Article contents
“The Literary Organ of Politics”: Tomáš Masaryk and Political Journalism, 1925-1929
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
Abstract
Tomáš Masaryk, the founder and first president (1918-1935) of interwar Czechoslovakia, devoted considerable time to founding, tracking, and attempting to take over newspapers and journals. In this article, Andrea Orzoff argues that journalism possessed central importance in interwar Czechoslovak political culture. Every party had its own press apparatus, making newsrooms into logical extensions of the usual arenas of political contention. But especially for Masaryk and his longtime collaborator Eduard Beneš, newspapers were a means of communicating directly with the electorate, thus subverting or evading the constraints of parliamentary politics. Orzoff offers various examples of Masaryk's successful and unsuccessful attempts to meddle in the affairs of the interwar press. She concludes that print culture helps scholars understand interwar Czechoslovak democracy and its closeness to Austro-Hungarian political culture. Particularly, the history of interwar journalism helps clarify the activities and opinions, long mythologized, of the Czechoslovak “freelancer president.”
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2004
References
Research for this article was supported by the International Research and Exchanges Board as well as the American Council of Learned Societies. I also thank Jamie Bronstein, Peter Bugge, Katherine David-Fox, Melissa Feinberg, Iñigo García-Bryce, Rene Hadjigeorgalis, Lynn Patyk, Nancy Wingfield, and the anonymous reviewers of Slavic Review.
1. Čapek, Karel, President Masaryk Tells His Story, trans. Round, Dora (London, 1934), 205.Google Scholar
2. Interwar contemporaries clearly understood the Castle as an extremely powerful organization, practically a rival party, although one lacking a coordinated mass base. The Castle's centers of information gathering, fundraising, and influence involved the presidential chancellery; the secretariat of Beneš's Ministry of Foreign Affairs; departments in other ministries, such as the Ministry of the Interior; the president's and Beneš's discretionary funds; and Masaryk's and Beneš's personal friendships with many important or influential figures, such as powerful bankers and parliamentary leaders. Czechoslovak parliamentarians and political journalists began publicly discussing the Castle's existence as a rival political institution as early as 1920. The many valuable studies on the Castle as a political phenomenon include Karl Bosl, ed., Die Burg: Einfluβireiche politische Kräfte um Masaryk und Beneš, 2 vols. (Munich, 1973-1974); Gregory Campbell, F., “The Castle, Jaroslav Preiss, and the Živnostenská Bank,” Bohemia: Jahrbuch des Collegium Carolinum 15 (1974): 231-53Google Scholar; Josef Harna, Zdeněk Deyl, and Vlastislav Lacina, “Materiály’ k politickým, hospodářským, a sociálním dějinám Československa v letech 1918-1929,” Sborník k dějinám 19. a 20. století 7 (Prague, 1981), 73-79; Josef Harna, “Poznámky ke studiu struktury politického systemu buržoazního Československa,” Sborník k dějinám 19. a 20. století 10 (Prague, 1986), 171-92; Antonín Klímek, Boj o Hrad I: Hrad a Pětka, 1918-1926 (Prague, 1996), and Klímek, Boj o Hrad II: Kdo po Masarykovi? 1926-1935 (Prague, 1998), as well as Klímek's many articles in Střední Evropa; Pechacek, Jaroslav, Masaryk, Beneš, Hrad: Masarykovy dopisy Benešovi (Munich, 1984; reprint, Prague, 1996)Google Scholar; Zeman, Zbynřk and Klímek, Antonín, The Life of Edvard Beneš 1884-1948: Czechoslovakia in Peace and War (Oxford, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. On Národni listy and the Young Czechs, see Garver, Bruce, The Young Czech Party, 1874-1901, and the Emergence of a Multi-Party System (New Haven, 1978), 102-9.Google Scholar
4. Ibid., 107.
5. H. Gordon Skilling, T. G. Masaryk: Against the Current, 1882-1914 (University Park, 1994), 35-36.
6. Ibid., 50-51.
7. See Andrea Orzoff, “Battles of the ‘Legend-Makers': Austria-Hungary and the First World War in Interwar Czechoslovak Politics” (unpublished manuscript). Masaryk's contributions appeared in the Realist daily Čas; Jaroslav Stránský's Přitomnost and Lidové noviny; Legionnaire publications such as Čin and Národní osvobození; the National Socialist České slovo; and, less frequently, in the Prager Presse. Various manuscripts are located in Archiv kanceláře prezidenta republiky, Prague (hereafter AKPR), signatura (sign.) T 12/24 (“Tomáš Masaryk“); Archiv Ústavu T. G. Masaryka, Prague, fond MAR (hereafter AÚTGM, MAR), Tisk-propaganda, karton 2, složky 10 and 11, also the složka marked “1927“; AÚTGM, MAR, Dokumentace, karton 9, složka 56. Finally, the edited memoirs of Masaryk's personal assistant, Antonín Schenk, retell as an anecdote Masaryk's 1932 Přítomnost article attacking poet and writer J. S. Machar. See Jindřiška Smetanová, TGM: “Proč se neřekne pravda?” Ze vzpominek dr. Antonína Schenka (Prague, 1996), 79-89. Many of these article manuscripts are collected in the series edited by Jiří Brabec et al., T. G. Masaryk, Cesta demokracie: Projevy, články, rozhovory (Prague, 1990-1997). Historian Jiří Kovtun lists Masaryk's most frequent pseudonyms as O. Skala, Č.P., Xp., Dr. K.T., O.R., T., and R. See Kovtun and Zdenřk Lukeš, Praižký hrad za T. G. Masaryka (Prague, 1995), 41.
8. On the polemics among Masaryk, Dyk, and Kramář, over wartime resistance and other matters, see Orzoff, “Battles of the ‘Legend-Makers.'” Some of the polemics were published: see Viktor Dyk, Ad usum pana presidenta republiky (Prague, 1929) as well as Karel Kramář, Kramářuv soud nad Benešem: Spor dr. K. Kramáře s ministerem zahraničních věcídr. Ed. Benešem, 2d ed. (Prague, 1938). On Masaryk and Kramář in the Young Czech party, see Garver, The Young Czech Party, 160-62, 264, 313-14, and Skilling, T G. Masaryk, 40-45, 55. On Kramář, the best overall work is now Martina Winkler, Karel Kramář (1860-1937): Selbstbild, Fremdwahrnehmungen und Modernisierungsverständnis eines tschechischen Politikers (Munich, 2002). On Masaryk and Kramář during the interwar years, see Antonín Klímek's Boj o Hrad series.
9. On the National Democrats’ political evolution, see Blackwood, Lee, “Czech and Polish National Democracy at the Dawn of Independent Statehood, 1918-1919,” East European Politics and Societies, 4 no. 3 (1990): 469-88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Winters, Stanley B., “Passionate Patriots: Czechoslovak National Democracy in the 1920s,” East-Central Europe / L'Europe du Centre-Est 18, no. 1 (1991): 55–68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kelly, David, The Czech Fascist Movement, 1922-1942 (Boulder, Colo., 1995).Google Scholar
10. For brief statements of Kramář's position, see Rothschild, Joseph, East Cenlral Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle, 1974), 95 Google Scholar; Winters, “Passionate Patriots,” 55-60; and Blackwood, “Czech and Polish National Democracy,” 477-79, 481-82, 487-88. For more detail, see Winkler, Karel Kramář.
11. Masaryk's famously tactless comment about Bohemian Germans being “emigrants and colonists” demonstrates that, in the words of Joseph Rothschild, though the Czechs intended to be benevolent landlords, they would not let the other minorities forget who owned the house. Masaryk's comment, from his 1918 address to the National Assembly, is reprinted in, among others, Milan Machovec, Tomáš G. Masaryk (1968; reprint, Prague, 2000), 308.
12. On the unease among Czechoslovak political circles during this time, see, for example, Antonín Klímek and Petr Hofman, Vítěz, který prohrál: Generál Radola Gajda (Prague 1995), 65. Nor was the concern limited to the Castle: fears also circulated that Masaryk and Beneš might attempt a “constitutional coup” on the model of Józef Pilsudski's May 1926 “sanacja” in neighboring Poland. See Andrea Orzoff, “Battle for the Castle: The Friday Men and the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1938” (Ph.D. diss, Stanford University, 2000), 146-51; also mentioned in TomአDvořák, “Národní strana práce (1925-1930)” series in Střední evropa 76-78 (1998), specifically 78:119.
13. Just prior to the elections, the three strongest parties in the governing coalition (the Agrarians, the Social Democrats, and the National Socialists) had repeatedly betrayed agreements to pass one another's legislative priorities; collaboration became impossible. Relations between the main parties and their smaller supporters also deteriorated. The 1925 Jan Hus celebrations provide a neat example of the breakdown of Czechoslovak political cooperation: see Cynthia Paces, “Religious Images and National Symbols in the Creation of Czech Identity, 1890-1938” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1998) as well as Paces, “'The Czech Nation Must Be Catholic!’ An Alternative Version of Czech Nationalism during the First Republic,” Nationalities Papers 27, no. 3 (1999): 407-28.
14. See Mamatey, Victor, “The Development of Czech Democracy, 1920-1938,” in Mamatey, Victor and Luža, Radomir, eds., A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1948 (Princeton, 1973), 128-40.Google Scholar
15. The Castle's informer, Ludvík Henych, wrote on 2June 1926 that in Prague alone there were 40,000 organized members of the fascist movement; in Moravia and Bohemia together roughly 200,000; he had no information on Silesia and Slovakia. Historian Antonín Klímek notes that Henych frequently exaggerated; but even half such a number would still be significant. See Klímek and Hofman, Vitéz, který prohrál, 68, on this and on the Gajda trial. Also important on the Gajda trial are Kelly, The Czech Fascist Movement; Zorach, Jonathan, “The Enigma of the Gajda Affair in Czechoslovak Politics in 1926,” Slavic Review, 35 no. 4 (December 1976): 683-98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, for more general context, Mamatey, “The Development of Czechoslovak Democracy 1920-1938.“
16. Klímek and Hofman, Vitéz, který prohrál, 65.
17. Various suggestions were circulated, among them revising the constitution to create a directly elected presidency and to expand the president's executive powers. See Orzoff, “Battle for the Castle,” 149-51; also see Klímek and Hofman, Vitéz, který prohrál, 65-67, as well as Klímek, Boj o Hrad I, 371. The only western-language historian I have found who mentions the Castle discussion of a “constitutional coup” is Daniel Miller, Forging Political Compromise: Antonín Švehla and the Czechoslovak Republican Party, 1918-1933 (Pittsburgh, 1999), 152-54.
18. In 1925, Lidové noviny became the core of National Labor Party propaganda and organization: many Lidové noviny staffers were party members. See Orzoff, “Battle for the Castle,” chap. 2, as well as Julius Firt, Knihy a osudy (Brno, 1991); Ferdinand Peroutka, Deníky, dopisy, vzpomínky (Prague, 1995); and Tomáš Dvořák's “Národní strana práce (1925-1930)” series in Střední evropa 76-78 (1998).
19. Peroutka wrote of Antonín Švehla that he was a “politician of small rooms.” See Peroutka, Deníky, dopisy, vzpomínky, 149.
20. On the history of Czech and Czechoslovak journalism, see F. Gregory Campbell, “The Interwar Czech Press” (paper presented at “The Role and Functions of the Media in Eastern Europe: Perspectives over Time,” Indiana University, 9-11 November 1983); Vojtěch Dolejší, Noviny a novináři: Z poznámek a vzpomínek (Prague, 1963); Garver, The Young Czech Party; Johnson, Owen, “Unbridled Freedom: The Czech Press and Politics, 1918—1938,” Journalism History 13, nos. 3-4 (1986): 96–103 Google Scholar; Sayer, Derek, The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History (Princeton, 1998)Google Scholar; Sayer, “The Language of Nationality and the Nationality of Language: Prague 1780-1920,” Past and Present 153 (November 1996): 197-98. Less helpful, but still worth consulting, are Frank Kaplan, “The Czech and Slovak Press: The First 100 Years,” Journalism Monographs 47 (January 1977): 1-54; the textbook edited by Milena Beránková, Dějiny československé žurnalistiky, vols. 1-3 (Prague, 1981); and Demetz, Peter, Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (New York, 1997).Google Scholar
21. On Czechoslovakia's gutter press, see Johnson, “Unbridled Freedom,” 99. On highbrow artistic and scholarly journals, see, for example, the work of Jindřich Toman, “Karel čapek and/vs. the Prague Linguistic Circle,” in Andrew W. Mackie, Tatyana K. McAuley, and Cynthia Simmons, eds., For Henry Kucera: Studies in Slavic Philology and Computational Linguistics (Ann Arbor, 1992), 365-80.
22. Beránková, Dějiny československé žurnalistiky, 3:58.
23. Jan Nahlovský, “Časopisy v československé republice,” Československý statistický vestník 4, nos. 4 -7 (February 1932), cited in Johnson, “Unbridled Freedom,” 98.
24. That said, censorship of articles and even entire issues of newspapers was not uncommon. The files of the Presidium of the Ministry of the Interior, located in the Státní Üstřední Archiv (hereafter SÜA) in Prague, record censorship and confiscation even of journals friendly to the state, such as Peroutka's Přítomnost. See, for example, SÚA, fond PMV (Presidium ministerstva vnitra), Státní zastupitelství v Praze, confiscation of Přítomnost dated 9 April 1924.
25. Julius Firt, “Die ‘Burg’ und die Zeitschrift Přítomnost, “in Bosl, ed., Die Burg, 2:111. Also see Campbell, “Interwar Czech Press,” 6-7.
26. Johnson, “Unbridled Freedom,” 98.
27. Miller, Forging Political Compromise, 91-92.
28. To offer an example, the National Democratic Party published the following papers: the dailies Národní listy (National pages), Národ (Nation), and Role (Role) in Prague; Český deník (Bohemian daily) in Plzeň (this paper was associated with the Škoda works); Moravskoskzský deník (Moravian-Silesian daily) in Ostrava; Pozor (Attention) in Olomouc; Národní noviny (The national news) in Brno; Obzor (Horizon) in Přerov; the magazines Ženský svřt (Women's world), Mladý národ (Young nation), Národní student (National student), Národni učitel (National teacher), and Česká revue (Bohemian review), among others. On the National Democratic press, see Beránková, Dějiny československé žurnalistiky, 3:170-71.
29. The Czechoslovak Hungarian press, consisting predominantly of “independent” newspapers, differed from the other ethnic partisan presses. On the Hungarian press, see Turczel, Lajos, “A czehszlovakiai magyar sajto fejlodése 1919 és 1945 kozott,” Magyar Konyvszemle 97, no. 4 (1981): 299–316.Google Scholar This article catalogues the various Hungarian periodicals published in Czechoslovakia but does not assess their political affiliations or sources of funding. It focuses on the left. I thank Holly Case for her assistance with translating this article. For a balanced assessment of the German press, see Linz, Norbert, “Der Aufbau der deutschen politischen Presse in der ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik (1918-1925),” Bohemia: Jahrbuch der Collegium Carolinum 11 (1970): 284–307.Google Scholar
30. The Third Section of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, responsible for information and propaganda, published these and other papers, as well as works of literary merit by Czechoslovak authors. See Andrea Orzoff, “Diplomacy by Other Means: The Third Section and Cultural Diplomacy in Interwar Czechoslovakia” (unpublished). On the Prager Presse and its circulation figures, see Beránková, Dějiny československé žurnalistiky, 3:152, and Dolejší, Noviny a novináři, 63.
31. On Legionnaire politics, see Kelly, The Czech Fascist Movement.
32. I thank Martin Jan Stránský for his clarification of this point. See Beránková, Dějiny československé žurnalistiky, 3:56n46.
33. Evidence of Laurin's and Čapek's involvement abounds in Prague archives, particularly in AÚTGM and AKPR.
34. Beránková, Dějiny československé žurnalistiky, 3:57.
35. Typewritten copy of a letter to Masaryk by the editors of Tribuna, 25 August 1926: AKPR, sign. T 45/24, document 929/26. Another copy of this document can be found in AÚTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, složka 5—Tisk 1923-1932.
36. Kubka, František, Na vlastní oči: Pravdivé malé povídky o mých současnících (Prague, 1959), 99–101.Google Scholar
37. See Moravský zemský archiv (Moravian Regional Archive, Brno, hereafter MZA), fond G426, for example, fascikl 40 (K. Z. Klíma) and karton 86 (Edvard Bass). Ferdinand Peroutka's papers also reveal significant debt. Even such “mandarins” as Ferdinand Peroutka, Edvard Bass, and K. Z. Klfma were deeply indebted, constantly drawing advances on their pay: Bass was forced to go to trial over unpaid debt at least once.
38. MZA, fond G426, fascikl 39 (Ferdinand Peroutka) contains various bills from van der Rohe's studio sent to Peroutka's office.
39. Slávka Peroutková, “Slávka Peroutková,” in Peroutka, Deníky, dopisy, vzpomínky, 250.
40. The Czechoslovak National Socialists were a moderate socialist party bearing no resemblance to the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party. Until 1926 the National Socialist press apparatus was dominated by editors and journalists faithful to Jiří Střibrný, a power within the party until his Castle-sponsored ouster in 1926. See OrzofF, “Battle for the Castle,” 173-81. On the National Socialists, see the work of T. Mills Kelly, including “Taking It to the Streets: Czech National Socialists in 1908,” Austrian History Yearbook 29, no. 1 (1998): 93-112. Various sources discuss Masaryk's voting tendencies, noting as well that his closest friends and associates began in the Social Democratic party, such as lawyer Václav Bouček. See, among others, Klímek, Boj o Hrad I, 170.
41. Adolf Stránský, minister of industry under Kramář 1918-1919, was voted into the Senate in 1920, where he remained politically active until his death in 1931. On the Stránský family and Lidové noviny, see Jiří Pernes, Svět lidových novin 1893—1993: Stoletá kapitola z dějin české žurnalistiky, kultury a politiky (Prague, 1993), 52.
42. Martin Čánk, ‘Jaroslav Stránský: Právník, žurnalista, politik” (Master's thesis, Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Palackého v Olomouci, 1993), 18, 20-21, 23. During this same time period, Jaroslav Stránský finished his Habilitationsschrift on criminal law, later becoming a professor at Brno's Masaryk University and writing several books on the subject. I thank Martin Jan Stránský for pointing out this source. See also Pernes, Svět lidových novin, 53.
43. Ibid., 57.
44. Garver, The Young Czech Party, 109; Pernes, Svět lidových novin, 9-14.
45. Pernes, Svět lidových novin, 58.
46. Ibid., 56-58.
47. That is, if that audience could read Czech. While noting the paper's literary and journalistic quality, historian F. Gregory Campbell nonetheless concludes that the young state's insistence on Czech and Slovak as its state languages inevitably isolated it from the wider world and the rest of Europe. See Campbell, “Interwar Czech Press,” 11, 23-27, 31-32.
48. Pernes, Svět lidových novin, 58.
49. Ibid., 27-28.
50. Ibid., 67.
51. Kubka, Na vlastní oči, 125.
52. Konrád, Edmond, “Karel čapek novinář,” Nač vzpomenu (Prague, 1957), 186-88.Google Scholar
53. Harkins, William, Karel Čapek (New York, 1962), 73, also 95, 103.Google Scholar
54. Peroutka, Deníky, dopisy, vzpomínky, 141-42.
55. Firt, Knihy a osudy, 58.
56. About Přitomnost, see Winkler, Martina, “Die Krise der Intelligenz: Zur Debatte urn die Rolle der tschechischen Intelligenz in der Zeitschrift Přitomnost 1924-1939,” Bohemia: Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der böhmischen Lánder 39, no. 2 (1998).Google Scholar Peroutka and Bechyně knew one another from the Společenský klub, a leftist social club in the heart of Prague tfiat particularly welcomed Social Democrats. They were said to be close friends. On the Společenský klub, see Josef Kroutvor, Potíze s dějinami: Eseje (Prague, 1990), as well as Peroutka, Deníky, dopisy, vzpomínky.
57. See Klímek, Boj o Hrad I, 346, as well as Josef Schieszl's diary in SÚA, Prague.
58. Ferdinand Peroutka, “Schazí nám ještě jedna politicka strana? I.,” Přitomnost, 7 May 1925.
59. The Pětka, at the behest of Agrarian Antonín Švehla, had begun unofficial meetings in 1920, with the goal of stabilizing a Parliament rocked by chaos in the Social Democratic party, at that time the largest and most influential political party. Initially, Masaryk had approved of the creation of this group, acknowledging the rawness of parliamentary debate and the need for discipline and leadership. Among the most helpful discussions of the Pětka are Daniel Miller, Forging Political Compromise, as well as his “Antonín Švehla and the Czechoslovak Republican Party, 1918-1933” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1989), esp. 172-77; Mamatey, “The Development of Czechoslovak Democracy, “esp. 105-10; Klímek, Boj o Hrad I; and Olivová, Věra, The Doomed Democracy: Czechoslovakia in a Disrupted Europe, 1914-1938 (London, 1972), esp. 124-49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Gregory Campbell's, F. “Central Europe's Bastion of Democracy,” East European Quarterly 11, no. 2 (Summer 1977).Google Scholar Like Mamatey, Campbell concludes that the Pětka was a critical stabilizing force for the young republic, whether or not it was unconstitutional. Various incarnations of this unofficial group continued until the end of the First Republic and even formed the basis of the postwar National Front coalition. Daniel Miller is extremely helpful, not only on the Pětka, but also on the Šestka and Osmička, the Pětka's successors.
60. On this perception generally, see Dvořák, “Národní strana práce (1925-1930),” Střední evropa 76-78 (1998).
61. Peroutka, Deníky, dopisy, vzpomínky, 143.
62. The Čapek brothers, Peroutka, and K. Z. Klíma, the editor of the Prague newsroom, placed themselves last on the party slate; they would have received a mandate only if the party had swept the elections. See Firt, Knihy a osudy; Peroutka, Deníky, dopisy, vzpominky; and of course Dvořak's “Národní strana práce (1925-1930).“
63. Peroutka, Deníky, dopisy, vzpominky, 143.
64. Peroutka's own reminiscences of this event are quoted in Firt, “Die ‘Burg’ und die Zeitschrift Přtomnost,” in Bosl, ed., Die Burg, 2:112.
65. For Stránský's complaints to Jan Masaryk, see AÚTGM, MAR, Politické strany 4, složka 18, “Strana préce Dr. Stránský,” report tided “Dr. Stránský,” dated 12January 1927, name ‘Jenda” written in upper-right corner.
66. AÚTGM, MAR, Politické strany 4, složka 18, “Strana préce Dr. Stránský,” letter from Jaroslav Stránský to Masaryk, 21 January 1927.
67. Garver, The Young Czech Party, 105, 303, 313.
68. One historian writes that “at least until 1923 the building of the Czechoslovak state was tantamount to the building of the Živnostenské Bank.” Campbell, “The Castle, Jaroslav Preiss, and Živnostenská Bank,” 242.
69. Ibid., 244.
70. In fact, the Castle had many. Various Castle stalwarts were former National Democrats. The chancellery staff began to leave the party in 1922 when it became increasingly clear that the National Democratic party leadership opposed the president and Beneš. On this topic, see, for example, AKPR, sign. T 635/21, document 880/22, as well as AKPR, sign. T 635/21, karton 52, “Narodni demokracie r. 1921-1935 I-II,” document T 1128/23, letter from 2 April 1924.
71. AKPR, sign. T 1412/23, document T 1412/25, “Záznam ze dne 28. listopadu 1925.“
72. Campbell, “The Castle, Jaroslav Preiss, and Živnostenská Bank,” 244-45. Campbell reports that Preiss was a member of this faction, but archival evidence indicates that Preiss was disdainful of the “center” group.
73. Klímek, Boj o Hrad I, 354.
74. Preiss mistrusted the leadership of then Prime Minister Antonín švehla. For Preiss on švehla, see Klímek, Boj o Hrad I, 354-55. The possible positions Preiss desired included minister of finance, a cabinet position under the president's tacit control (see Firt, Knihy a osudy, 71, as well as Klímek, Boj o Hrad I, 355), and governor of the National Bank, created in 1926 with help from the Živnostenská Bank, although Preiss was never its head (that position went to Vilém Pospišil; see Campbell, “The Castle, Jaroslav Preiss, and Živnostenská Bank,” 243-44).
75. Klímek, Boj o Hrad I, 354, 369-70.
76. Firt, Knihy a osudy, 71.
77. Discussed in various documents: for example, see AKPR, sign. T 1412/23, document 87/27, záznam tided “Praha 27. ledna 1927.“
78. AKPR, sign. T 1412/23, document T 1412/25, “Záznam ze dne 28. listopadu 1925.” The Sís family enjoyed primus inter pares status at Národní listy: František as editorin-chief, Vladimir as foreign affairs editor, and Miloslava as Parisian correspondent. See Beránková, Dějiny československé žurnalistiky, 3:172.
79. Klímek, Boj o Hrad, 369.
80. AKPR, sign. T 635/21, document 1349/26, as reported by Karel Scheinpflug, dated 29 November 1926.
81. Ibid.
82. AKPR, sign. T 635/21, document 146/27, reports from ll-12January 1927.
83. Klímek, Boj o Hrad I, 354.
84. See Firt, Knihy a osudy, 71; Klímek, Boj o Hrad I, 355; and Campbell, “The Castle, Jaroslav Preiss, and Živnostenská Bank,” 243-44.
85. Klímek, Boj o Hrad II, 194.
86. On Masaryk's financial contribution to Tribuna, see Firt, Knihy a osudy, 77; mentioned also in Pecháček, Masaryk, Beneš, Hrad, 91. On the Agrarians, see Miller, “Antonín Svehla,” 49. Other powerful centrist Agrarians, such as Jan Malypetr and František Udržal, were also associated with die sugar-refinery cartel: see Miller, “Antonín Švehla,” 212-13. On the Jews, see Rothkirchen, Livia, “Czechoslovak Jewry: Growth and Decline (1918— 1939),” in Berger, Natalia, ed., Where Cultures Meet: The Story of the Jews of Czechoslovakia (Tel Aviv, 1990), 107, 109.Google Scholar The best source on Czech Jewry and cultural life is Hillel Kieval: see his The Making of Czech Jewry: National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870-1918 (Oxford, 1988) as well as Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley, 2000). Regarding the SPČŽ, see Vyskočil, Josef, “Die Tschechisch-Jüdische Bewegung,” Judaica Bohemiae 3 (1967): 36–55.Google Scholar Assimilated Czech-speaking Jews such as those in the SPČŽ tended to ally themselves wholeheartedly with the Castle; see Kieval, Languages of Community, 181-216. Masaryk had gained the admiration of Czech Jews in 1899, when he defended Leopold Hilsner, an uneducated Moravian Jew, against accusations of ritual murder. A helpful summary of the Hilsner affair and its effects on Masaryk's political thought is to be found in Kieval, Languages of Community, 181-97, as well as Roman Szporluk, The Political Thought of Thomas G. Masaryk (Boulder, Colo., 1981), 118-19. Masaryk acknowledged that he was personally reluctant to befriend Jews; nonetheless popular or political anti-Semitism horrified him. Various of Masaryk's comments on Jews, Judaism, and anti-Semitism are recorded in AÚTGM, MAR, krabice 47-III-6, diář V. Kučery.
87. Arne, and Novák, Jan, Přehledné dějiny literatury české, 4th ed. (Brno, 1995), 1351.Google Scholar
88. Sources are inconsistent about Tribuna's editorship: Laurin either worked as a reporter for the paper or served as its chief editor from 1919-1921 and was then replaced by Hlaváč.
89. SÚA Loreto, fond PMV, 1925- sign. Xn/5/3, box 518, folder 8, report dated 25 August 1925, “Leták nové politické strany NSP.“
90. See Miller, “Antonín Švehla,” 219-20; also see Miller, Forging Political Compromise, 109.
91. AKPR, sign. T 45/24, document 929/26: typewritten copy of a letter to Masaryk by the editors of Tribuna, 25 August 1926. The same document can be found in AÚTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, složka 5—Tisk 1923-1932.
92. Borský was a former Legionnaire and served as ambassador to Rome. But by 1927, he had moved to the far right, helping to found the anti-Castle screed Fronta. On Borsky's political evolution, see Alexander, Manfred, “Die Rolle der Legionäre in der Ersten Republik: Ein politischer Verband und sein Geschichtsbild,” Vereinswesen und Geschichtspflege in den böhmischen Ländern (Munich, 1986), 265-79.Google Scholar Also see Pithart, Petr, “První republika: Jak ji viděla opozice,” Svědectví 18 (1983): 271–314.Google Scholar
93. AKPR, sign. T 45/24, document 929/26: typewritten copy of a letter to Masaryk by the editors of Tribuna, 25 August 1926. Šimonek's alleged words to Pleschner were “Nechte Židy běžet,” literally, let the Jews scurry around—an odd comment given that Pleschner was himself a Jew.
94. Ibid.
95. Ibid.
96. Ibid.
97. AKPR, sign. T 45/24.
98. AÚTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, složka 5—Tisk 1923-1932. Document not numbered. “Laurin 24.8.26., 2061/26,” typewritten.
99. See, for example, Chancellor Šamal's note to Masaryk on “[Záznam] Praha, 14. září 1926,” AÚTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, složka 5—Tisk 1923-1932.
100. AÚTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, složka 5—Tisk 1923-1932. 4 December 1928, opis dopisu Laurinův Benešovi.
101. AKPR, sign. T 45/27, document T 1028/28, “Praha, dne 9. listopadu 1928.“
102. Masaryk, Tomáš G., Karel Havlíček, Snahy a tužby politického probuzení, 3d ed. (Prague, 1920), 55.Google Scholar
103. Campbell, “Interwar Czech Press,” 7.
104. Skilling, T. G. Masaryk, 40-41.
105. Masaryk used the term in his 1919 address to the Czechoslovak parliament. See Korbel, Josef, Twentieth-Century Czechoslovakia: The Meanings of Its History (New York, 1977), 82–83.Google Scholar As is well known, Masaryk largely accepted nineteenth-century nationalist historian Frantíšek Pálacký's romanticized view of Czech history under the Habsburgs as centuries of oppression. He was challenged in this, most prominently by historian Josef Pekář—see O smyslu českých dějin (Prague, 1990)—and by Ferdinand Peroutka in his Jáci jsme essay series in Tribuna, 1922.
106. Tomáš Masaryk, Česká otázka/Naši nynější krize (1895; reprint, Prague, 1936), 157. All my quotations are from Česká otázka. Most of Masaryk's arguments had appeared earlier in his Realist journal, Naše doba.
107. AÚTGM, MAR, Tisk-propaganda, krabice 2, složka 11, copy of letter from Topolčianky, 23 September 1925 (“Z přiloženého listu vidíte, že pan Bertron s jednáním našich ministrů není spokojen“).
108. See Julius Firt's recollections of the interwar period in Knihy a osudy; also see the second section of Masaryk's memoirs, Hovory s T. G. Masarykem, which discusses his service in the Austrian parliament and his impressions of nineteenth-century Czech politics under the empire.
109. Masaryk, Česká otázka, 157.
110. The phrase “Žurnalistika jako literární nástroj obrození” begins the list of subtopics for Masaryk's discussion of nineteenth-century journalism in Česká otázka, 156.
111. “Kapitoly žurnalistické I.,” Tribuna, 22 May 1921, 1.
- 1
- Cited by