Tomas Garrigue Masaryk was a sociologist, philosopher, and political activist. He was the founder and first president of Czechoslovakia. Before he was the President liberator of the Czech and Slovak people, he lived a humble life in a small, industrial town.
Masaryk was born in 1850 in the Southern city of Hodonín, Moravia. Masaryk's parents were Jozef Masaryk, coachman at the imperial estate in Hodonín, and Teresie Masarykova, a Slovak Moravian who received a German education.
His parents met while working at the same estate; his father was the carriage chauffeur, and his mother was the maid and cook. While he might have come from humble beginnings, Masaryk's academic and political career was anything but commonplace.
Masaryk graduated with his Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Vienna in 1876. While studying in Leipzig, Germany the following year he met his wife, Charlotte Garrigue, an American. In 1879, Masaryk was appointed as a lecturer of philosophy in Vienna. This opportunity led to his advancement into the Czech University of Prague in 1882, where Masaryk became a Professor of Philosophy.
His academic experience, and the philosophical ideologies he favored, inspired a life campaigning for Czech and Slovak independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
A self-prescribed neo-Kantian, Masaryk took Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative and used it as the basis for his political career. He recognized the wealth disparity between the nobility of the Czech Lands and the working-class people. This imbalance was not an outcome that brought the greatest good to the majority of citizens.
The Categorical Imperative provided a strict regimen of morality and duty. One should act as if the principle of their action could become a universal law of human activity. People are not merely a means to an end but have intrinsic value and should be respected as such. This principle of morality followed Masaryk through his academic, and eventually, his political career.
Masaryk's academic work eventually gained traction, whereby he became politically active. His first attempt at political activism was with the Young Czech Party. They were a group dedicated to the advancement and socioeconomic welfare of ordinary Czech citizens. Of course, this meant that the Party, and Masaryk, stood in direct opposition of the Czech nobility. This position coincided with Masaryk's station in the Austrian Imperial Council, commonly referred to as the Reichsrat. However, as Masaryk grew in his convictions, the Reichsrat no longer had a place for the budding President.
During the trial of Leopold Hilsner, a Jewish man accused of Blood Libel, Masaryk took the defense and aided in clearing Hilsner of any charges. Blood Libel was a false claim that Jews were murdering Christian children to utilize their blood in certain religious rituals and Jewish cooking, even though this is a direct contradiction of Jewish beliefs.
Blood Libel was used, by those in power all across Europe, to persecute Jews. His criticism of Anti-Semitism gleaned a certain air of unpopularity within the Reichsrat, which led to Masaryk's removal from their ranks. The Reichsrat, as well as the Young Czech Party, no longer shared the vision that Masaryk held. Determined to construct his own Party, Masaryk officially left the Young Czech Party and built The Czech Realist Party.
Founded in 1900, the Realist Party displayed a much more progressive attitude towards political activism. The new Party advocated for a free and open democracy for the Czech and Slovak people. The authoritarian regime of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was detrimental to ordinary people. A realist approach to instituting measures of democracy was the only path forward in Masaryk's opinion.
"Unquestionably society ought to be so organised as to render self-sacrifice superfluous, for as long as men exist who are ready and willing to make sacrifices, so long will egoists take advantage of these sacrifices." - Garrigue Masaryk, Tomas (c 1919), The Spirit of Russia, II, pp. 15-16.
To garnish support from foreign powers, Masaryk fled his home during World War I and lived in exile while bolstering support from the Allied Powers. He visited many countries while in exile, but one country would prove much more beneficial to Masaryk's cause than the others: The United States. Masaryk visited the U.S four times throughout his life, and each visit fueled his desire for an independent Czechoslovakia.
His first visit was to New York in March 1878. Masaryk was introduced to the Garrigue family and excitedly prepared for his marriage to Charlotte. More than twenty years later, Masaryk returned to the U.S. by the invitation of a philanthropic industrialist named Charles R. Crane. During this second visit, Masaryk lectured at several Czech immigration centers. His talks in Chicago, New York, Baltimore, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Cedar Rapids were centered around educating the Czech-Americans on religion, socialism, Czech literature, and history. These lectures helped the Czech-Americans understand their homeland traditions, but they served a different purpose to Masaryk. He wrote several treatises with a renewed vigor and was more determined than ever to achieve his goals.
Five years later, Masaryk returned to the U.S. His reception upon each visit garnered more and more support for his cause and a Czech-American following that bombarded him with letters of invitation. Over eleven states called out to Masaryk to have him speak at their lecture halls. He obliged and once again talked to the Czech-American free-thinkers and continued to develop a political model that would serve in his efforts to create a democratic Czecho-Slovak nation.
It wasn't until May of 1918 that Masaryk would finally achieve his goals. Towards the end of World War I, with the world in utter chaos from the fighting, an economic crisis struck the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Masaryk, perhaps indirectly, took advantage of the weakened state of the Empire as a domino effect of nations clamoring for independence took root. In hindsight, this was the perfect opportunity to form the democratic government that Masaryk had envisioned for most of his adult life. He needed support, and with his visits, lectures, and written treatises in the United States, Masaryk gained the much-needed attention of his largest contributor: U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.
Towards the end of 1918, and with the total collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a treaty was put into effect to provide several countries with autonomy. The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye was signed the following year on September 10, 1919, and it officially recognized the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Simultaneously the Treaty recognized the formation of the newly independent nations of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs. This Treaty also dictated that the Central Powers take full responsibility for the horrors that took place during World War I and the creation of a 'War Reparations' fund.
Today in the U.S., Wilson is undergoing harsh criticism by groups such as Black Lives Matter and the Black Justice League. His poor mishandling of Jim Crow-era segregation of Black Americans tarnished his reputation in the U.S. However, Wilson is praised in the Czech Republic for his rigorous support to ratify and recognize Czechoslovakia as an independent nation.
"In a sense, the United States is Czechoslovakia's foster parent. It is upon President Wilson's immortal charter of freedom, as embodied in his famous Fourteen Points, that the foundations of our state are laid. We have tried to pattern our young republic after our great sponsor. Our Constitution and our laws, our mode of government, and even our business methods follow closely those of the United States." - Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, from the speech of the unveiling of the Woodrow Wilson statue in Prague, December 21, 1928.
Woodrow Wilson followed Masaryk's writings and was astonished to learn that the U.S. Constitution had been instrumental in forming the Czech intellectual's work. Wilson gained the favor of an entire nation as being one of the most influential backers of Masaryk's attempts to create a new democratic power in the world.
While the original statue, unveiled in 1928, was destroyed by the Nazis. Wilson's statue made a comeback in 2011 in memory of the 28th President, as well as a street named after him.
Tomas Garrigue Masaryk's story began as a humble boy from an industrial town. Born to commoners, Masaryk quickly learned that the deck was stacked against him and his fellow peers trapped in similar socioeconomic statuses. His philosophical education opened his mind to a world that could be different. It was this desire that drove Masaryk to political activism. Though teetering with being unpopular for his handlings of controversial subjects, such as advocating against Anti-Semitism, Masaryk followed his vision for a nation free from the tainted ideals of a totalitarian regime. Masaryk returned, at the end of 1919, to the newly formed democratic republic nation of Czechoslovakia as its founder and first president.
"I know that men are not equal; nowhere on Earth or in Nature is there equality -- there is variety…. The natural variety must be organised through the division and gradation of functions and work; no organisation of men is possible without superiors and subordinates, but it must be just an organisation, and not a privilege, not aristocratic coercion, but mutual service." - Tomas G. Masaryk, quoted in Capek, Masaryk on Thought and Life, 1938.
Written by James Lemons