My Years with Ludwig von Mises.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

CHAPTER IX
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Lv's SEMINAR at New York University began in 1948 and ended in
1969. For twenty-one years the seminar gathered at the Graduate
School in lower Manhattan every Thursday from 7:25 to 9:25 P.M.
When Lu entered the room, with almost military punctuality at
7:20 P.M., a small flat briefcase under his arm, he always had a
friendly smile for everyone and a quick searching glance for me.
He liked me to attend the meetings. He would sit down at the
center of the long side of the table and take a snlall sheet from the
inner pocket of his jacket. This tiny piece of paper was all he
needed for the evening.
Then he would start to talk. He presented his ideas clearly, in
simple words, in contrast to the often difficult terminology used in
his books. The composition of his lectures was always the same: he
began with a statement and returned with a closing word to exactly
the point from whence he had started; his thoughts completed a
perfect circle.
On Lu's eighty-ninth birthday Leonard Read presented him
with a plaque: "To A Great Teacher: You, Mises, are truly a
Teacher. Two generations of students have studied under you, and
countless thousands of others have learned from your books.
Books and students are enduring monuments of a Teacher, and
these monuments are yours. This generation of students will pass
away, but the ideas set in motion by your writings will be a fountain
source of new students for generations to come."
Yes, Lu was a great teacher. He had the ability to lift the minds
of his students, to incite their mental curiosity, to arouse their
imagination to new visions. Frank Dierson, a prominent corporation
lawyer in New York City who attended Lu's regula:r course at
New York University from 1946 and regularly came to the seminar
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