Abstract
The arrival of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in Prague in 1882 was charged with significance for modern Czech history and was to cause an upheaval in the history of the nation. Jan Herben, his devoted admirer and one of his biographers, wrote in 1898 that the decade of the 1880s was a time of a ‘revolution in ideas in Czech life; new strivings and new yearnings were born; new fractions and tendencies were formed’. This ferment developed in and from the Czech university, which had been created by the partition of the Charles-Ferdinand University into Czech and German parts.1 Professor Masaryk, newly arrived at the Czech university in its first year as a separate institution, stirred up controversy almost immediately by his teaching and by his day-to-day actions. He soon made the university a platform for an effort to influence the Czech intelligentsia and to reform Czech life in all its aspects, educationally , culturally and politically.
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Notes
Jan Herben, Deset let proti proudu (1886–1896) (Prague, 1898), p. 3,
republished in somewhat revised form in Herben, Kniha vzpomínek (Prague, 1935);
Zdeněk Nejedlý, T. G. Masaryk (4 vols., Prague, 1935), III, pp. 3–7, 20.
On his appointment, see Jaroslav Opat, Filozof a politik. Tomáš G. Masaryk, 1882–1893 (Prague, 1937);
also Karel Čapek, Hovory s T. G Masarykem (Prague, 1937), pp. 47–52.
On Masaryk’s first years at the university, see Jaromír Doležal, Masarykova cesta životem (Brno, 1920), Part I, pp. 33–53;
Simon R. Green, Thomas Garrigue Masaryk: Educator of a Nation, PhD thesis, University of California, 1976.
For an excellent analysis of the atmosphere at the university see Milan Machovec, Tomáš G. Masaryk (Prague, 1968), chap. 4;
See her chapter on the philosophical faculty after 1882 in Ferdinand Seibt (ed.), Die Teilung der Prager Universität 1882 und die intellektuelle Desintegration in den böhmischen Ländern (Munich, 1984), espec. pp. 96–7, 107–10.
Albín Bráf, Źivot a dílo, ed. by Josef Gruber and Cyril Horáček (Prague, 1922–24), I, pp. 15–27.
For a critical review of Masaryk’s scholarship and its inadequacies, see Kamil Krofta, Masaryk a jeho dílo vědecké (Prague, 1930).
For a collection of critical reviews of many of Masaryk’s writings, see Jan Patočka, Masaryk, Soubor statí, přednášek a poznámek (samizdat, Prague, 1979);
Tři studie, o Masarykovi (Prague, 1991).
Hoffmann, T. G. Masaryk und die tschechische Frage (Munich, 1988), pp. 75–8; Nejedlý, Masaryk, IV, pp. 101–11
For a detailed analysis of the encyclopedia project, see Stanley B. Winters, ‘Jan Otto, T. G. Masaryk, and the Czech National Encyclopedia,’ Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 31 (1893), pp. 516–42.
Other scholars who meted out sharp criticism of Masaryk’s literary theory were Karel Brušák, in ‘Masaryk and Belles-Lettres’, in T G. Masaryk (1850–1937), Vol. 2, Thinker and Critic, ed. by Robert B. Pynsent (London, 1989), chap. 10,
and Robert B. Pynsent, ‘Masaryk and Decadence’, ibid., I, Thinker and Politician, ed. by Stanley B. Winters (London, 1990), chap. 3.
For praise of Masaryk’s work in linguistics, see Roman Jakobson, ‘Problem of Language in Masaryk’s Writings’, in M. Čapek and K. Hrubý, (eds.), Masaryk in Perspective (n. p. 1981).
Škrach, in Masaryk myslitel (Prague, 1938);
on humanity, democracy and the Czech question, Otto Urban, ‘Masarykovo pojetí české otázky’, Československý časopis historický, 17 (1969), pp. 525–52;
For critical analysis of Masaryk’s theory of Czech history, see two essays originally published in samizdat, in Václav Černý, Dvě studie Masarykovské (1977)
and Jan Patočka, Dvě studie o Masarykovi (1977)
Masaryk, Jan Hus, Naše obrození a naše reformace, first published in 1896 (Prague, 1923), p. 9.
See also Palacký’s religious interpretation of Czech nationality and humanism as set forth by Masaryk, Palackého idea národa českého (first published in 1898 (3rd edn., Prague, 1926), chaps 2, 7, espec. pp. 177–8.
Masaryk, Karel Havlíček (Prague, 1896), chap. IX, XIV, espec. p. 242.
However, he praised socialism for its rejection of extreme nationalism and its international approach: Masaryk, Otázka sociální (Prague, 1948), I, p. 263, II, pp. 159–65, 217–18, 230, 297 (Masaryk on Marx (Lewisburg, 1972), I, p. 185, II, pp. 288–95, 313–14, 324, 342–3. For more on Marxism and the use of violence, see Chapter 2 below.
Pekař, ‘Masaryková česká filosofie’, Český časopis historický, XVIII (1912), pp. 12, 34, 44.
Josef Kaizl, České myšlenky (2nd. edn., Prague, 1896), espec. chap 1; on the state, chap. 4. Antonín Hajn agreed with Kaizl on the role of Western enlightenment in the thinking of the awakeners.
See his review, Rozhledy, V, no. 4 (1896), given in Hajn, Výbor práci 1889–1909 (Prague 1912), pp. 429–39.
See also Milan Hauner, ‘The Meaning of Czech History: Masaryk and Pekař’, ibid., Vol. 3. Statesman and Cultural Force (London, 1990), ed. by Harry Hanak, chap. 2.
see Jaroslav Opat, ‘Nad jednou knihu o realismu T. G. Masaryka (Obsah, samizdat, February 1986); for her reply, ibid., September 1986. For criticism of the more political aspects of Masaryk’s position by Kaizl and Hajn, see Chapter 3 below.
F. Plamínková, ed., Masaryk a ženy (Prague, 1930), pp. 195–7, 242–4, 278–9, 286, 301, 303, 328.
T. G. Masaryk and B. Odstrčil, Přechod ze střední na školu vysokou (Prague, 1913), pp. 13–15.
See his introduction to Bunge, K otázcealkoholu, a lecture given in 1886 (Prague, 1906)
He is reported to have rejected his physician’s advice to drink a glass of beer daily (Josef J. Filipi, S Masarykovými, Hrst vzpomínek (Prague, 1947) p. 102).
For the above, and the following, see R. Wolf, České studentstvo v době prvního třícetiletí české university (1882–1912), (Prague, 1912);
Karen J. Freeze, The Young Progressives: The Czech Student Movement, 1887–1897 (PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1974);
Bruce M. Garver, The Young Czech Party, 1874–1901 and the Emergence of a Multi-Party System (New Haven, 1978), pp. 143–6, 168–89, 447, n. 56;
Zdeněk Tobolka, Politické dějiny Československého národa od r. 1848 až do dnešní doby (Prague, 1936), III, 2, pp. 47–59;
Of some use is the poorly organized book by Václav Gutwirth, Masaryk a studentstvo (Prague, 1924).
The most detailed studies are those by Jan Havránek, ‘Počátky a kořeny pokrokového hnutí studentského na počátku devadesátých let 19. století,’ Acta Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis, Historia Universitatis, Carolinae Pragensis, 2, no. 1 (1961), pp. 5–33’;
For the trial, ibid., chap. 6. For the student demonstrations, see Havránek, ‘Protirakouské hnutí dělnické mládeže a studentů a události roku 1893,’ Acta Universitatis Carolinae — Historia Universitatis, 2, no. 2 (1961), 21–85.
Wolf, Ceske studentstva, p. 111, and the whole of Part II. A detailed study of the conflicting tendencies among the students, and a critical analysis of Masaryk’s relations with each, is given by František Červenka, Boje a směry českého studentstva na sklonku minulého a na počátku našeho století (Prague, 1962). See especially chap. 1 and passim, as indicated by the index.
For earlier parliamentary speeches on education, 6 and 30 June, 1891, see Jiří Kovtun, Slovo má poslanec Masaryk (Munich, 1985), pp. 33–6, 42–7.
Český učitel (1899–1900), full text not available, extensive citations given in J. B. Kozák ed., Masaryková práce (Prague, 1930), in chapter entitled ‘Masaryk pedagog’, pp. 251–86.
E. Rádl, T. G. Masaryk, lecture given 13 December 1918 (Prague, 1919), p. 11.
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© 1994 H. Gordon Skilling
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Skilling, H.G. (1994). Academic Iconoclast. In: T. G. Masaryk. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13392-5_1
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