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However, by this time Anton was unable to pay for his son’s education at all. He had been injured by a rolling tree trunk and was never again able to work his farm profitably. From the age of sixteen, Johann had to fend for himself. He became a qualified private tutor and, by giving private lessons to other students while at the same time attending school himself, managed for a time. But the hard mental work and inadequate food made him ill, and in the spring of 1839, Johann went home to the farm to work in the fields. After a few months, he was able to return to Opava. He completed his studies and left the high school in 1840 with a certificate of excellence. Johann, at eighteen, now wanted to study philosophy at the University Philosophical Institute of Olomouc (then called Olmütz). He intended to pay for this by earning money from private tutoring again. But “all his efforts remained unsuccessful,” he wrote of himself later, “because of lack of friends and

A view of Lipnik, the village where eleven-year-old Johann attended the upper elementary school.

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