The Last Knight of Liberalism

Chapter 1: Roots

1 On the Mises family, see in particular the 1881 Adelsakt (Ennoblement Act) for Meyer (or Mayer) Rachmiel Mises, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv. See also Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1975), vol. 6.

2 The “Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria” had not existed before the division of Poland. The Habsburgs chose this name as a quasi-historical justification of the annexation. In the late Middle Ages, the Hungarian King Andrew had been a Rex Galiciae et Lodomeriae, that is, a king of the old Ruthenian principalities of Halitsch and Wladimir. See Isabel Röskau-Rydel, “Galizien, Bukowina, Moldau,” in idem, Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas: Galizien, Bukowina, Moldau (Berlin: Siedler, 1999), pp. 11, 16.

3 In 1918, Galicia fell back to Poland, and today Lemberg and the adjacent lands belong to Ukraine. Other historical names of Lemberg were Lviv, Lwow, Lvov, Leopoli, L’wiw, L’vov, Lwiw, Leopolis, L’viv.

4 In 1848, the Galician population totalled 5.2 million. Among them were 2.2 million Roman Catholics (essentially Poles, but also Germans), 2.2 million Greek Catholics (Ruthenians), 333,000 Greek Orthodox, and 333,000 Jews. The city of Lemberg had some 63,000 residents in 1840, of which 30,000 were Roman Catholics, 4,500 Greek Catholics, and 25,000 Jews. See Röskau-Rydel, “Galizien, Bukowina, Moldau,” p. 48.

5 See Cyprian Pogonowski, Jews in Poland (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1993). Jews were evicted from England (1290), France (1306), Croatia (1349), Crimea (1350), Hungary (1360), Germany, Bohemia, Italy and Provence (1394), Austria (1421), Spain (1497), Estonia and Latvia (1495), and Portugal (1497); see ibid., p. 275.

6 Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Cultural Background of Ludwig von Mises (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999), p. 2.

7 The Jewish community in Krakow had remained pro-Polish under orthodox religious leadership. In Lemberg, by contrast, the pro-German secular faction had its way. See Röskau-Rydel, “Galizien, Bukowina, Moldau,” pp. 88f., 145.

8 Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publishers, 1895), vol. 5, p. 612.

9 Röskau-Rydel, “Galizien, Bukowina, Moldau,” pp. 27–29.

10 See Rudolf Sieghart, Die letzten Jahrzehnte einer Grossmacht (Berlin: Ullstein, 1932), pp. 334f.

11 In 1880, there were some 324,000 Galicians whose first language was German; in 1910, only some 90,000 were left. Thus even at its high point, the Germanization movement had a weak numerical impact in the part of Poland annexed by the house of Habsburg. The main reason was that most of the new settlers were Catholics and were therefore integrated into the existing Polish parishes and schools. See Röskau-Rydel, “Galizien, Bukowina, Moldau,” pp. 88f., 130, 152.

12 It seems that railroad construction was a spin-off of Jewish initiatives to promote the industrialization of Austria. Thus William Johnston states that a few years after 1831, “Salomon Rothschild persuaded Metternich to promote industrialization in the Habsburg domains.” William M. Johnston, Vienna, Vienna—The Golden Age, 1815–1914 (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1981), p. 29.

13 See Alois Gratz, “Die österreichische Finanzpolitik,” Hans Mayer, ed., Hundert Jahre österreichische Wirtschaftsentwicklung, 1848–1948 (Vienna: Springer, 1949), pp. 254f.

14 They married on October 17, 1880. See the marriage certificate in the Grove City Archive: file #6/9/1/1. Witnesses were Fischel Landau (Adele’s father) and Isidor Nirenstein.

15 Röskau-Rydel, “Galizien, Bukowina, Moldau,” pp. 70, 147. Joachim Landau was the brother of Ludwig von Mises’s grandfather on the maternal side. See Mises, Erinnerungen (Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1978), p. 20. Ludwig’s grandmother on the maternal side was a Kallir, his grandfather a Landau.

16 On Hermann von Mises, see the entry in Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon, 1815–1950 (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften), vol. 6, p. 317.

17 There seems to have been an oil boom in what came to be called the “Galician Pennsylvania”—Hermann’s election district around Drohobycz, an area southwest of Lemberg. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, Galicia was the number four producer of petroleum worldwide, after Russia, the United States, and the Dutch East Indies. See Balduin Winter, “Die Rückkehr zum Kind. Wirklichkeit ist mehr als Realität. Drohobycz, die Heimat des Dichters und Traumtänzers Bruno Schulz im vergessenen Europa,” Die Ost-West-Wochenzeitung (literature section; March 30, 2001).

18 Jews were expelled from Vienna under Leopold I in 1669–1670. A few years later these measures were rescinded rather half-heartedly, and so things remained as in 1670. As far as Maria Theresa is concerned, cultural historian Robert Kann states:

Within the first five years of Maria Theresa’s reign the Jews were driven out of Bohemia (1745), and less than three years before her death, less than five years before Joseph II issued the famous Toleranzpatent, in 1777 she wrote these words: “‘In the future no Jew shall be allowed to remain in Vienna without my special permission.” (Robert A. Kann, A Study in Austrian Intellectual History: From Later Baroque to Romanticism [New York: Praeger, 1960], p. 158)

19 Röskau-Rydel, “Galizien, Bukowina, Moldau,” p. 68.

20 On Meyer Rachmiel Mises, see the entry (Mises, Majer Jerachmiel von) in Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon, 1815–1950, vol. 6, pp. 317f.

21 These activities must have played a decisive role in his eventual ennoblement. Throughout Franz Joseph’s reign, contributions to public objectives or the creation of public-welfare oriented funds were instrumental in the ennoblement of wealthy industrialists, merchants, or bankers. See Sieghart, Die letzten Jahrzehnte einer Grossmacht, p. 256.

22 Röskau-Rydel, “Galizien, Bukowina, Moldau,” pp. 73f. Graetz remarks,

[I]n almost every large community, there arose a party of the “Enlightenment” or “the Left,” which had not yet broken with the old school, but whose action bordered upon secession. By the ultra-orthodox they were denounced as heretics, on account of their preference for pure language and form, both in Hebrew and European literature. (Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. 5, p. 403)

23 Röskau-Rydel, “Galizien, Bukowina, Moldau,” p. 91. The petition had been initiated by the Polish politicians Smolka, Ziemalkowski, and Kulczycki. It also demanded the introduction of the Polish language in public schools and civil service.

24 Anselm von Rothschild’s son Albert became a general counselor to the Austro-Hungarian bank and was commonly regarded as the key figure in the Austrian financial market. It is likely that his father played a similar though less publicized role in the National bank.

25 Hirsche Mises was married to a member of the Nirenstein family, Marie Nirenstein. See Grove City Archive: file #6/9/1/1.

26 Two of his daughters were still living in 1881: Stella Klarmann and Elise Bernstein.

27 Röskau-Rydel, “Galizien, Bukowina, Moldau,” p. 147.

28 See Gratz, “Die österreichische Finanzpolitik,” p. 255.

29 Ibid., pp. 270f.

30 Other family members had followed in the same path. By the 1890s at least three of Arthur’s brothers and cousins—Emil, Felix, and Hermann—had left for Vienna, too. Felix was a chief physician at the Vienna general hospital, and Hermann was a reputable journalist and politician.

31 Johnston, Vienna, Vienna, p. 200.

32 Charitable works were a quintessential part of her upbringing. See her autobiographical recollections in Adele von Mises, “A Day in the House of My Parents,” Tante Adele erzählt (unpublished manuscript, 1929). The chapter has been translated and put online by John Kallir.

33 Ludwig was a rigorous bookkeeper throughout his life. He kept track of his income and daily expenditure in a personal ledger.

34 On his training in these sports see Margit von Mises, My Years with Ludwig von Mises (Cedar Falls, Iowa: Center for Futures Education, 1978), p. 20.

35 About the typical German economist he wrote:

Such study of “economic state science” necessarily repelled young people with intelligence and thirst for knowledge. Instead, it strongly attracted simpletons.... They were dilettantes in everything they undertook. They pretended to be historians, but they scarcely looked at the collaborative sciences, which are the most important tools of the historian. The spirit of historical research was alien to them. They were unaware of the basic mathematical problems in the use of statistics. They were laymen in jurisprudence, technology, banking, and trade techniques. With amazing unconcern they published books and essays on things of which they understood nothing. (Mises, Erinnerungen, pp. 7, 67f.; Notes and Recollections [Spring Mills, Penn.: Libertarian Press, 1978], pp. 7, 102)

36 Johnston, Vienna, Vienna, p. 200.