František Soukup (politician)

František Soukup

František Soukup's tomb in the Kamenná Lhota cemetery

František Soukup , pseudonym Radim , (born August 22, 1871 in Steinlhota , † November 11, 1940 in Prague ) was a Czech politician , lawyer and journalist. He was a member of the Austrian House of Representatives , Minister of Justice of Czechoslovakia and President of the Czechoslovak Senate.

Life

Soukup was born the son of an innkeeper. From 1891 he studied law at the Czech University in Prague, but was expelled for his political and journalistic activities for the Czech progress movement in 1892 and therefore had to continue his studies between 1895 and 1896 at the University of Graz . Soukup received his doctorate in 1899 at the German University in Prague for Dr. jur. and worked as a lawyer in Prague from 1900. He did his military service with the medical service in Vienna and Bratislava.

Soukup took part in the Česká moderna manifesto in 1895 and was originally a member of the Young Czechs . However, in 1896 he joined the Czech Social Democrats ( Česká strana sociálně democická ) and made a quick career within the party, leading to the party leadership. From 1905 he represented the Czech Social Democrats in the Czech National Council in Prague and from 1908 to 1938 was also a representative of the Czech Social Democrats in the permanent office of the Second International in Brussels. After the party newspaper "Právo lidu" was founded in 1897, Soukup was editor of the party organ and also worked for this newspaper for several years as parliamentary reporter. He has been repeatedly fined for press offenses. Soukup founded the Workers Academy in Prague and was active in the free thinker movement. He was considered a representative of the national, autonomist wing, whereby he was heavily involved in the franchise campaign in 1905. In the Reichsrat election in 1907 , he ran in the electoral district of Bohemia 6 and was able to prevail in the first ballot. In the 1911 Reichsrat election, however, he lost his seat in this electoral district with 46 percent in the first ballot to the candidate of the Czech national-social party Jiří Stříbrný . For this he was able to prevail in the by-election in the electoral district of Bohemia 35 and was a member of the House of Representatives again between 1913 and 1918.

Soukup was elected to the Prague city council in 1913 as the first social democrat. In November 1915 his attempt to smuggle directives for the Czech resistance in his coat buttons into Austria led to his arrest. From July 1918 he was secretary of the Czech National Committee and negotiated the post-war political order at home and abroad. He proclaimed the Czechoslovak state on October 28, 1918, together with Alois Rašín , Antonín Švehla and Jiří Stříbrný in Prague and acted as its first Minister of Justice from November 1918 to July 1919. He was also a member and vice-president of the Revolutionary National Assembly from 1918 to 1920 and was a member and vice-president of the Czechoslovak Senate from 1920. In 1929 he took over the office of President of the Czechoslovak Senate. Soukup was arrested twice by the Gestapo in 1939 and died as a result of these interrogations.

literature

• Fritz Freund: The Austrian House of Representatives. A biographical-statistical handbook, 1907-1913, XI. Legislative period (18th session). Wiener Verlag, Vienna, Leipzig 1907, p. 318
• R. Luft:  Soukup, František (Franz). In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 12, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2001-2005, ISBN 3-7001-3580-7 , p. 434 f. (Direct links on p. 434 , p. 435 ).

Web links

Commons : František Soukup  - collection of images, videos and audio files