If you think today’s politics includes some unusual characters, wait until you hear about Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. He was born July 31, 1909 in Tobelbad, which at the time was in Astria-Hungary and is now part of Austria. Kuehnelt-Leddihn was personally brilliant, fluent in eight languages and able to read seventeen more. He started writing at 16, when he became the Vienna reporter for The Spectator newspaper. He attended university early, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in law at just 18, and continued, receiving an MA in economics and a PhD in political science. Then he began studying theology, but when he was 23 (already having earned all those degrees) he moved to England to become a schoolmaster. After about two years there he moved again, this time to the US, where he became a professor at Georgetown University. He taught at several other US universities over the next ten years or so, where he was the head of the History department, taught Sociology, Economics, and for something completely different, taught Japanese at Fordham University in 1942 and 1943.
He evidently considered himself a sort of art critic, too, since he wrote a letter to the New York Times in 1939 severely criticizing US coins. Not the nature of the currency — the actual designs of the coins. He thought the dime was the worst, but the quarter was “the most satisfactory.” His ideas about art weren’t entirely amateur; he was a pretty good painter himself. And then there were his political books. In 1943 he wrote The Menace of the Herd, which criticized National Socialists (Nazis), as well as socialism. He was basically criticizing both the German and the Soviet governments, which were not only pretty different but fighting each other at the time.
Kuehnelt-Leddihn published articles about a wide variety of subjects in publications including Chronicles, Thought, the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Catholic World, and even a Norwegian magazine, Farmand. He probably wrote that article in Norwegian, which he could speak. He published books as well, and illustrated some of them with his own paintings. After World War II he traveled as much as he could. He visited all 50 US states and 75 different countries around the world.
He was a fierce critic of US policies toward Europe, claiming that they were based on emotional “antimonarchical” feelings, as well as ignorance about Europe and European history. He was a leading scholar studying the rise of Nazism, and described himself as a “conservative arch-liberal.” He thought monarchy was preferable to democracy, but generally supported the US, which he described as a “non-democratic republic.” He approved of Switzerland too, although that seems to be the end of the list of countries he thought were doing okay. He objected to egalitarianism, conformity, materialism, centralization, Nazism, fascism, radical-liberalism, anarchism, communism, and socialism — and claimed that they were all democratic movements trying to destroy traditional forms of society.
His best-known book is Liberty or Equality, which argues for monarchy, and suggests that as life becomes more complex you need more expertise to deal with everything, and democracy is “totally inadequate” for that. In the US, he was a rare voice in favor of the Vietnam war, and in the 1960s began appearing on US television shows, opening up yet another career as a pundit.
Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s advocacy of rule by kings and the like might have been related to his personal experience; he was a European nobleman by birth and although he didn’t use the title, was a Count. His wife, though, did use her title: Countess Cirstiane Gräfin von Goess. Kuehnelt-Leddihn had unusual views that were (and are) somewhat difficult to reconcile unless you simply conclude that he was just against practically everything. At the same time, his contemporaries tended to be awed by his academic accomplishments and his brilliance. He was called “the world’s most fascinating man,” and more than one person described him as “the most intelligent man I ever met.”
He died at 89 and is buried in the village where he was born. His children Gottfried and Isabel have been active in European politics, — Gottfried served for years as a official in the Austrian government. Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s third child, Eric, seems to have somehow avoided all involvement in politics, probably demonstrating that he’s actually the smartest one in the family. If you want to learn more about Kuehnelt-Leddihn, he has a very long list of publications, including novels, nonfiction, and a vast number of published articles.
