Chapter 9, Lew's famous seminar. Lew's seminar at New York University began in 1948 and ended in 1969. For 21 years the seminar gathered at the graduate school in Lower Manhattan every Thursday from 7.25 to 9.25 p.m.
When Lew entered the room with almost military punctuality at 7.20 pm, a small flat briefcase
under his arm, he always had a friendly smile for everyone and a quick searching glance
for me. He liked me to attend the meetings. He would sit down at the center of the long
side of the table and take a small sheet from the inner pocket of his jacket. This tiny
piece of paper was all he needed for the evening. Then he would start to talk. He presented
He presented his ideas clearly, in simple words, in contrast to the often difficult terminology used in his books.
The composition of his lectures was always the same. He began with a statement and returned with a closing word to exactly the point from whence he had started. His thoughts had completed a perfect circle.
On Lew's 89th birthday, Leonard Reed presented him with a plaque.
You are a great teacher. You, Mises, are truly a teacher. Two generations of students have studied under you, and countless thousands of others have learned from your books. Books and students are enduring monuments of a teacher, and these monuments are yours. This generation of students will pass away, but the ideas set in motion by your writings will be a fountain source for new students in generations to come.
Yes, Lew was a great teacher. He had the ability to lift minds of his students, to incite their
mental curiosity, to arouse their imaginations to new visions. Frank Diersen, a prominent
corporate lawyer in New York City who attended Lew's regular course at New York University
from 1946 and regularly came to the seminar from the beginning in 1948 to 1955 and in
The seminar was the most enriching experience of my life. It opened new worlds to me. Keynes once said, at 25, your ideas are fixed. But in Dr. von Mises' class, men of 40 and 50 abandoned earlier convictions to accept the truth that he taught. Every lecture was a mind-stretching experience. In the first seminar, I remember Dr. Mises had finished his lecture on welfare legislation, attacking the economics of various social policies.
Policies. The entire class was astonished at his critical attitude. They arranged a
special meeting after the lecture and invited the professor to attend. They wanted to teach
him the social facts of life. And what happened? Wonder of wonders! After all the arguments
had been submitted and Dr. Mises had explained everything anew, the class came away in complete
agreement with Dr. Mises and shared a new conception of economic realities and economic
and Economic Freedom. Jack Holman, who for many years was director of Johnson & Johnson and has a PhD in economics and is a licensed professional engineer in the state of New York, felt similarly about Lew. He attended the seminar from 1950 to 1952 and he told me,
I have never known a man as erudite as was Dr. von Mises. He was extraordinarily learned in every field of knowledge. In discussing economics, he would bring in examples from history to illustrate the points he was making. I remember only too well some of the sentences he said during his lectures. Some of them I noted down. On September 21, 1950, he said,
said, One of the indispensable prerequisites of a mastery of economics is a perfect knowledge
of history, the history of ideas and of civilization, and of social, economic and political history.
To know one field well, one must also know other fields.
On December 14, 1950, he said, An ethical standard is judging various modes of conduct
from the point of view of a scale of values which derives from divine commandments, or
Apart from that which is in the soul of everyone, the realm of ethics is not something which
is outside of that of economic action.
You cannot deal with ethical problems apart from economic ones, and vice versa.
On December 21, 1950, he said, the fundamental contribution of the classical economist, what
is good for the individual is good for society.
Yes, Lew was a great teacher, though his English pronunciation was never perfect.
I often wondered whether others would be affected by it. I looked around, watching their expressions,
but they always listened attentively, their eyes fixed on his face, occasionally making
notes. I was the only one whose thoughts were diverted, perhaps because I loved him so much
and wanted so badly for him to succeed in whatever he did. He himself was completely
absorbed. Sometimes he folded his hands close to his face, his elbows resting on the desk.
Sometimes he leaned back in the chair, his hands pressed against the table, his head
I had thrown back, his eyes introspective, seeing nothing. He may have looked at people, but he did not see them.
Once in a while he shot a furtive glance back to my place. I felt he saw me, and then back he was in his thoughts, fully concentrated on the lecture.
During the discussion he was vigorous in his arguments, but he was always polite and civil. He never offended people, but he found no excuses for socialists.
He explained every subject to the point of disarming his opponent, but never, never did he persuade anyone against his will.
Occasionally the discussion became too lively and excited.
Then Lew, with a single remark, brought the students back to the subject and released the tension.
He always knew how to guide them.
His restraint and civility were unparalleled.
The students may have differed in their views about a subject, but they were united in their feelings of admiration and respect for Lew.
In the last five or six years of the seminar, it was a great relief for him when I brought the car to NYU to take him home.
When I was not there and he was brought home by others, he was forced to talk or to discuss further some problems, and he was too polite to tell them how tired he was.
With me there was no need to talk, he could relax. But regularly he asked me, did you like the lecture, were you satisfied?
To ask me that question, it touched my heart. I was never as attentive in his seminar as
I should have been. I took too much interest in the students who attended. I watched them,
I studied their faces. I saw many come and go, whose names I did not even know. But others
I saw grow and develop, acquiring stature and insight.
Lew met every new student, hopeful that one of them might develop into a second Hayek.
If he saw a tiny spark, he hoped for a flame. Never did he show any sign of impatience,
and he encouraged everyone to speak out and give his opinion. Again and again he advised
them to read and to learn foreign languages. It is a great pity, he often said, that American
scholars do not know foreign languages and are unable to read foreign literature. Every
economist should study Marx and Engels in the original language. Only if they know their
He pointed to the example of Keynes, who hardly knew any German or French, and was therefore unaware of solutions for economic policy, which had already been advanced by French and German authors.
One evening at the seminar, Lew cited authorities in French and in German. A student objected,
Why are you giving these citations, professor? he asked. I can neither read French nor German.
Learn it, was Lew's answer. You are engaged in scholarly activities.
Among the students I knew best was Hans Seinholtz, who was born and raised in Germany.
He was a pilot in the German Air Force during the Second World War, was shot down and captured,
and became a prisoner of war in the United States. During his captivity, he became acquainted with
with my husband's books. He had already finished the study of law and political science in
Germany, but he decided to remain in the United States. In 1949 he started studying economics
with my husband at New York University. For years he was a participant at the seminar,
and he wrote his doctoral thesis with Lew. Today he is head of the economics department
at Grove City College. He lectures frequently throughout the country, and is known as one
One of the staunchest defenders of the free market. A new generation of Mises disciples, advocates of the Austrian School, have emerged from Professor Sandholz's courses at Grove City College. He has written many books. The latest one, Age of Inflation, became a best-seller. His wife, the former Mary Holman, who usually participated in the seminars at the Foundation for Economic Education while she was Leonard Reed's personal secretary, is his close assistant. I always had, and still have, a special interest
in this marriage. One day, shortly after Hans and Mary had met, I invited them to our house
and told each of them, separately and in private, how much I thought of the other one. It was
a very simple way of bringing them together. They married, and in due time their son Robert
was born, became my godchild, and is still a favorite of mine. Mary Senholtz later edited
on Freedom and Free Enterprise, a collection of essays by nineteen scholars in honor of
by my husband on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his doctorate, February 20th, 1956.
The best known of all of Lew's American students today may be Professor Murray Rothbard. He
came to the seminar in 1949 and became one of the most devoted and able advocates of
Lew's teaching. Lew may not have agreed with all of Rothbard's views, but he always considered
him to be one of his most gifted students. Those who have read Rothbard's pamphlet,
of the Essential von Mises, know his deep insight and warm understanding of my husband's work.
Today Murray Rothbard is a professor of economics at the New York Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn,
a prolific writer famous as a scholar and historian in his own right.
He and Joey, his wonderful wife, are very good friends of mine.
Another man in whom Lew put great hope was Israel Kirzner.
In later years, Lew chose Kirzner to be his assistant for the seminar,
to help him with student problems and relieve the burden of the office hours.
Now Dr. Kirzner is Professor of Economics at New York University, fulfilling and surpassing
all of the hopes Lew cherished for him.
Lew considered Kirzner's The Economic Point of View an important and valuable work and
wrote a foreword to it.
Professor Kirzner, who is highly regarded among students, headed the circle of scholars
who, since my husband's death, succeeded in proving the great importance of the Austrian
School.
Thanks to his never ceasing effort, this movement is expanding more and more.
I am sure my husband would have been delighted about Professor Kirzner's latest important work,
Perception, Opportunity and Profit, published by the University of Chicago Press.
Louis Spadaro, a quiet, positive, earnest scholar, attended Lew's seminar for many years and wrote his doctoral thesis with Lew.
He is now Dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration at Fordham University
and President Emeritus of the Institute for Humane Studies.
Most of the seminar students became, over the years, good friends of ours.
Mr. Stanton Evans attended Lew's regular course at New York University and was a member of the seminar for one year.
He once said about my husband, the first thing Professor von Mises tried to teach us in his seminar was the science of epistemology, the science of how we know things.
It is not an easy topic, for the most difficult topic for the human mind to grasp is the extent of its own ignorance.
Stanton Evans became an editor and journalist and writes a syndicated column for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
He wrote various books such as Revolt on the Campus and The Future of Conservativism.
Since 1980 he has been president of Consumers Research, Inc. and publisher of Consumers Research Magazine.
Percy Greaves first came to the seminar in 1950 and attended almost all the meetings until Lew stopped teaching.
My husband thought very highly of Percy's knowledge and understanding of economic theory.
It is a great pity, he often told me, that Percy did not make his Ph.D.
Lew's work was like scripture to Percy.
He was the chairman of the dinner meetings that the students arranged from time to time with the financial help of Isidor Hodes,
another faithful and devoted participant of the seminar.
Grieves and his future wife, Bettina Bien, later became friends of ours and spent their honeymoon with us in Vermont.
Ronald S. Hertz, now a prominent certified public accountant with a large firm on Park Avenue, attended Lew's seminar for many years beginning in 1949.
No matter how verbose, inane, inept or belligerent the question or the questioner, Ronald Hertz wrote me once,
He was heard through and then received a patient, meticulous response. It must have been the respect which Professor Mises showed to students, which kept even those who began with great antagonism coming back.
There was a whole group of high school students whom Lew allowed to attend his seminar. They were bright young boys, eager to learn and deeply interested in today's problems.
They had discovered that Lew was their man of the future and not a reactionary as friendly
economists would call him before they shelved his uncomfortable words of truth.
One of the youngest members of this group was George Reisman.
One evening in the autumn of 1953 he rang the doorbell at our apartment.
I opened the door and saw a young, blonde, shy boy of about 15 years who asked to see
Dr. von Mises.
I asked why, and he told me that he was in high school, had read all of Lew's books
he could get a hold of, and was wondering whether the professor would allow him to attend
his course and the seminar. My husband talked to him, and helpful as always, admitted him.
From then on, George Reisman came regularly for years. He wrote his doctoral dissertation
with Lew, and often came to the house to converse with him. Reisman was hardworking, thorough,
and Inquisitive. In later years he translated one of Lew's books from the German. It was
published in 1960 by van Nostrand under the title Epistemological Problems of Economics.
After many years as a professor of economics at St. John's University in Brooklyn, Reisman
is teaching now in Los Angeles at Pepperdine University. In 1979 he published a book, The
Government Against the Economy. It is widely discussed and received especially good reviews.
George became a credit to his teacher.
Ralph Raco was another one of the high school students whom Lew watched with great expectations.
Raco later went to Chicago to continue his studies and is now teaching history at the
State University of New York at Buffalo.
He wrote in The Alternative, February 1975,
To know the great Mises tends to create in one's mind lifelong standards of what an ideal
intellectual should be.
These are standards to which other scholars whom one encounters will almost never be equal,
and judged by which the ordinary run of university professors at Chicago, Princeton or Harvard
is simply a joke, but it would be unfair to judge them by such a measure. Here we are
talking about two entirely different sorts of human beings.
Another one of these young men whom Lew admitted to the seminar was Lawrence Moss, who at that
At that time was a junior at Queens College. Moss had heard Lew speak when Lew sat on the platform with Senator Barry Goldwater.
He was so impressed by Lew's ideas that he tried his very best to meet Lew and get into the seminar.
Rothbard helped him and arranged it for him. From then on, Moss was a regular in the seminar.
Having been indoctrinated in his college with rather liberal ideas,
Moss and a friend who also joined the seminar started to ask Lew many questions,
which Lew answered with never-ending patience.
One of the older students was annoyed at the steady questioning of the newcomers.
The older student wanted only to listen to the professor.
He was not interested in the mental gymnastics of these youngsters.
So he called the Dean of Students at Queens College and reported these two young boys,
saying that they were on the grounds of New York University without permission of Queens College,
without paying admission fees and disturbing other students.
The Dean called the two students and asked for an explanation. They told their story and asked the Dean to call Dr. Mises to hear from him whether they had behaved improperly. But the Dean believed them and said,
If you are reported a second time, I will make a note on your record. It did not happen again.
Lew's friend Henry Haslett often came to the seminar. He always sat next to my husband and participated in the general discussion.
Lew was especially pleased with his presence. Once in the academic year 1957-1958,
Ayn Rand, the famous author of Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugs, also attended.
She was one of the strongest believers in my husband's theories and often spoke and wrote about him in her various lectures and publications.
If I remember correctly, Alice Widener also attended the seminar once.
For many years she has published USA, a bi-monthly periodical.
She reads tremendously, travels frequently, speaks various languages, and knows many important
people in the political arena.
My husband had a high opinion of her and called her one of the best informed reporters of
the United States.
She is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, and it was during one of their meetings that
I met her for the first time.
The seminar was frequented by people of various nationalities and professions. For five years
two Jesuit professors attended, Father William McGuinness, a professor of economics and management
at Weston College, and Father Michael Mansfield, a former economics professor at Hong Kong
University. I remember them especially well, for Lew always took a special delight in leading
these and other clergymen into philosophical and theological questions with respect to
to Social and Economic Problems, and I remember clearly also a young Catholic priest, now Reverend
Monsignor F. Davis, who in 1979 in a small book, This Priest is Thankful, which is touching
through its honesty, spoke about the great influence that Lew exerted on his life. I
also remember Captain Richard L. Fruent, a medical doctor from the Naval Station at Lake
hurst, New Jersey. He was working with the Air Force on problems specific to flying.
He traveled 5 or 6 hours every Thursday to attend Luz Seminar, even in winter when the
roads were icy and dangerous. He never missed a meeting. Now retired, he lives in California.
A good friend of mine is Phoebe Tan, a very gifted, beautiful, young Philippine woman
who wrote her doctoral dissertation with my husband and later married Edward Facey, another
student of Luz whom she met at the seminar. Both have been teaching for years at Hillsdale
College in Michigan. Another participant in the seminar was William Peterson, who for
some time was Professor of Economics at NYU and is now teaching at the University of Tennessee
in Chattanooga. In the course of years he became more and more convinced of the truth
and importance of my husband's ideas. He writes frequently for the best magazines using quotations
from Lew's books to emphasize his own ideas. Mary, his talented, elegant wife, also visited
She attended the seminar frequently. She became well known through her book reviews in the Wall Street Journal and is very successful in her work in General Motors, which she took up after they moved to Washington D.C.
In this connection, I would like to tell a little story that happened in June 1955. The Petersons and their children, then perhaps four and five years old, attended a seminar arranged by the Foundation for Economic Education and conducted by Lew at Buck Hill Falls Inn in the Poconos.
My husband was the main speaker. The seminar was held in a special building on the beautiful grounds of the hotel. The conference room was large, with a long oval table. I took my place as usual somewhere in the back. The first day of the meeting, Lou spoke about the gold standard.
Murray also sat in the back with her two children. According to the lecture notes of Bettina Biangreeves, my husband said during his speech,
There will be, one day, a period of history in which the government will leave the butter price as it is, and people will be in a position to eat butter at the lowest possible price.
This little girl, sitting so quietly in the back of the room, who is listening without too much interest to what we are saying, will perhaps live in a world where the butter price will be left to the free market.
Market. But this will certainly not happen if we don't study these problems and if we
don't tell the results of our thinking about these problems to the people. This clearly
shows that Lew had noticed the children. The next day, Mary sat down at the table between
her two children, directly opposite Lew. I was flabbergasted. I could not imagine these
small children staying quiet for two hours. I was afraid they would disturb my husband.
Mary knew what she was doing. She had given them books and drawings, and the children
behaved as if they were glued to their chairs, turning the pages of their books, glancing
at pictures, drawing, never looking up. Only toward the end of the lecture did they get
restless, fidgeting about on their chairs, pulling out their mother's sleeves, whispering
into her ears. Lew had hardly spoken the last word when Mary jumped up and rushed out of
the room, holding a child at each hand, looking neither right nor left. Today one of these
I wrote about our friend, George Kutter, in my acknowledgements at the beginning of this book. He and his wife, Hila, were very close to us. He was a journalist and economist who started attending Lew's school.
Seminar in 1949. Active, enthusiastic, always full of new ideas. He had one feeling, one
conviction that never changed after he started studying those ideas. My husband was to him,
and ought to be to all the world, he said, the light burning in the darkness.
Then there was Bettina Bian, now Bettina Bian Greaves. She first came to the seminar in
1951 and attended it to the last session, not missing a single meeting. With the passing
After many years she became a household word with Lew and me. If there was any information Lew needed, any refreshing of his memory, he would say, call Bettina, and surely enough she had the answer.
After four or five years in the seminar, Bettina took her seat next to my husband, taking notes in shorthand, and no one would have dared to contest for that seat.
I spoke first to her in 1952 during a seminar in California. At that time she was still rather quiet, hardly asking any questions.
Later, working with tremendous zeal, studying Lew's books from beginning to end, reading
them again and again, her inner security grew in relation to her knowledge. She wrote an
excellent bibliography for my husband's work, published by the Foundation of Economic Education,
and for his 90th birthday she catalogued, with my permission and without Lew's prior knowledge,
his whole library of about 6,000 volumes, to Lew's greatest surprise and delight.
The location of the seminar changed three times in 21 years.
Lew and I loved the second location best.
It was Gallatin House, the former British Embassy Inn on Washington Square, a beautiful
brownstone building.
Two stone lines at the entrance of the tiny garden bore witness to the past.
Looking out the windows of this office overlooking Washington Square, Lew once said that this
might have been the view that inspired Henry James for his great novels.
We all loved this place in spite of the parking problems we all had.
When the seminar was held in the old NYU building where it had started, so many students attended
that the room was often overcrowded and not a single chair could be added.
Some of the students may have come out of curiosity to hear the famous professor, but
most of them had a goal and were studying hard.
In later years when the seminar was held in the new NYU building, the number of students
was smaller, but what they lacked in numbers they made up in enthusiasm.
Lew never missed a single seminar. His various lectures and out of town obligations were arranged
in such a way that they never conflicted with the seminar.
Once in December 1961, Lew had to go to the Presbyterian Hospital for a hernia operation.
He checked in two days before on a Sunday morning. They did the necessary tests and
with permission of the surgeon, Dr. David Habith, I picked him up Monday evening and
I took him to NYU, where he gave his course. I then took him back to the hospital, where
he was operated on the next morning. Lew was a great defender of women and never doubted
their mental capacities or potentials. His seminar in Vienna was well known for the many
highly gifted women who attended and who later became leading figures in economics and education.
I would not be astonished if one day women's lib would discover Lew once the activists
Women's have overcome their anxiety problems concerning the equality of sex, and consider
politics and economics their most important tasks.
If they do, they may well declare my husband one of their heroes.
Lew explained in Socialism, All mankind would suffer if woman should fail to develop her
ego and be unable to unite with man as equal, freeborn companions and comrades.
To preserve the freedom of inner life for the woman is the real problem of women.
It is part of the cultural problem of humanity.
In closing this chapter, I want to tell a little episode that is absolutely true, though
I cannot give the names of the persons concerned.
Some years ago, a graduate student at NYU was revising his program of studies and wanted
to include Lew's seminar in his official curriculum.
His faculty advisor told him that he could take the seminar course on his own, but not
as a part of his official program.
Mises' theory, said the professor, is a religion, not economics.
Eight years later, that same professor, reminiscing over the great social experiments of the last generation,
was greatly disturbed at the fact that the experiments were always a dismal and known failure.
I have always tended to be liberal over the years, and I favored all these new programs, he said,
but one by one, I have seen them all fail and have to be discarded.
You know, perhaps Mises was right after all.