hotel the like of which I never thought existed. It
It had a...bathroom, which was not a real room with closed walls and doors. It was only
a tub and a toilet, separated by a thin partition with no ceiling above it. This was supposed
to be our honeymoon apartment in Paris. Even worse were the beds. I was frightened to undress
and lie down. After a sleepless night we moved out at nine the next morning and went to the
Hotel Montsigny, where we felt more comfortable. Lucy's explanation for recommending the other
Another Hotel was that, with the view of the Palais Royal, with the geraniums right before
your eyes, history will come to life for you right where you are. In this case, even Lew
renounced history for a good clean bed and a real bathroom. The conference in Paris was
arranged by Professor Rougier for August 26-30, 1938, and its main purpose was the discussion
of Walter Lippman's The Good Society, which had just been published in France under the
title La Cite Libre. In this book, Walter Lippman tried to explain the shortcomings
of the Manchester School. The main purpose of the meeting was to show that the free market
economy, if completely unhampered, would well satisfy the needs of the present world. As
a result of the conference, La Centre Internationale pour la Innovation de Liberalisme, the International
The Federal Center for the Revival of Liberalism was founded, but because of the war it was forced to close in 1940.
This meeting was attended by many economists and journalists.
There I first met Walter Lippmann, with whose views, then and in the future, Lew did not always agree.
For the first time I also met Professor F. A. von Hayek.
He was already famous and was teaching at the London School of Economics.
In January 1927, when Lew founded the Austrian Institute for Business Research in Vienna, das Österreichische Konjunkturinstitut, he did so not only because he thought it would be imperative for Austria, but, according to Mrs. Wolf Teberger, Lew's secretary, because he had to help Hayek find the right start in life, and so he nominated him to be director of the institute.
Lou's interest in Hayek never waned, and Professor Hayek's affection and regard for Lou have always warmed my heart.
Hayek is the Vienna scholar who, more than any of the others who studied there with Lou, kept his views and writings close to Lou's teachings.
As the years passed, Hayek and Lou became very good friends, a natural result of their mutual congenial convictions.
Years later in 1962, when Hayek left the University of Chicago to go to the Freiburg University in Germany,
Lew was invited to attend a banquet in Chicago in Hayek's honor.
My husband could not attend, but he sent a written contribution which, giving as it does so much credit to Hayek,
I feel is a credit to Lew's own modesty and humbleness.
This speech, Professor Hayek told me, was never read, nor was it ever given to Hayek.
He had no idea it even existed.
I cannot find any explanation for this incident, he said.
Neither can I.
The reader will find it as appendix 2 at the end of this book.
We return to Geneva in September when Lew's seminar started.
He taught only two hours weekly every Saturday from 9 to 11 a.m.
The rest of the time he was busy writing.
At that time he still had the habit of working late at night.
Often it was after 1 a.m. when he went to bed, very, very carefully, not to disturb me.
But I heard him anyway.
In 1938 he was not only working on National Economy, the German predecessor of his monumental treatise, Human Action,
he was also reading the galley proofs of the French translation of de Gaiman-Werschaft, Socialism.
He still wrote in German, though his lectures were held in English and French.
Everything he wrote was first done in longhand. He never used a typewriter. Since he had a very efficient secretary at the Institute, his tremendous correspondence and the copying of his manuscripts were done at the office.
From the very beginning, Lew showed me what he had written, but at that time I was still too conscious of my lack of economic knowledge to dare to make any suggestions.
Only once, I remember, did I make a remark which must have had some meaning to him. When
I read his reviews about free enterprise and the free market, I told him that I felt that
the most important fact about the free market was that it helps poor people. They are able
to get more consumer goods and they make a better living this way than under a socialist
system. Therefore, this fact should be emphasized and brought out as clearly as possible. He
He looked at me, thought for a moment, and then he said, I guess you are right. I can't say, of course, how far it influenced him.
Though I had nothing to do with his work, I was fully occupied at all times. I was taking courses in French literature at the university and had a lot of reading to do for my classes, and we were seeing many guests.
At least twice weekly we had dinner guests, or, what was more customary in Geneva, luncheon guests.
That was no difficulty for me then. We had a cook and a dining room. I only had to prepare the menu, do the shopping, set the table and arrange the flowers.
These gatherings were really international. Sometimes the discussion was in three or four languages because many diplomats and journalists had joined our circle.
The Austrian ambassador, Baron von Flügel, later in exile, was a frequent guest at our table and as much as Lew loved to talk to him,
In May 1939, Lew went to Paris for a few days, without me, to deliver a lecture about the non-neutrality of money at the École Pratique des Autitudes, and in the first days of July he gave a much-discussed lecture at the Student Union Institute of the World Affairs about the economics of autarky.
At that time we could still travel, and often, if only for a short trip, we went to France.
Traveling with Lew was, for me, a private course in history and art. His intellectual curiosity was boundless, what he had not known before he had to dive into. But he never consulted a Beidecker or a Fodor, these things he knew. The only guide he ever referred to was the guide Michelin, for he was a great lover of good French cuisine.
Often on a Sunday, when we stayed in Geneva, we climbed to the top of Mount Salève, the so-called House Mountain of Geneva.
You can either walk up, go by car, or use the téléphérique, a sort of cable car.
From the top you have a wonderful far view over the Alps and the Jura Mountains.
The whole excursion takes only three hours by foot, and you can easily be back home for lunch or dinner.
Lew's seminar started at 9 a.m. He was always very punctual, so we had to get up each Saturday at 6.30 a.m.
Shaving, bathing and dressing took him almost an hour and a half.
I get my best ideas while I shave, he used to say. I have written books during that time.
I too was punctual and still am. Punctuality gets into one's blood once one has been on the stage.
The responsibility is too great.
And, being married to Luke, this was indeed helpful.
Whatever he had to do and wherever he had to be, he was always ready before the appointed time.
I remember only too well when we met in Vienna for our dinner appointments.
Our rendezvous place was usually the Stock im Eisen, a landmark building at the corner of Graben and Kartnerstrasse, two minutes from my home.
Once in a while I would beat him to the rendezvous and then hide and watch him arriving and waiting at the corner.
at the Corner. He would look around impatiently, take a few steps to one side, go back from
where he came, look to the other side, inspect his watch, fiddle with his necktie, and walk
again a few steps to the other side. But when I appeared, he was suddenly completely composed.
Not the slightest gesture would betray his former impatience, nor did he say anything,
but he surely did not like to wait.
When we went out for dinner in Geneva, as early as I started, Lew was always waiting
We often went to the theater in Geneva, and though I felt the standard of the local productions was low, once in a while a famous French company came over from Paris. These performances were really great. Whenever I went to the theater in Geneva, I would hear a lot of French people singing.
Whenever we were in the theater or in the opera and the curtains went up, Lew at once
became so concentrated, so absorbed, there was an immediate communication between him
and the stage. I would say he even forgot about me. He was the ideal public for all
actors and singers. This tremendous power of concentration, which he also showed while
reading or writing, was for me an explanation not only of his remarkable memory, but also
and also his health. As concentrated as he was in his work, so he was in his sleep. If Lew wanted to rest wherever he was, in a car, in an airplane, in his bed, at night or during the day, he lay down, put a handkerchief over his eyes, and the world was gone. He was asleep.
Blue's capacity for sleep whenever he needed it was, in my opinion, one of the reasons for his physical well-being and his amazing intellectual output.
Our life in Geneva was steadily involved in and influenced by politics.
The signing of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in August 1939, Hitler's so-called Peace Speech to the Germans on the evening of August 31st, 1939,
in which he claimed that all his peace proposals to Poland had been rejected
were followed by us on the radio with the greatest excitement.
We knew Hitler lied. While he spoke, his SS men dressed in Polish uniforms
were blowing up the German radio stations in Poland, and the German artillery was crossing the border.
This trick, German soldiers dressed in foreign uniforms, was used everywhere.
Hitler's bombers were flying over Polish landing fields, destroying Polish planes on the ground.
The German troops moved with such unbelievable speed that Poland was, in fact, defeated in a few hours.
The Western powers clearly knew the next decision had to be theirs.
When, on September 3rd, Chamberlain told the British Parliament that Great Britain and France were from this day on at war with Germany,
Switzerland immediately prepared for the worst. The Swiss are a peace-loving people. For three centuries they had lived in harmony with three neighbors, three languages, and three regions. They had an excellently equipped, small, modern army, a sort of standing militia. Every Swiss citizen had to report for military duty once yearly, and the general had to report for military duty twice a year.
The general feeling was enthusiasm for peace, a hatred for aggression, and the knowledge that only a well-equipped army could protect them against war.
One of the first actions of the Swiss government was the requisitioning of all foreign-made cars.
Lew was one of the first who got the order to deliver his beloved Ford.
He never saw it again.
Though the Swiss government paid him a small remuneration for his car, on the whole the automobile investment was a loss.
From the moment of the French and English declaration of war, the atmosphere in Geneva completely changed.
Refugees from the newly occupied countries arrived daily. Hotels and apartments were filled, and streets and coffee houses were crowded.
But along with the newcomers came Hitler's spies. The atmosphere, once so tranquil and peaceful, was now filled with rumors.
Fear touched everyone. The Sunday excursions to France had to stop.
People also avoided going to restaurants for dinner and taking afternoon tea in the beautiful gardens at the lake.
One did not know who might be sitting at the next table to overhear the conversation.
Friends met at private houses where, as early as September 1939, dark shades had to be installed and not a gleam of light was allowed to show through the windows.
Geneva gradually became a haven for many well-known refugees, among them many German and Austrian authors.
Robert Mussel was one of them, and he often came to see us. He was a novelist, too, though
born in Austria, preferred to live in Berlin. Ruined by inflation, he went from Berlin to
Vienna, but when the Nazis came in 1938, he had to emigrate again. He died in Geneva in
1942 in utmost poverty. Only now his importance is fully recognized. Again and again his books
The books are reviewed and analyzed. Among them was The Man Without Qualities, a novel in three volumes, the last of which was published as a fragment after his death in 1943.
Rhoda Rhoda was another of the refugee authors who frequently visited with us. Originally an officer in the German army, he was well known for his political satires and witty short stories, formerly published in the German magazines Simplissimus and Jugend.
He always wore a red vest. No one had ever seen him without it.
More than ever, his stories were laughed at all over Europe and feared in Germany, where they were considered forbidden literature.
A frequent guest was Dr. Helene Leena Leiser.
She needed no invitation. She came and went when she felt like it.
She was Viennese-born and educated and one of the gifted participants in Lew's seminar in Vienna.
She was highly intelligent, practical-minded, and very efficient. When Hitler came to Vienna and she had difficulty in leaving, she married a man almost unknown to her. Such marriages were very common. They were marriages in name only and were never consummated.
The man who married a woman in this way asked a high price for giving her his name and the opportunity for her to leave Austria. He also consented to immediate divorce once his wife was safely out of the country.
Frequently, the consequences of these marriages were blackmail and extortion.
When I met Lena Lyser, she was past the prime of her life.
She must have been good-looking when she was young, but times and circumstances had greatly
changed her.
She was never well-groomed.
A button of her blouse might be missing, as if her might be broken, or her slit might
be showing.
These things were not important to her any more.
Her main interest was helping other people.
She had an enormous correspondence, and no one ever asked her in vain for help or assistance.
For many years she was the secretary of the International Economic Association in Paris.
She died of cancer in 1962.
Despite the increasing threat from the Nazis, Lew worked more than ever before.
When he sat at his desk, lost in his thoughts, he could forget what was happening around
him.
He loved Geneva, the freedom of teaching, the atmosphere of apartheid created within
in the Institute, and the steady friendly contact with the other professors. He still
had no fear for the future. He believed the French would fight and could resist the German
attacks. Hitler's defeat, Lew was sure, was just a matter of time. He never believed in
the tausend Jahre Reich. Lew's judgement about France's moral and combat strength was the
only political error I have ever known him to make. His other judgement, in politics
or Economics, always proved to be true. Professor Hayek confirms this in his speech, see Appendix 3.
But his trust in France was wrong. The famous Maginot Line, the construction of which was started in 1930 and finished in 1935,
was considered by the French to be impregnable. But great errors were made. One was that the line ended at the Belgian frontier,
So the way into Belgium was open. The second was that too many soldiers were behind the lines for defense, and too few outside for battle.
This was a weak and critical point, which Hitler, from the beginning, had taken into consideration.
When Poland was conquered, Hitler ordered that no action whatsoever be taken along the Western front.
The responsibility to open the fight must rest solely with England or France, he declared.
All winter long there was neither war nor peace, hardly any hostilities, no battles.
This situation greatly weakened the morale of the French troops, and the mood of France
became the mood of Switzerland.
One night in October or November 1939, I do not remember the exact date, all Geneva was
peacefully asleep when suddenly a terrible uproar woke everyone.
Sirens were screaming, fire engines came shrieking.
We rushed to the window, carefully lifted a bit of the curtain, and saw the darkness of the night pierced by searchlights.
Shortly afterwards, squadrons of Swiss fighters were in the air.
What had happened? The Royal Air Force apparently had made a geographical error.
They were supposed to bomb Hitler's retreat in Bavaria, and they mistook Lake Geneva for the Königssee near Berchtesgaden.
I doubt that this will be found in any history book.
Winter came and still there was peace at the Western Front. It was December 9th, a cold, bleak winter day. The streets were full of snow. Lew had his seminar and I had to do some errands.
When I came home and went as usual to his studio to greet him, he sat very quietly at his desk and did not get up to kiss me as he usually did. I looked at him and saw immediately that something was wrong.
He was very pale and just sat there, neither reading nor writing.
What's wrong, darling? I asked him.
And then he told me that in the morning, on his way to the Institute, he had slipped on the icy snow and fallen and hurt himself.
I asked, where? He showed me his right hand, the joint of which was terribly swollen.
Have you seen the doctor? I asked.
No, he said. I went to the Institute, delivered my lecture, and directed the discussion afterward.
I had no time for the doctor. I was shocked. He must have experienced terrible pain to judge by the swelling of his hand.
I suspected a fracture, called a taxi, and went with him to the hospital, where they took x-rays and confirmed the fracture.
For almost six weeks his arm was in a cast, but he never complained. He just went on working.
By this time Hitler had already set the date for an attack on the West. Of course, we did not know it then. We only felt the mounting tension.
Attention. On April 9, 1940, Hitler invaded Norway, and on the same day German troops
marched into Denmark without finding any resistance. The English wanted to help with air attacks
on Norway. They started on April 15, much too late to be of any help. Too little, too
late was Churchill's judgement later. The tension in Geneva was growing. The Haberleurs
had left for the United States, and Professor Kelsen had made plans to go there too. Professor
Mr. Potter, an American citizen, had just lost his wife, a great friend of mine, and
had accepted a new position at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C. He, too, wanted
to leave as quickly as possible. When Hitler invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, I
really became frightened. I had to talk to Lew. He did not want to leave. He never had
been so happy as he was in Geneva, and he did not feel any fear. I reminded him of the
Tonight the Nazis came to Vienna. I told him the Nazis would never take him off their
blacklist. I begged him, I implored him to leave, to think of me if he would not think
of himself. It took the breakdown of the Maginot Line, the occupation of Paris on June 14th,
and the raising of the German's Vastica on the highest point of the Eiffel Tower to make
Lew aware of the danger. Finally, he gave in and promised to make the necessary preparations
In his heart, of course, Lew was reluctant to leave, not only because of his love for the work at the Institute, but because he feared how America, the home of young people, the paradise of youth, would receive him, a man of almost sixty. He was also afraid of language difficulties. At that time he was more at ease with French than with English. He had studied French for at least six years in the academic gymnasium, and he spoke it fluently in English.
with almost no accent. English he had first learned by reading, and that, he always insisted,
was the wrong method. Often he said, jokingly, if you don't learn a foreign language as a
child, you later have to learn it with a sleeping dictionary. The change of languages meant
more to him than it would to an average citizen. Language was his most important tool, his
essential device for communicating his ideas, his means of earning his living. I was not
From the moment German troops moved into France, every line of communication between Switzerland and that country were closed.
Starting June 11th, no cars were allowed, no trains were running, no planes were flying, no buses were moving, no letters or telegrams came through.
This was another source of worry for me.
I knew we could not hear from Gitta, and in no case could we manage to get her on our visa to take her with us.
She would have to stay in Bessincon, where we had taken her a few months before to study at the university.
She was living with friends, but she was so young, and now she had to be on her own.
On June 21st, the armistice between France and Germany was signed, at Hitler's demand, in the same railcar where, in 1918,
The Germans had to accept the armistice and the conditions directed by General Fock, an armistice that gravely wounded their pride and aroused much hatred in Germany.
Finally, Lew started to act. He got in touch with Professor Benjamin Anderson, a good friend of his, who at that time was the chief economist at the Chase Bank in New York.
Professor Anderson immediately took the necessary steps and got both of us a non quota visa, which allowed us to enter the United States immediately.
Louis had his library packed, and whatever else we planned to take along with us was prepared for shipping.
Every day we went to the various agencies to hear whether and when we could leave, but Switzerland was surrounded by German troops and no one could move.
The airlines as well as the bus authorities had promised us seats on their first trip out.
Since we had to cross through France, Spain and Portugal, we had to get all the necessary visas.
The news from the shipping agencies never changed. It was nerve-shattering. The Repkes also pondered whether they should leave. Repke even went so far as to travel with Lew to Zurich to get his American visa from the American consul there, but in the end they decided to stay because of their three young children, and besides this, a good while before, they had applied for Swiss citizenship. The uncertainty and tension grew from day to day. We tried to get passage on the American export line from Lisbon,
But they could not promise anything. The only thing they could do for us was to put our names on the waiting list.
On June 18th, Lew received a telegram from Dean Robert Calkins.
Invite you to accept position lecturer and research associate professor, University of California, July to December.
Lew was in no way happy about this offer, but it meant a possibility and a way out.
A few days later, Professor Potter received a letter dated June 18, 1940 from E. F. Penrose, Professor of Economics at the University of California.
It read, He, Mises, has been accepted as an American non-quota immigrant and his arrival to take up position in the United States is eagerly awaited at the University and other American universities.
Universities. I trust that in the present unsettled state of Europe he will not be obstructed
or in any way interfered with in reaching the United States. If he should be interfered
with in any way, the fact will become known in the United States and would certainly influence
public opinion strongly against whatever persons or whatever country prevented him as an accepted
On July 1st we were told still no planes. On July 2nd we again went with Professor Potter to the French Consulate since we still did not have the visas required to cross France, but again we were turned down. The next day, in response to a letter from Darius Milhad to the French Embassy, we got our visas.
Mises. Milhad, the well-known composer, was married to a famous French actress who had
been teaching ghettas. On the same evening our luggage left and we got the news that we
would have seats the following day on the first bus leaving Geneva for France.