No Mises Bust at the University of Vienna

This past summer I joined my son in Vienna. He was there on a fellowship from his senior year at Carleton College to study architecture, in particular the work of Otto Wagner, the Secession movement, and so on. I had only been there once before, when backpacking during law school. I accompanied him on his explorations and we feasted on Viennese cuisine at places recommended by local friends. 

I suggested that we take time to visit the University of Vienna, so that I could see the monuments to famous Austrian economists who had taught there. The lobby highlights Nobel prize winners, including Friedrich von Hayek; and in the “Colonnade,” or “arcade courtyard” (Arkadenhof, also locally referred to as the aula), there are dozens of monuments—busts, bas-relief plaques—dedicated to noted intellectuals, alumni, and professors from the University. Of particular interest to devotees of Austrian economics, there are monuments to Carl Menger and his two students Friedrich von Wieser and Eugen von Böhm-Bahwerk, all located near each other in the Arcade Courtyard. 

The process to have a monument approved and funded is very bureaucratic and can take years. It originates from a request from the college where the professor taught (such as the Faculty of Law and Political Science) and is then approved by the Academic Senate, and apparently is usually privately funded. Wieser’s monument took 21 years, for example, from approval to completion. Menger’s was approved in 1927 and completed and unveiled just two years later. It appears to have been fast-tracked and some rules waived due to Menger’s status:

In 1927, the Academic Senate, following a request from the Faculty of Law and Political Science, decided to erect a monument to Carl Menger in the arcades. This decision was made just six years after the death of the man to be honored. The waiting period, which had only recently been increased from five to ten years, was exceptionally not observed in view of Menger’s extraordinary achievements.

The process culminates in a formal unveiling ceremony, which involves

a speech about the person being honored and their services to science in one of the ceremonial halls, musical accompaniment by the academic choir and the subsequent unveiling of the monument in the arcade courtyard. The monument was often decorated with flowers.

Hayek has no monument in the Arcade but does have one in the lobby, next to other Nobel Prize winning alumni and professors of the University:

(The author with the Hayek Nobel Prize monument.)

So the University of Vienna (UV) prominently and proudly features four of the great early Austrian economists. Conspicuously absent, of course, is Ludwig von Mises, arguably the greatest Austrian economist of all time, who was also a professor at UV. His absence is conspicuous, given that the University boasts about Mises on its website, along with the other four: Menger, Wieser, Böhm-Bawerk, and Hayek. 

I asked my friend Guido Hülsmann, Mises’s biographer, why Mises would be omitted. He surmised that Mises was too intransigent and not socialist enough. This is similar to the reason given by some Misesians as to why the Nobel Prize committee waited until Mises had died, in 1973, before awarding the Nobel Prize in Economics for Mises’s work on business cycle theory to his more politically acceptable student, Hayek. 

Still, I wondered, maybe enough time has passed that the hostility to Mises has waned; after all UV promotes him on its website and recognizes he was discriminated against for being Jewish—for “racist reasons.” I was aware of the Mises bust that had been commissioned by Doug French and Jeff Tucker when Doug was President of the Mises Institute:

I have one on my bookshelf. (My new customized Texas license plate reads: MISES.) But I wondered what it would take to have a flatter, “bas-relief“ version created, similar to those of Menger, Wieser, and Böhm-Bawerk. One that be mounted on a wall instead requiring a pedestal and more space. 

After some searching I happened across the work of sculptor Zenos Frudakis, famous for his “Freedom Sculpture“ in Philadelphia:

He also featured a bust of Mises that I had never heard of before, commissioned in 2023 for a private collector:

Intrigued, I sent a message inquiring into the cost and feasibility of having Frudakis prepare a bas-relief bust of Mises for ultimate presentation to the University of Vienna. To my surprise, his wife wrote me back expressing his interest in this project. As Frudakis is a world-famous sculptor, it would not be cheap, of course. 

I brought this idea to the attention of Guido Hülsmann and Hans Hoppe and a few other trusted colleagues, who were intrigued about the possibility of having a Mises bust prepared and presented to UV. Even if the project would take some years, we envisioned a ceremony at the university, attended by hundreds of Mises fans and scholars from all over the world, seeing Mises finally get his rightful due and recognition at his alma mater. 

In addition, it appeared that there was a strong possibility of some donors willing to fund the project, and Frudakis was also on board. We had two of the world’s leading Mises scholars on board, including his biographer. The only thing standing in the way appeared to be the bureaucracy at the university. We asked our colleague, the noted scholar Rahim Taghizadegan, from Vienna, to inquire into the feasibility of this project. 

Unfortunately, it turns out that the university will not accept a Mises bust. Apparently there was an effort last year by a noted Gödel scholar to have a monument dedicated to the famous mathematician Kurt Gödel placed in the Arcade, as UV was his alma mater; he published his famous “Incompleteness Theorem” as part of his doctoral studies there, which he published in 1931, shortly after his disseration in 1929. However, over a year of meetings among vice-rectors, the university senate, and then the formation of a “joint working group,” UV finally decided to reject the Gödel monument—or any other new monuments, ever. The Arcade has apparently now become an ossified museum. 

The article does not specify the reasons for this decision—for rejecting a monument for one the most famous thinkers of the twentieth century and surely one of the most notable of all of UV’s students and professors. Our inquiries led us to conclude that the reason for UV’s rejection of the Gödel monument, and for closing the Arcade to future monuments, such as one for Mises, is that UV is now too “woke” to permit additional monuments to dead, white males. Even though Mises was Jewish and, as UV acknowledges, was discriminated against in his career for for “racist reasons,” and he is the only one of their five major UV Austrian economics professors/alumni not to have a monument (and the only Jew), this is still not enough. He’s a white male. So, like Gödel: no monument for Mises. 

We can probably expect the new Arcade “museum” to start featuring warnings and signs condemning past sexism and racism. Maybe some monuments will be removed, as the Nazis removed Menger’s since he was “classified as ‘Jewish’ according to Nazi criteria.” Who knows. Or maybe they will start to allow monuments eventually, but only to women and minorities. As Hans Hoppe pointed out to me, it is notable that “the rather insignificant hard-core socialist woman Marie Jahoda received every conceivable honor from the university and the city of Vienna” as well as a monument from UV in 2016. She, along with some other women, received monuments, before UV closed the Arcade Courtyard to further monuments after the Gödel controversy last year. 

Oh well. It was worth a shot. Mises ought to be in the UV Arcade, next to Menger and the others. Or maybe the University of Vienna does not deserve him. Fortunately, no one needs the permission of the University of Vienna to learn and profit from one of its brightest stars. It’s their loss.

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