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He once observed, that “if a small people achieves something
with its equally small potential this acquires a huge moral value, just
like the penny of that proverbial widow from the Bible.” Growing amid the
totalitarian and authoritarian regimes that dominated Europe in the 1920s
and 30s, Czechoslovakia played a role that was hardly commensurate with
the small size of its territory. According to a leading 20th century
thinker, Karl Popper, “Czechoslovakia on Masaryk’s watch was one the most
open societies around, including the more civilized part of Europe.”
His persona has since taken on a mythical dimension, largely
due to the surrounding atmosphere of general admiration. At times it looks
like he was an ideal man. Plato’s age-old dream of a nation ruled by philosophers
became fully realized in Professor Masaryk. Never hungry for power, and
someone who joined big time politics pretty late, Tomas Masaryk did not
embark on a full-fledged political career until after the breakup of Austro-Hungary.
A political émigré, he waged such a fierce struggle for Czech
independence that his fellow countrymen elected him President in absentia.
A champion of complete equality, Masaryk married Charlotte
Garrigue, an American, whose last name he later added to his own. Women
adored him, and not entirely for his staunch support of their rights.
Their idol, however, was no skirt chaser and as a devout Christian was
a dedicated supporter of monogamy. He would not tolerate injustice. In
1899 he intervened in the case of Leopold Gilsner, a Jew accused of committing
a ritual murder of two Christian girls. The case raised an ugly wave of
anti-Semitic sentiment that swept the whole Empire where too many people
openly despised Jews. An authority on all matters cultural, Masaryk published
a series of articles proving the absurdity of the charges brought against
Gilsner. A big hearted man, he, in the 1920s gave shelter to a large group
of Russian professors banished by the Bolsheviks, providing them with jobs
and other means of subsistence. And, quite naturally, this ideal
man was a non-smoker, ate sparingly, exercised regularly and, from age
50 onward, never drank anything stronger than milk. To top it all off,
Masaryk was fluent in many languages and was a real walking encyclopedia.
It’s hard to believe, therefore, that such a cultured and
well-educated man was born away from Europe’s intellectual centers, in
the southeast of the economically laggard Moravia, the son of a coachman
and a cook. His father was an illiterate, naïve Slovak, his
mother a God-loving Czech woman raised in a culturally advanced German
milieu. He gradually evolved into an avid culture vulture but was also
too well aware of the dire need to earn his daily bread through hard work
to pay for his studies. After finishing secondary school, Tomas, now 14,
became the apprentice of a blacksmith. Entering gymnasium at age 15, he
then moved on to enroll in Vienna University, which he graduated from at
the age of 26. After a brief stint as an assistant professor there,
Masaryk was appointed Professor Extraordinarius of philosophy at the Czech
University in Prague where he began a monthly magazine devoted to the critical
examination of Czech culture and science.
Tomas Masaryk did not get fully immersed in politics until
the advent of the new century though. In 1900 he founded his own party,
but his real rise to political stardom began years later. Upon the outbreak
of World War One in 1914, Masaryk left the confines of Austria-Hungary
making his first ever call for liquidation of the Empire. Moving from one
European capital to another, he worked tirelessly to encourage and then
commit Allied support for the creation of a Czech state following the war.
By the war’s end, Masaryk was already a leading expert on the problems
concerning the Danube region. The days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
were now numbered and in 1918 Tomas Masaryk made a triumphal comeback to
Prague. For more than 20 years he served as the first president of
a new democratic Czechoslovakia. Twice re-elected, he officially held the
office until his death on September 14, 1937, although he handed over most
of his responsibilities to Eduard Benes in 1935 when his health began to
fail. Meanwhile, the political situation on the continent was deteriorating
fast and the ill-famed Munich deal and a host of domestic problems precipitated
the country’s eventual collapse when, on March 16, 1939, Adolf Hitler established
a German protectorate over a large part of the Czechoslovak state. Slovakia
became independent and several southern territories became part of Hungary.
Masaryk did not live to see all that, however. As we already said, he died
in 1937 – a universally admired sage and thinker, the father of a nation
and the author of a democratic concept that is still of much interest to
everyone everywhere…
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