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

him how the situation was. He understood, and we stayed friends
for life. After Lu and I were married, Sir Leonard flew from India
to Paris to meet Lu. Both men understood each other very well.
Though I liked these other men, there was nothing I could do. I
just had to wait until Lu was ready.
He had given me his books Gemeinwirtschaft (later translated as
Socialism) and Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel (The
Theory of Money and Credit), and I tried my best to get familiar
with their content. It was difficult for me. I had lived in another
world. It took years and much reading and many tears, intermingled
with feelings of inferiority, before I understood the meaning
of his teaching and his writings. But his most devoted students
could not have been more convinced of the advantages of free
enterprise and of freedom for the individual than I becam-e.
In those years Lu travelled a great deal to foreign countries as
the representative of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. Never
did he leave without first coming to see me and sending me the
most beautiful arrangements of flowers. And as soon as he returned
the first thing he did was to see me. All these years he had held a
secret superstition, which he later confessed to me: he must see
me, he must be with me on January first each year, for that gave
him the assurance that he would not lose me that year.
Following the World War, and even before, housing conditions
were very poor in Vienna. Now they introduced a new law: no
family was allowed to occupy more rooms than there were members
in the family. (The kitchen was not counted.) For us, who
owned a large apartment, this meant the danger of having people
placed to live with us, people whom we did not even know.
In my case, living alone and working at home, it would have
been a special ordeal. But I was lucky. A friend of mine, coming
back by boat from a visit in the United States, met Myra Finn with
her little daughter Alice, age eleven. Mrs. Finn had just been divorced
from Oscar Hammerstein, wanted to travel, and was looking
for a suitable place in Vienna for Alice to learn German. My
friend recommended me, Mrs. Finn called on me, we liked each
other, and after a while she left Vienna and Alice stayed on with us
for more than a year. Since she was the same age as Gitta, I arranged
for her to be in Gitta's class. The two girls became inseparable.
A friendship developed that has lasted all through the years.
Alice had suffered greatly from her mother's divorce, and it took all
my love and care to make her smile again.
The summer after Alice left to join her mother in Switzerland, I
sent Gitta to England to a boarding school in Kent, where she
stayed for almost eighteen months. When she came back she wrote
and spoke English just as fluently as shew.rote and spoke German.
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