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• Titles In the Liberty Fund Library of the Works of Ludwig Von Mises
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Monetary and Economic Policy Problems Before, During, and After the Great War
• Part 1: Austro-hungarian Monetary and Fiscal Policy Issues Before the First World War
• Chapter 1: The Political-economic Motives of the Austrian Currency Reform 1
• Chapter 2: The Problem of Legal Resumption of Specie Payments In Austria-hungary 1
• Chapter 3: The Foreign Exchange Policy of the Austro-hungarian Bank 1
• Chapter 4: On the Problem of Legal Resumption of Specie Payments In Austria-hungary
• Chapter 5: The Fourth Issuing Right of the Austro-hungarian Bank 1
• Chapter 6: Financial Reform In Austria 1
• Chapter 7: The General Rise In Prices In the Light of Economic Theory 1
• Chapter 8: On Rising Prices and Purchasing Power Policies 1
• Chapter 9: Disturbances In the Economic Life of the Austro-hungarian Monarchy During the Years 1912-1913 1
• Part 2: Economic Policy Issues In the Midst of the Great War
• Chapter 10: On the Goals of Trade Policy 1
• Chapter 11: Inflation 1
• Chapter 12: On Paying For the Costs of War and War Loans 1
• Chapter 13: Remarks Concerning the Problem of Emigration 1
• Part 3: Austrian Fiscal and Monetary Problems In the Postwar Period
• Chapter 14: Monetary Devaluation and the National Budget 1
• Chapter 15: For the Reintroduction of Normal Stock Market Practices In Foreign Exchange Dealings 1
• Chapter 16: On Carl Menger’s Eightieth Birthday 1
• Chapter 17: How Can Austria Be Saved?
• Chapter 18: The Claims of Note Holders Upon Liquidation of the Bank 1
• Chapter 19: The Austrian Currency Problem Thirty Years Ago and Today 1
• Chapter 20: The Restoration of Austria’s Economic Situation 1
• Chapter 21: The Austrian Problem 1
• Chapter 22: The Gold-exchange Standard 1
• Chapter 23: The Social Democratic Agrarian Program 1
• Chapter 24: America and the Reconstruction of the European Economy 1
• Chapter 25: The Currency and Finances of the Federal State of Austria 1
• Chapter 26: The Economic Crisis and Lessons For Banking Policy 1
• Part 4: Interventionism, Collectivism, and Their Ideological Roots
• Chapter 27: The Economic System of Interventionism 1
• Chapter 28: Economic Order and the Political System 1
• Chapter 29: Remarks Concerning the Ideological Roots of the Monetary Catastrophe of 1923 1
• Appendixes
• Appendix A: Maxims For the Discussion of Methodological Problems In the Social Sciences: Paper Delivered At the Private Seminar 1
• Appendix B: Short Curriculum Vitae of Mayer Rachmiel Mises of Lemberg 1

APPENDIX B

Short Curriculum Vitae of Mayer Rachmiel Mises of Lemberg1

I was born on June 23, 1801, in Lemberg, the son of the wholesaler and real estate owner Fischel Mises, who had been awarded, as a distinction, the right of domicile and of conducting business in the so-called “restricted district.”2 In 1819, I married Rosa, daughter of Mr. Hirsch Halberstamm of the town of Brody, who was at the time Brody’s most important Russian-German export trader.

In 1832, while still co-owner of my father’s business, I was appointed commissioner at the commercial court, a function I was to exercise for 25 years.

Following my father’s death in 1842, I went into the wholesale business on my own, which enabled me to stay in the family home located on Ringplatz.

In 1854 I employed my oldest son, Abraham Oscar, in my company. In 1856 he went on to establish a wholesale business in Vienna and played a prominent role in the foundation of the Galician Carl-Ludwig Railroad, on whose board of directors he then served.

In 1859, under my said son’s leadership, the Viennese branch of my company was commissioned with the purchase of Galician corn for the Austrian army in Italy. The business was conducted to the full satisfaction of Creditanstalt, the bank responsible for all monetary transactions in the contract. In 1860, Creditanstalt made my son director of its new Lemberg branch office, which resulted in the liquidation of my Viennese company.

Fifteen years later I also liquidated my Lemberg wholesale business and eventually retired from active business.

For nearly a half century I have been in public life in various positions and capacities.

I have already mentioned that for a period of 25 years I served as commissioner at the commercial court while also repeatedly serving on the city council and as a full member of the Chamber of Commerce.

Already in 1831 I became president of the Lemberg Jewish Community and have remained in this position ever since, with only a brief interruption in the years 1843-1845.

At the beginning of 1840, I was cofounder of the Lemberg Savings Bank, and for a period of nearly 16 years I was its internal auditor. I only resigned in 1857 when the Austrian National Bank appointed me to the board of its Lemberg branch; I served in this capacity for 22 years until this institution was transformed into the Austro-Hungarian Bank.

In 1848 I was a member of the “Confidential Committee” appointed by Governor Count Stadion,3 and also a member of the committee for the integration of émigrés returning from exile, which in the following year had to facilitate the reemigration of those among them who had not found gainful employment within the country.4

I have been substantially involved in the foundation of an orphanage, a reform school, a secondary Jewish school, a charitable institution for infant orphans, a Jewish library, and several other charitable and educational foundations, some of which I endowed out of my own financial means.

I dedicated myself no less to the administration of the Jewish Hospital in Lemberg, which owes its existence largely to one of my father’s foundations.

And last, I may add that my marriage has produced five children. Only my two daughters, Mrs. Esther Klärmann and Mrs. Elise Bernstein, are still alive. My two older sons, Abraham Oscar Mises, director of the Galician Carl-Ludwig Railroad and director of the Lemberg branch of Creditanstalt, and Hirsch Mises, partner and director of the Halberstamm and Nirenstein banking institutions, and my youngest daughter, Clara Bodek, are no longer alive.

My male grandchildren are:

Hermann Mises, publisher and deputy to the Reichsrat in the years 1873-1879, and an honorary citizen of the city of Drohobycz;

Max Mises, privatier;5

Dr. Felix Mises, medical director emeritus of the Imperial-Royal General Hospital;

Emil Mises, engineer at the Galician Carl-Ludwig Railroad;

Arthur Mises, engineer at the Lemberg-Czernowitz Railroad Company.6

Lastly, my great-grandson is Heinrich Mises, son of Dr. Felix Mises.

Lemberg, June 1881

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[1. ][Mayer Rachmiel Mises (1801-91) was the great-grandfather of Ludwig von Mises. In June 1881 he prepared this short curriculum vitae to submit to the office of the Austrian emperor, Francis Joseph, as part of the legal process for ennoblement and the bestowing of the honorific and hereditary title of “Edler von.” He was ennobled on April 30, 1881, with the ennoblement document issued on July 13, 1881. Ludwig von Mises is not mentioned at the end of the document among Mayer Rachmiel Mises’s great-grandchildren because Ludwig was not born until September.—Ed.]

[2. ][The “restricted area” referred to that part of Lemberg, the capital of the Austrian province of Galicia, which was reserved as a residence and place of business for non-Jews. For a brief history of the Jews of Austria and Vienna in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, and in the context of Ludwig von Mises’s life and work, including his own critique of anti-Semitism, see Richard M. Ebeling, “Ludwig von Mises and the Vienna of His Time,” in Political Economy, Public Policy, and Monetary Economics: Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian Tradition (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 36-56.—Ed.]

[3. ][Franz Stadion, Graf von Warthausen (1806-53), was a prominent Austrian statesman who served as Austrian governor of the Littoral (the capital of which was the Adriatic port city of Trieste) during 1841-46, and governor of Galicia (1847-48), during which time he freed the peasants from compulsory labor duties; he also served as Austrian minister of education. He was a supporter of constitutional government within Austria and other liberal reforms.—Ed.]

[4. ][Many who had been part of the failed revolution of 1848 in Austria, including the uprising in Hungary and the rebellion of Poles in Russia and Austria, had left the Austrian Empire. Some began to return shortly afterward to resettle in their own homelands, found it difficult to reintegrate into their communities, and departed to live abroad once again.—Ed.]

[5. ][A “privatier” is a financially independent individual, either through former business success or inheritance or marriage.—Ed.]

[6. ][Arthur Mises (1854-1903) was Ludwig von Mises’s father.—Ed.]