The House of Habsburg, Mises, and the Austrian School

0:00Ladies and gentlemen, first of all I would like to say thank you very much for the invitation that I was able to come here. I know of course I shouldn't be here. My father should be in my position. He was the person who knew Ludwig von Mises. They were friends and so he should be here, but he couldn't come. He's in Hungary this weekend. He's doing what is probably the closest to his heart. You know, we are just working on the enlargement of the European Union. He is the Rapporteur on Hungary joining the European Union and so he has to spend a lot of time in Hungary and of course also in some of the other countries that want to join this Union so I hope you excuse him for that. But by inviting me and by him sending me on his behalf of course you gave me a very great opportunity to talk to my father on the relationship he had with Ludwig von Mises and to talk with

0:57I told him also about the time before the Second World War, which is not so easy, you know, my father is very busy and when I was younger I didn't see him that often, I don't mean this negative in any way, I'm now in the very great position that I'm sitting next to him in Parliament, you know, we are sitting in the Christian Democratic Group according to the alphabet, so I have the time to see him now more than ever when I was young. You can imagine what shock it was for the whole Parliament when suddenly there were two Habsburgs for two different countries, and so on. He was able to tell me quite a bit about this relationship and what he thought about that. On the other hand, I want also to thank you very much for this invitation because I have to say that these last two days were extremely inspiring to me.

1:50I had a great luck in my life that I got the chance to spend nine months together with Russell Kirk in Michigan. And I had the possibility to learn a lot about the values that you are also representing here. And I want to be very honest to you. I really miss gatherings like this. I know they are also not happening too often here. If the Mises Institute is not organizing them also in the States, they don't happen too often. But a meeting like this one is probably for the time being quite unthinkable to happen in Europe if the Mises Institute is not organizing it in Vienna. That's another question. So I'm very happy that I could be part of this really very inspiring and highly interesting meeting. It was a real intellectual stimulation if I might say that.

2:37say that. Because you see in Europe, of course, there are some individual fighters like Eric von König-Le-Din, who couldn't be here for this weekend, like Thomas Heimowitz, like Karl-Albrecht Waldstein, people that are also organized partly in the Mont Pelerin Society, in the CD. But still, these type of meetings, alas, don't happen too often. You know, you mentioned before that probably there is much too little known about the Austrian School of Economics here. I have to tell you, if you would go to Austria and ask somebody, even of the higher intellectual area, what he knows about the Austrian School of Economics, he would probably think that it is the achievement which was done in Austria under Bruno Kreisky to try and institute Swedish socialist idea in Austria and nothing else like that.

3:26I also have to thank you for one other reason. I was very, very glad and happy to meet Congressman Ron Paul here. I can imagine that he is also a fighter, an individual fighter in Congress and I was very happy to meet him because very often I feel also like an individual fighter in the European Parliament where we are kind of working for our cause and I was very jealous when he mentioned something today for lunch. He said and then we were voting on this vote where we could transfer one million dollars for a special study here and there. I thought, oh my god, I'd love to do that once in European Parliament. If I'm coming up to our civil servants and tell them I want to vote and transferring one million dollars from one place to the other, they would just tell me, excuse me sir, we have the budget meetings in October next year, so why don't you come up to me next October and we'll talk about that then.

4:18The struggle that we have in the European Parliament, which is a very young Parliament, which of course only right now has to start and get its own power together, is a very tough one. And particularly when you try to bring also certain values in a very, very bureaucratic surrounding, like Brussels for example, which is kind of for me the capital of bureaucracy of the world probably, it's a very tough thing to do. It's a very good thing definitely to have people like Ron Paul around. When I was talking with my father about Ludwig von Mises, he was of course talking very much about the political effects and the political aspects of what he was teaching.

5:03And there were two words, two expressions which fell quite a couple of times and I was very happy to hear the same expressions quite an amount of time in the last two days here. One of them was the right of self-determination. It is something we need so much for the security. We always forget that security is one of the utmost importances of any parliament, of any political institutions, and that it really constitutes the rights of people, and that it is one of the last defense lines against certain overwhelming nations. And the other, of course, is the principle of subsidiarity, which is now one of the basic principles of the European Union.

5:48Since the famous Maastricht Treaty, we have this principle of subsidiarity as a ground principle. And still, of the politicians, nobody believes that it exists. I mean, it's so simple to say that a higher level should never do what the lower level can achieve sufficiently. It's very easy to say, but when you look at the interpretations that you find in politics, when the French are coming up and saying, principle of subsidiarity is when I'm helping the next level under me to help themselves, and nobody believes also in the Christian roots of these principles, which has to be instituted and which is so close, actually so close to all of us. I hope you will pardon me if I bring in this little speech, On one time, a sad thought, and also an expression of gratitude.

6:39A sad thought because we are celebrating the memory of one of the greatest Austrians of our century, not in his hometown Vienna, as I mentioned it before, but here, far away from his own country. The Holy Scripture has a word which says, No one is a prophet in his own country. And somehow this applies also to those great persons of our days who try to show us the way into the future and who all too often are silent by the howl and the demagoguery of the small-time politicians of whom we have too many but who have the tendency to thrive upon themselves title which they do not deserve. Today a politician who has not been removed within six months for corruption has already the title of a statesman, while even in the last century the title of a statesman was only given to persons after their death and who had really changed the course of history and I think it would be important to say some of the modern statements that they should

7:45get their title only after their death so then they would probably not try to achieve So, in this sense, Ludwig von Mises was a real statesman, and that is why his name is very often forgotten by those who should remember him. But we do not want to stay with this sad idea, but offer, coming from Austria, our deep gratitude to this meeting here in Atlanta, and of course to the organizers who have done so much to To arrange this, in this decisive moment, just to see what Ludwig von Mises has done actually for his country, for the cause of freedom and for the real humanity at large.

8:30Mises, as we all know, was one of the greatest members of the Austrian School of Economics and this school can probably now be judged better than it was possible only a few decades ago. And I'm talking now mainly about Europe. When today somebody has the opportunity of going to central Europe through countries like Hungary, Croatia and probably even the Bukovina, he will see what this 19th century under the impulse of the Vienna economists has done for the country and for its population. It was a really constructive time which has left memories even for those generation who who more than half a century or almost a century later still can see, and this not only in the capitals, but also in the small towns and medium-sized towns, the vestiges of an outstanding epoch of expansion due to the fact that there were people who were standing for freedom and decency and who at least for some time had the support of the state.

9:34is indeed a great sign of what they really did, that even the decades of barbarianism which followed their expansion have not been able to destroy what they have built. Of course it created ruins. But still despite this, there are still memories which you can find. And traveling today through Europe, one will really see that all the way from the western borders of what is today Austria, to areas which are now deep in the Ukraine, one will You will find what this Austrian School has actually built and what an academic background it has given. When you come to a city like Czernowitz in the Bukowina, you will find that even today, after the degeneration that built up that beautiful university there that has passed away, there will still remain the memory, nostalgia, probably some people would say, and the vestiges on which one can rebuild very many things.

10:34Ludwig von Mises was one of those who brought the background to the achievements of the political leadership. But he was also one of those who suffered from the catastrophe which was brought upon humanity by the First and Second World War. He also could remember the times when the question of race had not been raised, when persons were judged according to their personal value and not by the accident of their birth. But he had also to suffer to this revolution of darkness, whose greatest expression was on one side the National Socialism of Adolf Hitler and on the other side the International Socialism of Jose Stalin. It was this revolution of darkness which pushed him out of his country and forced him into emigration, into which he carried all the values he had served in his own homeland.

11:26Ludwig von Mises was, like many economists of the Vienna School of Economics, a Jew. He was, when we look at his work, one of the most representatives, one of the best representatives of this type of Judaism, which had been created in the tolerant and liberal atmosphere of the Danube Basin. And when I say liberal, I always mean it, of course, in the European sense. These Jews had done a lot for the cause which they served. They were standing by necessity over the nationalities in an area where 12 nationalities had been were being brought to live together under a common dynasty and where the Jews were carrying out the task of helping the dynasty by being a binding element between the different nationalities.

12:13One sees this today, what was done at that time when visiting places like Bosnia-Herzegovina. So an outstanding German socialist, the former mayor of Bremen, Hans Koschnik, you know he's one of these personalities,

12:57What happened before 1918, when three nationalities in this country were living peacefully together? To make peace, one needs somebody who is above the parties and who is ready and determined to bring them together. And that was a case, as Mr. Koschnick said, in the old Austria-Hungary, where the nationalities were brought to one table, but always presided by the representative of the emperor in Vienna, who might have come from Bohemia or Galicia or from the Italian speaking part of the country. He therefore was above the plenty of nationality quarrels and was able to represent the spirit of harmony among the differences. It was the failure of this which led to those conflicts, so there was no more peace because the judge between the different warring factions was no longer around.

13:52In a larger sense, the Jewish population of Central Europe was playing a similar role. It was close to each nation and still not a member of it. It was an independent element and it was consequently one of the greatest supporters of the old dynasty, which equally was interested in maintaining peace and understanding. When today this only remains as a nostalgic memory after the horrors which Hitlerism has brought upon the area, In the beginning of the 20th century, the first signs were shown on the horizon that the evil forces of nationalism, which the French president François Mitterrand called Nationalism is War, could be seen.

14:47Amongst the Jews in Central Europe, two schools emerged, if I can call these schools, at that time, namely those that were real optimists and who still believed that their common ideal could be saved and those who were pessimists and didn't believe in it anymore. Mises definitely belonged to the optimists, to those believers against common belief whose best expression was an unknown soldier, a non-commissioned officer by the name of Jakob Ducatenzähler, who was the first dead of the First World War and who died for his country. He is today quite forgotten, except in my family, because Jakob Ducatenzähler was, as a non-commissioned officer, in the army of my grandfather.

15:34But from Mises to Dugartenzähler, there was just this optimistic attitude which had been expressed in the different successes which took place and which today are still left as values for the future. The best arrangement between the nationalities was the so-called Merische Ausgleich from 1904. And it was brought upon the different nationalities next day after a serious clash had occurred between Germans and Czechs in Moravia. It was at that time when a Jewish member of the Austrian Parliament called together both sides and created this fabulous arrangement, the Moravian Agreement, which did put an end in this region to the national hatred which had existed before.

16:24And this agreement was then to be used in lots of other places within the old monarchy before the year 1918. This was one of these great successes. Of course, there were some pessimists who foresaw what would be coming for the area, which had been for them a homeland, and of which, again, Salzer Landmann had stated that it was not so much the soil which was the homeland, but the spirit of the community which was at that time called Austria-Hungary. These pessimists were thinking of an alternative and it is no accident that also the father of Zionism, Herzl, was born in Austria and lived in Austria. It is from this atmosphere that Ludwig von Mises stands.

17:10He belongs to the optimists because he wanted to defend the values and the soil which was his. This described his character and his personality. Ludwig von Mises was first a real bourgeois, that valuable, hardworking middle class, which was a foundation for the whole structure. He was a patriot, he believed in his country and in its value, and he dedicated his work to the ideal of Austria-Hungary. This class of the bourgeois has largely disappeared in the area from which he stands. But here too can one see the cultural memories which it has left and that it has not fully disappeared. In this sense, Ludwig von Mises means today a hope for the future.

17:57He was also a man of full loyalty and integrity. He never thought seriously about his own reputation and his name. He wanted to serve. He believed passionately in freedom and was certain if freedom could be preserved, this would be worthwhile. It is also significant that he never was discouraged. Even when he left his country, he was not a sad man. He was convinced that in the end the good cause would win. And a third characteristic, which indeed was also the characteristic of him and his colleagues, was their utter honesty. He was not a person to orient himself according to the opportunities of the moment. His life, when one looks back on it, was a straight line from the beginning to the end, and an open book for everyone since he very frankly spoke about his opinions.

18:50In this sense, he was a real liberal in the European sense, that is to say, a servant of freedom and of human dignity. He is remaining to us, at the end of this century, as the embodiment of great values which have made the continent of Europe and its old civilization. He could be relied on because what he said was what he thought. In this sense, I find it most encouraging that here in the United States, which is today the biggest power in the world, the memory of Ludwig von Mises lives on. Here he found a home and freedom to work when his country was overrun by the barbarians of our century. He found also many of his old colleagues from the Austrian School of Economics who had also been forced to leave Europe in the hope that the day would come as it did, when they could return with the effort to bring back the values which they had taken along with them.

19:47In that sense, they were not emigrants. An emigrant is somebody who leaves his country and gives it up. A real refugee of freedom is a person who leaves his country but carries on its values in the hope that the time will come when he can bring it back. This Ludwig von Mises remains to us as a messenger of freedom, a messenger of belief in man, a messenger of a deeper belief in the cultural values which we have and which are also the foundations of the future. We can therefore honor him only if we dedicate ourselves once more to the values which Ludwig von Mises represented. He did not die in vain, he did not suffer in vain. He carried out his values to others and we are today called upon to do this at a time when our task is to build a 21st century which should be worthy of the great values which our past has given to us.

20:46I want to say that I think the institute, the Mises Institute in this aspect has an enormous task to come. And allow me that I'm telling you a little story which I usually promise not to tell, but I will tell it in this small circle of people. A little experience that I had when I once met the Dalai Lama. Do you understand? I usually don't tell that because when you talk today about the Dalai Lama, everybody says he's either a Hollywood star who tries to become a Buddhist, I'm a Buddhist, I come from a family which strongly always is fighting for the Catholic Church and they will do this in the future too, so there is no danger of that. But it was shortly after the time when the war broke out in former Yugoslavia, my wife and I, we were in Lugano, and he was there to open an exhibition.

21:34And we had the possibility for a long chat with him, and I was asking him, I said, We are seeing something happening here right in the middle of Europe where you see the destruction of the cultural heritage, where you see a war which is waged against the churches, against the achievements of the last centuries. And it is something that happened exactly the same thing happened to your country and is still happening to your country. And it started 50 years ago in your country and don't you have the feeling that this is something which is repeating itself non-stop Where can we stop it? What can we do? And he looked at us and said, well, we can't do anything about that. And I was really disappointed because I always met him as an extremely optimistic person.

22:21And then he looked at us and with this special look that he has, and lifted his arm and he said, but there is one thing we have to do. We have to teach the next generation and we have to take the young people of today, make them the teachers of the next generation. So I have the feeling this is also exactly what the Ludwig von Mises Institute has to do. What is their task for the future? They have to be the lighthouse which sends out the beam in what has to be our future, because otherwise we will not have the future we want to have for our kids. So this is an enormous task which we all have upon us, which we all have to fight for on the different individual places. And in this sense, I would very much like to thank the von Mises Institute, its organizers, its promoters, its supporters, very much for the work they are doing.

23:12I think it's absolutely worthwhile. Thank you very much.