====================== HES POSTING ======================= 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the manuscripts and policy papers he prepared while serving with the Austrian General Staff during World War I; his unpublished monographs written while he was the senior economist with the influential Austrian Chamber of Commerce; his lecture notes and course outlines for the seminars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]). ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]