Tomáš Masaryk

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (IPA: ), sometimes called Thomas Masaryk in English, (March 7, 1850 - September 14, 1937) was an advocate of Czechoslovak independence during WWI and became the first President of Czechoslovakia.

Masaryk was born to a working-class family in the predominantly Catholic city of Hodonín, Moravia. This was then in the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and is now in the Czech Republic. His father Jozef Masaryk, a carter, was a Slovak from the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary (nowadays Slovakia), and his mother Terezie Masaryková (née Kropáčková) was from Moravia.

As a youth he worked as a blacksmith. He studied in Brno, Vienna (1872-1876 philosophy with Franz Brentano) and Leipzig (with Wilhelm Wundt). In 1882, he was appointed Professor of Philosophy in the Czech part of the University of Prague. The following year he founded Athenaeum, a magazine devoted to Czech culture and science. He wrote some works on history, exposing as fraudulent some old Czech mythological poems, supposedly dating from the early Middle Ages. This gained him the hate of some influential people who believed that the poems were genuine. During the Hilsner Trial Masaryk opposed racial prejudice by publicly defending a Jew accused of ritual murder; this too resulted in a wave of hate toward him.

Masaryk served in the Reichsrat (Austrian Parliament) from 1891 to 1893 in the Young Czech Party and again from 1907 to 1914 in the Realist Party, but he did not campaign for Czech independence from Austria-Hungary. When the First World War broke out, he had to flee the country to avoid arrest for treason, going to Geneva, to Italy, and then to London, where he started to agitate for Czech independence. In 1917 he went to Russia to help organize Slavic resistance to the Austrians. In 1918 he travelled to the United States, where he convinced President Woodrow Wilson of the rightness of his cause.

With the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Allies recognized Masaryk as head of the Provisional Czech government, and in 1920 he was elected the first President of Czechoslovakia. He won re-election twice subsequently, and held office until 1935, when Edvard Beneš succeeded him.

Masaryk married Charlotte Garrigue, a Protestant American, from whom he took his middle name, who died near Prague in 1923 from an unspecified illness. His son, Jan Masaryk, served as Foreign Minister in the Czechoslovak government-in-exile (1940-1945) and in the governments of 1945 to 1948. Charlotte gave birth to four other children, Herbert, Alice, Anna and Olga.

Masaryk died from natural causes in 1937 at the age of 87, in Lány, Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic.

Other facts of interest

Avenida Presidente Masaryk ("President Masaryk Avenue"), Mexico City's equivalent of Fifth Avenue in New York City, takes its name from him.
Masaryk gained the nickname of the President-Liberator. Many referred to him by his initials: TGM.
He wrote several books, including The Problems of Small Nations in the European Crisis (1915)
Name Tomáš (Thomas in English) has a place in the Czech calendar on March 7, as a tribute to TGM (it was Masaryk's date of birth).
Karel Čapek, a famous Czech writer, wrote a series of books called 'Hovory s TGM'(=Conversations with TGM).
His life motto was: "Nebát se a nekrást" (= Not to fear and not to steal).
Masaryktown, Florida is named after him.
Kibbutz Kfar Masaryk in Israel (near Haifa) is named after him (http://www.kfar-masaryk.org.il). The kibbutz was founded largely by Czech immigrants.
There is a statue of him in Washington, DC on Massachusetts Avenue as well as in Chicago on the Midway.
His funeral is pictured in the art sleeve for the American band Faith No More's final LP, Album of the Year, to portray the end of a golden age; namely, the band's.

External links

Who's Who: Tomas Masaryk

Presidents of Czechoslovakia | Czechoslovakian politicians | Blacksmiths | 1937 deaths | 1850 births

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Other facts of interest

External links