Edvard Beneš with his wife 1934
Statue of Edvard Beneš in front of
headquarters of Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague
Edvard Beneš ( ) (28 May
1884 – 3 September 1948) was a leader of the Czechoslovak
independence movement, Minister of Foreign Affairs
and the second President of
Czechoslovakia. He was known to be a skilled
diplomat.
Youth
Edvard
Beneš was born into a peasant family in a small village of Kožlany
near Rakovník
, ca.
60 km west of Prague
.
He spent
much of his youth in Vinohrady
district of Prague, where he attended a grammar school from 1896 to
1904.During this time he played
football for
Slavia Prague.
After studies at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Charles University in Prague,
he left for Paris
and
continued his studies at the Sorbonne
and at the
Independent
School of Political and Social Studies (École Libre des
Sciences Politiques). He completed his first degree in Dijon
, where he
received his Doctorate of Laws in 1908. Then he taught for
three years at the Prague Academy of Commerce, and after his
habilitation in the field of philosophy in 1912, he became a
lecturer in
sociology at Charles
University. He was involved in
Scouting.
First exile
During
World War I, Beneš was one of the
leading organizers of an independent Czechoslovakia abroad. He
organized a Czech pro-independence anti-Austrian secret resistance
movement called "Maffia".
In September, 1915, he went into exile where
in Paris he made intricate diplomatic efforts to gain recognition
from France
and the
United
Kingdom
for the Czechoslovak independence movement, as he was from 1916–1918 a
Secretary of the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris and
Minister of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs within the
Provisional Czechoslovak government.
Czechoslovakia
From
1918–1935, Beneš was first and the longest serving Foreign Minister
of Czechoslovakia, and from 1920–1925 and 1929–1935 a member of the
Parliament. He represented Czechoslovakia in talks of the
Treaty of Versailles. In 1921
he was a professor and also from 1921–1922 Prime Minister. Between
1923–1927 he was a member of the
League of Nations Council (serving as
president of its committee from 1927–1928). He was a renowned and
influential figure at international conferences, such as
Genoa 1922,
Locarno 1925,
The
Hague 1930, and
Lausanne in 1932.
Beneš was a member of the
Czechoslovak National
Socialist Party (until 1925 called Czechoslovak Socialist
Party) and a strong Czechoslovakist - he did not consider
Slovaks and
Czechs to be
separate ethnicities.
In 1935, Beneš succeeded
Tomáš
Garrigue Masaryk as President. He opposed
Germany's claim to the German-speaking
Sudetenland in 1938.
In October, the
Sudeten Crisis brought Europe on the
brink of war, which was averted only as France and Great Britain
signed the Munich
Agreement, which allowed for the immediate annexation and
military occupation of the Sudetenland by Germany.
After this event, which proceeded without Czechoslovakian
participation, Beneš was forced to resign on 5 October 1938 under
German pressure and
Emil Hácha was
chosen as President. In March 1939, Hàcha's government was bullied
into authorising the German occupation of the remaining territory
of Czechia. (
Slovakia had declared
its independence by then.)
Second exile
On 22
October 1938 Beneš went into exile
in Putney
, London
.
In
November 1940 in the wake of London Blitz,
Beneš, his wife, their nieces, and his household staff moved to
The
Abbey
at Aston
Abbotts
near Aylesbury
in Buckinghamshire. The staff of his
private office, including his Secretary Edvard Táborský and his
chief of staff Jaromír Smutný, moved to The Old Manor House in the
neighbouring village of Wingrave
, while his military intelligence staff headed by
František Moravec was
stationed in the nearby village of Addington
.
In 1940 he organized the
Czechoslovak
Government-in-Exile in London with
Jan Šrámek as Prime Minister and
himself as President.
In 1941 Beneš and František Moravec planned Operation
Anthropoid
, with the intention of assassinating Reinhard Heydrich. This was implemented
in 1942, and, predictably, resulted in brutal German reprisals such
as the execution of thousands of Czechs and the eradication of two
villages of Lidice
and Ležáky
.
Although not a Communist, Beneš was also on friendly terms with
Stalin.
In 1943 he signed the entente between
Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union
. According to British writer Nigel West's
book on the
Venona project, Edvard
Beneš was Soviet spy codename "19".
Second presidency
After the
Prague uprising at the end
of
World War II, Beneš returned home
and reassumed his former position as President. He was not elected
President in 1945 but unanimously confirmed as the former president
of the republic by the National Assembly on 28 October 1945. Under
article 58.5 of the Constitution, "The former president shall stay
in his or her function till the new president shall be elected." On
19 June 1946 Beneš was formally elected to his second term as
President.
The
Beneš decrees
(officially called "Decrees of the President of the Republic"),
among other things, expropriated citizens of
German and
Hungarian ethnicity, and paved the way for
the eventual expulsion of the majority of Germans to West and East
Germany and Austria. The decrees are still in force to this day and
remain controversial, with the expellees demanding their repeal.
The Czech
government's repeated assurances that the decrees are no longer
applied have been accepted by the European Commission
and the European Parliament
.
Beneš presided over a coalition government involving Democrats and
Communists, with
the Communist leader
Klement
Gottwald as prime minister. On 25 February 1948, the Communists
assumed complete power in a
coup d'état. Beneš
resigned as President on 7 June 1948 and Gottwald succeeded him as
President.
Death
Beneš
died of natural causes at his villa in Sezimovo
Ústí
, Czechoslovakia on 3 September 1948. He is interred along
with his wife in the garden of his villa and his bust is part of
the gravestone.
See also
Footnotes
- Stalo se před 100 lety: Robinson a Beneš - Radio
Praha
- HISTORIE: Špion, kterému nelze věřit - Neviditelný
pes
- Nigel West, Venona, the Greatest Secret of the Cold War,
London: HarperCollins, 1999.
- Prozatimní NS RČS 1945-1946, 2. schůze, část 1/4
References
- Milan Hauner *(ed.): Edvard Beneš’ MEMOIRS: THE DAYS OF MUNICH
(vol.1), WAR AND RESISTANCE (vol.2), DOCUMENTS (vol.3). First
critical edition of reconstructed War Memoirs 1938-45 of President
Beneš of Czechoslovakia (published by Academia Prague 2007. ISBN
978-80-200-1529-7)
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search