My Years with Ludwig von Mises

CHAPTER II How We Met

IT WAS in autumn 1925, when I went to a dinner party at the home of a journalist, Dr. Fritz Kaufmann, that I first met Ludwig von Mises. Kaufmann’s wife was the daughter of our beloved pediatrician, who—as long as Feri was alive—used to come to the apartment every Saturday morning to have a look at the children. (This was done for an annual fee. One can hardly imagine today that there ever existed arrangements like this with a private physician.) Only recently I found a handwritten letter of recommendation from Ludwig for Fritz Kaufmann, written in 1943: “Dr. Fritz Kaufmann was about twenty years ago a student of mine at the University of Vienna, Austria. He has well succeeded in acquiring a broad knowledge of economics and especially of the problems of currency, banking and finance. After his graduation he worked as a journalist with various newspapers and periodicals in Vienna and in Berlin. His editorials and articles were highly appreciated by the most competent experts.”

There were six guests that evening, one of them was Ludwig von Mises, a forty-four-year-old professor of economics, who also had a law degree from the University of Vienna. But that evening I had no idea who he was. What impressed me about him were his beautiful, clear blue eyes, always concentrated on the person to whom he talked, never shifting away. His dark hair, already a little grayish at the sides, was parted, not one hair out of place. I liked his hands, his long slim fingers, which clearly showed that he did not use them for manual work. He was dressed with quiet elegance. A dark custom-made suit, a fitting silk necktie. His posture indicated the former army officer.

He sat next to me, and the conversation was mostly about economics. I did not add much to the discussion. How could I? I did not know enough about the subjects discussed. After dinner he stayed at my side and we talked, that is to say, he made me talk, listened attentively, and when we left, he offered to take me home. But on the way he proposed to go to a bar opposite my house, to have a drink and dance. He did not dance well, so I preferred to sit and talk with him.

The next day, when my hosts told me that he was considered to be the greatest living mind in Austria, it gave me quite a shock. He seemed so unpretentious and simple, so easy to talk to. That day he sent me a wonderful assortment of red roses, called me soon afterwards, and asked me to have dinner with him.

From then on we met frequently, and it was not long before we were meeting almost daily. When he had no time to meet me, he would always call. He met my children and tried to make friends with them. He never came without bringing them a little gift, mostly books that were carefully chosen. And one day he brought me a tiny flask of perfume, also very carefully chosen, but not at all to my taste.

I soon felt he was in love with me. But within me there was no fire burning. I was interested, I liked his company, I was flattered by his attention, but I did not love him. It took quite a while before I responded. And it was a special event that made me realize I cared for him.

This was a time of political unrest in Vienna. Two socialists had been murdered by members of the nationalistic party, and the killers were acquitted. This led to riots in the streets. The Palace of Justice was burned down. Ludwig von Mises called me and warned me: “Don’t let the children go out today, the streets are not safe.” (We lived in the center of the city—as he did—a few steps away from Kaerntnerstrasse and Graben.) It was this telephone call that made me realize I loved him: he cared for my children!

In 1926 he went for the first time to America, as a representative of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, and as soon as he returned he asked me to marry him. I cannot describe what it meant to me.

From then on I always called him “Lu,” and this abbreviation of his given name, which seemed to me so warm and affectionate, was something quite new to him. He must never have been called by a pet name. When we came to the States and made new friends, they all very soon called him Lu. I think he liked it.

Shortly after his return from America he got very sick. He had appendicitis and could not be operated on, as his appendix was already infected. It took him weeks to recover.

He often spoke about his maternal grandfather and remembered him with great affection, even though this grandfather, while carrying Lu in his arms at the age of two, had dropped him. As a consequence, Lu broke his collarbone and had to wear a neckbrace for a long time.

Lu spoke little about his youth. Once, however, he told me that he had started reading newspapers at the age of seven and that at the age of ten he wanted to write a history of the Crimean War. He wrote one page and then discovered in the newspaper that an English historian had published a ten-volume history. That was the end of that book.

Lu greatly admired his father, who had been a prominent railroad construction engineer in the Austrian government and who died tragically, after a gall bladder operation, at the age of forty-six. Lu revered his father and never forgot his birthday. On August 13, 1941, Lu told me: “On this day my father would have been eighty-six years old.” He must have missed him greatly.

The early loss of a beloved father was not the only sad blow Lu suffered. His youngest brother died of scarlet fever at a very tender age, when Lu was only twelve years old.

Lu lived with his mother, whom I never met, but he rarely mentioned her. However, he never had a word of criticism for her. I soon realized that this silence was the result of a long and bitter struggle with himself. He must have suffered in his youth, though he never complained. Three of the many letters he wrote to me around this time, which I have translated into English, show clearly how lonely he was:

Vienna, July 29, ’27

My dear, sweet Grete:

Many, many thanks for your dear letter.

Since Tuesday I pondered much about you and your love. You have renewed in me, what I lost a long time ago, the belief in the possibility of happiness. Do you know, how much I have to thank you for, you, my beloved?

I am sorry to say—I was so rushed the last days—from early morning to late at night, that I could not carry out my wish to go to Moedling to look after the children. I would have wanted to send you their love and their greetings. I had some egoistic reasons, too: I wanted to touch Gitta’s hair and think of you.

That is all for today. I still have to do my packing and take care of various matters. I leave tomorrow morning.

I love you, I can’t say more, and I believe it is the most important thing.

Thousand kisses.

Badgastein, July 31,1927

My dear Grete:

When I arrived here last night and found no letter of yours, when even today there was nothing in the mail from you, I realized fully how much I miss you and that I cannot live any more without you. Now only do I know what longing really means and that I have only one wish, one thought: You.

I have gone through bad experiences and again and again I suffered severe disappointments. Your hands tenderly touched my cheeks and every remembrance of past harm has gone completely. I wish I could have your slim hands here to kiss them and hold them forever.

Write to me again and again that you love me and want to give me happiness. I cannot hear and read it often enough.

Are you thinking of me sometimes in Hamburg? Can I win the battle with the remembrances of childhood and home? Isn’t it true that the one who is absent is the losing one? I promised you never to be jealous. Now you can see the value of my promises. I am jealous even of the river Alster.

Don’t forget me and do love me. I kiss your mouth and your hair.

Badgastein, August 14, 1927

My dear Gretl:

Many glowing thanks for your letter of August 11 and for your Sunday telegram. I found both when I came home from dinner.

I deserved your reproaches but I cannot change the facts. I told you before. You know you have to change me to get me to be the one you want to love.

It won’t be easy. I would like to make a proposal: one always should start work as quickly as possible, and one should not delay the start. What about leaving Norderney two days earlier than planned and this way come two days earlier to B. (That means on the 26th.)

We talk better from mouth to mouth than by mail. We have to discuss a great many things. Please, do say “yes” and come earlier than we originally planned.

I feel more for you than I can say in writing and if you will know me better you might read behind my clumsy sentences the real meaning. Please, don’t be angry; don’t punish me by not writing and think of me without any anger or resentment.

I believe in you and I love you. You are now everything I have. I know how rich and happy you make me, but I don’t know how to thank you. I will try to become more worthy of you than I am.

Thousand kisses.

People who knew Lu’s mother well told me she was a highly intelligent woman, but with the attitude of a general and a will of iron, showing little warmth or affection for anyone. But I know she did many good things. She was president of the Institute for the Blind and gave much of her time to it.

Professor Hayek told me that while he was attending Lu’s seminar in Vienna, Lu sometimes invited him to his house for lunch or dinner. The long table was always set immaculately, Lu sitting at one side and opposite him, Mrs. von Mises. “She never spoke a word,” said Professor Hayek. “She never participated in the conversation, but one always felt she was there. When the coffee was served she quietly got up and left the dining room.”

She must have been a woman of distinction, otherwise she could not have brought up two sons, both of them distinguished scholars. The only one for whom Lu’s mother was said to have shown some affection was Richard, her second son. This might explain why the two brothers never were really close to each other. This situation changed though, after Lu and I were married.

I met Richard in Geneva in 1939, and I liked him immediately. There was a certain charm about him. He had the same unpretentious manner of speech that Lu had. When Lu and I came to the United States in 1940, Richard, who was then professor of aviation and mathematics at Harvard, immediately arranged a lecture for Lu and never failed to come and see us whenever he was in New York, sometimes two or three times a month. I saw him for the last time in 1953; Lu was in California lecturing when Richard arrived from Zurich. A friend of his, the famous Professor Hermann Nissen of Zurich, had advised an immediate and urgent cancer operation. But Richard refused to have it done, returned to the States, and a few weeks later died in Cambridge.

I never really understood why Lu stayed with his mother until he left for Geneva. There was no financial reason for it. The only explanation I could find was that his mother’s household was running smoothly—their two maids had been with them for about twenty years—and Lu could come and go whenever it pleased him and could concentrate on his work without being disturbed. There certainly was no inner need for him to stay with her.

The First World War, as much as he hated the loss of time, was a duty Lu had to fulfill—and not for a minute would he ever have disregarded it. On the first day of the war he had to travel to Premyzl to meet his regiment. He foresaw the consequences of the war for Austria and for the world; he lost almost five years of his life and his work; but he never complained. The last two years in the Carpathians, those icy winter days, brought real suffering and hardship to everyone. Often they did not even have water to wash.

For some time in the mountains Lu had as a comrade in arms his second cousin, Dr. Strisower, an army doctor, who also had the rank of captain. For a while they had their lodgings together. One morning, when it was bitter cold, they peered through the icecovered window and saw the ten-year-old daughter of the farmer’s wife with whom they lived take a completely naked baby of perhaps one year outside and hold her up until she had eased herself. Lu was horrified. “But the child will die,” he said. “No,” replied Strisower. “If she is healthy, she will survive. That’s how it is here in the country; only the strong ones can survive.”

Lu was proud of his ability to provide for his men. By chance, a first-class cook from a good Austrian hotel had joined Lu’s company. This man was able to bake the famous Viennese pancakes (they are like the French crepes suzette) for all the men while the company was marching and the kitchen, of course, was on the move, too. He adored Lu and proved this by always giving him an extra portion. But he was never satisfied with Lu’s appetite. “The first lieutenant is eating like a woman in childbed,” he complained. To please Lu he also fed a little colt, which had been born during a battle and was loved by all the men of the company. They often went without food themselves, but they still fed the colt. Then one day the army took the colt away. They needed meat. That was a black day for all of Lu’s men. Lu got typhoid in 1917 and, after a few months, was called back to Vienna, where he worked—still in uniform—with the General Staff in the Ministry of War until the last day of the war.

In the first years of our relationship Lu was almost an enigma to me. I never had seen such modesty in a man before. He knew his value, but he never boasted. Different from all men I had met before, he felt deeply without the need to talk about it all the time. I had never trusted the feelings of actors. Men who love professionally every night, project their feelings constantly to the outside, and have to tell the whole world about themselves never seemed real men to me. Their only steady love affair is with themselves. I think it was the extreme honesty in Lu’s feelings that attracted me so strongly to him. These feelings were so overpowering that he, who wrote thousands of pages about economics and money, could not find the words to talk about himself.

Before we married, this love must have been a very distressing factor in his life—so upsetting that he knew he could fight a battle in the Carpathian Alps, but could never win the battle against himself. He became frightened. I was the only woman he wanted to marry from the first moment he met her. He never changed his feelings or his mind about this decision. I knew that there were many young women who were desperately in love with him. His private seminar in Vienna had several female participants who tried their best to get his attention. He was interested in their careers, in their intellectual development, but completely indifferent toward them as women.

Once he chided me: “If you would not have been, I could have married a very rich heiress.” “Why didn’t you?” I asked him. “We both would have lived happily ever after.” He rejected both my flippancy and my proposal.

Another time I told him: “Do you know that people revealed to me that you at one time were engaged to marry Dr. Lene Lieser [a former student at his seminar]?” He laughed and said, “Did you really believe it? Could you ever imagine me married to an economist?” I really could not.

The wish to have me near him was constantly in him. He knew I needed a father for my children; he was aware of the fact that I gave them all the love and affection I was capable of. But children need more than a loving and doting mother. They need guidance and direction for their development, and I, as a mother alone, was well aware that I was not strong enough to give them what they deserved.

Lu thought of the task he had set himself, the tremendous work that was ahead of him, all the writing he wanted to do. He bore the burden of making a frightening decision—the choice between his work and duty to his intellectual ideals on the one hand, and a life of love and affection on the other. Soon after we became engaged, he grew afraid of marriage, the bond it would mean, the change that children would bring to a quiet home, and the responsibilities that might detract him from his work. So it was a stormy relationship, the old problem of Adam and Eve.

But we did not live in Paradise—far from it. We never had a fight between us. Lu fought himself, and then made me suffer. I was deeply in love with him now, a love so different from what I ever had felt before that I hardly knew myself any more. Until now I had always taken; I had been spoiled. Now I only wanted to give, give, give—and I deeply felt that he needed me, too.

We spent most of our vacations together. I usually rented a cottage in the country for the children and my mother, and Lu and I went mountain climbing. Other sports did not mean much to him. He played tennis—always with a trainer—but without enthusiasm. Once I watched him. When the ball was easy for him to reach, he returned it, otherwise he would not bother. When I asked him: “Why don’t you put a little effort into your game?” He replied, “Why should I? The fate of the ball does not interest me.”

He was a member of the Athletic Club in Vienna and dutifully went fencing once a week. But mountain climbing was the sport he really excelled in. Before he went to Geneva he also did some skiing. He had grown up with the mountains, and he spent four long years of war in the mountains, while I came from the sea. But I shared his love for hiking and climbing, and we were never nearer to each other than when we stood together on the top of a mountain. He had the correct training for climbing. Sometimes the sun would burn so hard that I would get tired and thirsty. But Lu allowed me no rest until we reached a certain goal or even the top. The beauty of the view, the wide-open spaces that lay before our eyes, the difficulties of climbing we had overcome together, the loneliness around us that never seemed depressing when we were together, gave us both a deep inner feeling of completeness and happiness. “It was then,” he told me later, “that I first knew what a good comrade you would be.” But he still was not able to set a date for our marriage.

Sometimes I did not see him for weeks. But I knew very well that he was in town. At least twice daily the telephone rang, and when I answered it there was silence at the other end of the line—not a word was spoken. I knew it was Lu. He wanted to hear my voice. I also knew I should not make the first move if I really wanted to help him. I longed for him; his silence hurt me; I was miserable. But I did not call. And finally—after a while, without any explanation—he came to see me again. I knew by then that if he could not decide by himself, I had to act. Also on account of the children, for the situation became so tormenting for me I could not stand it any longer. I needed work that would interest me and would take my mind off myself.

About this time George Marton, the publisher, who was always interested in my work (I had done one or two translations for him), advised me to go to London for a while to get better acquainted with authors and writers, to get new plays for him, and to start translating as a career. At the same time I could refresh my English. I followed his advice.

Marton got me the necessary letters of introduction, and in 1929 I sublet my apartment and left Vienna. I took Gitta to Hamburg to stay with my mother and left Guido with a teacher’s family in a suburb of Vienna. It was hard on the little boy, and he suffered under the separation as much as I did.

In London I lived all alone in a bleak second-rate boarding house, the like of which I had never known before. To save money I walked to most of my appointments. Once I walked all the way from Bayswater to the Tower of London. When it was cold I went to the National Gallery or into a museum to warm up. All the time I met new people, was introduced to writers and publishers, and succeeded in laying the groundwork for a future for the children and myself.

But I never succeeded in forgetting Lu. I never wrote to him. But one day he came to London as the Austrian representative of the Chamber of Commerce to open an exposition of graphic illustrations on the progress of production in Austria since 1922. Lu himself had brought about this exhibition, and Hayek, as director of the Austrian Institute for Economic Research in Vienna, had compiled the tables. After his arrival Lu called on me—and nothing had changed. We both knew it never would.

After a year I went back to Vienna, relieved to have my children staying with me again. Otherwise everything was exactly as it was before. The only difference was that I had found the work that, together with my children, filled my days so completely that I had very little free time. I translated and adapted one or two plays a month. The work was always “terribly urgent”—and afterwards the plays were shelved and the poor authors had to wait for months, years sometimes, until the plays were produced.

I had a contract with Marton for every play, royalties in advance of production and immediate cash for every “rough” translation I finished. I needed a secretary to help me, and things looked better for the children and for me. Among the plays I translated were Mary of Scotland by Maxwell Anderson, Distaff Side by Van Druten, and Rebound by Donald Ogden Stewart (which was produced by Reinhardt in the Deutsche Theater in Berlin and in Vienna’s Akademietheater). In 1932 I also wrote short stories for newspapers, which were printed in Der Wiener Tag.

The work I did was in every way a lifesaver for me. It helped me to take care of my children, it helped me to keep hold of myself, and it helped me to regain my pride, which had suffered greatly during these years of uncertainty in my relationship with Lu. Maybe, once in a while, I should have refused to see him. But what would this have changed? My stay in London was proof enough that there was no way out for me. I loved him and the longing to be with him was so strong I could not fight myself anymore. And I knew only too well that he needed me also, in the way that a man dying of thirst needs a drink of water.

Not that I could not have married again. There was Oscar Loewenstein, the always cheerful, elegant owner and publisher of the Neue Wiener Journal, whose sister-in-law was Gitta’s godmother and who was in love with me for years. There was Sir Leonard Castello, then chief justice of India, whom I had met in London and who came to Vienna to see me as often as his time allowed, waiting only for my word to get a divorce. But I had told him how the situation was. He understood, and we stayed friends for life. After Lu and I were married, Sir Leonard flew from India to Paris to meet Lu. Both men understood each other very well. Though I liked these other men, there was nothing I could do. I just had to wait until Lu was ready.

He had given me his books Gemeinwirtschaft (later translated as Socialism) and Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel (The Theory of Money and Credit), and I tried my best to get familiar with their content. It was difficult for me. I had lived in another world. It took years and much reading and many tears, intermingled with feelings of inferiority, before I understood the meaning of his teaching and his writings. But his most devoted students could not have been more convinced of the advantages of free enterprise and of freedom for the individual than I became.

In those years Lu travelled a great deal to foreign countries as the representative of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. Never did he leave without first coming to see me and sending me the most beautiful arrangements of flowers. And as soon as he returned the first thing he did was to see me. All these years he had held a secret superstition, which he later confessed to me: he must see me, he must be with me on January first each year, for that gave him the assurance that he would not lose me that year.

Following the World War, and even before, housing conditions were very poor in Vienna. Now they introduced a new law: no family was allowed to occupy more rooms than there were members in the family. (The kitchen was not counted.) For us, who owned a large apartment, this meant the danger of having people placed to live with us, people whom we did not even know.

In my case, living alone and working at home, it would have been a special ordeal. But I was lucky. A friend of mine, coming back by boat from a visit in the United States, met Myra Finn with her little daughter Alice, age eleven. Mrs. Finn had just been divorced from Oscar Hammerstein, wanted to travel, and was looking for a suitable place in Vienna for Alice to learn German. My friend recommended me, Mrs. Finn called on me, we liked each other, and after a while she left Vienna and Alice stayed on with us for more than a year. Since she was the same age as Gitta, I arranged for her to be in Gitta’s class. The two girls became inseparable. A friendship developed that has lasted all through the years. Alice had suffered greatly from her mother’s divorce, and it took all my love and care to make her smile again.

The summer after Alice left to join her mother in Switzerland, I sent Gitta to England to a boarding school in Kent, where she stayed for almost eighteen months. When she came back she wrote and spoke English just as fluently as she wrote and spoke German.

One day Lu told me he had been offered a high position at the Credit Anstalt, the foremost banking institution in Vienna, but that he had decided not to accept it. When I asked him the reason for his refusal, he told me that a great “crash” would be coming and that he did not want his name in any way connected with it. He preferred to write and teach. “If you want a rich man,” he told me, “don’t marry me. I am not interested in earning money. I am writing about money, but will never have much of my own.”

I did not need to assure him how I felt. When the stock market crashed in New York in October, 1929, the effect was worldwide. An international depression followed, world trade was seriously affected, and in 1931, on May 11, the Austrian Credit Anstalt went into bankruptcy, exactly as Lu had told me beforehand. The Austrian government tried to save the bank and appealed for help abroad. France promised support, but under impossible conditions. At the last moment England helped Austria with a loan of 150 million Austrian Schillinge to the Austrian National Bank. But the Credit Anstalt could not be saved. This newest crash led to a financial crisis and a panic in all Central Europe.

From then on, there was hardly a quiet day in Vienna. Hitler had used the fear, the despair, and the insecurity in Germany to follow his own devilish purposes, and he succeeded so well in his evil designs, that, in January, 1933, he became chancellor of Germany.

The consequence was a growing antigovernment movement in Austria. In March, 1933, Engelbert Dollfuss, the Austrian chancellor, whose government consisted of a coalition of Christian Socialists and Agrarians, prohibited parades and assemblies and restricted the freedom of the press. In spite of this, the Austrian Nazis, who now, unsuppressed, dared to come out into the open, staged a great riot in Vienna. The city looked like a fortress; the streets were full of soldiers; shops and schools were closed; no one dared to go out. The entrance doors of all buildings had to be closed at 8 P.M. After that hour no citizen was allowed in the streets. There was Standrecht in Vienna, which meant that the police had the power to shoot anyone who did not obey orders.

Lu was very concerned about us. He called three and four times daily and asked me not to go out. But he himself went out, in spite of everything, and came to see us. I never knew how he found the time for all the work he was doing. He was by then the full-time legal adviser and financial expert of the Chamber of Commerce; he had his lectures at the University of Vienna; he had his seminar; he had conferences and luncheons with visiting authorities; he had to travel; he did a tremendous amount of reading and writing; and he always had time for me. He was so interested in my work he read every play I was doing, constantly urging me to do some writing of my own, proposing one idea after the other. In later years, when I attended his seminar at New York University, there was not a single meeting when he did not suggest to his students the title of a new paper or an idea for a thesis. I remember I once advised Bettina Bien: “Take the titles down; they will make a book one day.” In Vienna he just poured out new ideas to me. He once told me to write a film of one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. Even today only one or two of these beautiful stories have been filmed, and they certainly would be a delight to children all over the world.

Early in July, 1934, Lu went to Gastein, as he did every year, to take the baths. Shortly after he left, the Nazis assassinated Dollfuss. A group of Nazis, in Austrian uniforms, seized the radio station in Vienna and forced the commentators to broadcast the resignation of Dollfuss, which of course was a lie. They then entered the Chancellery, shot Dollfuss, and refused medical help to him until he died. Dollfuss was immediately succeeded by Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, who fervently tried to keep Austria independent.

Lu followed the political situation in Germany and Austria with passionate interest. He saw the slippery road the Austrian leaders were forced upon. He knew Hitler’s rise to power would endanger Austria, and he knew exactly what the future would bring. Only the date was a secret to him. Lu was a typical Austrian. He loved his native country, the mountains, the city of Vienna, the beauty of the old palaces, the crooked streets, the fountains—but this, too, was something so deeply imbedded in his soul he rarely would talk about it. But I knew how he felt and how deeply he was hurt.

In August, 1934, I met Lu in Ferleiten, Tyrol. From there we took excursions into the mountains. One beautiful morning—it was August 23, 1934—we took the autobus to Hochmais and then climbed via the Fuscher Torl up to the Edelweisskopf, a mountain about 8000 feet high. On top we rested and enjoyed the beautiful view, the wide range of the Alps before our eyes, the peace and quietness around us. The sun was shining brightly, but we did not feel any heat. The strong wind cooled us.

I had trouble keeping my wide dirndl skirt from blowing over my face and had to use both hands to keep it down. Lu laughed about my efforts. Then suddenly he said: “You asked me before why I am working here so much, against my habit of not working while on vacation. I want to tell you the reason.” And he told me that he was to leave Vienna in the beginning of October, that he had received an invitation from Professor William Rappard to join the faculty of l’Institut des hautes études (the Graduate Institute of International Studies) in Geneva, Switzerland, that this meant a great opportunity for him, and that he therefore had accepted the appointment.

When I heard him say that, it seemed as if the sun had suddenly gone down. My hands dropped, I could not speak. This was a blow that hit me harder than any chilling wind. I never thought he could go away like this. He took me in his arms, held me firmly, and went on: “I’ll see you often . . . give me time . . . trust me, I love you, I love you so much . . . stay as you are . . . I need you.” It took a long time before I could pull myself together; I felt the tears rushing to my eyes. I did not want to cry; I knew how unhappy it made him to see me crying.

For Lu this had been an unusually quick decision. Lu was usually so slow in deciding important matters that I once jokingly called him Fabius Cunctator. In taking leave of absence from the Chamber of Commerce, the university—and of me—he found the courage to tell me about it only after he had decided. But I believed and trusted him, as I always did. He had never lied to me. We were never more in love than we were that summer.

From Ferleiten we went to Hallein to see the Salzbergwerke, and before returning to Vienna we spent one week in Salzburg, attending the Festspiele. Every day was a special day, and I tried to forget what I knew would be coming.

In Vienna we met every day until the very day he left for Geneva—October 3, 1934. He wrote often, telling me about the new apartment he had taken, the friends he had met, and his work at the institute. He returned to Vienna at Christmas, and as always, we spent much time together.

The years went by. He came very often, sometimes in the middle of the week, for only a day or two. It was a blessing for me that I had so much work to do. Curt Bois, a well-known Austrian actor, had acquired the rights for a play by Massingham, The Lake. He planned to produce the play himself and play the lead, and he asked me to do an adaptation for him. He was very happy about my work. Marton was also happy with another play that I had adapted from the French. It was done from Sardou’s play Dora, and I called it Diplomacy and Love. It was accepted by the Akademietheater in Vienna and came out in a very good production with excellent reviews and—most pleasing for me, of course—commendations for the translator.

On April 18, 1937, Lu’s mother died. Lu came for the funeral and left soon afterward. That summer we spent again in the Austrian mountains. Everywhere we felt change. When we were climbing a mountain near the German border, the villagers, who usually greeted us with “Gruess Gott” (“May God be with you”), now raised their arms and said, “Heil Hitler.” At the top of the mountain Germans and Austrians would not dine in the same room of the restaurant. It was a frightening experience. Earlier that summer Lu had given me a wonderful birthday present—one that made me happy for the rest of my life. He had arranged with an auto driver’s school in Vienna for me to take a driving course, to get a driver’s license. And then he told me that he had ordered a car.

That Christmas he spent with me, and the first night he was in town, he took me to a very good restaurant for dinner. Suddenly he reached over the table, took my hand and said, so softly I could hardly hear him: “I cannot go on further. I cannot live without you, darling. Let’s get married.”

At first I thought I was dreaming. I had waited so long for this moment. Now it had come; I could not believe it. I remember that in the other corner of the restaurant sat a couple, longtime friends of mine, who knew about Lu and me. I felt like rushing over to them shouting what had happened. I felt like a child who longs for Christmas and finally sees the tree lighted. And then everything became very quiet within me. I felt very small. I could not say a word, as usually happens to me when I am excited. I just sat and listened while he told me his plans.

He set the wedding day in early April of the following year, during the Easter recess of the institute in Geneva, so we could go on vacation together. In February he came again to Vienna, to arrange the banns (an old Austrian custom that requires that every couple intending to marry must have their names and the date of the wedding publicly announced for six weeks at the doors of City Hall).

But everything turned out differently than we had planned. Shortly after Lu left, the situation in Austria worsened. Bombs in telephone booths, Nazi demonstrations in the streets, combined with violence, were daily events. Schuschnigg made an appointment to see Hitler in Berchtesgaden, hoping to be able to arrange for better relations with Germany. But it was in vain. Hitler would not even listen to Schuschnigg. He shouted constantly and accused Austria—and Schuschnigg—of high treason. Schuschnigg was forced to sign an agreement that was used a few weeks later as the basis for the end of Austria as an independent nation. To give every Austrian citizen the opportunity to decide for himself whether he wanted to belong to Germany or keep his independence, Schuschnigg announced on March 9 a general plebiscite for March 13. Hitler was afraid of the result, and in order to prevent it, he sent German troops into Austria.

When the Germans marched into Vienna, I sent Lu a telegram: “Everything quiet here no need to come.” I was afraid that Lu might not realize how dangerous the situation had become for him. On the night the Nazis came to Vienna they had rushed into the apartment where Lu had lived with his mother, had taken his valuable library, his writings, his documents and everything they found of importance, packed it all into thirty-eight cases, and drove away. Worse still, Lu was also on the Russian black list. Lu’s writings were hated by socialists of every type: Nazis, Communists, Fascists, and, as I later found, American socialists as well. It would have been impossible for Lu to return to Vienna. He sent me a carefully worded telegram asking Gitta and me to come to Geneva as quickly as possible.

Cautiously I started my preparations. I told no one that I intended to leave, while packing as many of our belongings as possible. Before we left I had to see the judge who took care of my children at the Court of Guardianship. I asked him to release as many of our funds as possible, which he did. “How I envy you that you can get away from here,” he said, shaking my hand warmly as I left.

I never had a feeling of danger for Gitta and myself. Our Hungarian passport was still considered a good protection. But I realized that if anyone might have occasion to read the marriage bann for Lu and me, which according to the Austrian laws was publicly advertised, they might take more interest in Gitta and me than would be good for us, and we might have difficulties getting away.

It may sound like an irony of fate that just then, shortly before the tragic events of the month of March, 1938, the last play I had adapted from the French for the German stage was accepted by the Deutsche Volkstheater in Vienna. The play was Liberté, by Denis Amiel. It was never produced.

I won’t ever forget those last days in Vienna. The first day the Nazis marched into Vienna, they began tormenting and torturing their political enemies and the Jews. One day, when I walked along the Graben, one of the most elegant streets in Vienna, I saw how young people had climbed to the top of the Pestsaeule—a monument—to watch the Jews washing the streets. Whenever a German soldier or officer passed, the poor people had to step down into the gutter, accompanied by the howling, roaring laughter of the crowd.

Each day the situation in Vienna worsened. The Austrian Nazis, who before Hitler’s appearance had not dared to show their sympathies openly, now proudly displayed their party badges. In St. Stephen’s Cathedral a huge picture of Hitler was hung, and the Catholic Church, lead by Cardinal Innitzer, swore allegiance to the Nazis. The Nazis, fearing the decision of the Austrian population, prevented the plebiscite scheduled for March 13, assembled German troops at the frontier, and Schuschnigg, unable to resist, had to resign. Seyss-Inquart, a former Viennese lawyer, took over the government. He was ordered by the Nazis to send a telegram to Berlin demanding German troops “to prevent further riots.”

On March 14 Hitler marched into Vienna, the city where he had lived as a pauper in a flophouse, painting and selling postcards. That night he made his first speech over the radio. His voice still rings in my ears. I shall never forget it. It was rough, throaty, and vulgar, but it had an almost unbearable strength combined with a hypnotic power of persuasion. As much as his voice frightened me, I listened to the very end.

That same night Chancellor Schuschnigg spoke for the last time to the Austrian people with a simple and touching broadcast, his voice trembling with unwept tears. “Tonight,” he said, “I take leave of the Austrian people with only a few words of farewell coming from the depth of my heart. May God help and protect Austria.”

The last visit I made in Vienna was to a friend of Lu’s and mine, Dr. Weiss von Wellenstein, secretary general of the Central Association of Austrian Industry. I had known him and his beautiful, elegant wife—who had died a few years before—since my first days in Vienna. In spite of his great loss, Dr. von Wellenstein kept the household running as smoothly as before, for their three maids had been with them for years. Though Lu and I had never met at their house—they had a very large social circle—Dr. von Wellenstein knew about Lu and me, and I felt it my duty to bid farewell to him before departing. He was very lonely at that time. People abstained from visiting each other, for they had to avoid going into the streets. He was happy to see me and happy to hear about our forthcoming marriage. “You are going to marry the greatest mind Austria has produced in this last century,” he told me, “but I don’t believe you are fully aware of the difficulties that lie ahead of you. Ludwig von Mises is not easy to handle. He is obstinate, will never change his mind once he is convinced he is right, and he will rather have an enemy than make concessions or deviate from his convictions. Your life won’t be easy; I do wish you luck.” How little did he know how well I knew what he had told me—and much more!

A few days after Schuschnigg’s farewell, Himmler’s S.S. troops and the Gestapo arrived, and a real holocaust started. Communists, Social Democrats, and Liberals were arrested by police and Gestapo agents, taken into prisons and police stations, tortured, and often beaten to death. Schuschnigg himself was put into prison and later sent to a concentration camp, where he was lucky enough to meet his future wife. He never went to trial. Years later, when he came to New York, he came to see us several times. He taught for twenty years at American colleges, and now lives in Innsbruck, Austria.

During all this turmoil I had been in constant communication with Lu, who urged me to leave as quickly as possible. That was not so simple as we would have liked it to be. Everyone who wanted to cross the border needed permission from the government. Austria was always a bureaucratic country, but now the difficulties placed in the way of a would-be traveller were unimaginable. Luckily, I managed to get all the necessary documents. When, on March 26, Gitta and I came to the Vienna Westbahnhof and took our seats in the express train for Zurich, I felt relieved as never before. (Guido, my son, had been in an English boarding school for a year. Always somewhat adventurous, he later went to Caracas, Venezuela, married, and settled there.)

But the excitement was not over. Police officers, Gestapo agents, S.S. men, one after the other, came into the compartment of our railway coach to inspect our passports and examine our documents. Only when the train moved out of the station and gathered speed could I breathe easy. We were free!