Masaryk and Czechoslovakia
In November 1918, writes Elizabeth Wiskemann, the first Czechoslovak Republic was founded.
Thomas Masaryk was born in 1850, immediately after the years of revolution and in the second year of Francis Joseph’s reign. His home was in a remote corner of Southern Moravia, at the centre of the Habsburg Monarchy.
His parents were working people of Slav descent, who, however, spoke German at home. They lived near the Hungarian frontier, beyond which lay Slovakia from which they came.
Coachman Masaryk and his wife evidently attached importance to education j after their son Thomas had had some elementary schooling, they managed to send him to the German grammar school in Brünn or Brno, the chief city in Moravia. The boy was highly intelligent and exceedingly industrious.
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