Property, Freedom & Society

Roland Baader

Hans Hoppe’s first visit to my hometown and current domicile, Waghaeusel, (in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany) took place in June of 1995. My dear wife, Uta, was still alive at the time. With great pride she showed Hans the tidy garden she was so devoted to. She asked him: Do you like it? Hans answered dryly, “yes.” A little later Uta assumed a dancer’s pose and asked Hans if he liked what he saw. “Yes,” he said. In the evening Uta prepared a delicious meal. She looked at the guest with anticipation and at last asked, “do you like it?” Hans: “Yes.” Uta’s reply: “Hans, you are a son of a gun, but the most lovable son of a gun I know. I love you anyway.”

At the time we had a border in our house, a poodle named Olga who belonged to Professor Gerard Radnitsky. I put Olga on a porch chair next to Hans and said: “This is a very learned poodle. He insists on professorial company.” Hans Hoppe commented: It is a priori true and needs no falsification, that a poodle is not a human being and therefore cannot be a scientific theorist. But he can remain seated if he likes.

Many years passed before Hans renewed the tiresome journey (with the intercity train from Frankfurt to Mannheim, and from there with the regional train) in July of 2004.

Because we hadn’t seen each other in such a long time, our conversational cups were overflowing. And because Hans wanted to fly back to the USA on the very next day, we had but one evening to tackle a quota of intellectual exchange that would normally require an entire week. At the ready were four bottles of Sardinian red wine to serve as “Babbelwasser” (local dialect for alcoholic beverage that aids in the acceleration of linguistic and semantic gymnastics). When the first light of morning appeared the bottles were empty—and we were still lucid, but tired. A short sleep followed.

Now because Hans, who usually exercises caution with respect to false Gods (Bacchus among them), survived the Sardinian flood seemingly unscathed, I sent him a certificate a few days later. It read:

The Brotherhood of the Red Nose, the Society of Sardinian Competitive Drinkers, for having demonstrated uncommon bravery at the Battle of Waghaeused,1

on the night of the 27th to the 28th of July, 2004, is pleased to honor

Professor Dr Hans-Hermann Hoppe

As a lifelong member

Roland Baader

Signature of the President

The fun and games came full circle with Hans’s reply:

Dear Roland:

being recognized as a Sardinian competitive drinker and being named a life long member of your exclusive society moves me deeply.

Yours, Hans

Hans, on this the occasion of your 60th Birthday, I am deeply moved at how you’ve scattered the lies and the errors of mainstream economic battalions the world over, how you’ve so eloquently borne the torch of every flame started by Mises and Rothbard and have gone on to fan the same fire of freedom in millions of minds and hearts.

Roland Baader (M.Econ.; Roland-Baader@t-online.de) is a private scholar and major representative of the Austrian School in Germany, author of 15 books and hundreds of articles in newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. This chapter was translated by Arlene Oost-Zinner.

2There really was a Battle of Waghaeusel in 1849 between the Baden rebels and the Prussian troops.

• 1Professors Hoppe’s publications, including links to translations and a detailed bibliography, are available at his website, www.hanshoppe.com.
• 2Eventually, Hoppe turned into a full-blown Austrian when, in the early 1980s, he went to the United States on a prestigious Heisenberg fellowship. This time his research project concerned political philosophy, but it was again squarely built on Austrian economics. In 1986, he became Rothbard’s colleague at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where he would teach for the next 21 years. After Rothbard’s untimely death in 1995, Professor Hoppe assumed a place of uncontested leadership among Austro-libertarian scholars, becoming the editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, a co-editor of the Review of Austrian Economics, and then a co-editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. Professor Hoppe, now Professor Emeritus of Economics at UNLV and Distinguished Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, also serves on on the editorial board of Libertarian Papers. In addition to authoring numerous scholarly articles, his important books include Handeln und Erkennen (1976), Kritik der Kausalwissenschaftlichen Sozialforschung (1983), Eigentum, Anarchie, und Staat (1987), A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (1989), The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (1993, enlarged 2nd edition 2006), Democracy—The God that Failed (2001), and The Myth of National Defense (editor, 2003). His works have been translated into at least 21 languages, not counting English.