| Drucker's childhood and youth in Vienna |
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Peter Drucker grew up in Kaasgraben, a still tranquil avenue in the Viennese suburb of Döbling. His father Adolph was a high government official, his mother Caroline, a physician. The Druckers lived in a semi-detached house designed by Josef Hoffmann, shared by the family of the music historian and composer Egon Wellesz who belonged to the intimate circle of the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Two or three times a week Drucker's parents hosted soirées at their home. State officials, lawyers, doctors, psychologists and scientists, especially from the " Vienna Circle," met there. Already at an early age, Peter Drucker was allowed to participate: "That was actually my education." But around nine thirty Drucker had to be off to bed, and around ten thirty the rest of the participants would have to set out to reach the " last blue one," the last scheduled tram headed for the city centre and marked by its blue lighting.
Regular guests of the Druckers included the economists Schumpeter, Hayek and Mises, with whom Drucker's father had business relations in his function as director of the K.& K. trade museum. More cordial were Drucker's father's realtions with the Czech top politicians Tomas and Jan Masaryk, who were also regular visitors. Hans Kelsen, who was married to the youngest sister of Drucker's mother, practically belonged to the family, even if Peter Drucker did not have a very good relationship to him: "I couldn't stand the ultra-rationality of my Uncle Hans." Instead, the young Drucker was attracted to Othmar Spann, the "Romantic" among the economists, whom he rates today as a "great sociologist, but a rather mediocre economist". Spann had gotten to know Drucker through the latter's parents, who belonged to the "Schwarzwald Circle" around the social reformer Eugenia Schwarzwald,. In the summer home of "Genia" Schwarzwald on the Grundlsee lake, Drucker also came in friendly contact with the young Helmuth James von Moltke, who in the Third Reich would become the wisest and most visionary head of the German resistance. >> Apprenticeship in Hamburg and Frankfurt |
| The house in Vienna-Döbling in which Peter Drucker was born on November 19, 1909 |