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

ank of captain. For a while they had their lodgings together. One
morning, when it was bitter cold, they peered through the icecovered
window and saw the ten-year-old daughter of the farmer's
wife with whom they lived take a completely naked baby of perhaps
one year outside and hold her up until she had eased herself.
Lu was horrified. "But the child·will die," he said. "No," replied
Strisower. "If she is healthy, she will survive. That's how it is here
in the country; only the strong ones can survive."
Lu was proud of his ability to provide for his men. By chance, a
first-class cook from a good Austrian hotel had joined Lu's company.
This man was able to bake the famous Viennese pancakes
(they are like the French crepes suzette) for all the men while the
company was marching and the kitchen, of course, was on the
move, too. He adored Lu and proved this by always giving him an
extra portion. But he was never satisfied with Lu's appetite. "The
first lieutenant is eating like a woman in childbed," he complained.
To please Lu he also fed a little colt, which had been born
during a battle and was loved by all the men of the company. They
often went without food themselves, but they still fed the colt.
Then one day the army took the colt away. They needed meat. That
was a black day for all of Lu's men. Lu got typhoid in 1917 and,
after a few months, was called back to Vienna, where he workedstill
in uniform-with the General Staff in the Ministry of War
until the last day of the war.
In the first years of our relationship L u was almost an enigma to
me. I never had seen such modesty in a man before. He knew his
value, but he never boasted. Different from all men I had met
before, he felt deeply without the need to talk about it all the time.
I had never trusted the feelings of actors. Men who love professionally
every night, project their feelings constantly to the outside,
and have to tell the whole world about themselves never
seemed real men to me. Their only steady love affair is with themselves.
I think it was the extreme honesty in Lu's feelings that
attracted me so strongly to him. These feelings were so overpowering
that he, who wrote thousands of pages about economics and
money, could not find the words to talk about himself.
Before we married, this love must have been a very distressing
factor in his life-so upsetting that he knew he could fight a battle
in the Carpathian Alps, but could never win the battle against
himself. He became frightened. I was the only woman he wanted
to marry from .the first moment he met her. He never changed his
feelings or his mind about this decision. I knew that there were
many young women who were desperately in love with him. His
private seminar in Vienna had several female participants who
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