Tomáš Masaryk
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was a Czechoslovak statesman, political activist and philosopher who served as the first president of Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1935. He is regarded as the founding father of Czechoslovakia.
Born in Hodonín, Moravia, Masaryk obtained a doctorate at the University of Vienna and was a professor of philosophy at the Czech Charles-Ferdinand University. He began his political career as a deputy of the Austrian Reichsrat, serving from 1891 to 1893 and from 1907 to 1914. He was an advocate of restructuring the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a federal state, but by the outbreak of the First World War, he had become a supporter of Czech and Slovak independence. He went into exile, and travelled around Europe to organise and promote the Czechoslovak cause. He played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Czechoslovak Legion, which fought against the Central Powers during the war. In 1918, Masaryk, along with his protégés Edvard Beneš and Milan Rastislav Štefánik, travelled to the United States to obtain support from President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State Robert Lansing. Their negotiations resulted in the Washington Declaration, which proclaimed the independence of a Czechoslovak state.
With the fall of Austria-Hungary in late 1918, the First Czechoslovak Republic received recognition from the Allied powers and Masaryk was recognised as head of its provisional government. He was formally elected president in November, and was reelected three times subsequently. Masaryk presided over a period of stability as Czechoslovakia emerged as a strong democratic state. He resigned from office in 1935 due to old age, and was succeeded by Beneš. He retired to the village of Lány and died two years later at the age of 87.
Early life
Masaryk was born to a poor, working-class family in the predominantly Catholic city of Hodonín, Margraviate of Moravia, in Moravian Slovakia. The nearby Slovak village of Kopčany, the home of his father Jozef, also claims to be his birthplace. Masaryk grew up in the village of Čejkovice, in South Moravia, before moving to Brno to study.His father, Jozef Masárik, was Slovak, born in Kopčany, Slovakia. Masárik was a carter and, later, the steward and coachman at the imperial estate in the nearby town of Hodonín. Tomáš's mother, Teresie Masaryková, was a Moravian who received a German education. A cook at the estate, she met Masárik and they married on 15 August 1849.
Education
After grammar school in Brno and Vienna from 1865 to 1872, Masaryk attended the University of Vienna and was a student of Franz Brentano. He received his Ph.D. from the university in 1876 and completed his habilitation thesis, Der Selbstmord als soziale Massenerscheinung der modernen Civilisation, there in 1879. From 1876 to 1879, Masaryk studied in Leipzig with Wilhelm Wundt and Edmund Husserl. He married Charlotte Garrigue, whom he had met while a student in Leipzig, on 15 March 1878. They lived in Vienna until 1881, when they moved to Prague.Masaryk was appointed professor of philosophy at the Czech Charles-Ferdinand University, the Czech-language part of Charles University, in 1882. He founded Athenaeum, a magazine devoted to Czech culture and science, the following year. Athenaeum, edited by Jan Otto, was first published on 15 October 1883.
Masaryk's students included Edvard Beneš and Emanuel Chalupny.
File:Alte universitaet cossa.jpg|thumb|Portico of the University of Vienna's New Aula, where Masaryk studied philosophy.|225px
Masaryk challenged the validity of the epic poems Rukopisy královedvorský a zelenohorský, supposedly dating to the early Middle Ages and presenting a false, nationalistic Czech chauvinism to which he was strongly opposed. He also contested the Jewish blood libel during the 1899 Hilsner trial.
Masaryk was greatly influenced by the 19th-century respect for scientific evidence. The 19th century was an age of tremendous scientific and technological advances, and as such scientists enjoyed immense prestige. Masaryk believed that social problems and political conflicts were the results of ignorance, and that provided that one undertook a proper "scientific" approach to studying the underlying causes it would be possible to devise the correct solutions. As such, Masaryk saw his role as an educator who would enlighten the public from its ignorance and apathy.
Politician
Masaryk served in the Reichsrat from 1891 to 1893 with the Young Czech Party and from 1907 to 1914 in the Czech Progressive Party, which he had founded in 1900. At that time, he was not yet campaigning for Czech and Slovak independence from Austria-Hungary. Masaryk helped Hinko Hinković defend the Croat-Serb Coalition during their 1909 Vienna political trial; its members were sentenced to a total of over 150 years in prison, with a number of death sentences.When World War I broke out in 1914, Masaryk concluded that the best course was to seek independence for Czechs and Slovaks from Austria-Hungary. He went into exile in December 1914 with his daughter, Olga, staying in several places in Western Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States and Japan. Masaryk began organizing Czechs and Slovaks outside Austria-Hungary during his exile, establishing contacts which would be crucial to Czechoslovak independence. He delivered lectures and wrote several articles and memoranda supporting the Czechoslovak cause. Masaryk was pivotal in establishing the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia as an effective fighting force on the Allied side during World War I, when he held a Serbian passport. In 1915 he was one of the first staff members of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, where the student society and senior common room are named after him. Masaryk became professor of Slavic Research at King's College London, lecturing on the problem of small nations. In January 1917, supported by Norman Hapgood, T. G. Masaryk wrote the first memorandum to president Wilson, concerning the need for the creation of an independent Czechoslovak state.
During World War I and afterwards, Masaryk supported the unification of the Kingdom of Serbia with the Kingdom of Montenegro.
Masaryk championed feminist causes, being influenced by his wife Charlotte Garrigue. Masaryk's progressive ideas strongly influenced the Washington Declaration of Czechoslovak Independence.
Czechoslovak Legion and US visit
On 5 August 1914, the Russian High Command authorized the formation of a battalion recruited from Czechs and Slovaks in Russia. The unit went to the front in October 1914 and was attached to the Russian Third Army.From its start, Masaryk wanted to develop the legion from a battalion to a formidable military formation. To do so, however, he realized that he would need to recruit Czech and Slovak prisoners of war in Russian camps. In late 1914, Russian military authorities permitted the legion to enlist Czech and Slovak POWs from the Austro-Hungarian army; the order was rescinded in a few weeks, however, because of opposition from other areas of the Russian government. Despite continuing efforts to persuade the Russian authorities to change their minds, the Czechs and Slovaks were officially barred from recruiting POWs until the summer of 1917. Under these conditions, the Czechoslovak armed unit in Russia grew slowly from 1914 to 1917. Masaryk preferred to concentrate on elites rather than public opinion. On 19 October 1915, Masaryk gave the inaugural address at the newly opened School of Slavonic Studies at King's College London on "The Problem of Small Nations in the European Crisis", arguing that on both moral and practical grounds that the United Kingdom should support the independence efforts of "small" nations such as the Czechs. Shortly afterwards, Masaryk crossed the English Channel to go to Paris, where he delivered a speech in French at the Institut d'études slaves of the Sorbonne on "Les Slaves parmi les nations", receiving what was described as a "vigorous applause".
During the war, Masaryk's intelligence network of Czech revolutionaries provided critical intelligence to the allies. His European network worked with an American counterespionage network of nearly 80 members, headed by Emanuel Viktor Voska. Voska and his network, who were presumed to be German supporters, spied on German and Austrian diplomats. Among other achievements, the intelligence from these networks was critical in uncovering the Hindu–German Conspiracy in San Francisco. Masaryk began teaching at London University in October 1915. He published "Racial Problems in Hungary", with ideas about Czechoslovak independence. In 1916, Masaryk went to France to convince the French government of the necessity of dismantling Austria-Hungary. He consulted with his friend professor Pavel Miliukov, a leading Russian historian and one of the leaders of the Kadet Party, to introduce him to various members of Russian high society.
In early 1916, the Czechs and Slovaks in Russian service were reorganized as the First Czecho-Slovak Rifle Regiment. In a rare attempt to influence public opinion, Masaryk opened up an office on Piccadilly Circus in London whose exterior was covered with pro-Czechoslovak slogans and maps with the intention of attracting the interest of those walking by. One of Masaryk's most important British friends was the journalist Wickham Steed who wrote articles in the newspapers urging British support for Czechoslovakia. Another important British contract for Masaryk was the historian Robert Seton-Watson, who also wrote widely in the British press urging British support for the "submerged" nations of the Austrian empire. After the 1917 February Revolution he proceeded to Russia to help organize the Czechoslovak Legion, a group dedicated to Slavic resistance to the Austrians. Miliukov became the new Russian foreign minister in the Provisional government, and proved very sympathetic towards the idea of creating Czechoslovakia. After the Czechoslovak troops' performance in July 1917 at the Battle of Zborov, the Russian provisional government granted Masaryk and the Czechoslovak National Council permission to recruit and mobilize Czech and Slovak volunteers from the POW camps. Later that summer a fourth regiment was added to the brigade, which was renamed the First Division of the Czechoslovak Corps in Russia. A second division of four regiments was added to the legion in October 1917, raising its strength to about 40,000 by 1918.
Masaryk formed a good connection with Russian supreme commanders, Mikhail Alekseyev, Aleksei Brusilov, Nikolay Dukhonin and Mikhail Diterikhs, in Mogilev, from May 1917.
Masaryk travelled to the United States in 1918, where he convinced President Woodrow Wilson of the righteousness of his cause. On 5 May 1918, over 150,000 Chicagoans filled the streets to welcome him; Chicago was the centre of Czechoslovak immigration to the United States, and the city's reception echoed his earlier visits to the city and his visiting professorship at the University of Chicago in 1902. He also had strong links to the United States, with his marriage to an American citizen and his friendship with Chicago industrialist Charles R. Crane, who had Masaryk invited to the University of Chicago and introduced to the highest political circles, including Wilson. Besides Wilson and the secretary of the state Robert Lansing this was Ray Stannard Baker, W. Phillips, Polk, Long, Lane, D. F. Houston, William Wiseman, Harry Pratt Judson and the French ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand. It also included Bernard Baruch, Vance McCormick, Edward N. Hurley, Samuel M. Vauclain and Colonel House. At the Chicago meeting on 8 October 1918, Chicago industrialist Samuel Insull introduced him as the president of the future Czechoslovak Republic de facto and mentioned his legions. On 18 October 1918 he submitted to president Wilson the "Washington Declaration" created with the help of his American friends as the basic document for the foundation of a new independent Czechoslovak state. Speaking on 26 October 1918 as head of the Mid-European Union in Philadelphia, Masaryk called for the independence of Czechoslovaks and the other oppressed peoples of central Europe.
Masaryk's book was paradigmatic of central European thought as he identified the Western powers as the "bearers of higher humanitarian principles and democracy" without regard to non-European peoples enduring colonialism or segregation in the United States. Czech historian writes that "he implicitly identified humanity with the peoples of European stock".
Masaryk believed that Jews controlled the press and helped the nascent state of Czechoslovakia during its struggle for independence. Czech historian Jan Láníček comments that "The great philosopher and humanist Masaryk was still using the same anti-Semitic trope found at the bottom of all anti-Jewish accusations."