Vienna, Moscow, and Auburn: The Mises Biography

0:00As you know, and as Lew Rockwell has emphasized in his speech this afternoon, the 20th century was a century of bludgeon and mass murder, without precedent. These crimes were disguised as social experiments which deemed a radically transforming society, according to the wish of the new dictators, some of which we know today. The remarkable thing is that those who were responsible for these crimes are today still held in high esteem all over the world. Those few who are staunch enough to oppose them and to fight back, on the other hand, are held in contempt and are ignored. One means to correct this unjust state of affairs is to make the work and the life of the champions of freedom better known.

0:51One means to accomplish that is to write and publish biographies of these men. Now, as Lew Rockwell has already mentioned, I've been assigned to write a biography of Ludwig von Mises. And I do this, I'm very much honored by the Mises Institute, who is entirely supporting it. This decision has been spurred by the recent discovery of personal documents of Mises, which for decades were deemed to be lost forever. The analysis of these documents will bring new life and the life and work of this great man, and it might therefore be appropriate to explain their importance and how we finally got a hold of them in more detail, and this is what I'm going to do now.

1:43As you know, Mises lived and grew up in Vienna. I'm not a big artist, but I try to draw an essential map of the first district of Vienna. So, Vienna is much bigger than that.

2:07And the first district of this, right at the center of Vienna, and it contains what is most important to do for Austria. Well, so in the first district the major cultural, administrative, economic and financial institutions of the empire were concentrated. Here was the Hofburg. So the Hofburg, the opera, the university, the stock exchange that is in the north, I didn't sign it in either, so you see I've got a very reduced view of the important institutions.

3:09The Academy of the Arts and the headquarters of the major companies. Yet this was not a mere concentration as in other capitals. These institutions were not unconnected but formed the institutional framework of a truly remarkable and outstanding biosphere. Characteristically, the Viennese elites would not ignore one another but take part in an all-encompassing social life that would bring together ministers and students, opera singers and scientists, stockbrokers and historians of art, philosophers and thinkers, psychologists and novelists, office clerks and architects, and so on in numberless variations. The Viennese were enthusiastic about science and knowledge, about beauty and art.

3:58Talking and thinking about science and art were not reserved for special persons or for the holidays or other special occasions. It was part of Vienna's daily and common life. Virtually everybody in Vienna, from the emperor to the housewife, knew something about the latest achievements of science and held some opinion about this and that actor or this and that novel. But the young artists and scientists grew up among many persons who were interested in what they were doing and most importantly who could to some degree at least challenge their views in one of the numberless coffee house discussions. This permanent criticism sharpened the senses in the minds of the young intellectuals and it established high standards that were truly uncommon at other times and places.

4:47In short, the city of Vienna in its glorious days from the 1870s to the 1930s was a cultural hothouse. It was a hothouse that would shape much of what is valuable in 20th century civilization. To name just a few accomplishments, it was the birthplace of phenomenology, of psychoanalysis and of Eugen's field. It was one of the crevices of modern analytical philosophy, and most importantly it was the birthplace and home of Austrian economics. That school of thought that Ludwig von Mises were to transform and lead to new heights. It is not surprising that a genius like Mises should develop his faculties in such a stimulating environment. It is almost sure that Mises would meet colleagues and friends several times a day on the streets of Vienna.

5:36In fact, the Mises family lived on the third floor of a nice tenant house, ornamented by Rod Fassade, with a heavy iron floor and a street floor outside, a heavy floor with a wall that comes from above, so you can guess that this means the room has been full of iron. From here, Ludwig the pupil would walk 10 minutes to a school, the Akademisches Gymnasium. As a student he would walk 15 minutes to get to the University of Vienna to sit in Boehm-Bawerk's famous seminar.

6:23And later on when he worked for the Chamber of Commerce, it wouldn't take him even less than five minutes.

6:53It's not very surprising that all these things for us, on a daily basis, there is one or two reasons why there can't be just any correspondence for a couple of meetings. Well, we essentially don't want to say, well, we have been trying to say so much to one another. But we can leave it at the other sense. We wouldn't want people to assume that the correspondence is just an emergency case. We don't want them to send somebody a transmitted urgent message. The point is, wherever you are, you can get to the other side in 20 or 20 minutes or half an hour. So Waldseile, 2024, was virtually the geographical center of these three institutions which shaped the early years of the gymnasium.

7:52The change of commerce, I think, because when, as far as we know, there was a great fire of the old round, and of theatre, and both theatres are the most eminent theatres in Vienna, or Germany, around the world, and therefore we can imagine that across several countries they will cross the city, and meet people.

8:22However, Walter 24 was not only a geographical center, it was, as it should be the case of the truer home, much more than a geographical center. It was of course the center of his private life, the dispensable emotional framework for all his undertakings, and which is more important as far as Austrian economics is concerned, it was the personal center of learning. Here he built up his impressive personal library, and amidst the works of great minds of all centuries, he would work out his own theories. Books are the best university, was one of his mottoes, and as always he would live up to what he said. Hours and hours, night after night, he would sit there and study and write those books that should eventually become a blessing to mankind, as they changed the lives of readers all over the world.

9:16This private place, therefore, where Mises would retire in the evenings when he came back from work in the University of Vienna or in the Chamber of Commerce is the cradle of modern Austrian economics and of modern libertarians.

9:46Clearly, no other place in Europe can compare in significance for Mises' work. The documents and records that he kept here reflected his activities as a pupil in the academician gymnasium, as a student at the University of Vienna, as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, as a scholar at the University Thanks to the research supported by the Mises Institute, we have now a relatively clear idea of what was Mises' private library office. His library comprised approximately 2,000 volumes and 1,000 brochures, the sheer enumeration of which reflects the enormous scope and depth of his scholarship.

10:39His collection contains books and journals on economics, public finance and the history of public finance, on monetary policy, on the history of money and banking, on banking statistics, on history in general, on the history of Austria in particular, on law, on the history of law and legislation, on economic history, on philosophy, on sociology, etc. Mises owned over a hundred volumes of law books alone, the complete works of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Feuerbach, the publications of the Kant Society, special editions of Greek and Roman philosophers and of course you all read these guys in the original Greek and Roman.

11:24The Roman Philosophers were not as advanced as you published in German. He owned works by Lamarck and Darwin, and he owned August Kohn's five-volume Cure de Philosophie Polyposit. In fiction, he owned the complete works of Walter von der Vogelweide, Goethe, Schiller, Ulland, Grillparzer, Heine, Freilichrad, Kleist, Christ, Richard Wagner, Konrad Ferdinand Mayer, Ofrasin, Corneille, Molière, Lord Byron and Shakespeare. And he read all these scientific works, novels, poetry and theater plays in their original German, English, French and Italian languages.

12:10Among his records were letters that his mother sent him during World War I to the battlefields of Galicia. I tell you, this is really a big pleasure to read it when Mises' mother would ask him again and again, did you receive the socks, the cognac and the cigarettes that she would send. He has letters from friends and colleagues all over Europe. He also had several letters from a certain Margaret Cereny, which would later become his wife. A particular treasure were several letters by Boehm-Bawerk dealing with epistemological problems of economics. Mises valued also very highly two letters by his friend Seidl, one dealing with the Austrian currency reform of 1922, and the other concerning Austria's ability or rather inability to live on her own, that is, political independence from the German Reich.

13:06A more personal treasure were the family records comprising old letters and certificates, copies from the archive of Austria's royal chancellor which burned down in 1927. Mises also kept records about his military service in the Austrian-Hungarian army. These documents show, among other things, that Mises was well acquainted with the organizational details of German war socialism. That means he was well acquainted with the reality of socialism even before he set out to demonstrate the impossibility of socialist calculation. Moreover, Mises owned copies of the memoranda he had written as a staff member of the Austro-Hungarian army on problems of war finance and economics, and copies of all of his articles which appeared in scientific journals and newspapers, as well as copies of articles written about him or his work.

14:00Clearly, these documents are a precious testimony of the interwar period in Europe and in Austria, and they are essential for us to gain an understanding of Ludwig von Mises's personal, professional and intellectual development. Fortunately, we now have access to these records. Yet for a long time this seemed to be impossible because these documents were believed to be lost forever in consequence of events that shook the history of Austria and of the entire world. So let me talk a little bit about the odyssey of the Mises records. In April 1937, Mises's mother died. He himself worked at the time already as a professor in Geneva.

14:45So this could have been the moment for him to break all ties with Vienna. He could have taken all these things out of the apartment and made Geneva definitely the new center of his life. However, on the one hand, Mises' contract in Geneva was on an annual basis and there was no prospect of tenure. On the other hand, Vienna was after all much more than just the place where he happened to live the first 53 years of his life. It was a unique place in its own right. This place attracted him immensely, and he hoped to spend the evening of his life there. Mises also did not want to abandon his home, where his family had lived, and where he lived with his mother for more than 25 years. Last but not least, he would not abandon his private library office, where he worked out his ideas on the theory of value, on money and economic calculation and the impossibility of socialism, on banking and the business cycle, on the self-reinforcing nature of interventions, on the synthetic a priori character of economics, etc.

15:51So he decided to keep a foot in this apartment as a personal base in Vienna. With the owner of the apartment, he agreed that it should be led to the physician, Dr. Rises, In the following months, Mises would frequently return to Vienna, sleep in a hotel and spend some time of the day in his library office. There he would think through new ideas and commemorate his mother, who must have been ever present in his sacred rooms. The rest of his time in Vienna, Mises spent quietly preparing his future life. At the end of February 1938, he came to Vienna making arrangements for his wedding with Margit Seremin.

16:39The law provided that the announcement of their wedding be posted for six weeks on the front door of the Stefan's door. When Mises returned to Geneva, he expected to marry Margit at the beginning of April. He could not foresee that this had been his last visit to Vienna for many years, and that terrible events should transform his beloved hometown forever. In fact, on the 12th of March 1938, Adolf Hitler sent his troops into Austria to prevent a referendum on Austria's independence, which was supposed to take place the next day. These troops virtually met no resistance from Austria's army and civilians, and so they reached the city of Vienna on the very same day and took control of Austria's command posts. The Nazis lost no time to suffocate any resistance right from the beginning. They immediately started sending out Gestapo task forces to arrest their most eminent Austrian enemies and to bring important records and other evidence under their control.

17:41All Jewish organizations in Vienna, all political party organizations and many private persons fell prey to this action. One group of Gestapo men was sent to Wolfsheide 24. The men in black overcoats would march up the steps of the third floor and knock on the door of the Reitz assembly. The Reitz were of course shocked when these representatives of the Nazi party, as they introduced themselves, They broke in the door and took everything with them. And this literally means everything that could possibly be taken out of history. Personal documents, books, manuscripts, paintings, silver, carpets, furniture, clothes and underwear.

18:29I wonder what they've done with the underwear. They claimed that these items were to be handed over to a penal court, but of course nothing of this sort ever happened. The Mises records and the precious library were lost without a trace. Mises tried hard to get them back, but all efforts were in vain. Its belongings seemed to be lost forever. We now know that the Mises records, along with the looted documents of other Mises organizations and private persons, were brought to Berlin and stored in the department of the Deutsche Arbeitskont. This was a Nazi research institute charged with the analysis of intellectual enemies whether communists or libertarians. What use the DAF has made of the Mises records in the six years it had them at its disposal, we do not know.

19:17In any case, the Mises records remained at the DAF until 1944, when the allied forces started marching toward Berlin. Then the whole DAF archive was moved to a more secure place. This place was a hidden castle in Bohemia, which was part of the battlefields. There the documents remained until the war was over and in June 1945 the whole DAF archive was handed over to that allied army which first arrived on the spot. Unfortunately, this happened to be the Red Army. The Red Army brought its loot immediately to Moscow and stored it in a secret archive, which was newly built for the express purpose of hosting documents that had been taken over from the Nazis.

20:08There is really an incredible collection of documents, the entire records of the Auschwitz concentration camps, another example are the Goebbels diaries, you have certainly heard of them, they have been published recently. The name of this archive was Special Archive for Historical Documentary Collections. It was located in the small and quite deep Borkskaya street, which is about 10 miles north from the center of Moscow. Not many Russians, and hardly a Western foreigner, ever walked through this street. This is true even now, as Moscow and Russia are open to foreign visitors.

20:58The archive with the documents from Germany and Austria was indeed one of the best kept secrets in Moscow. Eventually, things should change with the fall of the East Bloc. Shortly after the dramatic reforms that were begun in Russia, A Moscow female journalist published an article on the Special Archive for Historical Documentary Collections. This article drew for the first time the attention of Western scholars to this hitherto unknown archive. A German research team with financial support from the Western trade unions set out to visit the archive and to create a comprehensive list of its records. Because the Cold War was officially ended, the Russian authorities gave the necessary permission, and so the team led by Dr. Gertz Ahlywood in 1991, and after much freezing in the unheated study rooms of the archive, published a German language report.

21:53Now you must not think that this means fire in the scientific world. Dr. von Habsburg very accurately observed yesterday in his address that professors are most of the time ignoring what their colleagues are doing. So it was in this case too. In complete ignorance of Arley's work a team of Austrian scholars led by the professors Karcher and Jakschutz would travel to Moscow, freeze again in the unneeded study rooms of the archive, and eventually publish, by and large, the same findings as the RITM. Both the RD and the Karcher publications mentioned the Mises records. However, much more time had to pass before any Austrian economist would take notice of the findings.

22:42The first one to do so was my colleague, Professor Richard Eberling, who traveled to Moscow in 1996 to analyze the Mises files and to buy Xeroxes of the most important documents. Spurred by this breakthrough, the Mises Institute immediately assigned me to write a biography of Ludwig von Mises, which would take advantage of this newly available material. And so it came that in the last summer, I myself set out to travel to Moscow to work with the original documents and to buy copies. Well, who would have thought that the heirs of Lenin and Stalin would make that much money with Ludwig von Mises' documents? Among other things, my journey was necessary because Professor Eberling was not allowed to get copies of the entire Mises collection.

23:30I had to make my own selection, and here I profited from two circumstances. On the one hand, the copying policy of the archives had apparently become more liberal in the course of time, so that I was allowed to export many more copies than everything was allowed to do. This change of policy certainly reflects the bad shape of Russia's state finances and the general immiseration of the country, which makes it necessary to earn money wherever possible. On the other hand, as some of you might have guessed in the meantime, I am a native German speaker and because virtually all of the Mises records are in German language documents, I could screen them relatively easily. Now it came out that much of the 11,000 or so pages of the Mises files contained irrelevant material.

24:20For example, the Russians counted every single page of the journal in which Mises had published an article of five pages, whereas obviously only these five pages were relevant. Therefore, I could get copies of all relevant documents, approximately 6,500 pages, without running into conflict with Russian laws, which provided only a part of the collection might be copied. As a result, the Mises Institute now owns copies of virtually all relevant documents that Mises left in his Vienna apartment in 1938 and which were then first looted by the Nazis and brought to Berlin and then looted by the Soviets and brought to Moscow. In a way, these documents are now finally home again, for in fact the Mises Institute is today the home of Austrian economics just as the University of Vienna was its home from the 1870s to the 1930s.

25:19So in the coming months, I continue to analyze the Mises files and to write a biography working of this great man whom we all admire and whom we have come to celebrate today. Thank you very much.