Viliam Braun and Cecilia Braunova

This is a photo of my maternal grandparents, Viliam Braun and Cecilia or Cili Braunova, taken in the 1900s. The Braun family is from my mother's branch of the family. My grandparents were named Vilmos [in Slovak Viliam] Braun and Cecilia Braunova. My grandfather on my mother's side was born in the town of Dolna Lehota, in 1850. He owned a café in Nitra. The popular Braun Café was very well known in this city. The café was located in the center of Nitra, beside the then Theater of Andrej Bagar. Unfortunately it's been since town down. They were enlarging the town square, so they leveled it. I don't remember my grandfather, he died in Nitra in 1920. That one I never knew. My grandma, Cili [Cecilia], her I remember well. She and her husband had eleven children. I think that two of them died right after birth. What my grandmother's maiden name was, that I don't know. I only know that she was originally from Nitra. She was born in 1856 and died, in 1936, in her hometown of Nitra. The most characteristic for the whole family was Vilmos Braun. I've even got a book, named Nevet a Nyitra - Usmievava Nitra [in Hungarian and Slovak: Smiling Nitra], that contains all the anecdotes about Vilmos Braun. There are a lot of them. They're anecdotes typical of small-town café life during peacetime [during the time of the First Czechoslovak Republic 5 - Editor's note], when people had no worries. They amused themselves by playing tricks on each other and were happy when they successfully pulled off some mischievous prank. One of the anecdotes about the Brauns says that Grandma Cili always asked: 'Mikor jöttel haza? When did you come home? 'I was already home at one.' She didn't believe him and said to herself: 'I'll get the better of you.' She lay down in bed crosswise. He'll have to wake her up when he comes home at night...! In the morning Grandma wakes up, and Vilmos is fast asleep beside her. Or there was this ad in Hungarian. At night a bed during the day a 'fotel'. That's this type of folding bed. And he wrote a letter to the factory. Please sirs, I'm a café owner, I work at night and sleep during the day. Do you also have something that's a 'fotel' at night, and a bed during the day? It's full of these stories. Vilmos had a beautiful watch. 'Mr. Schlessinger, I'll give this watch to you.' 'But why?' 'My only condition is that you've always got to tell me the time. When I ask you, when I won't have a watch. You'll tell me.' Schlessinger knew that something was up. But he took the watch. Vilmos let him wait for two days, after all, he had a spare watch. The third day, at 1:00 a.m., his servant is banging on Schlessinger's window: 'Mr. Braun wants to know what time it is.' So by then Schlessinger knew what the deal was. That's the Braun family.