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I have spoken on many festive occasions but never on one that focused on me. It is a strange experience. I feel that I cannot do wrong, since you are willing today to forgive me my shortcomings; nor can I do right, since, measured by what I can achieve in reality, your expectations are undoubtedly too high. But I will not worry and will let my thoughts flow—not unchecked, of course, but also, as befits the hour, without the rigor and caution I would usually be inclined to apply.
I shall begin with two personal stories. The first is no more than an anecdote with easily graspable meaning. The second, however, although the account of a real event, has taken on the coloring of a private myth. It has become interwoven with those elements in me that transcend the personal: the goals and ideals—our goals and ideals—to which I have increasingly devoted my life.
Here is the anecdote, and you will have no trouble understanding how it relates to the present moment. Sixteen years ago I returned for the first time to Vienna, the city where I was born and raised, and which I had left nearly two decades before. I was with my wife and my then seven-year-old son. Among the people there whom I had not seen for all those years was an old uncle who was a man of considerable influence. On the day before we were to leave again, this uncle suddenly expressed the wish, probably in anticipation of his death, which indeed occurred not long after our departure, to make a gift to my son. That evening we joined him for dinner, after which he took us to the largest toy store in town, Muehlhauser's—the F. A. O. Schwartz of Vienna—a large establishment with several floors of toys. It was 9 P.M.; the store—as do all stores in Vienna—had closed at 6, but because of my uncle's political influence,