ABSTRACT
It was in Litomysl that the author of these reminiscences was born on 4 April 1914, and opened up his young eyes for the first time on this old Universe of ours, now some seventy years older. With the advent of the second millennium ad the traffic on the trail passing through Litomyšl increased to such an extent that it became profitable for the local chieftains to provide armed escort for caravans against payments in cash, from which they built their first fortified places in those parts. In the year of 1141, the Bishop of Olomouc in Moravia, Jindrich Zdík, founded in Litomyšl a monastery for the Order of Premonstrates, who brought with them also the coat-of-arms of their mother house in Prémontré in France, which then became that of the town itself. In January 1919 the family returned from Jicín to Litomyšl, where father resumed teaching at the Gymnasium.
