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

Lu was one of the "founding fathers" of the society. He attended
the first meetings without me, but in later years I usually went with
him. The meetings were held in the beginning of September, so we
combined them with our annual vacation and spent the summer in
Europe. I loved the Mont Pelerin meetings. They were not only
intellectually and spiritually stimulating, but were also enjoyable
social affairs. Held in a different country each year, they were
beautifully arranged for many years by our good friend, Dr. Albert
Hunold, the society's first secretary, and later by Ralph Harris, the
indefatigable, always good-humored, diplomatic successor for this
difficult task.
Going through the Mont Pelerin reports, I have discovered that
Lu delivered only four papers to the society, one at Bloemendaal,
Holland, in 1950, one in Berlin in 1956, the third in Princeton in
1958, and the last at Turin, Italy, in 1961. This does not mean that
he was not heard from during other meetings. He participated in
all discussions without any notes. One of his frequent quotes was
from Luther: "Eine Rede soIl keine Schreibe sein." ("A speech is
not an essay.")
These meetings were rather strenuous for Lu. Everyone wanted
a discussion with him, or at least to share his company during a
me'a!' He was in the conference room all day long. But whenever a
discussion or a speech bored him, he took out one of the little
scraps of paper he used to carry with him and started to write.
People who watched him must have thought he made notes, but he
wrote nothing but irregular rows of figures, and once in a while he
added them up. They must have been meaningless, and I considered
them a sort of doodling, but 1 never asked him about it.
The Mont Pelerin meetings were important to Lu. He met old
friends, made new ones, and from all over the world streams of
thought flowed in, unheard and undiscussed before. Friends like
Jacques Rueff, Louis Baudin, Ludwig Erhard, Hayek, Machlup,
Helmut Schoeck, Haberler, Roepke, Gaston Leduc, W. H. Hutt,
and Rougier met and had the opportunity for long debates. And all
of these famous scholars were united in their dedication to human
freedom.
Once in a while, however, someone-in Lu's opinion-must
have taken a crossroad or made a wrong turn. I remember a Mont
Pelerin meeting that took place in Stresa. I sat next to Lu in the
conference room listening to Machlup read a paper. Suddenly, I
noticed Lu moving. I looked at him and saw that he was very
excited; he seemed shocked by something Machlup was saying. It
was near the end of the speech.
When we got up and went out, Machlup joined us, saying some
pleasant, conventional words to me, putting his arm around my
shoulder. When Lu saw this, he pulled me away from Machlup. "I
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