Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn - Life

Life

Kuehnelt-Leddihn was born in Austria. At the age of 16, he became the Vienna correspondent of The Spectator. From then on, he wrote for the rest of his life. He studied civil and canon law at the University of Vienna at the age of eighteen. From there, he went to the University of Budapest, from which he received an M.A. in economics and his doctorate in political science. Moving back to Vienna, he took up studies in theology. In 1935, Kuehnelt-Leddihn travelled to England to become a schoolmaster at Beaumont College, a Jesuit public school. Subsequently he moved to the United States, where he taught at Georgetown University (1937–38), Saint Peter's College, New Jersey (head of the History and Sociology Department, 1938–43), Fordham University (Japanese, 1942–43), and Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia (1943–47). In a 1939 letter to the editor of the New York Times, Kuehnelt-Leddihn critiqued the design of every American coin then in circulation—except for the Washington quarter, which he allowed was "so far the most satisfactory coin"—with the Mercury dime judged to be "the most deplorable".

After publishing books like Jesuiten, Spießer und Bolschewiken in 1933 (published in German by Pustet, Salzburg) and The Menace of the Herd in 1943, in which he criticised the National Socialists as well as the Socialists directly or between the lines, he could not return to Nazi-occupied Austria.

After the Second World War, he resettled in Lans in Tyrol where he lived until his death. However, he was an avid traveler: he had visited the USSR in 1930–31, and eventually traveled to every state in the United States.

Kuehnelt-Leddihn wrote for a variety of publications, including Chronicles, the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Catholic World, and the Norwegian business magazine Farmand. He also worked with the Acton Institute, which declared him after his death "a great friend and supporter," and was an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. For much of his life, Kuehnelt was also a painter; he illustrated some of his own books.

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