In Honor of the Austrian School of Economics: Austrian Christmas Traditions

In honor of the great Austrian school economists, here is a video on Austrian Christmas traditions.

The founder of the Austrian school, Carl Menger, was born into a devout Roman Catholic family. 

In fact, Carl Menger’s maternal grandfather Jozef Geržabek owned an estate around Maniowy in Poland where he built a church dedicated to St. Nicholaus there.

Carl and his brother, Anton, attended a gymnasium run by the Roman Catholic Church in Teschen (Cieszyn).

But Antal Fekete notes:

In 1889 the German-language conservative newspaper

Österrechischer Volksfreund complained about the “Judaization of the

University of Vienna” and referred to Carl Menger and his brother

Anton Menger, both professors and one-time rectors, as Jews.

Anton and Carl responded that they were not Jewish and that there

were no Jews in their family...

Their denial, however, failed to convince the German

conservatives who asserted that the behavior and the views of both

professors betrayed either real or adopted Jewish traits, and the

allegation that they were Jewish was repeated elsewhere, e.g., in the

newspaper Das Vaterland.

Later Carl Menger became the target of anti-Semitic attacks over

his role in establishing the gold standard in the Austro-Hungarian

Empire as a member of the Austrian Currency Commission.

The specific charge was that in promoting the gold standard

Menger was working for “the Jewish haute finance”

Friedrich Hayek's parents were also Roman Catholic but he received no formal Catholic school education.

It is very likely that both Menger and Hayek as children observed the Christmas traditions discussed below.

Ludwig von Mises was brought up in a Jewish family so would have been aware of the general Christmas traditions around him but would have been limited to that.

 

 Merry Christmas! 

Or as they say in Austria, Frohe Weihnachten!

 -RW