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

tried their best to get his attention. He was interested in their
careers, in their intellectual development, but completely indifferent
toward them as women.
Once he chided me: "If you would not have been, I could have
married a very rich heiress." "Why didn't you?" I asked him. "We
both would have lived happily ever after." He rejected both my
Rippancy and my proposal.
Another time I told him: "Do you know that people revealed to
me that you at one time were engaged to marry Dr. Lene Lieser [a
former student at his seminar]?" fIe laughed and said, "Did you
really believe it? Could you ever imagine me married to an economist?"
I really could not.
The wish to have me near him was constantly in him. He knew I
needed a father for my children; he was aware of. the fact that I
gave them all the love and affection I was capable of. But children
need more than a loving and doting mother. They need guidance
and direction for their development, and I, as a mother alone, was
well aware that I was not strong enough to give them what they
deserved.
Lu thought of the task he had set himself, the tremendous work
that was ahead of him, all the writing he wanted to do. He bore the
burden of making a frightening decision-the choice between his
work and duty to his intellectual ideals on the one hand, and a life
of love and affection on the other. Soon after we became engaged,
he grew afraid of marriage, the bond it would mean, the change
that children would bring to a quiet home, and the responsibilities
that might detract him from his work. So it was a stormy relationship,
the old problem of Adam and Eve.
But we did not live in Paradise-far from it. We never had a fight
between us. Lu fought himself, and then made me suffer. I was
deeply in love with him now, a love so different from what I ever
had felt before that I hardly knew myself any more. Until now I
had always taken; I had been spoiled. Now I only wanted to give,
give, give-and I deeply felt that he needed me, too.
We spent most of our vacations together. I usually rented a cottage
in the country for the children and my mother, andLu and I
went mountain climbing. Other sports did not mean much to him.
He played tennis-always with a trainer-but without enthusiasm.
Once I watched him. When the ball was easy for him to reach, he
returned it, otherwise he would not bother. When I asked him:
"Why don't you put a little effort into your game?"" He replied,
"Why should I? The fate of the ball does not interest me.""
He was a member of the Athletic Club in Vienna and dutifully
went fencing once a week. But mountain climbing was the sport he
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