Notes:

The Legacy of TGM

Tomas Garrigue Masaryk - founder and first President of the Republic of Czechoslovakia - is a hero whose world significance and moral authority are unsurpassed among the distinguished figures of his time, a man remarkable not only because of his personal courage and devotion to democracy, but for the harmony between his personality and work - the astonishing unity of his words and deeds.
He was dead before the twin terrors of Nazism and communism took temporary control of his country, and both regimes tried to sweep his memory under the rug. He was ignored at best and vilified at worst during the decades of totalitarian domination.
The communist propaganda machine portrayed him as an enemy of the Soviet Union and of communism, and condemned his leadership in Czechoslovakia. His writings were on the list of forbidden books; his name was removed from streets and monuments in his honor were melted down.
Today, eight years after the fall of communism, Masaryk has become the subject of a modest revival of interest.
Someday the Czech people will realize that Masaryk has surreptitiously exercised a moderating influence upon them because they have lived, so to speak, in his state. For those old enough to remember the first half of this century, or wise enough to have read its history, Masaryk, who founded the republic in 1918, is one of the most important pioneers of what the philosopher Sir Karl Popper called "the open society."
Up from serfdom

His early life would not have hinted that Masaryk was marked to be a world leader. He was born in 1850 in southern Moravia, the son of a Slovak-speaking coachman working on an Imperial estate, and a German-speaking housewife. Encouraged by his parents, Tomas took the long step from his father's illiterate serfdom to becoming a professor of philosophy. After his first term of primary school, he was apprenticed to be a blacksmith. Then he gained an education in the secondary schools in Brno and Vienna. As a high school and university student, he had to seek support from wealthy families by tutoring their children. His studies were finished at the University of Vienna, where he took a doctoral degree in philosophy in 1876. Six years later, he was made professor of philosophy at the Czech university in Prague, and began living in the city for the first time. He taught there until 1914 when war broke out.
Throughout his teaching career, Masaryk thought centered around the crisis of European civilization. He refused to consider its history a play of meaningless, irrational forces, as Leo Tolstoy had argued in War and Peace. Nor did Masaryk embrace a deterministic view of history, explaining everything by economic conditions, technological changes or the class struggle, as Marx did. In fact, Masaryk always maintained--insisted--that history is shaped by ideas in the minds of men and women who can make the future better than the past.
Philosophy and religion

Earlier in his career, Masaryk had diagnosed the crisis of European civilization as the decay of religious beliefs, with the increased incidence of suicide and homicide as its most visible signs. For him, this decline of faith was a sad phenomenon whose explosive social consequences were a serious problem. It appeared to him "as a historical process, as something for which a society is collectively responsible." The remedy offered by Masaryk was simple: people must regain their religious faith, be they Christians, Jews or Muslims.
Masaryk himself was a deeply religious man. His religious feeling was first nurtured by the naive piety of his Catholic mother. Then came school and the intellectual cultivation and justifications produced by contact with his teachers and by his own reflections. He himself joined the protestant church in 1880. To use Max Weber's simile, Masaryk didn't feel himself God's vessel; he rather sensed himself an instrument of God's will, as he drew his moralism from the certainty that he was the God-sent agent of Providence.
A modern view of women

In 1878 Masaryk married Charlotte Garrigue, an American student he had met while at the Leipzig university. After their marriage in New York, he incorporated her maiden name into his own - a radical move even by today's standards, much less those of a century ago. By all accounts, Masaryk loved women, and they, in turn, adored him. But he loved them in a Puritanical way. What he had to say about women in general was often regarded as mildly heretical by some guardians of social mores. Masaryk argued that social development was leading toward democratic equality of opportunity for the sexes.
"The modern woman," Masaryk proclaimed in one of his speeches, "must be active; she must engage herself in public debate while ignoring the old-fashioned mentoring but having, as the French put it, the courage de son opinion. Clearly, such an audacious attitude may be perceived as heresy. But the modern woman must struggle against both prejudice and bluff.
Masaryk is most emphatic and very eloquent on the sexual question, which he sees with the eyes of a firm believer in woman's moral equality with men. In his view, woman as a household drudge or sexual object is destroyed externally and impoverished internally. But Masaryk adds: "I do not preach a sermon about enjoying ascetic life, nor about any act of raping nature or the human body... What I urge is true love between man and woman."
Unmasking Czech anti-Semitism

An intrepid critic who measured the soundness of national life by the criterion of truth, Masaryk's intervention was often without popular backing, especially when he defended the rights of minorities in the Habsburg Empire. For instance, he substantially contributed to the unmasking of Czech anti-Semitism. When an East Bohemian girl was killed in 1899, it revived the superstition of Jewish ritual murders for the purpose of using Christian blood in religious ceremonies. A young Jew, Leopold Hilsner, was arrested and, despite his protestations of innocence, was sentenced to death for committing the crime. In a series of articles, Masaryk refuted the allegation of ritual motives, and urged a revision of the verdict. In a subsequent decision the court dropped the accusation. With unfaltering courage, Masaryk sought justice and to debunk anti-Semitic legends, be they in the minds of the common folk, the schoolmaster or the jingoist, even when going against popular opinion made him a target for the hatred of others.
War, exile and culture

On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, an act that set off World War I. Shortly afterward, Masaryk, aged 64, went into exile. He became the leading opposition figure abroad, where he strove for the liberation of the Czechoslovak people from Austrian shackles. During the war, he was made the commander in chief of the Czechoslovak Legion, troops assembled from Czechs living abroad--particularly in France, England and America--who were joined by Czech and Slovak conscripts who had become prisoners of war in Russia or who had defected from the Austrian army. These armies fought fierce battles against Austria and Germany on various European battlefronts.
Today, one may be amazed at the fact that these stateless soldiers summoned the will, marshaled the resources, made the sacrifices and rebounded from their blunders in order to fight for their cause under Masaryk's leadership. After the Allied victory in 1918, Masaryk brought his valiant soldiers--an army of 80,000 men--home on an arduous path made necessary by the civil war raging throughout Russia: through Siberia to Vladivostok, and across the Pacific Ocean and the United States. They finally returned to a European homeland where the many deaths caused by the war had given birth to a new republic.
To be sure, the triumph of the Czechoslovak nation was the result not only of Masaryk's leadership but also of Allied support. Toward the war's end, Masaryk had visited Woodrow Wilson in the White House and convinced him that it would be in the interest of the United States to help liberate the Central European nations from the debilitating climate of the Habsburg Empire.
Unlike other European leaders, Masaryk had an advantage in his links to the United States. Not only had he visited there several times and taken an American wife, but he felt at home in the culture and admired what he called American pragmatism.
Masaryk also loved Russian culture, yet there he did have an ax to grind. He was highly critical of the oppressive Czarist regime, the Orthodox Church, mystical Slavophilism, atheistic radicalism and the Marxist quest for power. On cultural matters he was critical but scrupulously fair, the result being an evenhanded evaluation of the interplay of Russian and West European artists and thinkers.
In three volumes titled Russia and Europe, written in German before World War I, he analyzed, with what seems today a remarkable clairvoyance, those various demons of Russian history. In his view, Russia missed the advent of the modern nation-state in the 17th century, bypassing the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Those blank spots in its history set the stage for the tragedy to come: The Bolshevik coup that plunged Russia into misery, brutality, isolation and confrontation with the outside world. Masaryk was most insightful when he defended the European interest in his charming and moving book World Revolution (1925), in which he argued that Europeans wished to see the ascendancy of those Russian adherents of democracy who sought the signposts of national revival by looking outward and forward, rather than inward and backward.
The legacy of TGM

After founding democratic Czechoslovakia, Masaryk set about implementing his lofty and guiding principles on the multiethnic and multicultural European continent. During his presidency (1918-1935), Czechoslovakia became an island of democracy, a great educational workshop and a powerful industrial country. It developed a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, separation of powers, and the protection of fundamental liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property. In spite of shortcomings and problems, the country gave asylum to many who faced persecution elsewhere, namely in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, because of their political, national, religious or cultural allegiances. The collaboration among Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Hungarians and Jews, who had lived in the Central European region from the Middle Ages, produced at that time a uniquely free society with a cosmopolitan culture, one which was tolerant and nearly untouched by the nationalism and xenophobia that mark many multiethnic societies today.
As Sir Karl Popper put it, "Masaryk's Czechoslovakia was the most open of all societies ever to develop in Europe. It lasted for only 20 years. But what difficult and marvelous years! In the shortest time, this open society had built a solid economy and the most solid military defence system in Europe."
In 1938 Britain and France, under the governments of the appeasers, cooperated with Hitler in destroying Czechoslovakia with the notorious Munich Agreements. Masaryk, who had been in poor health for a few years, did not live to see his life's work crushed under the enormous impact of Nazi forces. Nevertheless, his spirit lived on in thousands of quiet "Masarykian" heroes who risked everything to help rescue the lives of persecuted Jews or who struggled against the enemy. The struggle continued until 1989 and the re-establishment of the independent state of Czechoslovakia, with Vaclav Havel as its president.
What, then, is the most significant element of Masaryk's message today, when European history provides no indication that the incredibly diverse peoples of this continent will be able to merge peacefully and voluntarily into a single polity?
Without pretending to be a prophet, Masaryk offered--and still offers--to Europeans a brighter future in terms of his moral insight and universal ethos, one which is the very opposite of the current, dominant secular-hedonistic and nationalist trends. Masaryk calls for a concern for truth and authenticity; a concern for our fellow man and woman; and a passion for justice and freedom and thus for democracy, conceived as a tolerant, open society with equal rights and duties for all citizens, regardless of sex, colour, religion or cultural background.
The creation of a united and prosperous Czech Republic as a multiethnic model in Europe is as central to the policies of Vaclav Havel as it was to those of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk. Both presidents put their faith in democracy, diversity and multiculturalism. This is and will be their lasting legacy.
© Josef Novak

Tomas married Garrigue, Charlotte on 15 Mar 1878 in New York's City Hall, New York, United States. Charlotte (daughter of Garrigue, Rudolph Pierre and Whiting, Charlotte Lydia) was born on 20 Nov 1850 in Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States; died on 13 May 1923 in Praha, Prague, Czechoslovakia. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

His son, Jan, was vice premier (1941-45) of Czechoslovak provisional government in London.
Jan Masaryk (1886–1948)
Anecdote... Early in his career, Jan Masaryk served as Czech ambassador to the United States. At a party he was prevailed upon by the hostess to play the violin. He graciously accepted the invitation and played a Czech nursery song, to rapturous applause from all present. He left the party with a Czech friend, who wanted to know why on earth he had been asked to play the violin. Masaryk explained: "Oh, it's all very simple—don't you see? They have mixed me up with my father; they mixed him up with Paderewski. And they mixed the piano up with the violin."
Biographical Note... son of the founding president of Czechoslovakia. He became foreign minister in London when the Czech government was in exile during World War II. He remained foreign minister after the war but died as a result of a "fall" from a window, not long after the Communist takeover in 1948.
Jan Masaryk died 54 years ago
[11-03-2002] By Pavla Horáková
To hear the following story in Real Audio, click here:


Listen in RealAudio: Streaming - Download
Two weeks after the Communist Party took over in Czechoslovakia, Jan Masaryk, the country's Foreign Minister was found dead. His body was found beneath his window in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry building. Jan Masaryk died 54 years ago, on March 10th, 1948 and the question as to whether he ended his own life or was killed by the Communists will probably never be answered. By Pavla Horakova.
Bust of Jan Masaryk, photo CTKJan Masaryk, a diplomat and the longest serving Minister of Foreign Affairs of pre-Communist Czechoslovakia was the son of the first president and founder of Czechoslovakia Tomas Garrigue Masaryk and his American-born wife Charlotte Garrigue. After his secondary studies in Prague, Jan left for the United States where he stayed until 1913. After independent Czechoslovakia was created in 1918, Jan Masaryk entered its diplomatic service. In 1919, he returned to the United States as Czechoslovakia's first charge d'affaires and in 1925, Masaryk was appointed ambassador to Great Britain. In protest against the 1939 Munich Agreement, Masaryk left the diplomatic service and in 1940, he became the foreign minister of the London-based Czechoslovak government in exile. On the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland, Masaryk spoke out about the situation and the fate of his country on the BBC in London and on September 8, 1939, he started a series of regular radio addresses to the Czechoslovak people. After the war, Jan Masaryk returned to Czechoslovakia, where he served again as a Foreign Minister - in what was known as the National Front government, which included the Communists. Jan Masaryk had to respect the Communists who won the 1946 election but he was wary of their aggression and Soviet expansionism. In 1947 Czechoslovakia agreed to participate in the US-funded Marshall plan - a decision unpalatable for the Soviets. In July 1947, Masaryk and the Communist Prime Minister Klement Gottwald went to Moscow to negotiate. "I left as a minister of a sovereign state but have come back as Stalin's lackey," Jan Masaryk said immediately after his return from the Soviet Union.
Jan Masaryk The events of 1947 gradually led to the Communist takeover in February 1948, when the majority of ministers, Jan Masaryk not included, handed over their resignation to president Benes in the hope that fresh elections would be held. Instead, the president accepted their resignations and a communist government headed by Klement Gottwald was formed. Jan Masaryk retained his post but was not sure whether his decision to stay in a communist government was right, and he even contemplated going into exile. Two weeks after the government was formed, Jan Masaryk met his end on the ground beneath his bathroom window.
============================================================================
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit ] Private life
From 1924 until their divorce in 1931, Masaryk was married to Frances Crane Leatherbee. She was an heiress to the Crane plumbing and elevator fortune, the former wife of Robert Leatherbee, a daughter of Charles R. Crane , a U.S. minister to China, and a sister of Richard Teller Crane 2nd, a U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia. By that marriage, he had three stepchildren: Charles Leatherbee, Robert Leatherbee Jr., and Richard Crane Leatherbee.[2] Stepson Charles Leatherbee (Harvard 1929) co-founded the University Players , a summer stock company in Falmouth, Massachusetts , in 1928 with Bretaigne Windust . He married Mary Lee Logan, younger sister of Joshua Logan , who became one of the co-directors of the University Players in 1931.[2]
Masaryk was a skilled amateur pianist. In that capacity, he accompanied Jarmila Novotna in a recital of Czech folk songs issued on 78 RPM records to commemorate the victims of the Nazi eradication of Lidice .[3]
At the time of his death, Masaryk was reportedly planning to marry the American writer Marcia Davenport .
Masaryk was also a Master Mason.

[edit ] References
^ The Kremlin’s Killing Ways - by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, November 28, 2006

Family/Spouse: Crane, Francis. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]