Interwar Czechoslovakia

"Jesus Not Caesar"

Religious foundation of Slovak and Czech culture, pushed by Masaryk

Background for Pittsburgh Agreement

The historical setting of the Pittsburgh Agreement was the impending dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the months prior to the end of World War I. By September, 1918, it was evident to many that the forces of the Habsburg monarchy, the rulers of Austria-Hungary, would be vanquished by the Allies: Britain, France and Russia. Between 1860 and 1918, close to one million people of Slovak and Czech ethnicity migrated to the United States and to other nations. At the time, these immigrants were officially recorded as Austrians or Hungarians (Magyars), which did not accurately reflect their culture and ethnic origin. The United States allowed Czech and Slovak nationalist groups to form and operate. On 22 October 1915 (approximately three months after the commencement of hostilities in World War I), at the Bohemian National Hall on Broadway, Cleveland, Ohio the Slovak League of America and the Bohemian (Czech) National Alliance signed the Cleveland Agreement. With this, the two groups agreed to work together towards a united and independent state for Czechs and Slovaks.

Hlinka's Slovak People's Party

also known as simply the Slovak People's Party or the Hlinka Party, was a right-wing conservative political party in Slovakia with strong Christian and nationalist orientation. Its members were called Ludaks. The party arose at a time when Slovakia was still part of Austria-Hungary and fought both for democratic freedoms and Slovak national rights, and against liberalism. After the formation of Czechoslovakia, the party preserved its conservative character, opposing ethnic Czechoslovakism and demanding Slovak autonomy. In the second half of the 1930s, the rise of totalitarian regimes in Europe and the party's inability to achieve long-term political objectives caused a loss of faith in democracy and saw the party turn to more radical ideas. After a merger with other parties in November 1938 to form the Hlinka Slovak People's Party - Party of Slovak National Unity, it became the dominant party of World War II Slovakia. In addition to adoption of a totalitarian vision of the state, it included an openly pro-Nazi wing, which dominated Slovak policy between 1940 and 1942.

irredentism

is any political or popular movement that seeks to reclaim and reoccupy a land that the movement's members consider to be a "lost" (or "unredeemed") territory from their nation's past.

Tomas G Masaryk

(1850-1937) With the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Allies recognized X as head of the Provisional Czechoslovak government (on October 14), and on November 14, 1918, he was elected President of the Czechoslovak Republic by the National Assembly in Prague while he was in New York. He came back to Prague Castle on December 21, 1918. Masaryk was re-elected as president three times: in May 1920, 1927, and 1934. A provision in the Czechoslovak Constitution of 1920 exempted him from the two-term limit. After the rise of Hitler, he was one of the first political figures in Europe to voice concern. He resigned from office on December 14, 1935 on the grounds of old age and poor health, and Edvard Beneš succeeded him. On paper, Masaryk's powers as president were limited; the framers of the constitution intended for the Prime Minister and Cabinet to hold the real power. However, he provided a considerable measure of stability in the face of frequent changes of government (there were ten cabinets headed by nine Prime Ministers during his tenure). The stability that he ensured, as well as his great prestige both inside and outside the country, made Masaryk enjoy almost-legendary authority by the people. He used his authority to create an extensive informal political network called Hrad (the Castle). Under his watch, Czechoslovakia became the strongest democracy in central Europe.

Franz Kafka

(3 July 1883 - 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian Jewish novelist and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible social-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"), Der Process (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle). The term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those in his writing.

Konrad Ernst Eduard Henlein

(6 May 1898 - 10 May 1945) was a leading Sudeten German politician in Czechoslovakia. Upon the German occupation he joined the Nazi Party as well as the SS and was appointed Reichsstatthalter of the Sudetenland in 1939.

The Friday Men

(Czech: Pátečníci, German: Die Freitagsrunde) were a Czech intellectual and political circle that met in the garden of Karel Čapek's Prague house on Friday afternoons from 1921 till Čapek's death in 1938. The group also sometimes met in Café Slavia.

The Pittsburgh Agreement

... was a memorandum of understanding completed on May 1918 between members of Czech and Slovak expatriate communities to create an independent Czechoslovakia. This was achieved on October 1918, when the primary author of the agreement, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, declared the independence of Czechoslovakia. Masaryk was elected the first president of Czechoslovakia in November, 1918.

Locarno

.... (Dec. 1, 1925), series of agreements whereby Germany, France, Belgium, Great Britain, and Italy mutually guaranteed peace in western Europe. The treaties were initialed at Locarno, Switz., on October 16 and signed in London on December 1. The agreements consisted of (1) a treaty of mutual guarantee between Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Italy; (2) arbitration treaties between Germany and Belgium and between Germany and France; (3) a note from the former Allies to Germany explaining the use of sanctions against a covenant-breaking state as outlined in article 16 of the League of Nations Covenant; (4) arbitration treaties between Germany and Czechoslovakia and between Germany and Poland; and (5) treaties of guarantee between France and Poland and between France and Czechoslovakia.

Edvard Beneš

1884-1948 -> statesman, foreign minister, and president, a founder of modern Czechoslovakia who forged its Western-oriented foreign policy between World Wars I and II but capitulated to Adolf Hitler's demands during the Czech crisis of 1938. With the resignation of Masaryk as president in 1935, Beneš was elected to that office. Relations with Poland and Germany, never amicable, steadily worsened. Though he granted substantially the first Sudetenland German autonomy demands in 1938, he was nevertheless unable to avert the crisis that led to the destruction of the Czechoslovak state. Abandoned by his allies, Beneš capitulated before the German ultimatum, and his country lost the Sudetenland in September 1938. Poland soon occupied the disputed Teschen area. Resigning on October 5, 1938, Beneš went into exile. After the outbreak of World War II he established in France a Czechoslovak national committee, which moved to London in 1940. Reestablishing a government on his native soil on April 3, 1945, Beneš entered Prague on May 16 to the enthusiastic welcome of the population. His was the only eastern European exile government to be allowed to return after the war.

Karel Čapek

9 January 1890 - 25 December 1938) was a Czech writer of the early 20th century. He had multiple roles throughout his career, including playwright, dramatist, essayist, publisher, literary reviewer, photographer and art critic. Nonetheless, he is best known for his science fiction including his novel War with the Newts and the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which introduced the word robot. He also wrote many politically charged works dealing with the social turmoil of his time. Largely influenced by American pragmatic liberalism, he campaigned in favor of free expression and utterly despised the rise of both fascism and communism in Europe.

Sudetendeutschepartei

The Sudeten German Party SdP, Czech: Sudetoněmecká strana) was created by Konrad Henlein under the name Sudetendeutsche Heimatfront ("Front of Sudeten German Homeland") on October 1, 1933, some months after the state of Czechoslovakia had outlawed the German National Socialist Workers' Party (Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei, DNSAP). In April 1935, the party was renamed Sudetendeutsche Partei following a mandatory demand of the Czechoslovak government. The name was officially changed to Sudeten German and Carpathian German Party (Sudetendeutsche und Karpatendeutsche Partei) in November 1935. With the rising power of Nazi Party in Germany, the Sudeten German Party became a major pro-Nazi force in Czechoslovakia with explicit official aim of breaking the country up and joining it to the Third Reich. By June 1938, the party had over 1,3 million members, i.e. 40.6% of ethnic-German citizens of Czechoslovakia. During last free democratic elections before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the May 1938 communal elections, the party gained 88% of ethnic-German votes, taking over control of most municipal authorities in the Czech borderland. The country's mass membership made it one of the largest fascist parties in Europe at the time.

"Truth prevails"

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first President of Czechoslovakia, adopted the shortened phrase "truth prevails" as a presidential motto shortly after independence from Austria-Hungary in 1918. (Czech: Pravda vítězí) is the national motto of the Czech Republic. The motto appears on the standard of the President of the Czech Republic, which the Czech Constitution designates a national symbol.[1] Before the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, the motto was the motto of Czechoslovakia and appeared on the standard of the President of Czechoslovakia as well.

Woodrow WIlson and Self-Determination

X ... revived America's commitment to self-determination, at least for European states, during World War I. When the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia in November 1917, they called for Russia's immediate withdrawal as a member of the Allies of World War I. They also supported the right of all nations, including colonies, to self-determination."[15] The 1918 Constitution of the Soviet Union acknowledged the right of secession for its constituent republics.[9] This presented a challenge to Wilson's more limited demands. In January 1918 Wilson issued his Fourteen Points of January 1918 which, among other things, called for adjustment of colonial claims, insofar as the interests of colonial powers had equal weight with the claims of subject peoples

Roman Jakobson

died July 18, 1982, Boston, Mass., U.S. Russian born American linguist and Slavic-language scholar, a principal founder of the European movement in structural linguistics known as the Prague school. Jakobson extended the theoretical and practical concerns of the school into new areas of study.

Devětsil

was an association of Czech avant-garde artists, founded in 1920 in Prague. The movement discontinued its activities in 1930 The first manifesto of Devětsil urged new artists to look deeper into ordinary objects for poetic quality. Skyscrapers, airplanes, mimes, and poster lettering were the new arts. Inspired by the Berlin Dadaists, Seifert claimed "art is dead." Following him, Teige remarked, "the most beautiful paintings in existence today are the ones which were not painted by anyone." [1]

The Prague Linguistic Circle

was an influential group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis and a theory of the standard language and of language cultivation during the years 1928-1939.