My Years with Ludwig von Mises
Chapter III. Life in Geneva
LU WAS at the station in Zurich to meet us. In the thirteen years we shared before our marriage, I had never seen Lu cry. (Nor did I ever see him cry in all the thirty-five years of our married life.) He wept—unrestrained and unabashed. Tears were streaming down his face and he was not ashamed of them. He took me in his arms; he kissed Gitta; he embraced me again and again, as if he never would let me go. The happenings of the recent weeks, the horrible fate of Austria, the anxiety he had gone through, all this must have been an unbearable strain on him, worsened by the distance between us and his forced inactivity.
In Geneva Lu had taken rooms for Gitta and me in a comfortable boarding house. It could have been less comfortable and we would have enjoyed it. The terror of the past few weeks still lingered in my mind. Though nothing really had happened to me, I had been constantly conscious of the danger around us. Our freedom was at stake; I could not do what I wanted to do. There were spies everywhere, spies who watched you, misinterpreted the simplest of your actions and reported you. Employees who had grown old with families they lived with, suddenly became enemies. Children were taught to observe their parents and report on them. The Germans had organized everything so thoroughly beforehand that it took only a few days for freedom to turn into tyranny.
But now we were free again, and I felt easier. Lu showed us the apartment he lived in, and which, he thought, I should share. The furniture was first class and beautifully kept. But the whole apartment looked to me like an exhibit from a department store. It was cold and impersonal. For the first time I saw a refrigerator—we did not have them yet in Vienna—and it was a real marvel to me. I loved Lu’s sparkling kitchen, but otherwise I had my doubts. The apartment was small, just large enough for a bachelor. I would not have known where to put my belongings. We soon arranged to send Gitta to a French boarding school in Lausanne, to learn the language thoroughly. She had studied French for eight years, and in the last few years I had retained a charming French lady to practice conversation with Gitta and me at home. But I wanted her to know the language as well as she knew English; both Lu and I appreciated the power of languages.
I did not tell him my feelings about the apartment. There was too much on his mind right then. He had to procure all the documents for our marriage certificate and, if I remember well, he needed nineteen documents, five lawyers, and three months and ten days of preparation before we could marry.
But these three months were a happy time for the three of us. Lu showed us Geneva and its lovely surroundings. Geneva may well be called one of the most beautiful cities of the world. The city overlooks Lake Geneva and the Rhone River, and you can see the Cathedral of St. Pierre, built in the twelfth century, from wherever you are. It was in the cathedral that Calvin delivered his thunderous sermons more than 400 years ago. All around the lake are gardens, parks to promenade or in which to enjoy an afternoon snack in one of the coffee houses or pastry shops.
Geneva is also one of the cleanest cities I know. I was amazed to see building superintendents hose the streets every morning until they were as clean and sparkling as linen sheets. The frankness and honesty of the Swiss population was a steady source of wonder to me. You could leave a baby for hours unattended in a perambulator in the street. Nothing would happen. In Austria they would empty the baby carriage, but leave the child undisturbed. In America, according to my later experiences, they would most probably kidnap the baby.
Every Sunday, as all the Genevois did, we went by car (Lu owned a Ford) over the border into France, almost as easy a procedure as driving from New York City to Connecticut. Although you had to stop at the border where a customs officer would look at your passport and your car, he might smile at you, give you a wave, and off you would drive, over the border into France, to have your dinner.
In Switzerland the Guide Michelin played the same important part as it did in France. Even among the many learned men I met in my two years stay in Geneva, Michelin’s recommendations were of great importance for the regular Sunday excursions. It was sometimes amusing and almost a relief for me when these prominent scholars interrupted or ended their serious discussions with plans and suggestions for next Sunday’s dinner excursion.
But it was less amusing for me when Lu one day prepared me for our future social contacts and told me: “Here in Geneva, when men talk, women have to be silent. They only listen.” I would not believe it. It seemed most odd to me in a modern cultivated society. But it was like this with the professors of the institute, and I do hope it has changed by now. Lu gave me another piece of advice: “Never ask an economist about his wife. He may already be divorced.”
One afternoon Lu and I went to buy our wedding rings. He took as much time and care in choosing a small thin golden wedding ring as Botticelli might have taken to design one of his most elaborate pieces of jewelry.
In late June, shortly before our wedding day, while we were having tea at one of the restaurants on the lake, we met Professor Hans Kelsen. He was a good friend of Lu’s. They were born in the same year, they went to primary school together, they were classmates in the Vienna Academic Gymnasium, they studied for some time at the same university in Vienna, and now they both taught at I’Institut des hautes études in Geneva. Hans Kelsen was professor of international law and world famous. In 1920 he had created the new Austrian constitution, and from 1920 to 1930 he was the senior judge of the Austrian Constitutional Court. He was small and slim, but well proportioned. His eyes, under sharp glasses, always had a humorous twinkle. He was kind and easy to talk to. Lu introduced me, told him about our marriage plans and asked him to be one of our witnesses. Never have I seen anyone more surprised than Kelsen. He was speechless. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “No one ever would have expected Mises to marry. [He always spoke of Lu as “Mises,” apparently a reminiscence from their school years.] Everyone expected him to be a bachelor for life.” But Kelsen was a pleasant man, and I felt I had won a new friend.
Finally Lu had the rings and the necessary documents. The marriage was fixed for July 6, at 11 A.M. The day before, I told him that it was customary for the groom to give the bride a small bouquet of flowers. I knew he would not have known. The next day I received a beautiful bouquet of blue and pink sweet peas, my favorite flowers.
Our second witness was Professor Gottfried von Haberler, also from Vienna, a former student of Lu’s, and at that time working as a financial expert at the League of Nations. Professor Haberler had gotten his first job with Lu’s help. At a time when jobs were almost impossible to get, Lu had secured a job for Haberler with the Chamber of Commerce in Vienna.
It was five minutes to eleven when we entered the registry office to be married. Lu, clad in a formal dark suit, was very quiet, his face almost emotionless. I wore a royal blue outfit, made in Vienna for this occasion. My heart was beating so hard I thought everyone could hear it. The registry office was somber and dull, as all public offices are. I was astonished that it did not smell of Lysol. My flowers brought the only touch of gaiety and color to this disappointingly depressing ceremony. At five minutes past eleven everyone had signed the certificate: I was Mrs. Ludwig von Mises. Lu kissed me, conventionally, hastily, conscious of all the people around us. But he also took my hand and pressed it firmly and warmly, as if he wanted to tell me: “You know how I feel. This kiss does not mean anything.” And then everyone congratulated us and kissed my hand.
Lu had invited some friends for luncheon at the Hotel des Bergues. Everything was carefully arranged, and the little party was a great success. Lu was always a good host; he knew what people liked and he remembered their preferred drinks. For the first time I met more of his colleagues with whom he was in close contact: Professor and Mrs. Wilhelm Roepke, the Haberlers, the Kelsens, and Professor and Mrs. William Rappard.
Of all the people I met in Geneva, Professor Rappard was my favorite. He had, like Churchill, an American mother. His father was Swiss. He spoke four languages fluently, without the least bit of accent. He was the founder of the Institut des hautes études and a great thinker and writer, but also a devoted family man. Everything about him was elegant, his movements, his appearance, his way of walking, his speeches, his eloquence, his way of living. It was an inborn elegance, a gift of nature. You have it, or you don’t; one cannot acquire it. He had a great admiration for Lu and showed it with frequent invitations for us to visit his lovely home, far from the center of town. Madame Rappard was the motherly type, a wonderful warm personality, mostly interested in the wellbeing of her family.
After our marriage I moved in with Lu. Gitta had been enrolled at La Marjolaine, “un Pensionat de jeunes filles,” some months before. Without a word Lu took care of all financial matters concerning the children. Gitta liked her school in Lausanne, but she preferred to stay with us, and she came as often as she could make it.
From the time Lu first came to Geneva in 1934, he had a housekeeper, Tiny, whom he had “inherited” from the Kelsen family. Lu often told me about her before I left Vienna: what an excellent worker she was and how she terrorized him. She came in the morning and left around 5 P.M. She had a lover on whom she was totally dependent. The lover stayed in the background; no one ever saw him or knew his name or occupation. But he was a force with whom I had to contend. If he needed money—usually toward the end of the month—Tiny started to bang the doors from the moment she came in and never stopped using the vacuum cleaner, a terror to Lu when he was writing. Then he knew she would come and demand more money. Being alone and in need of her services, he always gave in. When we married, no one thought I would be able to get on with her, in spite of all her good qualities. She was really the neatest person I ever had working for me, and she was a perfect cook. I did not want to lose her.
But after a short time I found out she had been charging us quite a bit of extra money for her household shopping purchases, and I very kindly advised her that in future I would help her (after all, she had so much extra work now because of me) with the shopping. I also told her I would try to get her off earlier in the afternoon so she could have more of a homelife herself. She was so frail and thin, so unattractive, that I could hardly imagine the relationship between her and her lover. It must have been a one-sided affair. When we were in New York, during the war, I tried to reach her. I wanted to help, send her things she might need, but she had disappeared. No one, not even the police, could find a trace of her. Something terrible must have happened, and I still think of her with great pity. She stayed with us until our last day in Geneva. She even brought us to the bus that took us to France.
The evening after our marriage, when Lu and I took our first dinner at home, Tiny, of course, was not in. We were both happy. From the day of our marriage Lu was a changed person. Not that he spoiled me with gifts or presents—he would not have known how to do that—but he was so affectionate, so happy. Every little thing I did was of interest to him. The world had changed for him. He once told me: “You are like a kitten, so soft and tender. I only hope you won’t show the claws later on.” How often he had teased me: “I hope you are not like so many women: Once they get that certain little piece of paper, they give up.” During our first months together when we were invited out, he even chose the dress he wanted me to wear that night. But slowly he convinced himself that I would do no wrong and left the choice to me.
But there was one thing about him that I never understood and still don’t understand. From the day of our marriage he never talked about our past. If I reminded him now and then of something, he cut me short. It was as if he had put the past in a trunk, stored it in the attic, and thrown away the key. In thirty-five years of marriage he never, never—not with a single word—referred to our life together during the thirteen years before our marriage. As the past was part of my life, part of the person I became, I could not forget. His silence about the past remains in my mind like a crossword puzzle that one cannot solve because one needed letter is missing.
Lu was overpowering in his love and affection for me. Never was he cross or dissatisfied with anything I did; he could not nag. There was not one day, to the very end of his life, that he did not tell me: “I love you, darling, oh . . . how I love you.” It seemed to me, after our marriage, that for the first time in his life he felt really fulfilled and happy. I often asked myself: “Why does he love me so much?” The answer, I felt, was the contrast between us that attracted him and made him feel complemented. I sometimes joked and said, “I am the human touch in your life.” And then he would say: “You are more than that, and there are more reasons that I love you so much. One of the reasons is that you have an even temper, you always are in a good mood. It certainly is enough if one in the family is gloomy and loses his temper.”
The one thing about Lu that was as astonishing as it was frightening was his temper. Occasionally he showed terrible outbursts of tantrums. I do not really know what else to call them. I had experienced them in Vienna on various occasions. Suddenly his temper would flare up, mostly about a small, unimportant happening. He would lose control of himself, start to shout and say things, which coming from him, were so unexpected, so unbelievable, that when it happened the first few times I was frightened to death. Whatever I said would enrage him even more. It was impossible to reason with him. So I kept silent or went out of the room.
I gradually realized that these outbursts had nothing to do with me. I was just there, I was the outlet which gave him the opportunity to relieve himself. And I learned to understand that these terrible attacks were really a sign of depression, a hidden dissatisfaction and the sign of a great, great need for love. Sometimes I could not help myself, I cried when I was alone. But it never took long, and he followed me to my room or wherever I was. He could not bear to see me crying. He took me in his arms; he kissed me again and again and started to apologize. I stopped him. I could not be angry with him. I pitied him too much.
These occurrences became less frequent after we were married, and after a few years they disappeared completely.
In retrospect I judge these attacks differently, and I believe I understand the reason for them. Lu wrote some notes in 1940, and I read them again and again. He wrote of Austria and of Carl Menger, who as early as 1910 recognized that not only Austria but the whole world was getting nearer to a catastrophe. Lu, thinking alike, tried to fight this with all the means he had at his disposal. But he recognized the fight would be hopeless, and he got depressed—as were all the best minds in Europe in the twenties and thirties. He knew that if the world would turn its back to capitalism and liberalism (in the old sense of the word) it would tumble into wars and destruction that would mean the end of civilization. This terrible fight against corruption, against the foes of liberty and the free market had broken the spirit of Menger, had thrown a dark shadow over the life of Lu’s teacher and friend Max Weber, and had destroyed the vitality and the will to live of his friend and collaborator Wilhelm Rosenberg.
Theirs was a fight for a world that did not want to be helped. Few people recognized the danger, and even fewer were ready to fight alongside Lu. It was like being on a sinking ship on which people were dancing though the end was near. Lu recognized the danger. He knew how to help his fellow passengers. He tried to lead them to the right exit, but they did not follow him—and now doom knocked at the door.
When Lu and I came to the United States, he saw the greatness of the country and he believed in the future of America. He hoped she would be able to resist socialists, Communists, and inflationists alike. Inflation was the great peril he had always warned of. He got new hope. The attacks I mentioned above disappeared; the veil of depression left his soul, and with new hope and energy he took up his work in this country. How he would judge the situation today, I don’t dare to think.
As astonishing as it may sound, Lu adapted more quickly to marriage than I did. For me the change was tremendous. I was living in another country, in an environment completely different from my circle of friends in Vienna. I had to arrange an apartment that was too small for a couple to live in. Lu never felt the lack of space. He had his studio, his books, and his desk. From the beginning, his room was for me a sanctuary that could not and must not be changed. What made it so difficult for me was the awareness that I had to change my pattern of life completely if I wanted to make him happy. I knew this could only be done if I could make his life my life. His work should be more important to me than anything I could do, and only if I could keep this feeling alive in me would our marriage be the success he was hoping for.
We stayed in Geneva until August, and gradually I became better acquainted with Lu’s friends and colleagues. I grew very close to Mrs. Roepke. Whenever she could help me with advice, she did so. We met the Roepkes socially very often. Professor Roepke had shown the courage to resist the Nazis openly, and he knew very well that he could never return to Germany as long as they were at the helm of the government—nor did he want to.
The Roepkes had twin daughters, very pretty young girls, who were always moving around on their bicycles, even going over the border into France to shop for their mother. I had never seen so many bicycles before. At lunchtime, when the people went home from offices, shops and schools, hordes of bicycle riders were moving over the bridges and around the lake. Lovers would often ride together, the boy holding his arm around the shoulder of the girl, a terror to the motorists. Driving was more dangerous in Geneva than it is at the rush hour in New York.
Besides Professors Rappard, Kelsen, and Roepke there were other famous scholars teaching at the institute: Professor Paul Mantoux, codirector of the institute, whose son, Etienne, was Lu’s special favorite. Then there were Professors Louis Baudin, Guglielmo Ferrero, and Pitman Potter. Most of these scholars seemed to me, a newcomer and complete stranger, like the gods in Greek mythology, distant, remote, and impenetrable. In retrospect, I am sure I was completely wrong. I simply looked upon them with the same awe that students, who did not know him, looked upon Lu. I was wrong, because like all human beings, these men had gone through suffering, all of them had their share of personal disappointments.
Professor Ferrero, the famous historian and author, was very tall, with a tiny goatee, always impeccably dressed in a dark gray or black suit. He had not only lost his country when Mussolini came to power; he had also lost his only son. Neither he nor his wife would ever smile again.
Then there was Professor Maurice Bourquin, who was head of the International Department of Law at the University of Geneva and who taught diplomatic history at the institute. His marital difficulties were known to everyone at the institute, but they were discretely concealed until he and his beautiful, elegant wife were finally reconciled.
Two weeks after Lu and I were married, we invited the students in Lu’s summer course for tea. There were many young Americans among them. I remember one of them was the niece of Christopher Morley. It was a gay afternoon, and the windows were opened to let the warm summer breeze flow through the rooms. When the lights were turned on, all the young people were still with us. Some neighbors called up to complain about the noise. In the four years he had lived in his apartment, that had never before happened to Professor von Mises. I was amused about it, but I knew I had to be more careful in the future.
In spite of the gay parties, the atmosphere in Geneva was becoming more gloomy. Every night we listened to the radio and followed the political events in Germany. Austria had been swallowed up, and Hitler made no secret of his intentions toward Czechoslovakia. I got letters from people all over the world asking me to send tea, coffee, or chocolate to their relatives and friends in Austria and Germany. Sometimes we even sent hard-boiled eggs. We helped whenever we could. Our living room looked like a miniature Red Cross office. I was always writing, packing, shipping.
In August we went on vacation, first to Plombières in France, a beautiful summer resort where Gitta stayed with us, then via Nancy to Paris, where Lu had to attend a meeting. Lu drove all the way, and as much as I love him and admire his genius, I must confess I never felt safe with him in a car. He was not a good driver. He was so tense at the wheel that a conversation was impossible. His lips were firmly pressed together, as if he were about to challenge the most dangerous obstacle. Heavy traffic made him nervous, but he never would confess his difficulties or let me drive, though he knew I had a license. Believe it or not, he loved to drive, and I did not want to take this pleasure away from him, though sometimes we were in real danger. I remember once when we went up a narrow curving road to the top of a mountain; the car suddenly was half hanging over a precipice, only the back part still on firm ground. Trembling, we got out of the car. Other people had to help us back up. We drove on. Lu never said a word about the danger we had been in; neither did I.
On the trip through France everything went well. When we came to Paris, Lu parked the car in the outskirts of town to avoid the traffic. Here for the first time I met Dr. Lucy Friedmann, a former professor of French in Vienna, who later became a very close friend of mine and who—three years later—married Professor Louis Rougier, an outstanding scholar and personality, one of Lu’s closest friends. Lucy is one of the most feminine women I know. With clear blue eyes, her face bears the expression of a naughty madonna. I had met Professor Rougier before, in Geneva, and had “quietly” listened when he spoke to Lu about Benjamin Constant and the book he was writing about him.
Lu had asked Lucy, who knew Paris almost better than she knew Vienna, to reserve a room for us in a good hotel. She made a reservation in a hotel the like of which I never thought existed. It had a “bathroom,” but it was not a real room with closed walls and doors; it was only a tub and a toilet, separated by a thin partition, with no ceiling above it. This was supposed to be our honeymoon apartment in Paris! Even worse were the beds. I was frightened to undress and lie down. After a sleepless night, we moved out at nine the next morning and went to the Hotel Monsigny, where we felt more comfortable. Lucy’s explanation for recommending the other hotel was that “with the view of the Palais Royal, with the geraniums right before your eyes, history will come to life for you right where you are.” In this case, even Lu renounced history for a good, clean bed and a real bathroom.
The conference in Paris was arranged by Professor Rougier for August 26-30, 1938, its main purpose the discussion of Walter Lippmann’s The Good Society, which had just been published in France under the title La Cité Libre. In this book Walter Lippmann tried to explain the shortcomings of the Manchester School, and the main purpose of the meeting was to show that the free market economy, if completely unhampered, could well satisfy the needs of the present world. As a result of the conference, le Centre international pour la renovation du liberalism (the International Center for the Revival of Liberalism) was founded. But, because of the war, it was forced to close in 1940.
This meeting was attended by many economists and journalists. There I first met Walter Lippmann, with whose views—then and in the future—Lu did not agree. I also met for the first time Professor F.A. von Hayek. He was already famous and was teaching at the London School of Economics.
In January, 1927, when Lu founded the Austrian Institute for Business Research in Vienna (Das Oesterreichische Konjunkturinstitut), he did so not only because he thought it to be imperatively necessary for Austria, but, according to Mrs. Wolf-Thieberger, Lu’s secretary, “because he had to help Hayek find the right start in life.” Lu’s interest in Hayek never waned, and Professor Hayek’s affection and regard for Lu have always warmed my heart.
Hayek is the Vienna scholar who, more than any of the others who studied there with Lu, kept his views and writings close to Lu’s teachings. As the years passed, Hayek and Lu became very good friends, a natural result of their mutually congenial convictions. Years later, in 1962, when Hayek left the University of Chicago to go to Freiburg University in Germany, Lu was invited to attend a banquet in Chicago in Hayek’s honor. He could not attend, but he sent a written contribution which—I feel—giving as it does so much credit to Hayek, is a credit to Lu’s own modesty and humbleness. This speech, Professor Hayek told me, was never read, nor was it ever given to Hayek. I wonder why? The reader will find it, as Appendix One, at the end of this book.
We returned to Geneva in September, when Lu’s seminar started. He taught only two hours weekly, every Saturday from 9 to 11 A.M. The rest of the time he was busy writing. At that time he still had the habit of working late at night. Often it was after 1 A.M. when he went to bed, very, very careful not to disturb me. But I heard him anyhow. In 1938 he was not only working on Nationaloekonomie, the German predecessor of his monumental treatise Human Action, he was also reading the galley proofs of the French translation of Die Gemeinwirtschaft (Socialism). He still wrote in German, though his lectures were held in English and French. Everything he wrote was first done in longhand. Since he had a very efficient secretary at the institute, his tremendous correspondence and the copying of his manuscripts were done at the office.
From the very beginning Lu showed me what he had written, but at that time I was still too conscious of my lack of economic knowledge to dare to make any suggestions. Only once, I remember, did I make a remark, which must have had some meaning to him. When I read his views about free enterprise and the free market, I told him that I felt that the most important fact about the free market was that it helps poor people. They are able to get more consumer goods and they make a better living this way than under a socialist system. Therefore this fact should be emphasized and brought out as clearly as possible. He looked at me, thought for a moment and then he said, “I guess you are right.” I can’t say, of course, how far it influenced him.
Though I had nothing to do with his work, I was fully occupied at all times. I was taking courses in French literature at the university and had a lot of reading to do for my classes, and we were seeing many guests. At least twice weekly we had dinner guests or, what was more customary in Geneva, luncheon guests. That was no difficulty for me then. We had a cook and a dining room. I only had to prepare the menu, do the shopping, set the table, and arrange the flowers. These gatherings were really international. Sometimes the discussion was in three or four languages, because many diplomats and journalists had joined our circle. The Austrian ambassador, Baron von Pfluegl, later in exile, was a frequent guest at our table, and as much as Lu loved to talk to him, these conversations always left him depressed.
In May, 1939, Lu went to Paris for a few days (without me) to deliver a lecture about “The Non-Neutrality of Money” at the École pratique des hautes études, and in the first days of July he gave a much discussed lecture at the Student Union Institute of World Affairs about the economics of autarky.
At that time we could still travel, and often, if only for a short trip, we went to France. Travelling with Lu meant for me to take a private course in history and art. His intellectual curiosity was boundless: what he had not known before, he had to dive into. But he never consulted a Baedeker or a Fodor, these things he knew. The only guide he ever referred to was the Guide Michelin, for he was a great lover of good French cuisine.
Often on a Sunday, when we stayed in Geneva, we climbed to the top of Mount Salève, the so-called house-mountain of Geneva. You can either walk up, go by car, or use the “téléphérique,” a sort of cable car. From the top you have a wonderful view far over the Alps and the Jura Mountains. The whole excursion takes only three hours by foot, and for lunch or dinner you can easily be back home.
Lu’s seminar started at 9 A.M. He was always very punctual, so we had to get up each Saturday at 6:30. Shaving, bathing and dressing took almost an hour and a half with him. “I get my best ideas while I shave,” he used to say, “I have written books during that time.” I too was punctual and still am. Punctuality gets into one’s blood once one has been on the stage. And, being married to Lu, this was indeed helpful. Whatever he had to do and wherever he had to be, he was always ready before the appointed time. I remember only too well when we met in Vienna for our dinner appointments. Our rendezvous place was usually the Stock-im-Eisen, a landmark building at the corner of Graben and Kaerntnerstrasse, two minutes from my home. Once in a while I would beat him to the rendezvous, and then I would hide and watch him arriving and waiting at the corner. He would look around impatiently, make a few steps to one side, go back from where he came, look to the other side, inspect his watch, fiddle with his necktie. But when I appeared, he was suddenly completely composed. Not the slightest gesture would betray his former impatience. But he surely did not like to wait!
When we went out for dinner in Geneva, as early as I started, Lu was always waiting for me. He once told me that Boehm-Bawerk, the great economist, told his students: “Young men, you will all get married one day. You will all—at one time or another—have to wait for your wives. Always have a book handy. You will get a lot of reading done in this way.”
We often went to the theater in Geneva, and though I felt the standard of the local productions was low, once in a while a famous French company came over from Paris. These performances were really great. Whenever we were in the theater or in the opera and the curtain went up, Lu at once became so concentrated, so absorbed, there was an immediate communication between him and the stage. When he put his glasses on his nose, nothing existed but the stage. I would say he even forgot about me. He must have been the ideal “dream” public for all actors and singers.
This tremendous power of concentration, which he also showed while reading or writing, was for me an explanation not only of his remarkable memory, but also his health. As concentrated as he was in his work, so he was in his sleep. If Lu wanted to rest—wherever he was, in a car, in an airplane, in his bed, at night or during the day—he lay down, put a handkerchief over his eyes, and the world was gone—he was asleep. Lu’s capacity for sleep whenever he needed it was, in my opinion, one of the reasons for his physical well-being and his amazing intellectual output.
Our life in Geneva was steadily involved in and influenced by politics. The signing of the Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact in August, 1939, Hitler’s so-called peace speech to the Germans on the evening of August 31, 1939, in which he claimed that all his peace proposals to Poland had been rejected, were followed by us on the radio with the greatest excitement. We knew Hitler lied; while he spoke, the most reliable S.S. men, dressed in Polish uniforms, were blowing up the German radio stations in Poland and the German artillery was crossing the border. (This trick—German soldiers dressed in foreign uniforms—was used everywhere.) Hitler’s bombers were flying over Polish landing fields, destroying Polish planes on the ground. The German troops moved with such unbelievable speed that Poland was effectively defeated in a few hours.
The Western powers clearly knew the next decision had to be theirs. When, on September 3, Chamberlain told the British Parliament that Great Britain and France were at war with Germany, it meant the beginning of the most horrible war in history, and for me personally the beginning of a never-ending fear for Lu.
Switzerland immediately prepared for the worst. The Swiss are a peace loving people. For three centuries they had lived in harmony with three neighbors, three languages, and three religions. They had an excellently equipped, small modern army, a sort of standing militia. Every Swiss citizen had to report for military duty once yearly, and the general feeling was enthusiasm for peace and a hatred for aggression.
One of the first actions of the Swiss government was the requisitioning of all foreign-made cars. Lu was one of the first who got the order to deliver his beloved Ford. He never saw it again. The Swiss government paid him a small remuneration for his car. But, on the whole, the automobile investment was a loss.
The atmosphere in Geneva had completely changed. New refugees from the newly occupied countries arrived daily. Hotels and apartments were filled and streets and coffee houses were crowded. But along with the newcomers came Hitler’s spies. The atmosphere, once so tranquil and peaceful, was now filled with rumors. Fear touched everyone. The Sunday excursions to France had to stop. We also avoided going to restaurants for dinner and taking afternoon tea in the beautiful gardens at the lake. One did not know who might be sitting at the next table to overhear the conversation. Friends met at private houses, where as early as September, 1939, dark shades had to be installed and not a gleam of light was allowed to show through the windows.
Geneva gradually became a haven for many well-known refugees, among them many German and Austrian authors. Robert Musil was one of them, and he often came to see us. He was a novelist who, though born in Austria, preferred to live in Berlin. Ruined by inflation, he went from Berlin to Vienna. But when the Nazis came in 1938 he had to emigrate again. He died in Geneva in 1942, in utmost poverty. Rhoda-Rhoda was another of the refugee authors who frequently visited with us. Originally an officer in the German army, he was well-known for his political satires and witty short stories, formerly published in the Simplizissimus and Jugend in Gemany. He always wore a red vest; no one ever had seen him without it. More than ever his stories were laughed at all over Europe and feared in Germany, where they were considered forbidden literature.
A frequent guest was Dr. Helene (“Lene”) Lieser. She needed no invitation, she came and went when she felt like it. She was Viennese born and educated and one of the gifted participants in Lu’s seminar in Vienna. She was highly intelligent, practical minded, and very efficient. When Hitler came to Vienna and she had difficulty in leaving, she married a man almost unknown to her. Such marriages were very common. They were marriages in name only and were never consummated. The man who married a woman in this way asked a high price for giving her his name and the opportunity for her to leave Austria. He also consented to immediate divorce once his “wife” was safely out of the country.
When I met Lene Lieser she was past the prime of her life. She must have been good looking when she was young. When I met her, times and circumstances had greatly changed her. She was never well-groomed, a button of her blouse might be missing, a zipper might be broken or her slip might be showing. These things were not important to her anymore. Her main interest was helping other people. She had an enormous correspondence, and no one ever asked her in vain for help or assistance. For many years she was the secretary of the International Economic Association in Paris. She died of cancer in 1962.
Despite the increasing threat from the Nazis, Lu worked more than ever before. He loved Geneva, the freedom of teaching, the atmosphere Rappard had created within the institute, the steady friendly contact with the other professors. He still had no fear for the future. He believed the French would fight and could resist the German attacks. Hitler’s defeat—Lu was sure—was just a matter of time. He never believed in the “tausendjaehrige Reich.” Lu’s judgment about France’s moral and combat strength was the only political error I ever knew him to make. His other judgments—in politics or economics—always proved to be correct.
But his trust in France was wrong. The famous Maginot Line, the construction of which was started in 1930 and finished in 1935, was considered by the French to be impregnable. But great errors were made. One was that the line ended at the Belgian frontier, so the way into Belgium was open. The second was that too many soldiers were behind the lines for defense and too few outside for battle. This was a weak and critical point, which, from the beginning, Hitler had taken into consideration. When Poland was conquered, Hitler ordered that no action whatsoever should be taken along the Western front. “The responsibility to open the fight must rest solely with England or France,” he declared. All winter long there was neither war nor peace, hardly any hostilities, no battles. This situation greatly weakened the morale of the French troops, and the mood of France became the mood of Switzerland.
One night in October or November, 1939, I do not remember the exact date, all Geneva was peacefully asleep, when suddenly a terrible uproar awoke everyone. Sirens were screaming, fire engines were shrieking. We rushed to the window, carefully lifted a bit of the curtain, and saw the darkness of the night pierced by searchlights. Shortly afterward, squadrons of Swiss fighters were in the air.
What had happened? The Royal Air Force apparently had made a geographical error. They were supposed to bomb Hitler’s retreat in Bavaria, and they mistook Lake Geneva for the Koenigssee near Berchtesgaden. I doubt that this will be found in any history book.
It was December 9, a cold, bleak winter day; the streets were full of snow. Lu had his seminar and I had to do some errands. When I came home and went as usual to his studio to greet him, he sat very quietly at his desk and did not get up to kiss me as he usually did. I looked at him and saw immediately that something was wrong. He was very pale and just sat there, neither reading nor writing. “What’s wrong, darling?” I asked him. And then he told me that in the morning, on his way to the institute, he had slipped on the icy snow and fallen and hurt himself. I asked, “Where?” He showed me his right hand, the joint of which was terribly swollen. “Have you seen the doctor?” I asked. “No,” he said, “I went to the institute, delivered my lecture and directed the discussion afterwards. I had no time for the doctor.” I was shocked. He must have experienced terrible pain, to judge by the swelling of the hand. I suspected a fracture, called a taxi, and went with him to the hospital, where they took X rays and confirmed the fracture. For almost six weeks his arm was in a cast, but he never complained; he just went on working.
By this time Hitler had already set the date for an attack on the West. Of course, we did not know it then. We only felt the mounting tension. On April 9, 1940, Hitler invaded Norway, and on the same day German troops marched into Denmark without finding any resistance. The English wanted to help with air attacks on Norway; they started on April 15, much too late to be of any help. “Too little and too late,” was Churchill’s judgment later.
The tension in Geneva was growing. The Haberlers had left for the United States, and Professor Kelsen had made plans to go there, too. Professor Potter, an American citizen, had just lost his wife (a great friend of mine) and had accepted a new position at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
When Hitler invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, I really became frightened. I had to talk to Lu. He did not want to leave. He never had been so happy as he was in Geneva, and he did not feel any fear. I reminded him of the night the Nazis came to Vienna. I told him the Nazis would never take him off their black list. I begged him, I implored him to leave, to think of me, if he would not think of himself. But it took the breakdown of the Maginot Line, the occupation of Paris on June 14, and the raising of the German swastika on the highest point of the Eiffel Tower to make Lu aware of the danger. Finally, he gave in and promised to make the necessary preparations for us to leave for the United States.
In his heart, of course, Lu was reluctant to leave not only because of his love for the work at the institute, but because he feared how America, the home of young people, the paradise of youth, would receive him, a man of almost sixty. He was also afraid of the language difference. At that time he was more at ease with French than with English. He had studied French for at least six years in the Academic Gymnasium, and he spoke it fluently with almost no accent. English he had first learned by reading, and that, he always insisted, was the wrong method. Often he said, jokingly, “If you don’t learn a foreign language as a child, you later have to learn it with a sleeping dictionary.”
The change of languages meant more to him than it would to an average citizen. Language was his most important tool, his essential device for communicating his ideas, his means of earning his living. I was not frightened of anything. My belief in him was unshakable and so was my confidence that a man of his stature could neither be suppressed nor overlooked.
From the moment German troops moved into France every line of communication between Switzerland and that country was closed. Starting June 11, no cars were allowed, no trains were running, no planes were flying, no buses were moving, no letters or telegrams came through. This was a great source of worry for me. I knew we could not hear from Gitta, and in no case could we manage to get her on our visa to take her with us. She would have to stay in Besançon, where we had taken her a few months before to study at the university. She was living with friends, but she was so young, and now she had to be on her own.
Knowing Lu’s disposition, I had to worry even more about him. How would he bear up under the trip to the United States, the uncertainty of the future, the unrest that was bound to come?
On June 21 the armistice between France and Germany was signed, at Hitler’s demand, in the same railroad car where, in 1918, the Germans had to accept the armistice and the conditions dictated by General Foch—an armistice which gravely wounded their pride and aroused much hatred in Germany. Lu got in touch with Professor Benjamin Anderson, a good friend of his, who at that time was chief economist at the Chase Bank in New York. Professor Anderson immediately took the necessary steps and got for both of us a nonquota visa, which allowed us to enter the United States immediately. Lu had his library packed, and whatever else we planned to take along with us was prepared for shipping. Every day we went to the various agencies to hear whether and when we could leave, but Switzerland was surrounded by German troops and no one could move. The airlines as well as the bus authorities had promised us seats on their first trip out. We had to get all the necessary visas—the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French.
The news from the shipping agencies never changed. It was nerve shattering. The Roepkes also pondered whether they should leave. Roepke even went so far as to travel with Lu to Zurich to get his American visa from the American consul there. But in the end the Roepkes decided to stay, because of their three young children. The uncertainty and tension grew from day to day. We tried to get passage on the American Export Line from Lisbon, but they could not promise anything. The only thing they could do for us was to put our names on the waiting list.
On June 18, Lu received a telegram from Dean Robert Calkins: “Invite you accept position lecturer and research associate professor University California, July to December.” Lu was in no way happy about this offer, but it meant a possibility and a way out.
A few days later, Professor Potter received a letter, dated June 18, 1940, from E. F. Penrose, professor of economics at the University of California. It read: “He [Mises] has been accepted as an American non-quota immigrant and his arrival to take up a position in the United States is eagerly awaited at the University and other American universities. I trust that in the present unsettled state of Europe he will not be obstructed or be in any way interfered with in reaching the United States. If he should be interfered with in any way the fact will become known in the United States and would certainly influence public opinion strongly against whatever persons or whatever country prevented him—as an accepted immigrant—from coming to the United States.”
On July 1 we were told: still no planes. On July 2 we again went with Professor Potter to the French consulate, since we did not have the visas required to cross France. But again we were turned down. The next day, in response to a letter from Darius Milhaud to the French embassy, we got our visas. Milhaud, the well-known composer, was married to a famous French actress who had been teaching Gitta. On the same evening our luggage left, and we got the news that we would have seats the following day on the first bus leaving Geneva for France.
