ABSTRACT
Over a professional career that spanned almost three-quarters of the twentieth century, Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, was without any exaggeration one of the leading and most important defenders of economic liberty. The ideas of individual freedom, the market economy, and limited government that he defended in the face of the rising tide of socialism, fascism, and the interventionist welfare state have had few champions as clear and persuasive as Mises. He was the most comprehensive and consistent critic of all forms of modern collectivism. Furthermore, his numerous writings on the political, economic, and social principles of classical liberalism and the market order remain as fresh and relevant as when he penned them decades ago.1 Born in the city of Lemberg in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire on September 29, 1881, Mises came from a prominent family of Jewish merchants and businessmen. His great-grandfather, Mayer Rachmiel Mises, was honored with a nobility title for his service to the Emperor, Francis Joseph, as a leader of the Jewish community in Lemberg, a few months before Ludwig was born.2 Ludwig’s father, Arthur, moved his family to Vienna in the early 1890s where he worked as a civil engineer for the Imperial railway system. Ludwig attended one of the city’s leading academic gymnasiums as preparation for university studies. He entered the University of Vienna in 1900, and received his doctoral degree in jurisprudence in 1906. In 1909, he was employed by the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, Crafts, and Industry, and continued to work at the Chamber as a senior economic analyst until he left Vienna in 1934 to accept a full-time teaching position at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Besides his work at the Chamber, Mises also taught at the University of Vienna, led an internationally renowned interdisciplinary private seminar, and founded the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research in 1927, with a young Friedrich A. Hayek as its first director.3
