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The following statement is being released by Hillsdale College, along with
a
covering letter by the College president, Dr. George Roche. It summarizes
the
circumstances under which Mises papers were recently uncovered, photocopied
and microfilmed in Moscow, and the College's plans for making them
available
for the general scholarly audience.
Richard Ebeling
THE LOST PAPERS OF LUDWIG VON MISES
Ludwig von Mises, one of the greatest free market economists of the
20th century, became a victim of Nazi regime when his personal property and
papers were seized by the Gestapo after the annexation of Austria in 1938.
For more than six decades, all was presumed to be destroyed. But the "Lost
Papers" have been discovered and copies are now at Hillsdale College,
Hillsdale, Michigan.
After years of research, Richard Ebeling, the Ludwig von Mises
Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College, traveled to the Holocaust
Museum in Washington, D.C. hoping to find the Gestapo file on Mises. The
Museum could not find such a file, but what it did unearth was a
reference-which, apparently, no one in the U.S. had ever seen-to the
location of Mises' missing papers. In October 1996, Professor Ebeling and
his wife, Anna, traveled to the Center for Historical and Documental
Collections in Moscow where they were the first American scholars to gain
access to the Lost Papers. With the help and cooperation of Hillsdale and
the administration and researchers from the Russian archive, they were able
to acquire photo or microfilm copies of virtually the entire collection.
In March 1938, when Nazi Germany occupied Austria, the Gestapo
sought to arrest Ludwig von Mises. But by then, Mises had taken a teaching
position in neutral Switzerland. In his apartment in Vienna, he had left
many of his books and most of his family documents and papers. The latter
included: his extensive correspondence with a number of the famous
economists of his time; the manuscripts and policy papers he prepared while
serving with the Austrian General Staff during World War I; his unpublished
monographs written while he was the senior economist with the influential
Austrian Chamber of Commerce; his lecture notes and course outlines for the
seminars that he taught at the University of Vienna for almost 20 years and
for the world-famous "private seminar" he led at his Chamber of Commerce
office and that often attracted many of the most famous economists of the
United States and Europe.
The Gestapo failed to find Mises. But they sealed his apartment
and seized everything in it. The family documents, the correspondence, the
unpublished manuscripts, monographs and policy papers, the lecture notes
and outlines disappeared. When Ludwig von Mises died in 1973, at the age
of 92, he still believed that everything had been destroyed by the Nazis.
At the end of the Second World War, in 1945, the Soviet Red Army
occupied a small town in Czechoslovakia that had been used by the Gestapo
as a depository for captured booty. In this depository, the KGB found
Mises' Lost Papers. For the next half century, they remained in a secret
archive in Moscow under the control of the security forces of the Soviet
Union. Mises' papers were read, organized and carefully cataloged into 196
separate files totaling almost 10,000 items.
An early opponent of all forms of socialism, Ludwig von Mises
demonstrated at the dawn of the Soviet era why central planning was
inherently unworkable and bound to fail. In the middle decades of our
century, while most economists were persuaded that government intervention
and regulation were needed for economic stability and growth, Mises
forcefully argued that it was these very interventions and regulations that
were responsible for the economic dislocations and imbalances about which
so many were concerned. He insisted that the Keynesian "solutions" of
budget deficits and government spending were short-run panaceas that would
inevitably lead to inflation and recession. Only the unhampered free
market, he showed, could assure economic harmony, balance and prosperity.
The fall of communism, the decline of Keynesian economics, and the
bankruptcy of the interventionist-welfare state have vindicated Ludwig von
Mises' defense of the free market and his opposition to every form of
statism.
Ludwig von Mises died in 1973. In 1971, he bequeathed his library
to Hillsdale College. In a letter to his long-time friend George Roche,
president of Hillsdale College, he wrote: "Hillsdale, more than any other
educational institution, most strongly represents the free market ideas to
which I have given my life."
As part of its commitment to the ideas of freedom, to which Ludwig
von Mises dedicated his life, Hillsdale College established the Ludwig von
Mises Chair in Economics and integrated into its curriculum a two-semester
course on Austrian Economics. And for 24 years, the College has held the
annual Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series, bringing to campus many of the
leading advocates of economic liberty from around the world. The Hillsdale
College Press publishes all of the lectures in its "Champions of Freedom"
series.
The Ludwig von Mises Library Collection has been an important and
integral part of the research and study for students and faculty at
Hillsdale College. The historically significant discovery of thousands of
pages of Lost Papers now makes that collection even more valuable to
scholars in America and abroad.
The newly-discovered Lost Papers help lift a veil from the early
life and work of one of the leading figures of the 20th century, who was
also a very private man. His papers, manuscripts, and correspondence
demonstrate not merely Mises' importance as a great advocate of freedom,
but his profound and widespread influence in the central Europe of the
1920s and 1930s. As the leading opponent of all forms of socialism and
government intervention, Mises was called upon by business and industrial
groups in Europe to inform the public about the dangers from and
alternatives to government planning and regulation. He frequently wrote
for the most prominent newspapers and journals in the German-speaking
world, and he participated in all the leading debates over freedom versus
socialism at universities and academic conferences throughout Europe in
these crucial decades of the 20th century.
Photocopies and microfilms of the Lost Papers found in Moscow are
now at Hillsdale College and are in the process of being arranged,
catalogued, and translated into English for inclusion in the Ludwig von
Mises Library. They will soon be available for general access to scholars
and researchers. Also within a year, a selection of Mises' unpublished
monographs, papers, memoranda, and correspondence from this collection will
be translated and published as a supplement to Hillsdale's "Champions of
Freedom" series.
As part of the research for his soon-to-be published intellectual
biography of Ludwig von Mises, Hillsdale Professor Richard Ebeling has
collected a large number of rare and previously unknown papers, documents,
and correspondence about Mises' life and work from six archives in Vienna,
Austria, Geneva, Switzerland and the United States. These materials are
also being added to the Ludwig von Mises Library collection at the College.
During the March 9-13, 1997 Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series (which
will be held in conjunction with the College's Center for Constructive
Alternatives seminar "Between Power and Liberty: Economics and the Law"),
Hillsdale College will be presenting an exhibition of the papers,
documents, manuscripts and correspondence found in Moscow and from these
other archives in Vienna and Geneva. Attendees of the Mises Lecture program
will have a unique opportunity to have a glimpse into the personal life and
important contributions of one the leading defenders of liberty of our
time.
For further information about the March 1997 Ludwig von Mises
Lecture Series or about the College's translation and publication of the
lost papers, please contact Lissa Roche, Director of Seminars, Hillsdale
College, Hillsdale, Michigan, 49242 (telephone: 517/439-1524 fax:
517-437-0654 e-mail: [log in to unmask]).
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