In 1949, amid the disbelief of New York’s intelligentsia, a newly-arrived professor from Europe—courteous in manner and relentless in argument—began teaching at New York University. His name was Ludwig von Mises—a refugee from Nazi tyranny, but above all, an exile from an academic world that had embraced statism with the same passion it had once devoted to progress.

It was there—in that atmosphere of respectful isolation—that a young German named Hans F. Sennholz found his master. Not merely found—he sat humbly at his feet, studied with rigor and honor, and carried his torch for decades. Sennholz was Mises’s first doctoral student in the United States. And although his mentor’s name would pass through the century as a giant, it is possible that Mises’s legacy might not have taken root in America without the patience, fidelity, and courage of his disciple.

While the spotlight illuminated the chairs of great urban universities, Sennholz chose to go to Grove City, a small town in Pennsylvania. There, among churches and old trees, he planted the roots of the Austrian School of economics in American soil. At Grove City College, he taught for more than 30 years. He refused to trade principles for prestige. His students didn’t just listen—they were transformed.

The Making of a Disciple

The biography of Hans F. Sennholz reads like a paradoxical novel—as if the protagonist had journeyed backward through the twentieth century: from statism to liberty, from war to logos, from obedience to duty to devotion to reason.

Born in Germany in 1922, he served as a fighter pilot in the Luftwaffe during World War II. Captured by Allied forces, he was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in the United States. It was there, among barbed wire and the disciplined routine of the defeated, that he first encountered economic literature in English—a foreign language at the time. This awakening, in a context of silence and humiliation, was no accident: it was a first act of virtue.

After the war, Sennholz returned to Europe and resumed his studies. He earned a degree in economics at the University of Marburg and then returned to the United States in search of deeper formation—and found Mises. That meeting was not merely academic; it was existential. Sennholz saw in Mises, not just a theorist, but a moral master. Mises, in turn, saw in the young German not just a promising student, but a rare man of character.

As Mises’s first PhD student at New York University, Sennholz did not simply absorb praxeology—he lived it. Rather than pursue the easier path of academic conformity, he chose the more demanding one: a life marked by internal coherence, moral integrity, and doctrinal fidelity. At Grove City College, he found a place where he could teach, not only economics, but a way of seeing the world—one that respected individual liberty, personal responsibility, and human action.

Grove City College: A Refuge of Virtue

At a time when academia was intoxicated by the fleeting brilliance of institutional novelty, Hans F. Sennholz chose permanence. Instead of cosmopolitan centers, he settled in Grove City—a town of just over 8,000 residents. It was a life of deliberate simplicity, anchored in conviction rather than acclaim. There, in the silence of ordinary life, Sennholz cultivated something rarer than prestige: the continuity of an intellectual tradition rooted in moral depth.

“Truth has nothing to fear from inquiry.”—Hans F. Sennholz

Grove City College—founded in 1876 with a Christian and classical liberal spirit—has never accepted government funding, not even indirectly, through federal student aid. This decision, which many deemed unwise, allowed the institution to preserve something increasingly rare in the 21st century: academic freedom with philosophical integrity.

It was in this fertile—yet demanding—ground that Sennholz planted the Misesian legacy. There, praxeology was not just taught as an analytical method but lived as a posture toward life: a radical respect for the individual as an irreducible unit of action, consciousness, and responsibility.

Under his guidance, a new generation of thinkers emerged—not just students, but disciples. Among them:

• Jeffrey M. Herbener, current Chair of the Economics Department at Grove City College and prolific contributor to the Mises Institute;
• Shawn Ritenour, professor and author of Foundations of Economics: A Christian View;
• Mark Hendrickson, economist and theologian, who made Austrian ideas accessible beyond academic circles.

These names are not just continuators of a school of thought—they are heirs to a way of intellectual life that withstands time and noise. In their writings, lectures, and classrooms, they preserve a quiet but firm tradition—built on discipline, humility, and loyalty to truth.

The Lessons of Sennholz: Economics as a Moral Choice

The greatness of Hans F. Sennholz is not measured by the number of pages he wrote—though there were many—nor by his immediate reach in public discourse. His value lies in the coherence between what he taught and what he lived. Like Aristotle, he knew that virtue is not a discourse: it is a habit. Like Thomas Aquinas, he understood that the good is recognizable, communicable—and, above all, imitable.

Sennholz saw economics as a reflection of human decisions. For him, there is no neutrality in economic policy. Every act of government intervention carries a moral choice—even when disguised in technocratic language. In his writings and classes, he often warned that inflation, for instance, was not just a monetary phenomenon, but a silent form of confiscation, an act of injustice masked as financial sophistication. He declared:

The state is not the source of order, but the most dangerous threat to it.

Inflation is not an economic accident. It is a deliberate public policy.

This lucidity did not make him a bitter prophet. On the contrary, there was a serene hope in his writings—as if he had seen darkness from the inside and chosen, still, the light. Formed amid ruins, forged in war, he saw in the free market not merely a functional system but a path toward the moral reconstruction of Western civilization.

He firmly rejected welfarism, central planning, and grand social experiments. Not out of a lack of compassion, but out of love for responsibility. He believed that “every man has the right to the fruit of his labor, the risk of his liberty, and the destiny of his life”—and to deprive him of this is to mutilate what makes him human.

It is no exaggeration to say that Sennholz, as an educator, did not merely form economists—he formed free men.

Legacy and Imagination: When the Masters Remain

There are professors who teach theories; others, techniques. Rare are those, like Hans F. Sennholz, who teach attitudes. And rarer still are those who remain—even after they depart.

There are no grand statues in his honor, no quotes of his among the media slogans of the new right, he was never invited to televised debates. His work does not shout—it whispers. And perhaps that is why it endures.

Sennholz understood that defending liberty demands more than outrage—it demands character. That is why he did not simply critique the state’s errors: he built a school, a lineage. In Grove City, he planted roots that still bloom—not in the noise of the networks, but in the persistence of those who study, educate, and live according to their principles.

The halls of Grove City College still carry his presence. The names of his disciples are living echoes of a teacher who taught with his whole being, not just his mind.

And yet, Sennholz’s greatest legacy may not lie in books. It lives in the transformed students, in the young people who learned to think for themselves, to resist the seduction of easy solutions, to recognize the dignity of the individual—even when the world clamors for collectivism.

Thus, when we invoke his name today, we do so not merely as readers or admirers. We do so as witnesses. For some men pass through history with a flash; others, with a compass. Sennholz was a compass who always pointed in the right direction.