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The affair around the 1899 trial against the Jew Leopold Hilsner, who was accused of ritual murder, represented the culmination of the wave of antisemitism in Bohemia and the rest of Austria at the end of the 19th century. During the affair, also known as the also known as the Hilsner Trial, Hilsner Case or Polná Affair, Tomáš G. Masaryk, later the first president of Czechoslovakia, advocated the reversal of the verdict, and took a decisive stance against the antisemitic tendency in Czech society.On Easter, April 1, 1899, the corpse of a young woman was found in a forest…

Affäre um den Prozess gegen den des Ritualmords beschuldigten Juden Leopold Hilsner im Jahr 1899, die den Höhepunkt der antisemitischen Welle in Böhmen und im weiteren Österreich am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts darstellte. Während der auch als »Hilsneriade« bezeichneten Affäre setzte sich der spätere erste Präsident der Tschechoslowakei, Tomáš G. Masaryk, für die Revision des Urteils ein und bezog dezidiert Stellung gegen die antisemitische Stimmung in der tschechischen Gesellschaft. Ostern 1899, am 1. April, wurde in einem Waldstück nahe der im böhmisch-mährische…

Beneš, Edvard (May 28, 1884, Kožlany, Bohemia – September 3, 1948, Sezimovo Ústí, South Bohemian Region), Czechoslovak politician. Beneš was his country’s first minister of foreign affairs (1918–1935). In 1921–1922 he simultaneously held the office of prime minister before succeeding Tomáš Masaryk as president (1935–1938). From 1940 he headed the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London and finally became president of Czechoslovakia following the renewal of the country in the wake of World War I…

Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue (March 7, 1850, Hodonín [Göding] – September 14, 1937, Lány Castle [near Prague]), Czech politician (state president). Masaryk studied in Vienna and Leipzig. After obtaining his doctorate and professorial qualification, in 1882 he moved from Vienna to Prague, where he worked as Professor of Philosophy at the new Czech University, and entered politics as a member of the Bohemian Parliament and the Austrian Reichsrat (1891–93, 1907–14). After the beginning of the First World War, he played a leading part in founding a secret, anti-Austria…

Czechoslovakia One of the successor states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was assembled from the Bohemian Crown lands located in the Austrian part of the Empire, namely Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia, as well as the former Hungarian territories of Slovakia and the Carpathian Ukraine (Ruthenia). The state was founded on October 28, 1918, with the official title of the Republic of Czechoslovakia. In Czechoslovakia as of 1921, a total of 13,613,172 people inhabited an area of 140,484 km2. Under law the 8.7 million Czechs and Slovaks, representing 66% of the total…