Tomás Masaryk Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (sometimes called Thomas Masaryk in English) (March 7, 1850 - September 14, 1937) was a Czechoslovak independence advocate and first President of Czechoslovakia.
Masaryk was born in Hodonín, Moravia, then part of the Austrian Empire, to a working-class family. As a youth he worked as a blacksmith. He studied in Brno, Leipzig, and Vienna. In 1882, he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the Czech part of the University of Prague. The following year he founded Athenaeum, a magazine devoted to Czech culture and science. He wrote many works on history, exposed as fraudulent supposed history taught before, and opposed racial prejudice.
He served in the Austrian Parliament from 1891 to 1893 in the Young Czech Party and again from 1907 to 1914 in the Realist Party, becoming an ever more vocal proponent of independence of the Slavic peoples from Austria-Hungary. When the First World War broke out he had to flee the country to avoid being arrested for treason, going to Geneva, Italy, and then London, where he continued to agitate for Czech independence. In 1917 he went to Russia to help organize Slavic resistance to the Austrians. In 1918 he went to the United States, where he convinced President Woodrow Wilson of the rightness of his cause.
With the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Allies recognized him as head of the Provisional Czech government, and in 1920 he was elected the first President of Czechoslovakia. He was re-elected twice. He held the office until 1935, when Edvard Beneš succeeded him.
He married Charlotte Garrigue, an American, from whom he took his middle name. His son, Jan Masaryk, was a minister in the government of Benes.
Avenida Presidente Masaryk, Mexico City's equivalent of Fifth Avenue in New York, is named after him.
Masaryk was nicknamed the President-Liberator and was widely known by his initials TGM.
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