My Years with Ludwig von Mises

SOME READERS may ask: “Why does the author write a whole chapter about her youth when the title of this book is My Years with Ludwig von Mises? Others may ask: “Who was this woman whom Professor von Mises met when he was forty-four, asked to marry when he was forty-five, and did not marry until he was fifty-eight? What was she like?”

I must confess it is not easy for me to talk about myself, but I feel it is necessary for an understanding of Ludwig von Mises’ decision to marry so late in his life. A knowledge of my own life may also help the reader to understand what both of us brought to our marriage, and why our marriage was a happy one.

I was born in Hamburg. Hamburg was then, and I believe it still is today, one of the most beautiful cities of Germany. While the city was elegant and refined, life in the harbor was noisy, full of energy and color. Hamburg was one of three Hansestaedte (Hamburg, Bremen, Luebeck) whose life differed greatly from all other cities in Germany. Hamburg had its own senate and its own judiciary, and its people had the reputation of being haughty and arrogant. They admired England and the English people, and they displayed a great similarity to the English in their living habits and customs. Whereas most Germans ate their main meal at noon, the Hamburg citizen followed the English custom and dined after business hours, when the day’s work was over. At noon the well-to-do merchants and bankers, dressed in their frock coats, top hats on their heads, walked along the Alsterbasin, on Jungfernstieg, the most beautiful street in Hamburg, to attend the Stock Exchange. Then they went home to their elegant houses, all surrounded by parklike gardens, to enjoy their money—and sometimes also their families.

I did not know my maternal grandfather and I do not remember much of my grandmother. My mother’s family was well known and rather wealthy. Two stories were told about them. One story was that my grandfather owned a mill and made his money with it. The second story, which interested me far more, since it captured my imagination, was that my grandfather—for some time at least—was a coowner and administrator of the Hamburg City Opera. What I know for certain, however, is that my grandmother was an opera fan and that one night she went to the opera in a far-advanced state of pregnancy to hear Giacomo Meyerbeer’s l’Africaine. The same night her third little girl, my mother, was born, and she rewarded the baby for arriving promptly by naming her Selica, after the heroine of l’Africaine. My mother did not resent this name as much as I did. On the contrary, she was very proud of it and felt obliged to study music as a career.

My father’s family lived in Hanover, Germany. My father and his family were not very close, so I know little about these relatives. Father, whom I adored, died at a very young age. He was restless, gay, very intelligent, witty and enterprising. My parents had married when young. When I was six months old they went to America, and my father studied orthodontics in Chicago. He intended to stay in the United States, but my mother got homesick, and after almost five years, they returned to Hamburg, where father became one of the first dentists ever to work exclusively on children.

So it was that I learned English before I learned German. My mother, who was ambitious for her children (I had an older brother who died in the First World War), employed an English governess for us; she did not want us to forget the English language. That proved to be one of the wisest things she could have done for us. I was sent to one of the best private schools in Hamburg (Elisabeth Goethe Textor School in Harvestehude). I loved my school, I loved to read. So did my father. At night, when my parents had retired, I went into the living room and took the books he had read that day and brought them to my bedroom. I read them by candlelight, putting a blanket at the bottom of the door to hide the light. My parents never found out.

When I was through with school, my father wanted me to study medicine, in which I always had shown great interest. At that time there were no special “high schools” for girls. So my parents discovered the quickest way for me to get a degree was to attend the “Teacher Seminar” and study Latin privately, which I did.

When I was seventeen I was invited to take the junior lead in an amateur performance, and by chance a reporter attended the play and wrote about me. That decided my future. From that day on nothing interested me but the stage. I dropped out of the seminar one year before the final exams and refused to go back. My father always had been a great enthusiast of the theater. He knew his Schiller, Goethe, and Shakespeare by heart. Almost every Sunday he attended a performance of a classic, and I was usually allowed to go with him. So he was not surprised by my decision. But my mother objected strongly. In those days a bourgeois family looked upon an actress as a lost sheep. A singer, however, that was completely different; a singer was above reproach. But an actress—no!

Home life became unbearable. So one day I put an ad in a newspaper and got a job as a tutor to a little girl, the daughter of a banker in Cologne, and I left home. That was too much for my father. After a short time he wrote me and asked me to come back and follow the career I wanted.

The first thing for me to do was to see Carl Hagemann, who at that time was the director and chief manager of the Deutsche Schauspielhaus, the foremost theater in Hamburg. He took a liking to me and accepted me as a student actress without pay. But I was allowed to attend all rehearsals and performances and was promised small parts when they would come up. Hagemann also made me take speech lessons with the official instructor of the theater. I attended rehearsals from morning to night. At that time—and I think it is mostly like that still today—all the theaters in Germany and Austria were repertory theaters, and young actors and actresses had to study about twelve to fifteen leading parts that came up regularly, at certain intervals, in every theater. My honest enthusiasm excited the interest of one of the leading stage managers, Ludwig Max. He was a tall, beautiful, white-haired old man, who also acted in classics. As is so often the case with comedians who make other people laugh, he was a rather serious and reflective man. He studied with me once a week, never asked for a fee, and no one in later years was prouder of my success than he. He also regularly cast me in small parts in plays he produced.

Carl Hagemann was the first personality who really influenced my life. He opened my eyes to everything that was beautiful. He gave me books about art; he made me visit the old painters who were sources of ideas and colors for his productions. He showed me the close connection between music and the spoken word (later, shortly before the Second World War, he conducted operas in Berlin).

Every Sunday morning Hagemann worked with me. For months we studied Rahel in Juedin von Toledo by Grillparzer, Austria’s most beloved dramatist. In later years I played this role on every stage I appeared on.

There were two or three young actresses in whose future Hagemann was interested. He used to call us his children. He himself had no family. Nothing concerning us was unimportant to him. He even tried to improve our taste in fashion. “If a young woman has talent,” he used to say, “she does not need to prove this by fancy clothes or make-up. Harmony in colors and taste is the main thing.”

Hagemann did even more for me. He showed me the way to a second career, which I took up later in Vienna after the death of my first husband. He knew about my upbringing and my knowledge of English, which he could not speak. And since he was interested at that time in a new adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (Oscar Wilde was one of his favorite modern authors), he asked me to do a rough translation of it. That was a big task for a young and inexperienced actress, but I finished the task, and my work must have been to his liking. He corrected and adapted it, and twenty years after its first publication, Lady Windermere’s Fan was printed in a new translation, and Hagemann gave me a leatherbound copy inscribed “To Grete [Grete was the name I was called as a child] for her intelligent and sensitive help. The Publisher.” I still have the book.

One of Hagemann’s most brilliant productions was Oscar Wilde’s Salome, and one of his greatest discoveries was a young Polish actress, Maria Orsca. She claimed to be—how the relationship came about I never knew—the niece of the late Justice Felix Frankfurter, who was Austrian-born. This young woman had the most beautiful eyes and most delicate and expressive hands I ever have seen. But she was far too heavy for her height. Hagemann wanted her to play the lead in Salome, but three weeks before her debut he told her he would not let her go on stage and dance unless she lost fifteen pounds.

Maria went on a diet and was a sensational success on opening night. But it was the beginning of the end. She had taken to drugs, and one love affair followed another. A well-known banker, who was married but in love with Maria, committed suicide; he could not stand life without her. Maria Orsca played a big part in my life. Because of her frequent indisposition, I got my first chance in the theater.

Hagemann was producing a new play, Gudrun by Ernst Hart. It was the old story of Gutrun and Siegfried seen from another angle. Originally, I had a small part in the play, one of Gudrun’s maidens. Maria Orsca played Sindgund, the supporting lead, a young woman full of passion. One afternoon my telephone rang: “Deutsches Schasupielhaus. Orsca is sick. Could you take over her part tonight?” “Of course,” I said. “Be here half an hour earlier,” came the reply. “We’ll give you a short rehearsal. We are sure you know the part.” I came through all right. The next day I got a letter from the theater and a check for fifty marks. It was the first money I had earned in my life. I knew now that the world was open to me.

Hagemann advised me I would do better at a smaller theater where I would have the opportunity to play all the parts I had been studying. My agent looked around for an opening and, as a start, made a contract for me with the Stadt theater in Bremerhaven.

The summer before, however, I had a job with Leopold Jessner at the Thalia Theater, the second outstanding theater in Hamburg. Jessner was one of the three producer-stars famous at that time all over Europe (Reinhard, Hagemann, Jessner). He was the original founder of the “People’s Theater”—first class literature with a good cast at popular prices. Among the actresses he had under contract was a young beginner, whom I had met before. She was the daughter of the superintendent of the building where Hagemann lived. One day, when the superintendent took me down in the elevator from Hagemann’s apartment, he asked me to meet his daughter, who wanted to become an actress. Her name was Emmy Sonneman. She was a slim, shy blonde girl with regular features. Her talent never impressed me, but I shall always remember her wearing a starched white blouse and a pleated blue skirt. We spoke to each other frequently and I liked her. She later became a well-known actress, but even better known when she became the wife of Herman Goering and, as such, Germany’s “First Lady” during the Nazi regime.

Bremerhaven, where I spent the next winter, is a small seaport near Bremen. Most of the big transatlantic vessels of the Hapag (Hamburg America Line) landed there or in Cuxhaven, the seaport of Hamburg.

I was very busy that winter, on stage almost every night. I played Desdemona, Julia, Gretchen (Faust), Ibsen’s Nora, and more. I only stayed one year, then went to Luebeck, which had a beautiful new theater, its interior all paneled in cherry wood. It also had a keen-minded director. This little treasure of a theater was burned down during the Second World War.

From Luebeck I was called to Vienna, with a very good contract for the Deutsche Volkstheater, which at that time, after the Burgtheater, was the leading stage in Austria. When the public in Luebeck realized that a young actress from their provincial town was called to Vienna for leading parts, the theater was sold out whenever I played.

My debut in Vienna was as Rahel in Grillparzer’s Juedin von Toledo. My second role was Princess Eboli in Schiller’s Don Carlos. I was the youngest Eboli ever on the Austrian stage. I hope this was not the only quality people liked me for. With me in this play were Fritz Kortner (King Philip), who later went to Hollywood, and Erika von Wagner (Queen Elizabeth), who a few years later married Stiedry, conductor of the Metropolitan Opera.

One of my favorite roles was the gypsy girl, Masha, in Tolstoy’s Living Corpse. Another was Regine in Ibsen’s Ghosts. Both parts I played with Moissi, the most famous actor of the time.

During my first weeks in Vienna, in 1916, I met my first husband, Ferdinand G. Serény. He was Hungarian and much older than I. He was a man of the world and had a wonderful way with women. This and his intelligence, combined with his great concern for my well-being, made me fall in love with him. I called him “Feri.” We were secretly married in Budapest in February, 1917.

In those days every actress had a clause in her contract which forbade her to marry without consent of her director. As I had not thought of marriage, I had not taken any notice of this paragraph when signing my contract. But now this prohibition against marriage seemed to me almost indecent, and I rebelled. I did not ask Director Wallner’s permission to marry, and so my marriage had to be in secret. But very soon I got pregnant—yet I had to go on acting. My roles were mostly young, innocent, seductive women, and I had to represent them with the knowledge of a swelling tummy. But I must have carried my baby well, for no one noticed anything—at least they did not say anything.

I was six months pregnant when the theater closed for summer vacations. Feri and I went to Karlsbad and later to Budapest, where my little boy, Guido, was born. From this very moment I changed. It was as if a cover had fallen from my soul, and love had another meaning for me. I felt the mystery of love a mother feels for her child. It came with the first cry of the baby, and it will stay as long as I live.

Shortly after Guido’s birth I wrote Director Wallner, was forgiven for my marriage, and asked to return to the theater immediately. And from then on I had to work as usual. It was hard on me. There was the baby who gave me so much warmth and happiness, and there was the theater, my work, which I loved and could not and did not want to neglect.

The living conditions did not soothe my inner conflict either. It was the last year of World War I, and the economic situation in Austria was very bad. People stood in line at bakeries, meat shops, and groceries. Even milk for babies was scarce. In the restaurants more and more “Ersatz” was being served, and the Austrian people, always great lovers of good food, began to revolt. In Budapest I had not noticed the misery so much. Hungary, though still a part of the great Austrian Empire, was better off, since it was an agrarian country and there was always plenty of milk and butter.

And all the time I had no real home. Feri and I could not live together; he had to stay in his apartment, which was too small for a family. The baby, the nurse, and I lived in the Hotel Bristol. I nursed the baby myself, and when I came home from rehearsals or performances, the nurse and the baby were always waiting for me, the nurse scolding, the baby crying. It was impossible to get a larger apartment, as hard as Feri tried. There was no peace in the world, no peace in my heart. And other events added to the inner turmoil.

That season a rather sensational charge was brought against Director Wallner of the Volkstheater, and without any intention of mine I became involved in it. For personal reasons certain older actors and actresses felt animosity towards Wallner and accused him of morally questionable behavior toward young actresses, me among them. He was—so they said—directing Juedin von Toledo in a morally offensive and improper way. When the case came before the jury, the old actors and actresses were not allowed to take the oath. I was sworn in. I declared that I never felt any misgivings about Director Wallner or his manners; and whatever he said, and whatever explanatory movements he may have made during rehearsals, it was done—I said—in the keenness and enthusiasm of artistic work. I never felt offended. He was acquitted, but my position at the Volkstheater became so difficult I could not stay.

Why do I tell this story? At that time I did not know Professor von Mises, who was still in the Austrian Army. But when later, after the death of my first husband, Ludwig von Mises and I met in Vienna and became friends, I told him about it. Some time later he surprised me by telling me that he had gone to the archives of the Neue Freie Presse and had looked up all the records about the case. He had to assure himself that I had spoken the truth.

I did not renew my contract, and the newspapers said that I had resigned “for reasons of health.” I was, of course, in perfect health and was offered immediately an excellent contract for the Thalia-theater in Hamburg. Feri asked me to stay, but I was still too selfish to be able to give up my career. I accepted the offer, though I realized I had to leave my child also, at least for a while. The war was over, the Austrian Empire was torn to pieces, Germany was defeated. Traveling from one country to the other was now very difficult; there was not even a direct train connection between Vienna and Hamburg. One had to change trains at the border, and the trip took twenty-nine hours. The cars were not heated, there were few train personnel, and there was no food, no milk at any of the stations. I could not subject my child to that; I first had to find suitable quarters before I could have him stay with me. I left.

In Hamburg I played the same roles I had played in Vienna, again with Moissi as a guest. But one evening there was trouble in the theater. Moissi—in doctor’s garb—had attended, with permission of the resident physician, a child’s birth in a hospital, and students and women revolted against him. There was such a commotion at the end of the performance that the actors could not take their bows; the stagehands did not dare to raise the curtain, and Moissi never again came to Hamburg.

I was very lucky; I found a furnished apartment, modern, heated, in a good neighborhood. When the train situation improved—it was around Christmas—Feri accompanied our child and the nurse to Hamburg. Feri stayed with me for four months. He was very upset that he could not work in Vienna, and I felt guilty about it. But I still was not ready to give in.

When he left I soon discovered that I was pregnant again, and now Feri implored me to come back to Vienna when my contract expired. He finally had found an apartment and it was to be ready by the time we returned.

The apartment was beautiful, located on the sixth floor of one of the few buildings that had central heating, at that time still a great luxury in Austria. From the windows we looked far over the roofs of the old buildings to the tower of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. At all times we heard the big clock chiming, and on Sundays and holidays the bells were ringing. I loved that apartment. For the first time I had a home. Finally I was at peace with myself. For some time at least.

When my daughter Gitta was born I took care of her myself. And when I caught our cook cheating us by selling our eggs and groceries—which were so hard to get—for lots of money to other people, I dismissed her and started cooking myself. I had plenty of help otherwise, of course. We travelled a great deal, but always in Austria, and the children were with us wherever we went. Feri was a wonderful father, happy and proud about his family.

In the summer of 1923 I took the children to Travemunde, a bathing resort on the Baltic Sea. Feri could not get away immediately, but was supposed to come a few weeks later.

This was the worst year of the run-away inflation in Germany and Austria. I carried a suitcase with me, containing money for one day. Every evening my husband had to cable fresh money, for the value of the krone decreased daily.

One day I got a telegram from Feri’s secretary asking me to come back immediately: Feri was seriously ill. I rushed home and hardly recognized him. He died at home a few weeks later, of a lung sarcoma. He was a chain smoker. His physician was Dr. Rudolf Strisower, a second cousin of my future husband, Professor von Mises.

I was twenty-seven years old when I became a widow for the first time, with two small children and the inflation raging. Feri had left a letter in which he begged me to stay with the children and not return to the stage. This letter was surely meant for the best interest of the children. But Feri could not foresee the outcome of the economic situation. Inflation had consumed the value of all savings. I remember how I found, some months after Feri’s death, a wallet of his containing large sums of Austrian kronen, the old currency that had since been changed into Schillinge. The time allowance for exchanging kronen into Schillinge had expired. The value of the money was totally lost. Though we still had some real estate, it was not the right time to sell. I knew I would have to work to earn our living.

One day that winter the Deutsche Volkstheater called. Maria Orsca was supposed to perform that night as a guest Rahel in Juedin von Toledo. She was in such a bad state, they said, that she was incapable of going on stage. Would I take over? I could not. I had to let them down. Feri’s letter haunted me. I tried various times. I got interesting offers, but I never had the courage to go on stage again. I could not forget that letter.