Elisabeth de Waal

Elisabeth de Waal was born in Vienna in 1899, the eldest child of Viktor von Ephrussi, of the banking family, and Baroness Emmy Schey von Koromla. She was educated at home and at a leading boys' school, studied philosophy, law and economics at the University of Vienna, and when only 19 gave a paper at the first of Ludwig von Mises's legendary Private Seminars on economics. She completed her doctorate in 1923 and also wrote poems (exchanging letters about poetry with Rilke). She was a Rockefeller Foundation fellow at Columbia. In 1928 she married Hendrik de Waal, a Dutchman; they had two sons, Viktor and Constant (later Henry), lived first in Paris and then in Switzerland, and in 1939 settled in Tunbridge Wells, England. She wrote five unpublished novels, two in German and three in English, including 'The Exiles Return' which was published posthumously.