Jan Masaryk

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jan Masaryk (before 1923)
Monument in Prague

Jan Masaryk (born September 14, 1886 in Prague ; † March 10, 1948 there ) was a Czechoslovak politician. From 1940 to 1948 he was Foreign Minister, initially in the government in exile . He died in unexplained circumstances.

Life

Jan Masaryk was the son of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk , the first President of Czechoslovakia . From 1906 to 1913 he lived in the USA. Jan Masaryk was a front-line officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I and was promoted in October 1918 for being particularly brave. In the second half of the 1920s he was a participant in the meetings of the informal Stammtisch group of Prague intellectuals Pátečníci .

From 1919 in the diplomatic service, Masaryk was among other things Czechoslovak Ambassador to Great Britain from 1925 to 1938 . From 1940 he was Foreign Minister of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and gained great popularity during this time through his radio addresses on the BBC . From September 1944 to April 1945 he was also Minister of Defense of the government in exile.

After returning in 1945, Masaryk retained the post of foreign minister in the first government of the communist premier Klement Gottwald .

Masaryk was a member of the Freemasons Association .

death

On September 10, 1947, the Olomouc area secretariat of KSČ tried to assassinate Masaryk together with the two likewise non-communist ministers Petr Zenkl and Prokop Drtina by an explosive attack. The initiator of the bombs sent from Krčmaň in perfume boxes was KSČ MP Jura Sosnar-Honzák . The client was probably the Olomouc KSČ area secretary, Gottwald's son-in-law Alexej Čepička .

During the communist revolution in February 1948 , Masaryk did not take a clear stance. A little later he was found dead under the bathroom window in the courtyard of Palais Czernin , the seat of the Foreign Ministry, dressed only in his pajamas (so-called “Third Prague Lintel ”). Despite several judicial investigations, it was not clear for a long time whether he had committed suicide or was murdered.

Speculations about a murder by the communist secret police led to the resumption of the dropped investigation in 1993, which was only concluded after ten years. In 2002, based on the position of the body and the injuries, an expert opinion determined that Masaryk must have been forcibly pushed out of the window. An agent of the Soviet secret service had already indicated this in her testimony; However, since this statement could not be verified later, the circumstances of death were still considered unexplained. The Prague police also declared in 2004 that they no longer assumed suicide.

According to official information, the investigations into the death of Jan Masaryk were resumed at the end of October 2019.

Jan Masaryk Medal

The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs awards the silver Jan Masaryk Medal , which is one of the highest awards that non-Czechs can receive.

Masaryk in film and literature

Karel Roden plays his role in the film drama Verrat von München by Julius Ševčík (2017, orig. Masaryk , Czech Republic, 2016) . The film shows the time before the Munich Agreement from the fictional retrospective of Jan Masaryk in an American psychiatry in 1938.

In November 2019, the 272-page novel “The Foreign Minister” by Leo Lania was published by Mandelbaum Verlag , the subject of which is Jan Masaryk. It is neither a key novel nor a political thriller, it shows a statesman struggling to find an attitude. It is a re-publication of a novel published in the USA in 1956 as "The Foreign Minister", which was first published in German in 1960.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Václav Stehlík: Stari Friday Men Novodobí a Zpátečníci! , online at: vasevec.parlamentnilisty.cz / ...
  2. ^ Tajné společenství v Čechách - zednáři (Secret Societies in Bohemia Freemasons) ( Czech ) Homepage of the ČT24 transmitter . Retrieved November 18, 2012.
  3. ^ Rob Cameron, Police close case on 1948 death of Jan Masaryk - murder, not suicide. , Radio Praha in English , published January 6, 2004. Retrieved February 8, 2018.
  4. ↑ Rob Cameron, Masaryk murder mystery back in headlines as Russian journalist speaks out , Radio Praha in English , published on December 18, 2006. Accessed February 8, 2018.
  5. ↑ New investigations on “Prague Lintel” from 1948 . ORF. October 30, 2019. Retrieved October 30, 2019 ..
  6. ↑ Masaryk (2016). IMDb , accessed January 11, 2020 .
  7. ^ Leo Lania: "The Foreign Minister" Zerritten between fascism and communism , deutschlandfunk.de November 29, 2019, accessed November 29, 2019

Web links

Commons : Jan Masaryk  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Masaryk, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech politician
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1948
Place of death Prague