ad W.E. 200 From the Register of Births and Baptisms of the Parish of St. Maria-Schnee, Lib. XIII, pg. 176, it is hereby officially certified that in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-three (1843) on the ninth day of June was born in S.C. 697/2, and on the twentieth day of the same month was baptized in accordance with the use of the Catholic Christian Church by the then parish priest, the Reverend Father Thomas Bazán, Bertha Sophia Felicita Countess Kinsky of Chinic and Tettau, legitimate (posthumous) daughter of the Right Honorable Franz Joseph Count Kinsky of Chinic and Tettau, retired Royal and Imperial Lieutenant Field-Marshal and Actual Chamberlain, born in Vienna—a legitimate son of his Excellency the Right Honorable Ferdinand Count Kinsky of Chinic and Tettau, Royal and Imperial Chamberlain and Grand Steward and seigneur of the domain of Chlumec, by his wife the Honorable Lady Christine, born Princess Liechtenstein—and his wife, the Honorable Lady Sophia Wilhelmine Countess Kinsky of Chinic and Tettau, born Von Körner, born in Prague (a legitimate daughter of the Honorable Herr Joseph von Körner, Captain of Cavalry in the Royal and Imperial Army, by his wife Frau Anna, born Hahn). The sponsors at the christening were Barbara Kraticek, lady’s maid, and the Honorable Herr Arthur Count Kinsky of Chinic and Tettau. Midwife Frau Sabina Jerábek of S.C. 124. Hereto witness the hand of the undersigned, and the parish seal. Prague, Parish of St. Maria-Schnee, November 27, 1866 Dr. (illegible) Minister at St. Maria-Schnee At this christening service—though I vowed and abjured so many things in it—I was not present. For I do not understand by the word “I” the living corporeal form in which it is contained, but that self-consciousness which is absent both in infancy and also at frequent intervals throughout life: in sleep, in fainting, in narcotic stupefaction, under the influence of drugs, and in a great many moments when one merely breathes and does not think, look, hear; when one merely continues his existence vegetatively until the I resumes its functions. Prague, then, was the city where they set up my cradle, over which, as over all cradles, so much was unprophesied. But my mother, who at my birth was already a widow, soon moved to Brünn, and what I remember of childhood is events that took place in the Moravian capital.