Masaryk, Tom�s Garrigue 1850-1937
Czechoslovak statesman

Born in Hodonin in Moravia, the son of a coachman, half Czech and half Slovak, he received his university education in Vienna and Leipzig, read and travelled widely, and married Charlotte Garrigue, from Boston, USA, before becoming Professor of Philosophy at the newly authorized Czech University of Prague in 1882. Entering politics in the nationalistic atmosphere of the 1880s and 1890s, he made his name as an independent of courage and common sense through his many writings and his intervention in several fraught disputes. A deputy in the Czech and Austrian Imperial parliaments off and on after 1891, he was variously a 'realist' and a 'progressive', but his main political contribution came after 1914 when he travelled abroad to France, Britain, Russia and the USA to win support and recognition for an independent state, first Czech, then Czechoslovak. He became its first President in 1918 and was regularly re-elected until he retired in 1935 in favour of his right-hand man, Eduard Benes.

Bibliography: Emil Ludwig, Gespr�che mit Masaryk: Denker und Staatsman (1935, Defender of the Democracy: Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, 1936)