Ludwig von Mises, Austria / USA (1881-1973)
Economist Ludwig von Mises was born in Lemberg, Austro-Hungary in 1881. He taught at the University of Vienna (1913-34) whilst also serving as a principal economic adviser to the Austrian government. He left Austria in 1934 due to the turmoil provoked by the Nazis, going first to Geneva, and in 1940 to the USA, where he taught at New York University (1945-69).
A leader in the Austrian school of economics, he wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of economic liberalism. In his one of his major texts, Socialism, von Mises predicted the breakdown of the communist experiment and argued that socialism could not function in an industrial economy because there would be no market for capital goods and therefore no price system to calculate profit and loss.
Von Mises also presented a systematic and persuasive defence of the natural society's mediating structures, which stand between the individual and the state. Social cooperation, he said, rests on human inequality and institutional hierarchies. Von Mises also attacked mixed economy statism in his book Bureaucracy. Von Mises' achievements for liberty can also been counted in his students and followers. For example his students Wilhelm Röpke and Ludwig Erhard turned Germany towards freedom and rekindled the "economic miracle". In Italy Luigi Einaudi, a friend and follower of von Mises', had, as President, led the successful fight against a communist takeover.