XVII

D—Mark and Dollar*

We seem to be inured nowadays to the unusual and the unprecedented. Yet even for us it should make sensational reading that the United States government is trying to lay its hands on part of the German foreign exchange reserves in order to speed up and facilitate the re-equilibration of the American balance of payments.

XVIII

F. A. Kramer: In Memoriam*

If one individual among the many who mourn the untimely death of this unique man may be permitted a personal testimony, I would condense everything into this one sentence: I have lost a friend to whom I was tied by years of common work in hard times, by an intimate mutual understanding in everything we had at heart, and by the deepest affection, and whose life and work I respectfully acknowledge as those of a truly wise and God-fearing man.

WILHELM RÖPKE

ECONOMICS OF THE FREE SOCIETY

ECONOMICS OF THE
FREE SOCIETY

by

WILHELM RÖPKE

Professor at the
Graduate Institute of International
Studies—Geneva

Translated by

PATRICK M. BOARMAN

HENRY REGNERY COMPANY

Chicago, 1963

The assistance of the Intercollegiate Society
of Individualists, Philadelphia, in the publication
of this book is gratefully acknowledged.

First Published in Austria in 1937
Die Lehre von der Wirtschaft
(Julius Springer, Vienna)

Translated from the 9th German Edition
Published in Switzerland in 1961 by
Eugen-Rentsch Verlag
Erlenbach-Zurich

This English translation of my Die Lehre von der Wirtschaft is based on the 9th German edition (Eugen-Rentsch Verlag, Zurich, 1961). The appearance of the work in the United States some twenty-five years after its original publication in German may be the proper occasion on which to relate its rather tumultuous history. The original draft was composed during a period of exile in Turkey in 1936 and was published in Vienna (Julius Springer Verlag) shortly before the National Socialist takeover of Austria.

It was in 1946, as an American exchange student at the University of Geneva, that I first heard expounded the economic principles and the economic philosophy which are set forth in this book. Listening to Wilhelm Röpke was a revelation; his lectures and seminars, presented in an elegant and dramatic English, were small masterpieces of economic wisdom and wit.

“Grasp the exhaustless life that all men live! Each shares therein, though few may comprehend: Where’er you touch, there’s interest without end.”

GOETHE (Faust, Prelude on the Stage)