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Marzo  1997

The Discovery of the "Lost Papers" of Ludwig von Mises

CategoríaMarzo 1997Economía

Richard M. Ebeling

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Richard M , EbeJíng- The Discovery of the ''Lost Liadwig von Mises 99 Shortly after the Nazi occupation of Austria in March , 1938 , the Gestapo ordered apartment 18 at 24 WoUzeile , District III , in Vienna , sealed and all the possessions in it boxed up and transported away . This apartment had belonged to Ludwig von Mises . Mises had Uved there from 1911 to the Fall of 1934 , whai he moved to Geneva , Switzerland , to take up a position as Professor of Intemational Economic RelaticMis at the Gradúate Institute of International Studies . But he had kept his Vienna apartment , with his mother hving there until her death in 1937 . From his residence in G^ieva , Mises mailed out , on March 9 , 1939 , " Information " to his firiends in Europe that the Gestapo had carried offthe contents of the back He explained that he had apaitmoit , and no attempt to get it had succeeded . lost his library , his pers < xial and family documents , his correspondence , files , papers and manuscripts . They were never seen again . Mises and his fn^ds assumed that they had been destroyed , either by the Nazis or in the destruction of war . Richard M . Ebeling is the Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics , at Hillsdale College , Hillsdale , Michigan ( USA ). This was not the case . In May , 1945 , as the Second World War was coming to a cióse , the Soviet Red Army occupied Bohemia , the westem región of Czedioslovakia . One of the towns " liberated " by Stalin's armed forces in Bohemia had served as a repository for records , files and archives seized by the Gestapo in countries ovemm by the Nazi regime . Among the tens of thousands of files , papers and boxed up archives the Nazis had stored away were those lost by Ludwig von Mises . During the months following the of the war . Soviet military trains hauled everything found in this repository to the east to Moscow . There , these captured documents including those of Ludwig von Mises ^were tumed over to the KGB . In eme of the great ironies of history , the papers of one of the greatest intellectual opponents of sociahsm in the 20th century ended up in the taider care of the Soviet secret pólice ! And they were , indeed , treated with care . On March 6 , 1951 , a stamp was placed on the " opus ," or annotated index , to all of Mises' papers , indicating they had been read , arranged and organized , with a brief paragraph summarizing each of the topic sections in the " Mises Fund ." This " Fund " contained 177 sepárate files , with many of them ruiming into the hundreds of pages . Laissez-Faire 50
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Indeed , the entire " Mises Fund " contained more than 10 , 000 items . Ludwig von Mises died in 1973 , never knowing that the ideological heirs of Karl Marx in Moscow had done everything possible to assure that his " lost papers " were in proper and protected order . I first heard about the possibility that Mises' papers were , in fact , preserved and " safe " in Moscow during a research trip that my wife , Anna , and I made to Vienna in the summer of 1993 . But we had no finn proof until this past summer of 1996 , when we found out the ñame of the archive where the papers were being stored the actual catalog number of the " Fund ." and Now the problem was how to gain access to it . Besides the invaluable assistance of several archivists in the United States , access to the papers would have been impossible without the hard work of my wife , Anna ( v^o is Russian by birth ), and her numerous friends in Moscow . These fhends knew how to work their way through the labyrinth of the Russian bureaucracy and the network of personal relationships which make up the Russian system of favors and privileges . Through them , contact was made with the archive c ( mtaining Mises' papers , official invitations were issued and access to the " Fund " obtained . The great diffículty in arranging all of this was due to the fect that this archive still is secret and restricted . But once in Moscow , access to the entire " Fund " and ability to photocopy or microfibn almost anything we wanted would still have been impossible or greatly hampered if not for my wife's special negotiating ability on the spot with those authorities in control of the " Fund ." In addition , Hillsdale CoUege , and especially Presidait George Roche and Vice-President for Development , Jdin Cervini , provided total support for the project . They arranged from " friends of the CoUege " the most generous fínancial assistance , without which the joumey to the Moscow archive , and the expenses connected with it , would have been impossible . My wife ( who , besides her native Russian , has an excellent working knowledge of spoken and written Germán ) and I spent from October 17 to October 26 , 1996 going througjh Mises' papers . Mises kept almost everything ! Indeed , he seems to have be^ something of a compulsive " pack-rat ." There were even the smallest of things , for example , train ticket stubs from the joumey to some conference and the receipts from meáis eaten at hotels on some lecture trips . There were two thick folders about his activities during the First World War as an ofiñcer with an artillery regimait on the Russian front . Mises kept numerous papers of now faded , almost unreadable , battle plans and orders for combat operations in which his unit participated , with accompanying battle field sketch maps of front-line positions . There were specific orders directed to him for various activities , including temporary transfers for rest and recuperation from illnesses he had . ( During our 1993 trip to Vienna , we found his military service file in the Austrian military archive Mises had been decorated three times for bravery under fire .) We found in an envelope two oíd film negatives from whidí we had prints made . These eighty year-old photos were of Mises with members of his artillery regiment somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains in the Ukraine . There was a lengthy monograph Mises had written about the economic relationships between Austria-Hungry and the Laissez-Faire 51
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Ukraine . It had been written by him whai In still another file were typed lectures he was the officer in command of military currency OMitroI in occupied Ukraine , after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March , 1918 had ^ded the war on the from some of the seminars he taught at the University of Viama . They cover a variety of topics on economic theory and policy . He had spent part of one term in the early eastem front . Odessa . Mises' headquaiters was in 1920s presaiting an e ? q ) osition of the mathematical-ec ( Hiomic ideas of Lecm Later in 1918 , he was transferred to the Austrian General Staff in Vioina . Another file contained cq ) ies of various Austrian govemment documents about the monetary and fiscal problems of the war . Among the documents were several papers and monographs written by Mises for the Austrian General Staff about the war-time inflation , fiscal and exchange-rate problems in war-time , and on the problems of naticxial minorities in the Austro- Hungarian En^ire . In another two thick folders were hundreds of letters and postcards written to him by his mother w^ile he was at the fi-ont . She seems to have written to him every day . His mother wfote tender words of support , told about family members and fiiends and the situation on the " homefront " in Vienna . There were only a few short postcards from his brother , Richard , suggesting that they were not really cióse . There were also some letters and postcards fi-om a young lady , who even had her picture put on one side of a postcard . The words in them suggest that Mises was a bit of the " ladies' man " in his earlier years ! We also fbund in another file love letters fi-om his fiíture wife , Margit , written to him in 1927-28 . They had been sent in envelopes addressed to his business office at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce . Mises clearly did not want his mother to know about the relationship . Walras and Vilfredo Pareto , with neatly drawn graphs e ? q ) laining the logic of Paretian Indiffer^ce Curves . There were also the final exams of his University students in 1919 , in which their assignment had been to simunarize the argum^ts Mises had developed during the semester on " The Development of the Mandan Theory of Inq ) erialism ." There was a file about the private seminar he held at his Chamber of Commerce office . He kept lists of the attoidees each year ( usually jotted down on the back of pieces of paper ) and incomplete lists of some of the topics discussed . But there were also the typed fiíll texts of some papers Mises deüvered at the private seminar , especially on questicms relating to methodology of the social Sciences , and the typed commentaries of other seminar participants ( e . g ., Oskar Morgenstem ). In yet another file were papers relating to his work at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce . There were some of the memoranda and reports he had prepared , including an account of the Chamber's work from 1926 to 1932 , in his own clear handwriting . Several files contained his correspondaice . Mises not only kept many of the letters he received ( including the CTvelopes they came in ), he also kqít a carbón copy of his replies , so the correspotidence is complete . Mises was almost always " business-like ." There are very few letters with informal commoits Laissez-Faire 52
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about fhends and personal affairs . Instead , they are frequently a continuation of economic policy debates e . g ., about the monetary causes of the Great Austrian Inflation of the early 1920s , the problems of interventionism and the unworkability of sociahsm . Most of these exchanges are with Germán and Austrian writers and scholars now long-forgotten or unknown . But there was a sepárate file of Mises' correspondence with Friedrich Hayek , after the latter's move to London in 1931 until 1934 , when Mises moved to Geneva . And there was a thick file of correspondence between Mises and Licaiel Robbins ( who taught at the London School of Economics ). There was even the receipt fbr the price of a copy of Mises' book , " Socialism ," which he had sent to Robbins in 1924 . Mises took a keen and concemed interest in his students and scholar-fi-iends . There were letters of recommendation , for example , in which Mises tried to get research grants or jobs for Fritz Machlup , Gottfiied Haberler and several others in places outside of Austria . He seems to have had a good relationship with the Rockefeller Foundation in this regard . Several files contained exchanges between Mises and publishers over the details of pubhshing his books ( e . g ., ví^qi galley pages would be sent , etc .). The correspcmdence files also clearly demónstrate Mises' influence and highprofile in the caitral Eurq ) e of the 1920s and early 1930s . There was a large number of letters fi-om industrial and business organizations inviting him to join their associations and deliver lectures ( he usually decUned joining , but often agreed to lecture ). Numerous research institutes , professicmal associations and universities invited him to paiticipate in conferences or deliver a paper . Beginning in 1928 Mises did belong to the Vienna Rotary Club . Resides the membership forms , rules and by-laws and notices of meetings , there was in the file the words of a " firiendship " song that members were expected to sing . One pictures Ludwig von Mises as a vocalist at a Rotary Club luncheon ! Mises also kept copies of his articles , and he was extremely prolific . This refers not only to his scholarly articles and books , but to the large number of pieces he wrote for the Vienna newspapers and magazines on economic pohcy issues , with his contributions often being the lead article . ( I beheve that several of them that we found are not included in Bettina Bien Greaves' excellent annotated bibüography of Mises' work .) This , I hqje , gives a " flavor " of some of what we found among Ludwig von Mises' " lost papers " in the Moscow archive . The timing of this visit , it tums out , was most fortuitous , because we were told that the archive in which Mises' papers are stored is being transferred to another ministry's control that is much more secretive , and the window of opportunity to have had access to them is once again closed . We did leave Russia with many thousands of pages firom the " Mises Fund ," either in photocopy or on microfilm . After they have been arranged and cataloged they will in time be available fbr use by scholars in the Ludwig von Mises Library Room at Hillsdale College . Important and interesting aspects of Mises' life and work during the first half of his lüe in Europe will now no longer be as much in the dark as they have been up until now . Laissez-Faire 53
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