For one year, he worked as a private tutor in Leipzig, where he met his future wife, Charlotte Garrigue. Later, Masaryk taught as an unsalaried tutor at Vienna University. In 1882, he was appointed Professor Extraordinarius of philosophy at the University of Prague; however, he was not nominated for full professorship until January of 1897. He began the monthly magazine Athenaeum in 1883, devoted to the critical examination of Czech culture and science.
In 1887, he journeyed to Russia, met and had discussions with Tolstoy. He became a good friend to Tolstoy, but had serious philosophical disagreements with the famed writer. Meanwhile, Famous manuscripts that were considered valuable evidence of medieval Czech history and culture were proven bogus in 1888 by scholars who were a clique of Masaryk's Athenaeum.
Masaryk's scholarly career took a decisive turn in 1891, when he was elected to the Vienna parliament as a Young Czech Party candidate, which he had joined recently joined. Within two years, however, Masaryk resigned his seat in parliament, dissatisfied with the radical Young Czechs and their erratic, undetermined party policies.
The years of 1895 to 1898 were the literary years of Masaryk, where his books and dissertations addressed Czech problems. He published The Czech Question and Our Present Crisis in 1895, a biography of Jan Hus in 1896, wherein Masaryk argued the nationalistic and reformist element of the rebellion, and The Social Question in 1898. In late 1899, the trial of Leopold Hilsner, a Jew who was accused of murdering two Christian girls, caused an outbreak of violence against the Jews. In response, Masaryk reacted against the shameful displays, and wrote about the nonsense of Jewish ritual murder that was charged against Hilsner. (In 1917, Kaiser Karl acquitted Hilsner of all charges by imperial decree.)
Along with some of his friends and collegues, Masaryk established the Czech People's Party, later called the Progressive Party. However, this organisation never grabbed the attention of the Czech people, who put their faith in the noise-making Young Czechs.
By 1907, however, Masaryk was well-known enough to be elected to the Vienna parliament as a deputy of his own Party, partially by allying his party with the Social Democrats. He kept his seat in parliament for two consecutive elections until the outbreak of the War in 1914.
Although a philosopher and historian of Church history, Masaryk defended the freedom of science in a parliamentary vote, which gained him a reputation but no real support. In a separate incident, he defended professor Ludwig Wahrmund, who was diatribed for giving a lecture on the contradictions between church doctrine and science. Masaryk was quickly gaining fame as a left-wing radical.
Politics were never very far behind, though. Following the formal annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Empire, Masaryk attacked Austria's foreign policy, criticising the Triple alliance with Germany, which he believed was an endangerment of both the monarchy and Slavdom within the monarchy. He further defended Serbs and Croats accused of high treason in the infamous Friedjung trial at Agram in 1912; he personally testified against the historian Heinrich Friedjung, who used forged documents as evidence in his accusations against the Slavs. A year later, Masaryk published the first two volumes of his magnus opus, Rußland und Europa.
Upon the outbreak of war in 1914, Masaryk chose to support the Entente in their war against the Central Powers. He left Austria and visited Switzerland, Italy, France and England. In 1915, he formed the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris, along with Eduard Benes and the Slovak Milan Stefanik.
After much vacillation, Czechoslovak military units were formed in Russia, Italy, and France in 1917. Masaryk visited Russia to coerce Russian support for the Czech military contribution. He consolidated the Czechoslovak Legion as the Bolshevik Revolution broke out, and announced that it was a part of the Czechoslovak National Army in France rather than a component of the Russian military. He campiagned for its departure from Russian territory in 1918, to join the Czech Legion in France. However, when the Bolsheviki atttempted to disarm the Czechs who were moving across Siberia to awaiting Entente ships in Vladivostok, the Legion turned on the Reds and seized the railways.
Meanwhile, Masaryk arrived in the United States and the Czechoslovak National Council was recognised by France and England as the legitimate government of the future independent Czechoslovakia. While on tour, Masaryk gained the same for his movement by the Washington.
The war was coming to a close, and in late October, the revolutionary National Assembly in Prague elected Masaryk the first President of Czechoslovakia, with Karl Kramar as his prime minister. However, there were still troubles to be found in the German minorities who wanted union with Austria or Germany, with Poland over the Teschen (Tesin) Question, skirmishes with Bela Kun's Red Hungary, troubles with Carpatho-Ukraine in the far eastern section of the country, and the fact that the Czech Legion in Russia was still battling the Bolsheviki; the Czechs would not evacuate Russia until 1920, when the cause of the White Armies was definitely lost.
In 1919, Masaryk published The New Europe, an plan for post-war Europe. In 1920, he was elected Czechoslovakian President as was demanded by the new Czechoslovak constitution; he was reelected in 1927 and again in 1934. He also published his memoirs and other observations in The World Revolution, in 1927. Masaryk resigned the Presidency in 1935, owing to poor health. He died at Lany on 14 September 1935.
In June 1946, as the Czechs attempted to assert themselves in the face of a domineering Soviet presence, Jan Masaryk, the son of Tomas, told Sir Alfred Duff Cooper, the British ambassador to France, that "Czechoslovakia had never been so happy as when forming part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire." Cooper reminisced "Time has given it proof. It is surely now generally recognised that the disappearance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire has proved to be one of the majour calamities of this disastrous century."
The reflections by both of these gentlemen are not condemnations of the resurrection of the Czech state and nationalism in East Central Europe. They rather confirm that there was a tremendous power vacuum left in that part of the world when a Great Power vanished, and neither Poland nor Czechoslovakia nor any other little state formed in that space could replace its presence. The tragedy lies therein. And, it haunted the region only until about a decade ago.
GWS, 7/02 [rev. 3/04]
