23. Last Years

MISES REMAINED VIGOROUS UNTIL about 1962. In the early 1960s, he completed four major writing projects and gave several public lectures per year. At his public appearances the frailty of his condition became increasingly obvious. More and more his feeble voice and his virtual deafness weighed against his legendary reputation. He had become a living icon of liberty, yet a fading icon after all.

In 1962, he still had a substantial number of speaking engagements, addressing for example The Remnant (a group associated with Edmund Opitz), a 150 student audience at the Nathaniel Branden Institute, the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) at Madison Square Garden, the Coast Federal Savings and Loan Association, the NYU Faculty Club, the American Management Association, and the Free Enterprise Institute. In the same year, on the night of May 16, his voice was heard for the first time in a long while at Harvard University. As one might guess, it was not the University who had invited him. He was not even physically present. The United States Steel Corporation had sponsored a series of radio shows featuring a six-minute taped speech on economic subjects. Mises spoke on the conflicts of interest between workers and employers. He was on the air simultaneously at Harvard, Brown, and Cornell universities. The next day the same speech was aired at Dartmouth and Yale.¹

After 1962, public appearances became less frequent and Mises focused on his regular teaching activities. Until May 1969, he taught his NYU seminar; he lectured at FEE seminars until 1972. In these very last years, only his most faithful friends and admirers—most notably Percy Greaves, and Bettina Bien—continued to take part in his regular seminar sessions. They had become used to the shortcomings of the presentation and still wrote diligent notes of each meeting. Greaves always sat right next to Mises to facilitate all communication between the old master and his seminar. When a student asked a question, Greaves would shout this question into Mises's ear, receive the answer from the old man's feeble lips, and then repeat Mises's words with his booming voice to the audience. New people showed up from time to time out of curiosity, but did not stay because it was difficult to follow the lectures and impossible to engage the speaker. Such newcomers often wondered why the seminar had such visible success with the regular participants. Some had the impression of a prayer meeting involving a bunch of fervent disciples around an enigmatic guru—with Percy Greaves as the high priest and Bettina Bien as the devoted abbess of a Mises Cult.

Mises and Percy Greaves

Mises did not ignore his physical condition and true to his nature prepared well in advance for the approaching end. He started skipping Mont Pèlerin Society meetings, which usually took place in Europe. The last one Mises attended was in 1965 in Stresa, Italy. He saw his beloved Vienna for the last time in September 1964.² He began selling off his library of scholarly journals. In October 1958, he parted with his collection of Econometrica (the complete set, vols. 1–26)³ and in July 1965 cancelled his membership in the Royal Economic Society.⁴ Eventually, by the end of 1968, Percy Greaves assisted him in selling the rest of his periodicals.⁵

Mises preserved his health almost until the end of his long life.⁶ He slowed down smoothly and was still around after many of his younger American friends and associates had already gone. Nymeyer died in 1967, Cortney in 1971, Harper in April 1973. Just when Mises was starting to feel really old and somehow left over, it was time to congratulate Richard Schüller on the occasion of his 100th birthday.⁷ The last Habilitant of Carl Menger's was still around!

During a 1971 summer vacation in Manchester, Vermont, Ludwig fell ill with a serious infection.⁸ Even though he recovered physically, he had lost the ability to concentrate and was incapable of doing any work from then on. His wife recalled him saying: “The worst is that I still have so much to give to the people, to the world, and I can't put it together anymore. It is tormenting.”⁹ During the last two years of his life, Mises was no longer himself and needed assistance and supervision. In this critical phase, to Margit's great relief, Bettina Bien and Percy Greaves were ready to provide generous assistance.¹⁰

In July 1973, Margit took Ludwig for a last trip to Europe, to a spa up in the mountains above the Swiss town of Luzern. Upon their return to New York, Mises's condition deteriorated and the very next day he was brought to Saint Vincent's Hospital. There he died on the morning of Wednesday, October 10, 1973. A memorial service was held at the Universal Funeral Chapel, 52nd Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City on Tuesday, October 16, at noon.