Difficult Start in Professional Life

This was the traditional choice of the sons of civil-servant families. It had been the first station in Böhm-Bawerk's career and thus it was a promising start for Mises, too.⁹ A career within the civil service was a highly coveted outlet for law graduates, opening prestigious opportunities within the executive branch of government.¹⁰ The office was then under the direction of Alexander Freiherr von Spitzmüller, who later moved to a top executive position at the Credit-Anstalt and eventually became the last president of the Austro-Hungarian bank, the empire's central bank.¹¹ Patient and loyal service combined with a dose of clever networking would have put Mises in a position to follow in this great man's footsteps and, given his interest in the theory of money and banking, gain a high position within the central bank.

But Mises soon discovered that this was a mistake. The paralyzing formal procedures, the mental pettiness, and the personal dependence on one's superiors came to him as a shock. He might have been thinking back on this experience when he later wrote on the nature and significance of bureaucracy:

Government jobs offer no opportunity for the display of personal talents and gifts. Regimentation spells the doom for initiative. The young man has no illusions about his future. He knows what is in store for him. He will get a job with one of the innumerable bureaus, he will be a cog in a huge machine the working of which is more or less mechanical. The routine of a bureaucratic technique will cripple his mind and tie his hands. He will enjoy security. But this security will be rather of the kind that the convict enjoys within the prison walls. He will never be free to make decisions and to shape his own fate. He will forever be a man taken care of by other people. He will never be a real man relying on his own strength. He shudders at the sight of the huge office buildings in which he will bury himself.¹²

Mises was not going to shudder and bury himself. By the fall of the same year he asked to be honorably released and his request was granted.

This decision must have caused great consternation among his family and friends. How could he give up one of the most coveted positions for young men of his background? “How can someone enjoying the privilege of serving His Majesty quit this service voluntarily?”¹³ Mises's choice was indeed remarkable and a vivid testimony to the personality of the young man. Ludwig was not the nice guy who went along with prevailing notions of a good career. He had his own mind and found the civil service utterly dreadful. He was full of ambition and independent judgment. He had far more confidence in his own abilities than in the Protektion and prestige accorded to His Majesty's faithful servants.

After his resignation he decided to prepare for a career as a private lawyer. Admission to the bar required that the candidate familiarize himself with the Austrian court system through a two-year internship at the main courts. From October 1906 to September 1908, Mises interned at the court for civil affairs, the trade court, the penal court, the executive court, and the district court of the city of Vienna. The atmosphere in these institutions was not much different from what he had experienced in fiscal administration. But at least there was the prospect of leaving the system one day to become his own man.

In those years, Ludwig must have been the black sheep of the family. Was he unfit for the real world? Did he not know how to compromise? His brother Richard was the white sheep. He had graduated in the same year as Ludwig, then moved as an assistant professor to the University of Brünn (today Brno), and in 1909, at the age of 26, he would land a professorship at the University of Strasbourg. This was a career path Ludwig would have welcomed, but the real world imposed different choices on him.

In the fall of 1908, with the end of his two-year internship approaching, Mises looked for suitable employment in Vienna. He was hired by the prestigious law firm of Robert Pelzer and started working in its office in the Krugerstrasse, right in the center of Vienna, in October 1908.¹⁴ The new position was a vast improvement on the suffocating mental narrowness of courtroom routine. Still, the firm was not a real escape from the bureaucratic atmosphere of the courts. Mises kept looking for other options.