My Years with Ludwig von Mises

THE FIRST year in New York is not a happy memory for me. We moved five times. We first stayed at the Hotel Park Chambers on Fifty-sixth Street, where Dr. Schutz had taken rooms for us; then we moved to a very nice private apartment on Riverside Drive, loaned to us by a friend, then to the Hotel Park Crescent on Riverside Drive and Eighty-sixth Street. For a while we lived in a furnished apartment until, in 1942, I found the apartment on West End Avenue where we lived for so many years and where I still live today.

Lu’s spirits were at a low point during this time. Very often he would say: “If it were not for you, I would not want to live any more.” He missed his work, his books, and his income. He had a very good salary in Switzerland, for in Europe teaching by a renowned scholar like Lu was valued much more highly than it was in the United States at that time—not only from the monetary point of view, but also in the eyes of the public. A professor was a learned man who had dedicated decades of his life to studying, reading, and writing, and this timespan of work had to be calculated and paid for. Now, here in New York, we had to live from Lu’s savings, and to see his money dwindle is a sad sight for an economist.

Lu did not talk about this to other people, but he had friends who knew his situation without his ever having mentioned it. One of these was Henry Hazlitt, who at that time was financial editor of the New York Times. He knew Lu through his books. Hazlitt had read the English edition of Socialism, which had been published in London in 1936. He wrote to Lu about it, and since then they had been in constant correspondence. Hazlitt was one of the first people Lu met in New York and one of the first to take an active interest in getting Lu established in America. They met for the first time on August 21, 1940, less than three weeks after our arrival. They lunched together at the Century Club, and on September 3, I met him and his wife Frances for dinner at their home on Washington Square. Frances’ intelligence impressed me greatly. The Hazlitts, well aware of Lu’s situation, were extremely hospitable and kind.

Every day Lu had a luncheon appointment. I mention it because a few years later he rather preferred to lunch at home and take his rest afterwards, which he needed for his work. It is interesting to note that, in spite of his low spirits, he was full of ideas. Every day he met new people and he had new plans. He soon decided not to go to Berkeley. He felt that New York was the cultural center of the United States and it was here that he wanted to stay.

Very soon invitations came in for him as a guest speaker or a lecturer. On November 7, 1940, he delivered a lecture before a banking seminar at the School of Business, Columbia University, on “Postwar Economic Reconstruction of Europe”; on November 19 he spoke at the Political Economy Club on the “Non-Neutrality of Money”; on November 25 he participated in a discussion at the New School for Social Research. On December 5 we went to Cambridge, where he delivered a lecture at Harvard’s Littauer Hall, arranged for him by his brother Richard, who since 1938 had been professor of mathematics and aviation at Harvard.

During our stay in Cambridge I met, for the first and only time, Professor Joseph A. Schumpeter, who had just been married for the third time. His new wife was an elegant and intelligent American. They kept a lovely, well-run home. The discussion at lunch was lively but careful, both men aware of their parts as host and guest. Schumpeter knew of course that Lu did not agree with many of his views.

This might be a good opportunity to mention a little story that Joe Keckeissen, a former student of Lu’s and now a professor at the University Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala, has told me and that is corroborated by Bettina Bien-Greaves through her shorthand notes. One night in his seminar, Lu was commenting on the late Professor Schumpeter. “There are many people,” he humorously disclosed, “who stand steadfastly by the social doctrines of Professor Schumpeter. They do not seem to remember that when the great professor was minister of finance he was not able to protect Austria against the most disastrous inflation in its history and that, when the great professor was president of a bank (Biedermann Bank), the bank failed.”

The afternoon after the visit with Schumpeter, Lu lead a discussion at Littauer Hall, the students asking questions about his lecture of the previous night. In the evening he gave another lecture at Fletcher Hall. In those years he never seemed to get tired. The same month in 1940 he also lectured as a guest in Princeton and had lunch with Winfield W. Riefler at the Institute for Advanced Study. I remember Lu once told me that Riefler’s job was the only position that really would have made him happy.

Riefler had worked for some time in Geneva, where he was a frequent guest at our house. Lu always enjoyed his presence. Riefler had written a book about the Federal Reserve System, which was very much talked about. Consequently, he became one of the permanent members of the Institute for Advanced Study, the job Lu had spoken about. Later he moved to the Federal Reserve Board as an adviser.

It was very unusual for Lu to express a longing for something out of his reach. It was more revealing to me than any other remark or complaint he might have made. Mostly I had to feel my way, search in the dark like a mole digging its way underground. Questioning would have made him lock the door of his soul. When I told Fritz Machlup—much, much later—about Lu’s wish, he replied, “And he would have been the right man at the right place.” Why did no one ever think of it?

From the moment we came to the United States—even before we had our own apartment and still lived in a small furnished place or in the hotel on Riverside Drive—Lu wanted company in the evening. He needed people, he needed discussions, he needed to air his opinions and hear the reactions of different minds.

In the beginning we saw more Europeans than Americans, but after a few years this changed automatically. There was a group of Europeans who had been Lu’s students in Vienna, and another group of friends whom he had met socially. Among them was the famous psychoanalyst Heinz Hartmann and his wife, Dora, who, when she came to the U.S. was a pediatrician, but later became a specialist in psychoanalysis of young adults. These evenings were among the most interesting I can remember, as Dr. Hartmann—a former student of Freud—was always analyzing Hitler, trying to get to the bottom of his soul and discover his future plans. Then there was Dr. Felix Kaufmann, the witty and genial philospher of the social sciences, who once wrote a poem about the Mises seminar (reprinted in the Mont Pelerin Quarterly of October 16, 1961) as a tribute on Lu’s eightieth birthday. We saw also quite a bit of Dr. Stephy Brown, an always enthusiastic, gay, and energetic former student of Lu’s, who later became a full-time professor at Brooklyn College. Fritz Machlup, in 1940 a professor at the University of Buffalo, also came to see us whenever he could. Later, when he was at Princeton, trevelling and lecturing continuously, he had less time to spare. More about him later.

Especially close to us were Dr. Alfred Schutz and his wife, Ilse. It was he who welcomed us at the pier in New Jersey. He was the first person to try to lift Lu’s sunken spirits. He was a sociologist and a banker and had never forgotten that he got his first job as a financial adviser through Lu, a job which he later hated but had to maintain for practical reasons. It helped him to go on with his scholarly work. He taught for years at the New School for Social Research. He was a most interesting personality, who not only looked like Beethoven, but had a special passion and understanding for music. He died in 1959. Ilse, his wife, considered it her life task to publish his many unfinished writings, and thanks to her indefatigable effort, Alfred Schutz’ work is better known today than it was in his lifetime.

One of the few men Lu really worshipped was Dr. Richard Schuller, former under secretary for economic affairs in the Austrian State Department, who lectured for years at the New School for Social Research. His daughter, Dr. Ilse Mintz, had been one of Lu’s students in Vienna. She and her husband, Dr. Max Mintz, were frequent visitors to our home. Ilse became a member of the staff of the National Bureau for Economic Research and professor of economics at Columbia University.

Dr. Schuller was a small, fragile man, but when he talked about Vienna, about the past, about politics, you had to listen. When he was ninety years old and had only recently retired from the New School, he told me that he was taking up the study of mathematics, found it fascinating, and got real pleasure out of it. He lived to be more than 100 years old, and I never saw a warmer, more affectionate relationship than that which existed between the members of this remarkable family.

One of the men closest to Lu’s thinking was the late Dr. Ernest Geyringer, a Viennese industrialist, whose keen mind Lu always admired. Geyringer very soon left New York and lived for years with his family in the South. Lu greatly missed the exchange of thought with this friend.

Also very close to us were Dr. Fritz Unger and Dr. Annie Unger, his wife. Both were former students of Lu’s in Vienna. They often took us out and showed us the town, but whenever Dr. Unger came visiting with us, he immediately tried to have a few minutes alone with me. He was deeply interested in Lu’s future and had to get the latest news. He knew he would never hear anything from Lu. He was a very good friend, helpful, kindhearted, and warm, and both Lu and I missed him greatly when he died quite unexpectedly. Annie, his wife, was a passionate traveler. But we saw her often, and although she was a lawyer, grandmother, and a tremendously well-read woman, she never got over the feeling a student has toward her professor. This is a typical European attitude usually not encountered in the U.S. Here, after the first meeting with his professor, a student may grasp his teacher’s shoulder with a merry “Hi, Prof! How are you today?” The professor, to him, is simply another human being who does his work.

Then we had some lawyer friends, all of them former students of Lu’s in Vienna. After completing their studies here, two of them took up careers in New York. One of them was Dr. Adolphus Redley, a very devoted friend. He once wrote to me: “Deeply imbedded in my mind is the recollection of the totality of his [Lu’s] personality, devoted to the proposition that Economics is not a part of an Etatostic Technology, but has its deep roots in Humanities. This was the gospel which he spread and for which he will be remembered with gratitude and great affection.”

The second lawyer was Dr. Oscar Heitler. Heitler, a bachelor and a very frequent dinner guest of ours, was our steady companion and guide on our Sunday excursions into the environs of New York. Lu and I simply could not exist without walking and hiking. We had no car then, and, with Heitler, we often went by bus to Tarrytown to enjoy the beautiful Rockefeller estate, which was open to the public. In 1940 it was something unheard of in America to see people like us strolling around the Rockefeller gardens. More than once we were stopped by police and asked to explain what we were doing. When Dr. Heitler unexpectedly suffered a heart attack, he asked for me to be with him in the last hour of his life. Another very lonely man.

Very good friends of ours were Dr. and Mrs. Otto Kallir. He is a second cousin of Lu’s, and he, as well as his wife Fanny, were not only very interesting and cultivated people, but—what should count more—they were, and are, good and kind. He owns the Gallery of St. Etienne in New York City and—among others—he introduced the now famous Egon Schiele to this country. Dr. Kallir has always been interested in folk art. When, in 1939, he was shown some primitive American paintings, he was attracted to some done by an old lady named Anna Mary Robertson Moses. The paintings were uneven in quality, but in some of them Kallir found an original and fresh approach to painting. He gave her a “one man” show at his gallery, calling the exhibition “What a Farmwife Painted.” This was the beginning of the fabulous career of the artist who has since then become known all over the world as “Grandma Moses.”

Besides these friends whom we saw frequently, there was a steady flow of visitors from out of town or abroad. I always had to be prepared for surprise visitors.

Lu meanwhile had become connected with the National Bureau for Economic Research, and on Christmas, 1940, he got a letter from Dr. William J. Carson, the treasurer of the National Bureau, telling him “I am very glad to advise you that the Rockefeller Foundation has approved a grant of $2,500 to the National Bureau of Economic Research to extend its hospitality to you for a period of a year.” “This grant,” Dr. Carson wrote on February 16, 1941, “would be renewed for another year, beginning December, 1941.” Life started to look a little brighter to Lu. Though he had no books, no diaries to refer to, he started working on an “autobiography,” as he first called it. It is not an autobiography in the usual sense of the word. It contains nothing of his personal life, tells almost nothing about his family. He speaks about his schooling, his intellectual development, his work, and his ideas for future books. He explains the political situation in Austria and Germany and deplores the conditions at German and Austrian universities. The manuscript is handwritten in German and ends with his stay in Geneva. He wrote it in the last weeks of December, 1940. He gave it to me to keep, but when I read it—it was only two years after we were married—I was not ready for it. Only now I know how fascinating these memoirs are. In later years I often urged Lu to write a real autobiography. I even suggested he dictate it to me. His answer was: “You have my notes, that’s all people need to know about me.”

During the war Lu had no hopes for a German book market in the near future. In a letter to Hayek, written in November, 1941, Lu wrote: “As I do not want to increase further the collection of my posthumous books, I am writing now in English. I hope that I will succeed finishing within a year a volume critically dealing with the whole complex of ‘anti-orthodox’ doctrines and their consequences. I am, however, rather skeptical in regard to the practical results of our endeavors. It seems that the age of reason and common sense is gone forever. Reasoning and thinking have been replaced by empty slogans.”

After we had been in New York a year, our belongings arrived from Geneva, and we began looking for an apartment. Lu was determined to live on the West Side, on account of the good transportation to theaters and the nearness of the New York Public Library, a very important factor in his life. Without the library he could not do the work he really wanted to do during his first years in America. To be without his books meant for him what it would mean for a carpenter to be without his tools.

I soon found the apartment I was looking for. At that time, in early 1942, there was an overflow of empty apartments. My sole wish was to find a place that was absolutely quiet and where no noise whatsoever would disturb Lu when he was working. Soon I found the house I thought was suitable. It had at that time a first-class landlord, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and the house was excellently kept. The room I selected for Lu was completely isolated. It had a view of the Hudson River, and we could enjoy the most beautiful sunsets. Far below was the West Side Highway, but no noise, no telephone call, no doorbell could ever disturb him. The apartment is on the top floor of the building, high enough for even the noise of the highway to be unheard. It really was an ideal working spot for Lu. He had shelves built all along the wall; other shelves were all over the place, also in the living room. I used to say “I was married not only to Lu, I was married to books.” When the neighborhood deteriorated, I tried for years to persuade him to move, but it was in vain. He did not want his books touched, he did not want to miss them again, not even for a short time.

Now they are all together at Hillsdale College, under the special protection and care of Dr. George Roche, Hillsdale’s president. It was my most urgent wish—and Lu agreed—to have the library he loved so much preserved and kept together as a complete unit. His special wish was that the books should be kept in the United States.

The whole first year of our stay in America, while Lu developed various plans for the future, I tried to help Gitta get out of occupied France. It was an almost impossible task, for there was no way of getting in touch with her. For the first time I saw that Hazlitt’s friendship consisted not only of enthusiasm for Lu’s ideas and thoughts, but also included a warm and personal regard. Hazlitt was the one who helped us get Gitta a visa for the United States. He was on friendly terms with the assistant secretary of state, Breckinridge Long, and only through diplomatic channels could Gitta be reached and given the necessary papers. It was a very, very complex procedure, but it worked so well that on the same day she got the visa, we received the news. Only the mother of a young daughter will understand what this meant to me. Hazlitt himself may long have forgotten about this incident; I haven’t and I never will.

From the time of our arrival in New York in August, 1940, Lu had been in contact with New York University. On August 30 he had lunch with Drs. Herbert B. Dorau and J. T. Madden, dean of the School of Commerce and Finance. Both men took a lively interest in him. On September 7,1940, Madden wrote to Lu that he was interested in Lu’s remarks that “totalitarianism really began in Germany at the time of the installation of the foreign exchange control in 1931.” “It occurred to me,” Madden wrote,

that it might be desirable to have for publication sometime an article from you on the general topic of about, say, five thousand words. As I conceive it, it would perhaps deal briefly with the social and economic development after the war, leading up to the crisis of 1931 with some references to the political conditions at the time. And from that point lead on to the establishment of foreign exchange control and the economic factors which gave rise to the increasing degree of governmental control over business and imports and exports and how that led then into the continually increasing encroachment of the government upon economic life in Germany. . . . I have been canvassing in the early week to see what possibilities there may be here with us and I hope that we may be able to come to some prompt conclusion.

I wonder whether this letter and the preceding conversation may not have planted the seeds for Lu’s book Omnipotent Government.

Coming to the United States did not mean for Lu immediate Americanization. He watched, observed, read, and learned. He followed every phase of American politics, domestic and foreign, with deepest interest. He met new people every day and widened his outlook. We both had applied immediately for citizenship. But we never considered ourselves Americans until we got our papers. It was in January, 1946, that Lu received his citizenship, almost six months before I got mine. The importance of this was not the paper, it was the change in Lu’s mind, his heart. Deep inside he knew he “belonged” now; he was at home again, for the first time in many years. And in a land of freedom. His joy in his new citizenship was so intense that even if I had not known how he had suffered before, I could have deduced it from his happiness.

Lu was a very modest man, almost frugal in his habits. He slept in his studio, on a narrow daybed with a firm mattress. I used to compare him to the former Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, who slept all through his life on a simple iron bedstead. Once I asked him whether he had ever met the emperor. “Yes,” he said, “and he even spoke to me.” “What was the occasion?” I inquired. And he went on: “It was at a military exercise after I had finished my year of training. I must have been nineteen years old then. The emperor came for inspection and he passed me sitting on my black horse. He stopped and said: ‘Beautiful horse . . . very beautiful horse.’ And then—after he had uttered these profound and pregnant words—he rode on.”

We were both early risers. When I read, during World War II, that Churchill always had a champagne breakfast in bed to save his energy, I thought that might be a very good idea for Lu, too. Since that time, to the last month of his life, I gave Lu his tray every morning at 7:30, together with the New York Times. But instead of champagne he got his milk. When I had arranged his tray next to his bed, he took my hand, kissed it, and pulled me down so he could kiss my face, my hair. It was almost a ritual.

I took care to have Lu’s room cleaned while he was in the bathroom. He hated any disturbance while he worked, and I would say he started working in the bathroom. More than once he was so deeply in his thoughts that he forgot to turn the faucet off, and only when his feet were deep in water did he realize what was happening around him. Then I had to rush in and help him and assure him again and again that it really did not matter, for he was unhappy that he caused extra work for me. When he was dressed, Lu went immediately to his desk and started to write, simply continuing the flow of thoughts he was working on while in the bathroom. Only twice each morning did I come into his room: once at 10:30 with a light snack (he was on a diet, under doctor’s order) and a little later with the mail. He never answered the telephone. No bells, no street noise could be heard in his room. But we could see from our windows the never-ending traffic on the West Side Highway. Only two or three times in thirty-two years did the traffic stop. Both times were in the middle of a cold winter, and the snow was piled so high that the cars, buried, could not move. This motionless silence, after all the years of never-ending movement, was strange and fascinating and beautiful to look at.

In the summer of 1941, our first real summer in New York, we were very much affected by the heat and humidity, to which we were not accustomed. So we went on vacation in the White Mountains. We stayed at Glen House, at the foot of Mount Washington, a place then frequented mostly by Europeans. From the hotel, buses went up to the top of the mountain. Most of the visitors who came for the day left their cars in the parking lot. Before boarding a bus, they took a quick try at one of the gambling machines set up near the filling station. The slot machines were busy, since the buses left frequently. The passengers tried a few times at the slot machines and then left in a hurry to get their seats on the bus. At that moment, the attendants, mostly young boys, rushed to the machines, and after risking a few coins, usually hit the jackpot and emptied the machines. Lu and I were always amused to watch them.

Now everything has changed. Glen House is nothing more than a store for postcards and knick-knacks. The gambling machines have disappeared; only the gas and bus stations remain.

In our first year at Glen House we climbed to the top of Mount Washington three times. On Sunday, August 17, we left Pinkham Notch Camp at 9:35 A.M. Our goal was to climb up via Tuckerman Ravine. When we were above the timber line, a terrible gale started. There was no possibility of return or shelter. We could not even see the nearest rock to hold on, for a terrible snowstorm had started. The gale was driving the blinding white mass into our eyes. I became frightened, but Lu never lost his coolness and courage. He shouted to me and signalled every rock on which I was to take hold. Finally, at 3:30 in the afternoon we arrived at the top and stumbled into the restaurant.

When we opened the door, exhausted but relieved, a waiter hurried toward us with two glasses of brandy on a tray. They had watched our climb and our fight with the gale through their telescopes, ready for the moment when they would have to rush out to help us. One thing I know, without Lu I never would have made it. We went back by train. The following week we went to the top again, but this time by bus. We both had a deep unexplainable longing to be on the top of a mountain and see the world from there.

We managed to take every one of the excursions that the visitor to the White Mountains usually makes. On August 24, a clear day, we climbed Mount Madison via Osgood Trail, and on another beautiful day we walked with friends to the Great Gulf Shelter, seven hours of difficult climb on badly marked trails, with roots of trees constantly slowing us down. That summer we learned to love New England, and in most of the following years, when we did not go to Europe we summered in New Hampshire or in Vermont.

In September we were always back in New York and Lu started to work. One of Lu’s regular visitors was Arthur Goddard. Even before Lu’s books arrived from Europe, he needed help with his language problems. Goddard was recommended to him by Dr. Schutz, whom he had helped with similar problems. In the course of the years, Goddard really became irreplacable for Lu. He regularly came twice and sometimes three times weekly, staying for hours. Besides being well-read, studious, always desirous of learning, and interested in art and theater, he had a pleasant personality. After his visits Lu was always in a very good and relaxed mood. Sometimes I asked Arthur to correct one or another word of Lu’s mispronunciations, which I had noted in the seminar. I felt being corrected by an outsider would be easier for Lu to take. Lu kept a little book in which he noted down the words that he pronounced incorrectly, the result of learning the basis of a foreign language by reading and not by speaking. Lu has given special recognition to Arthur Goddard, who is today vice principal of the School for Printing in New York, in his great treatise Human Action and in Omnipotent Government. But Arthur gave “first aid” to almost all of Lu’s writings in the United States. I was most surprised when I one day saw the monthly check Lu gave Arthur, until I realized that for Goddard the work with Lu was not a source of earning, but a way of learning.

During the winter of 1941 Lu very often had conferences with the former archduke of Austria, now Dr. Otto von Habsburg, who was interested in Lu’s views about Austria’s future. Lu forsaw that Austria would never again be a monarchy, and he wrote a long and detailed report for Dr. von Habsburg, the last essay he wrote in German, some book reviews excepted. He often told me he was convinced that history would have taken a different course if a man like Otto von Habsburg had been at the helm of the Austrian government in 1914. Lu had the highest esteem for the archduke’s moral and intellectual qualities and maintained this regard for the archduke all through the years. When we later met Dr. von Habsburg at the Mont Pelerin Society, I was also charmed by him. He frequently sat next to me at dinner or luncheon meetings, and I was always impressed by his knowledge of history, his human understanding, his diversified interests, and especially by his natural kindness and warmth.

All who worked with Lu became fascinated by his personality and became ardent admirers of him. There is first of all his former, very efficient secretary in Vienna, Mrs. Wolf-Thieberger, who was with Lu for more than twenty years, became a very close friend, and helped Lu tremendously. Later, when Lu was at New York University, Mildred Schachinger, a young, very talented secretary was working for him. Many years later she wrote that she wished she could still be with him.

Lu was patient with everyone who worked for him. He explained the work and expected the best. It was perhaps one of his most remarkable qualities that he never found fault with a person’s character, only with his or her intelligence. Once, at NYU, he had a secretary who often brought him to despair through her incompetence. “Why don’t you send her away and get another one?” I asked him when he once again complained to me. “I can’t do it,” was his reply. “She needs the job.”