Jan Masaryk

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Jan Masaryk
Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia
In office 21 July 1940 – 10 March 1948
President	Edvard Beneš
Prime Minister	Jan Šrámek Zdeněk Fierlinger Klement Gottwald
Preceded by	German occupation
Succeeded by	Vladimír Clementis
In office 1925 – September 1938
President	Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Edvard Beneš
President of the World Federation of United Nations Associations
In office 2 August 1946 – 10 March 1948
Preceded by	Post created
Personal details
Born	Jan Garrigue Masaryk 14 September 1886 Prague, Austria-Hungary
Died	10 March 1948(1948-03-10) (aged 61) Prague, Czechoslovakia
Cause of death	Disputed – see text
Relations	Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (father)
Religion	Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren
1In exile 1940 – April 1945

Jan Garrigue Masaryk (14 September 1886 – 10 March 1948) was a Czechoslovak diplomat and politician who served as the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940 to 1948. American journalist John Gunther described Masaryk as "a brave, honest, turbulent, and impulsive man".^[1]

Early life[]

Born in Prague, he was a son of professor and politician Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (who became the first President of Czechoslovakia in 1918) and Charlotte Garrigue, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk's American wife. Masaryk was educated in Prague and also in the US, where he also for a time lived as a drifter and lived on the earnings of his manual labor.^{[citation needed]} He returned home in 1913 and served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War.^[2] He then joined the diplomatic service and became chargé d'affaires to the US in 1919, a post he held until 1922. In 1921, he became secretary to the Czech foreign minister Edvard Beneš. In 1925, he was made ambassador to Britain.^[3] His father resigned as President in 1935 and died two years later. He was succeeded by Edvard Beneš.

Wartime[]

In September 1938 the Sudetenland was occupied by German forces and Masaryk resigned as ambassador in protest, although he remained in London. Other government members including Beneš also resigned. In March 1939 Germany occupied the remaining parts of the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and a puppet Slovak state was established in Slovakia. When a Czechoslovak government-in-exile was established in Britain in 1940, Masaryk was appointed Foreign Minister.^{[citation needed]} During the war he regularly made broadcasts over the BBC to occupied Czechoslovakia.^[4] He had a flat at Westminster Gardens, Marsham Street in London but often stayed at the Czechoslovak Chancellery residence at Wingrave or with President Beneš at Aston Abbotts, both near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.^{[citation needed]} In 1942 Masaryk received an LL.D. from Bates College.^{[citation needed]}

After the war[]

Masaryk remained Foreign Minister following the liberation of Czechoslovakia as part of the multi-party, communist-dominated National Front government.^[5] The Communists under Klement Gottwald saw their position strengthened after the 1946 elections but Masaryk stayed on as Foreign Minister.^[5][6] 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.^[5][6]

Czechoslovakia sold arms to Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The deliveries from Czechoslovakia proved important for the establishment of Israel. Masaryk personally signed the first contract on 14 January 1948.^[7] Because Masaryk was viewed as the most sympathetic to the Jews of members of the postwar government, he was given the task of "appeasing Jewish organisations in the west" in terms of the government's plans to expel the country's German population, including German Jews.^[8]

Flag of the World Federation of United Nations Associations of which Jan Masaryk was President from 1947 to 1948.

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 in what became known as the Czech coup ("Victorious February" in the Eastern Bloc).^[5][6] Masaryk remained Foreign Minister, and was the only prominent minister in the new government who was neither a Communist nor a fellow traveller.^[6] However, he was apparently uncertain about his decision^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}

Masaryk served as the President of the World Federation of United Nations Associations. A memorial to his memory and his presidency of the Organisation is located in Geneva, Switzerland. Flowers are laid annually by the Permanent Representative of the Czech Republic to the United Nations.^{[citation needed]}

Death[]

Memorial plaque with Masaryk's quote "Pravda vítězí, ale dá to fušku" (The truth prevails, but it's a chore). It is a reference to the Czechoslovak national motto Pravda vítězí (Truth prevails).

Jan Masaryk with Laurence Steinhardt, the United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

On 10 March 1948 Masaryk was found dead, dressed only in his pajamas, in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry (the Černín Palace in Prague) below his bathroom window.^[9] The Ministry of the Interior claimed that he had committed suicide by jumping out of the window, but at the time, it was widely assumed that he was murdered at the behest of the nascent Communist government.^[5][9][10] On the other hand, many of his close associates (e.g. his secretary , his press assistant Josef Josten, or Viktor Fischl) have always defended the suicide story.^{[citation needed]}

In a second investigation taken in 1968 during the Prague Spring, Masaryk's death was ruled an accident, not excluding a murder^[11] and a third investigation in the early 1990s after the Velvet Revolution concluded that it had been a murder.^{[citation needed]}

In his 1981 autobiography History and Memory, US Ambassador Charles W. Yost, a friend of Masaryk who worked with him in Prague in 1947, and also a friend of Masaryk's fiancé Marcia Davenport, wrote, "The Communists used him and, when his usefulness was past, flung him out of a window to his death."^{[citation needed]}

Discussions about the mysterious circumstances of his death continued for some time.^[9] Those who believe that Masaryk was murdered called it the Third Defenestration of Prague, and point to the presence of nail marks on the window sill from which Masaryk fell, as well as smearings of feces and Masaryk's stated intention to leave Prague the next day for London. Members of Masaryk's family—including his former wife, Frances Crane Leatherbee, a former in-law named Sylvia E. Crane, and his sister Alice Masaryková — stated their belief that he had indeed killed himself, according to a letter written by Sylvia E. Crane to The New York Times, and considered the possibility of murder a "cold war cliché".^[12][13] However, a Prague police report in 2004 concluded after forensic research that Masaryk had indeed been thrown out of the window to his death.^[14] This report was seemingly corroborated in 2006 when a Russian journalist claimed that his mother knew the Russian intelligence officer who threw Masaryk out of the window of the west bathroom of Masaryk's flat.^[15]

The highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, claimed he had a conversation with Nicolae Ceauşescu, who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill". Jan Masaryk was one of them.^[16]

Czech historian Václava Jandečková has tentatively suggested in her 2015 monograph "Kauza Jan Masaryk: Nový pohled"^[17] (The Jan Masaryk Case: A New Perspective) that Masaryk might have been murdered by Jan Bydžovský and František Fryč, who believed they were working for the British intelligence service SIS, but most probably fell victim to NKVD agents. Bydžovský confessed to murdering Masaryk when interrogated in prison by the Czech secret police StB in the 1950s (in an unrelated case); but later denied it. Jandečková argues that this confession cannot be so easily dismissed as has been believed, especially since Bydžovský certainly was not hallucinating or drugged, and the interrogators seem to have been surprised by his confession (at his trial, the Masaryk murder was not "used" or even mentioned, although a separate re-investigation by the StB continued for more than a year).^{[citation needed]}

A new investigation that opened in 2019 included a new expert opinion regarding the mechanics of the fall, and an old tape by the policeman who was among the first at the crime scene, testifying the body had been already moved when he arrived. The investigation closed in 2021, with murder, accident or suicide all possible.^[18]

Private life[]

From 1924 until their divorce in 1931, Masaryk was married to Frances Crane Leatherbee (1887-1954). An heiress to the Crane piping, valves and elevator fortune, and the former wife of Robert Leatherbee, she was a daughter of Charles R. Crane, a U.S. minister to China; and a sister of Richard Teller Crane II, a U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia. By that marriage, Masaryk had three stepchildren: Charles Leatherbee, Robert Leatherbee Jr., and Richard Crane Leatherbee.^[19] Stepson Charles Leatherbee (Harvard 1929) co-founded the University Players, a summer stock company in Falmouth, Massachusetts, in 1928 with Bretaigne Windust. He married Mary Lee Logan (1910-1972), younger sister of Joshua Logan, who became one of the co-directors of the University Players in 1931.^[20]

Masaryk was a skilled amateur pianist. In that capacity, he accompanied Jarmila Novotná in a recital of Czech folk songs issued on 78 RPM records to commemorate the victims of the Nazi eradication of Lidice.^[21]

He is reputed to have had an exquisite sense of humour. It is reported that when he was a young Czechoslovak Ambassador to the US, he attended many parties and once the hostess invited him to play the violin. Accepting graciously, he played a Czech nursery song to enthusiastic applause from the audience. Leaving the party with a friend, he was asked why had he been asked to play the violin, to which he replied: "Oh, it's all very simple-- don't you see? They have mixed me up with my father; they mixed him up with Paderewski. And they mixed the piano up with the violin."^[22]

At the time of his death, Masaryk was reportedly planning to marry the American writer Marcia Davenport.^{[citation needed]}

Jan Masaryk Medal[]

The Honorary Silver Medal of Jan Masaryk (Czech: Stříbrná medaile Jana Masaryka) is awarded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and is one of the highest awards that can be received by foreign nationals.^[23][24]

See also[]

• A Prominent Patient, a 2017 film
• List of unsolved deaths

References[]

Further reading[]

• Claire Sterling (1969). The Masaryk Case. New York: Harper & Row.
• Jan Masaryk (2011). Speaking to My Country. Lexington MA: Plunkett Lake Press. Foreword by Madeleine Albright
• Marcia Davenport (1967). Too Strong for Fantasy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jan Masaryk.

• Newspaper clippings about Jan Masaryk in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW