my father had to leave the little border city he had learned to love, moving down the Inn to take
a new position in Passau, that is, in Germany proper.
In those days constant moving was the lot of an Austrian customs official. A short time later, my
father was sent to Linz, and there he was finally pensioned. Yet, indeed, this was not to mean
"res"' for the old gentleman. In his younger days, as the son of a poor cottager, he couldn't bear
to stay at home. Before he was even thirteen, the little boy laced his tiny knapsack and ran away
from his home in the Waldviertel. Despite the at tempts of 'experienced' villagers to dissuade
him, he made his way to Vienna, there to learn a trade. This was in the fifties of the past century.
A desperate decision, to take to the road with only three gulden for travel money, and plunge
into the unknown. By the time the thirteen-year-old grew to be seventeen, he had passed his
apprentice's examination, but he was not yet content. On the contrary. The long period of
hardship, endless misery, and suffering he had gone through strengthened his determination to
give up his trade and become ' something better. Formerly the poor boy had regarded the priest
as the embodiment of all humanly attainable heights; now in the big city, which had so greatly
widened his perspective, it was the rank of civil servant. With all the tenacity of a young man
whom suffering and care had made 'old' while still half a child, the seventeen-year-old clung to
his new decision-he did enter the civil service. And after nearly twenty-three years, I believe, he
reached his goal. Thus he seemed to have fulfilled a vow which he had made as a poor boy: that
he would not return to his beloved native village until he had made something of himself.
His goal was achieved; but no one in the village could remember the little boy of former days,
and to him the village had grown strange.
When finally, at the age of fifty-six, he went into retirement, he could not bear to spend a single
day of his leisure in idleness. Near the Upper Austrian market village of Lambach he bought a
farm, which he worked himself, and thus, in the circuit of a long and industrious life, returned to
the origins of his forefathers.
It was at this time that the first ideals took shape in my breast. All my playing about in the open,
the long walk to school, and particularly my association with extremely 'husky' boys, which
sometimes caused my mother bitter anguish, made me the very opposite of a stay-at-home. And
though at that time I scarcely had any serious ideas as to the profession I should one day pursue,
my sympathies were in any case not in the direction of my father's career. I believe that even
then my oratorical talent was being developed in the form of more or less violent arguments
with my schoolmates. I had become a little ringleader; at school I learned easily and at that time
very well, but was otherwise rather hard to handle. Since in my free time I received singing
lessons in the cloister at Lambach, I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the
solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural the abbot seemed to me, as
the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal. For a time,
at least, this was the case. But since my father, for understandable reasons, proved unable to
appreciate the oratorical talents of his pugnacious boy, or to draw from them any favorable