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I Offer my thanks to the Burgomaster of the town of Příbor-Freiberg,2 to the organizers of this celebration and to all those who are attending it, for the honour they have done me in marking the house of my birth with this commemorative tablet from an artist's hand—and this during my lifetime and while the world around us is not yet agreed in its estimate of my work.
I left Freiberg at the age of three and visited it when I was sixteen, during my school holidays, as a guest of the Fluss family,3 and I have never returned to it again. Since that time much has befallen me; my labours have been many, I have experienced some suffering and happiness as well, and I have had a share of success—the common medley of human life. At seventy-five it is not easy for me to put myself back into those early times; of their rich experiences but few relics remain in my memory. But of one thing I can feel sure: deeply buried within me there still lives the happy child of Freiberg, the first-born son of a youthful mother, who received his first indelible impressions from this air, from this soil. Thus I may be allowed to end my words of thanks with a heartfelt wish for the happiness of this place and of those who live in it.