ABSTRACT
The earliest paternal ancestor of whom more than the bare name is known is the author's great-great-grandfather, Josef Hayek, who in 1789 obtained the minor title of nobility, which the family since bears. Josef's son, Heinrich, used his substantial inheritance to study law, then married a gifted singer, Franziska Zwierzina; became a civil servant in one of the ministries in Vienna, where he probably had to work for only two or three hours each morning; and spent a long, dignified, and comfortable life as a gentleman. The von Jurascheks were housed in a magnificent, even grandiose, top-floor flat of ten rooms at Kartnerstrasse 55, where they kept at least three servants. During the last years of his life, the author's father had become a kind of social center for the botanists of Vienna, who met at regular intervals at our flat.
