University of Vienna
I attended the University of Vienna, in the Faculty of Law, from 1919 to the completion of my doctorate in 1922. The atmosphere of the university at the time was determined by the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of the First World War. By its composition, the university was still the university of the capital of the empire and reflected in its scholarship and the personal attitude of the professors this cosmopolitan atmosphere. At the time when I was a student, and throughout the 1920s, or rather until the effects of National Socialism made themselves felt in the early thirties, Vienna still had an enormous intellectual horizon and was leading in science internationally in a number of fields. First, there was Hans Kelsen’s Theory of Pure Law, represented by Kelsen himself and the growing number of younger men whom he had educated, especially Alfred von Verdross and Adolf Merkl. Second, there was the Austrian School of Marginal Utility. Eugen Böhm-Bawerk had already died, but Leopold von Wieser was still the grand old man who gave the principal course in economic theory. Among the younger economists there was Ludwig von Mises, famous because of his development of money theory. Joseph A. Schumpeter was in Graz at the time, but his work of course was studied. Among the further intellectual and spiritual components that would impress themselves on a young man at the time was the school of theoretical physics going back to Ernst Mach and represented at the time by Moritz Schlick. An important intellectual force in this circle was Ludwig Wittgenstein, less by his presence than by his work. There further must be mentioned the Austrian Institut für Geschichtsforschung, represented by Alfons Dopsch, who by that time had attained international fame through his work on the history of Carolingian economics.
Among the younger men, there was the rising force of Otto Brunner, who later became famous by his theories of medieval feudalism.1 A further glory of the University of Vienna at the time was the history of art, represented by Max Dvořák and Josef Strzigowski. Dvořák had already died by the time I came to the university, but Strzigowski was active. I had courses with him in the history of Renaissance art; and what especially was attractive about him was his interest in Near Eastern art, of which his two-volume work about Armenia is a great document. At the same time there was flourishing in Vienna the Institut für Urgeschichte.
More on the fringe so far as I am concerned were such famous institutions as the Institute for Byzantine Music under Egon Wellesz, with whom I later got acquainted. After the National Socialist takeover, Egon Wellesz went to Oxford. A further inevitable massive influence was represented by the psychologists. I took courses under Hermann Swoboda, who was very much addicted to the theory of rhythms of Ernst Kries; and he, in turn, was a close friend of Sigmund Freud. Into the psychology of Swoboda entered as a background his early friendship with Otto Weininger. The works of Otto Weininger were read by everybody at the time. The most important influence in psychology, of course, was given through the presence of Freud. I did not belong to the circle of Freud and never met him, but I knew quite a few of the younger men who had been trained by him. The most important at the time whom I knew was Heinz Hartmann, who later came to New York; Robert Waelder, who later established himself in Philadelphia; and Kries, who later went to Australia.
Now about the composition of the Law School. The great intellectual figures by whom the students were attracted at the time were Hans Kelsen, the lawyer and maker of the Austrian constitution, and Othmar Spann, the economist and sociologist who had developed a theory of universalism and had carried out a structural analysis of a people’s economy, going in its content far beyond the subject matter dealt with by the more restricted marginal utility theorists. The third figure who attracted students in masses was Carl Gruenberg, a stalwart of Social Democracy. In the wake of the upheaval through the breakup of the empire and the establishment of the republic in 1918 came the ascendancy of the Social Democratic party, and in the first election in which I ever participated I voted for it; an important figure had become the chief ideologist of the Social Democrats, Max Adler. More on the periphery, so far as I was concerned, were a number of excellent lawyers—for instance, Strisower in international law; Schey, who had conducted the reform of the civil code; and Hupka in civil procedure.
I had registered as a student for the curriculum that would lead to the Doctor rerum politicarum. My decision to take these courses leading to the doctorate in political science were partly economic, partly matters of principle. So far as economics are concerned, I was very poor, and a doctorate that would be finished in three years had a definite appeal. The law doctorate would have required four years. The matter of principle was a vague but strong impulse even at that time that I would embark on a career in science. The doctorate of law had the temptation that ultimately one could land, if one did not become an independent lawyer, in a civil service position; and I did not want to become a civil servant. The choice of political science was furthermore determined by the attraction of the faculty, which included such famous men as Kelsen and Spann. An alternative, seriously considered by my father, who was a civil engineer, and myself at the time, was to go into physics and mathematics. But politics had the stronger pull. Still, after I had finished the doctorate in political science, I enrolled in the Philosophical Faculty in mathematics courses, especially with Philipp Furtwaengler in Funktionentheorie. But these studies turned out to be no more than desultory, because I simply could not become enthusiastic about mathematical problems.
During these three years I began to form personal relationships with students of my own age, some of them not more than one or two years older and, by virtue of that slight age difference, coming back from military service, which had given them a maturity that people such as I (who had escaped military service by my youth) found attractive. The occasions on which these relationships were formed were the courses we heard in common, and especially the seminars. Three of these seminars were of major importance for the later cohesion among the group of young men about which I have to talk. I mention first the seminar with Othmar Spann, not because it was the most important under this aspect but because here I got acquainted with some people who later dropped out of my life. The general climate of the Spann group and of the young people attracted by Spann was Romanticism and German Idealism with a strong touch of nationalism. Some of these people later got involved in National Socialism or in even more radical national movements opposed to National Socialism. At the time when the Hitler problem became virulent in Austria, contacts with these people faded and were not resumed later. Still, I have to mention this phase, because to Spann and the work in his seminar, especially his private seminar, which I attended through several years, I owe my acquaintance with the Classic philosophers (Plato and Aristotle) and with the German idealistic systems of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, G. W. F. Hegel, and F. W. J. von Schelling. More important for my later life, apparently because it met with my own inclinations, were the seminars of Kelsen and Mises. Through the Kelsen seminar, and again especially the private seminar, were formed the connections with its older members, particularly Verdross in international law and Merkl in administrative law. Among the people closer to my own age group were Alfred Schütz, who later became professor of sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York; Emanuel Winternitz, who, after we were all thrown out by Hitler, became the curator of the collection of musical instruments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Felix Kaufmann, the legal philosopher who became professor at the New School for Social Research; and Fritz Schreier, who, when he came to America, entered the independent business of marketing and advertising. Third comes the private seminar of Ludwig von Mises, which I attended for many years, until the end of my stay in Austria, and where I formed connections with Friedrich August von Hayek, Oscar Morgenstern, Fritz Machlup, and Gottfried von Haberler.
From these groupings, determined by the institutions of the seminars and the personal friendships and relations between these people and others, there crystallized in the end an institution which, with ironical overtones, was called the Geistkreis [Spiritual or Intellectual Circle]. It was a group of younger people who met regularly every month, one of them giving a lecture on a subject of his choice and the others tearing him to pieces. Since it was a civilized community, it was a rule that the man in whose house we met would not be the one to deliver the lecture, because the lady of the house was permitted to attend (otherwise women were not admitted), and it would not be courteous to tear a gentleman to pieces in the presence of his wife. To this group, which gradually expanded with sometimes somebody dropping out, belonged on and off most of the people just enumerated, especially Alfred Schütz, Emanuel Winternitz, Haberler, Herbert Fuerth, Johannes Wilde the art historian, Robert Waelder the psychoanalyst, Felix Kaufmann, Friedrich von Engel-Janosi the historian, and Georg Schiff. An important characteristic of the group was that we were all held together by our intellectual interests in the pursuit of this or that science, but that at the same time a good number of the members were not simply attached to the university but were engaged in various business activities. A man like Alfred Schütz, for instance, was the secretary of a bankers’ organization and later entered a banking business. He continued his banking activities when he came to New York and had the fantastic energy of pursuing both his business successfully and of becoming the author of the studies that now have become famous through his collected works. Emanuel Winternitz was a practicing lawyer connected especially with Bausparkassen. He used a good deal of his income as a successful lawyer to make extended trips to Italy in order to indulge his interest in art history. That was the basis on which he later established himself in America, leading ultimately to his position in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His great success is the organization of that marvelous permanent exhibition of musical instruments that has attracted the attention of the visitors to the museum since 1972.
The economists were affected by the shrinking of the University of Vienna under the conditions of the republic. One university could not accommodate as many first-rate economists as emerged in these years, and the names of Hayek, Haberler, Morgenstern, and Machlup have become famous in England and America. They intended to leave Vienna even before Hitler. Machlup was one of the last to leave, because he was an independent industrialist. Engel-Janosi, besides being an excellent historian, was the owner of a parquetry factory; but I must say that the successful conduct of his business was largely due to the eminent business intelligence of his wife, Carlette. A further difficulty arose through the fact that, beginning with the establishment of the republic, anti-Semitism became an ineluctable factor in the University of Vienna. At the time I entered the university as a student, a considerable number of the full professors were Jews, reflecting the liberal policy of the monarchy. But after 1918 and establishment of the republic, no more Jews were appointed full professors, so that the younger people who were Jews had no chance of ever rising beyond the level of Privatdozent. That limitation was in part responsible for the necessity of excellent men like Felix Kaufmann and Alfred Schütz to pursue their business occupations. Schütz, as I have mentioned, was a banker; Felix Kaufmann was a director of the Anglo-Persian Oil Corporation. Many of these young people, through the advent of Hitler, the fact of being thrown out of their positions, and the necessity to flee, were thrown into their business careers. The friendships formed in these years held up. The members of this Geistkreis were physically dispersed, but the personal relationships have remained intact.
1. Especially as published in Land und Herrschaft, 4th ed. (1959).