Jana Masaryka 165/22: Memorial to Jan Masaryk

Jan Masaryk was born in 1886 at the Villa Osvěta in Vinohrady. The third child of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, Jan acted as ambassador to London from 1925, and as Foreign Minister of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile from 1940.

In March 1948, having tangled with Stalin over the implementation of the Marshall Plan, Masaryk was found dead in the courtyard of Prague’s Foreign Ministry. The circumstances have never been satisfactorily explained.

Čelakovského Street, where the family villa stands, was later named ‘Jana Masaryka’ in his honour. Below Masaryk’s bust (by Jan Bartoš, 2006) appears the Czech motto ‘Truth will prevail’, to which Masaryk himself added the ironic words ‘ale dá to fušku’ – ‘but it’s going to be quite a job’.