Masaryk was born in Prague in 1886, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Czechoslovakia was formed in October of 1918, having gained independence from the empire and Jan's father, Tomas Masaryk, became its first President. His mother was an American, Charlotte Garrigue. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, and apparently had Hugenot ancestry on her father's side and a Mayflower passenger ancestor on her mother's side. Quite a pedigree. She met her husband whilst visiting a friend at a conservatory in Leipzig, Germany. With this mixd parentage, Jan was educated in Prague and in the United States. He lived for a time in his youth drifting about the U.S. living on earnings from odd jobs and manual labour. He returned to Czechoslovakia aged 26 in 1913 and served in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War, after which he joined the diplomatic service and was made chargé d'affaires to the USA in 1919, a post he held until 1922. In 1925 he was made ambassador to Britain.
From left to right: Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured before signing the Munich Agreement, which gave the Sudetenland to Germany.
In September 1938 the so-called Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia was occupied by German forces and Masaryk resigned as ambassador in protest, although he remained in London. Other government members including, the then President Beneš also resigned. In March 1939 Germany occupied the remaining parts of the country. In 1940 a Czechoslovak Government in Exile was established in Britain and he was appointed Foreign Minister. During the war he regularly made broadcasts over the BBC to occupied Czechoslovakia. He had a flat at Westminster Gardens, Marsham Street in London.
The short clips from a radio broadcast give a feeling of what he felt after being completely let down by the Munich Agreement. Not the happiest of British Foreign Office decisions.
Masaryk remained Foreign Minister following the liberation of Czechoslovakia as part of the multi-party, communist-dominated National Front government. The Communists under Klement Gottwald saw their position strengthened after the 1946 elections but Masaryk stayed on as Foreign Minister. He was concerned with retaining the friendship of the Soviet Union, but was dismayed by the veto they put on Czechoslovak participation in the Marshall Plan. In February 1948 the majority of the non-communist cabinet members resigned, hoping to force new elections, but instead a communist government under Gottwald was formed. Masaryk remained Foreign Minister, although he was apparently uncertain about his decision and possibly regretted his decision not to oppose the communist coup by broadcasting to the Czech people on national radio, where he was a much loved celebrity.
On March 10, 1948 Masaryk was found dead, dressed in his pajamas, in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry below his bathroom window. The initial 'investigation' stated that he had committed suicide by jumping out of the window, although for a long time it has been believed by some that he was murdered by the nascent Communist government. In the Spring of 1948 there was a rumour in Prague that the Soviet NKVD was responsible for the death of Jan Masaryk. NKVD Major Augustin Schramm, who was involved with the Czechoslovak intelligence and secret communist police, was according to that rumour responsible for Masaryk's death. Schramm was shot dead in his Prague flat on 27 May 1948, a possible "silencing" of an inconvenient witness, for which the NKVD and/or KGB were famous. Two young Czech philosophy students were arrested, tortured and later executed for shooting Major Schramm. They were Milan Choc, who, in spite of torture by the Czech secret police, denied any involvement in the shooting to the end. The other youth was Sadek, of whom little is known.
In a second investigation taken in 1968 during the Prague Spring, Masaryk's death was ruled an accident, although a third investigation in the early 1990s after the Velvet Revolution once again concluded that it had been suicide; nonetheless, discussions about the mysterious circumstances of his death still continue.
He was a man of his time, caught up in momentous events he tried to do something about, but had to go with the flow like so many of the Czechoslovak people. So he is worth remembering, as he said in 1938 "I am not really complaining, I am just trying to explain in simple words, what went on in the heart of the simple Czech and Slovak, man and woman, who trusted their allies and their friends, and quite suddenly, found themselves alone, bereft and destitute in a blizzard of harshness." This could explain any despair he may have felt ten years later on 10th March 1948.
Let us hope the citizens of North Africa and the Middle East do not find themselves bereft and alone.
And the there was Zelda, poet, novelist, dancer and painter, the consummate artist of her time. She had a very bipolar existence, and has been written about by countless numbers of people enraptured by her life and the various myths surrounding her and husband F. Scott Fitzgerald. In the last years of her life she was a patient at Highland Hospital in Asheville North Carolina. On the night of March 10, 1948, a fire broke out in the hospital kitchen. Zelda had apparently been locked in a room awaiting electroshock therapy. The fire moved through a dumbwaiter shaft, spreading onto every floor. The fire escapes were wooden and caught fire as well. Nine women, including Zelda, died, the tragic result of inattention and negligence. She was 47 year old and despite her frenzied condition was still very much in love with life. On the other side of the world, a disillusioned man, bereft and alone, jumped out of a window into a garden.
Here are some videos of Zelda to peruse. She will surely never be forgotten.
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