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| Reference: |
37639
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| Caption: | His Excellency Jan Masaryk, Vice-President of the Czechoslovak Republic. Jan Garrigue Masaryk (14th September 1886-10th March 1948) was a Czech diplomat and politician and Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940 to 1948. Born in Prague, he was a son of professor T.G Masaryk (who became the first President of Czechoslovakia in 1918). In 1925 Jan Masaryk was made ambassador to Britain. His father resigned as President in 1935 and died two years later. In September 1938 the Sudetenland was occupied by German forces and Masaryk resigned as ambassador in protest, although he remained in London. When a Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile was established in Britain in 1940, Masaryk 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 but often stayed at the Czechoslovak Chancellery residence at Wingrave. In 1942, about the time this photo was taken, Masaryk received an LL.D. from Bates College. 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. On 10th March 1948 Masaryk was found dead, dressed in his pajamas, in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry below his bathroom window. The initial investigation by the Communist ministry of interior stated that he had committed suicide by jumping out of the window, although for a long time it was been believed by some that he was murdered by the nascent Communist government. In a second investigation taken in 1968 during the Prague Spring, Masaryk's death was ruled an accident, not excluding a murder and a third investigation in the early 1990s after the Velvet Revolution concluded that it had been a murder. |
| Added: | 01/06/2012 |
| Keywords: |
man portrait
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