3. Alma Mater Rudolphina

WHEN MISES STUDIED LAW and government science, the University of Vienna was one of the best institutions of higher learning in the world. It had been founded in 1365 by Emperor Rudolf IV, thus the school's Latin name, Alma Mater Rudolphina. For centuries it preserved the three typical features of medieval universities: political and legal autonomy; only four departments (law, medicine, the arts, and theology); and management by the Catholic Church.

The medieval autonomy of the Continental universities was legendary. It went beyond intellectual affairs, extending to jurisdiction over virtually all the legal relationships between university members.¹ When Ludwig von Mises was a student at the University of Vienna, the police still had no authority to enter its premises.

By the early twentieth century, however, its legal independence was not quite what it had been in ancient times. One of the causes of this reduced autonomy was the imposed change of patrons that, in the Age of Enlightened Despotism, shifted control over the Catholic Church in Austria—and thus over the University of Vienna—to the House of Habsburg. Starting in the mid-eighteenth century, the Austrian monarchs successfully initiated a grand campaign to break the influence of international Catholicism, a process that was completed by 1790. The bureaucratization of the clergy—known as Staatskirchentum—also brought the University of Vienna under the control of the Habsburg state.²

As a consequence of this takeover, Protestants could acquire academic degrees after 1778, and in 1782 Jews were admitted to the departments of law and medicine. A century later, women too were admitted, first to the department of philosophy (1897), then to medicine (1900), and law (1919).³ Another consequence of the government takeover of the University of Vienna was the proliferation of departments and institutes. Among the new departments were philosophy, which at first had only the subservient function of preparing the students for study in other fields, and the department of law and government science.

The first full professor's chair in the field of government science had been created in 1763 for Maria Theresa's counselor Joseph von Sonnenfels (1732–1817), one of the few Jews the empress tolerated in her residential city.⁴ A towering personality, Sonnenfels initiated several important traditions. Not only was he the first professor of applied political science, but also the first Jew to influence intellectual life in Vienna, and the first great proponent of the “economic point of view,” that is, of a strict utilitarian perspective in judging political problems. An engaging teacher and gifted writer, Sonnenfels also started the characteristically Viennese tradition of economist-journalists that in later generations included Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen von Philippovich, and Ludwig von Mises. Because of their academic pedigree and their clear, concise, and unpretentious writing style, these thinkers would exercise considerable influence on political reform processes in Austria.

In Mises's day, studies at the department of law and government science were organized in two phases. The first two years featured lectures and seminars on the history of law and legal institutions, and they ended with the first of three exams, called the Staatsexamen because the examiners were specially appointed to act as agents of the Austro-Hungarian state. Then the students spent another two years in lectures and seminars to acquaint themselves with the current civil, penal, and legal-process laws of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and with government science, which included economics, economic history, and courses on technical and legal aspects of public administration. The Staatsexamen for current law and for government science completed this second phase.⁵

Passing these exams completed the university requirement for a career in law, but a mandatory two-year apprenticeship still stood between the graduate and his career. Some students, in particular those interested in becoming professional scholars, also acquired the degree of doctor juris (doctor of law), which required them to pass three additional exams—the Examina Rigorosa—after the three Staatsexamen.

Mises went through all these stages. In October 1900 he began his two-year study of the history of law, Roman and Canon Law in particular, and of medieval legal institutions and economic conditions. Today, the study of Church and medieval law is reserved for a handful of scholars. But in the Austria-Hungary of Mises's time, a career in law or government required both a familiarity with these traditions and a solid command of Latin. Hungarian politics was built on medieval thought and institutions, and Latin had been the language of instruction in Hungarian middle schools until 1867. Up to the very end of the monarchy in 1918, Hungarian intellectuals and politicians did not yield an inch when it came to the mystical foundations of their nation.⁶

While students needed to know Austria-Hungary's legal and institutional traditions, these subjects were not particularly popular among non-Hungarian students. Mises did not deem this period of his studies worth mentioning in his autobiographical recollections.

The lectures were infamously bad, resulting in part from a distinctive lack of consumer orientation on the part of the professors. After the government takeover of the Austrian universities, the professors had become financially independent of their audience and had little incentive to accommodate the needs of their students. This affected both their behavior and their public status. The government had turned them into civil-servant scholars—or to put it less flatteringly, into court intellectuals. “Academic freedom” no longer meant political autonomy. When the public spoke of “limitless academic liberty,” they referred to freedom from responsibility or consequences. In the words of Kuehnelt-Leddihn:

The freedom to teach was limitless.... Even a professor, who, instead of lecturing, read newspapers, could not be dismissed. Every professor had tenure up to the age of sixty-five or sixty-seven, when he had to retire at eighty-two percent of his final salary. The quality of the professor as a teacher bore no weight: the professor was expected not to be an educator, but a scholar who gave the students a chance to listen to him.⁷

Mises's early university years were a mixed experience. In addition to the poor lectures, there was rampant hostility between students of different nationalities and widespread anti-Semitism. Student life was generally organized through fraternities, which tended to segregate based on place of origin. This provided newcomers to the capital city with a network of their countrymen for mutual support; it also introduced them to established former members who could later be helpful in finding suitable employment. But the fraternities often degenerated into associations dedicated to excessive collective alcohol consumption, and tended to glorify violence and a militaristic lifestyle, with variants of a half-baked nationalistic ideology. There were frequent violent confrontations between members of different fraternities, especially between students of different nationalities. The largest non-German student group in Vienna, the Czechs, clashed with German students on an almost daily basis.⁸

Because the University of Vienna still enjoyed its status of legal autonomy, the police were helpless to prevent these confrontations, and the aggressive students took full advantage of the situation. Students from Vienna were less dependent on the support of compatriots and therefore had less incentive to join one of the fraternities. More importantly, however, many Viennese students were Jews, and while few of them identified themselves along religious lines, the fraternities despised these identifiable and highly efficient competitors.

Mises managed to steer clear of both the ethnic unrest and collegiate debauchery. He threw himself into his work and pursued the opportunities that now opened up. Aside from lectures and seminars, in the first two years he took part in the meetings of the Sozialwissenschaftlicher Bildungsverein (Association for Social Science Education). This association was non-partisan and brought the students in touch with some of the leading intellectuals. It was here that Mises first met the historians Ludo Hartmann and Kurt Kaser, the socialist leader Karl Renner, and Michael Hainisch, who would later become president of the Republic of Austria. Among the student members were Friedrich Otto Herz, Otto Bauer, and Hans Kelsen.⁹

The most fascinating and at the same time bewildering personality among the students was Otto Weininger (1880–1903), who would become famous throughout Austria and Germany almost overnight when he published his 1903 doctoral dissertation, Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character). The book would be republished in more than thirty editions until the 1930s. It had a great impact on how German-speaking intellectuals thought about gender differences and gender relations. Weininger undoubtedly presented his ideas first to the smaller circles of friends and admirers with Hans Kelsen first in line. Mises probably took part in some of the meetings of the Weininger circle, and his 1922 treatise on socialism would reflect this influence.