(From "THE OPEN DOOR,"  an autobiography, written by Falko Wilhelm Schilling 
in June 1953 after a severe illness.)
(Transcribed and translated from carbon copy by Falko Allan Schilling, 
February 8, 2006)
(Copyright (c) 2006 Falko Allan Schilling All Rights Reserved)

1
My Father
*********

Ernst Louis Schilling

	During my childhood I was rather afaid of him. During adolesence 
I hated him at times. Later I learnt to love him and am happy that he 
knew of my love during the last years of his life.
	In Eastern Prussia stood father's cradle. Only once - as a student 
during a summer vacation - I visited the land of his birth. I never saw Tilsit 
the place where father was born, far up in the most northern part of the 
province. But I did see enough of that country to give me a rather lively 
picture of it:

Long, cold winters, skies covered with large grey clouds; storm-beaten waves of 
the Baltic sea lashing rocky shores; storm-beated oaks and fir trees moaning and 
bending low; and then lovely summer days; sunkissed beaches alive with love and 
laughter of a sturdy nordic race; cool forests stretching endlessly; placid 
lakes reflecting skies and clouds and trees and flowers -- such is the land of 
father's youth. It seems a picture too as true as a mirror - of my father's 
character.



Father's family.

	And now to father's family. Sorry I know so little about it. Grandfather 
died March 26, 1880, over five years before I was born. Grandmother I met only 

once during vacation time in 1906 at Koenigsberg. I learned to love her in those 
short days of my visit there; she died soon afterwards, November 10, 1906.

The story of my ancestors beyond my grandparents has been lost. Father told me 
they came to Eastern Prussia at the time of the soldier-king Frederic-William I 
who had called for settlers in the new kingdom of Prussia. They are said to have 
come from Wuertemberg. All documentary proof about it has been lost in a big 
church fire during grandfather's youth.

2

Grandfather Ernst Wilhelm Schilling and his wife Henriette Westphal had three 
boys - Richard, Max and Louis - and one girl, Anna. Grandfather was a Baumeister 
*architect* whether college trained or not I do not know. After his death 
grandmother lived the rest of her life with her daughter Anna, herself a widow 
also.

	Uncle Richard was a merchant, a bachelor, until well advance in years. He 
loved to hear himself called "Dich" remembering long and - I assume - happy 
years spent in England.