Simon Wels - At the ‘Bernats’

Foreword

How I came to tell this story:

At the request of my children: Rudolf, Aninka and Otto, I sat down one calm evening and started sorting through the memories of my own life and the lives of my parents.

I wrote down these fragments on scraps of paper, or on clean pages torn out of my children’s old exercise books, and one incident in my memory would call forth the one before and the one after. In just a few weeks there was already a good handful of such scraps.

Now I intend to put them in order and write them out properly on nice lined paper.

I sort among these memories as one does when raking over the dying embers in the stove and I observe just how eventful and interesting can be the life of even the least and most lowly of human beings.

It is my hope that always one member of each succeeding generation will continue writing things down, recording their experiences, their sorrows and their joys.

‘Their experiences, their sorrows and their joys’.

I have already started making a fair copy and let’s hope I finish the task.

For many years my life to outside gaze appeared monotonous, but I am grateful for it to the great Providence.

And remember, my dears, those of you who will be the continuation of my life: there is no light without shade and there is no night so dark that it is not followed by the dawning of a new day.

You will know sorrow and joy. Of suffering and joy is our daily life made. But I beg you: Be even–tempered and cheerful in all you do! And enjoy living!

My son Rudolf once showed me a German book. It was prefaced by some lines of verse which I liked to recall on many occasions and I hope that you too will recall them as you journey through life.

Listen carefully:
“Horch drum, was mein Mund Dir spricht:
“So viel Gold hat Ophir nicht,
“Als in ihrem Munde
“Die flüchtige Sekunde.
“O Adame, O Eve,
“Vita somnium breve!”

Live your lives for the happiness of yourselves and those about you!

And God be with you and keep you!

Rokycany, 1919