Wrote Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, who died in 1937 and left a letter that was not to be opened until September 19, 2025, which was yesterday.
Quoted in "Masaryk’s 'last words' envelope opened: insights into a nation’s founding president" (Radio Prague International).
We talked about the great letter-opening yesterday, here. I had a bit of the text in that post, though I wasn't sure it was from the letter: "If people are uneducated and foolish, there is not much that can be done. People are glad to be foolish — do not make it easy for them, and argue with them." I see that is indeed from the letter.
The letter also says this about the Germans: "Give them what they deserve, but no more."
Posts
22 comments:
I have read that the Czechs and Slovaks agreed to join up after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire because the Czechs worried (rightly) about the Germans and the Slovaks worried about the Hungarians.
By "the Germans" of course he meant the Sudetendeutsch, who were a minority in the new nation.
As for Hungarians, there's a reason they have been called The Other Master Race.
Hellzapoppin! Czechsagog!
I feel like we all had Prague in the 90s, even if we didn't bother going there. Like Vegans, the people who did go there couldn't stop talking about it. I suppose it was cheap to live there, but Hemingway and Gertrude Stein only happened once.
Why September 19, 2025? Article doesn't say.
Turns out the Germans didn't bother asking.
The Czechs make excellent beer, and drink more of it than anybody else. Having been to Prague, I can confirm that it is rave-worthy. I intend to revisit next year, and was delighted to find that it is possible to make a day trip from Prague to Dresden. Or maybe an overnighter.
"it is possible to make a day trip from Prague to Dresden."
Both cities are worth as many days as you can spare, and the countryside between them is beautiful except for the %^*# wind turbines in Saxony. I don't recall seeing any in Czechia.
Among the cable TV channels we get are several dozen Music Choice channels. Basically, using your TV as a radio.
One feature they have are little AI-generated and sometimes nonsensical pop-up facts and factoids about the composer or artist featured, and it's amusing to see how they handle composer birthsites--a lot of composers were born in the Czech Republic centuries before there was a Czech Republic.
“The letter also says this about the Germans: "Give them what they deserve, but no more."
Sure. They only want an inch.
Our Czech Viking tour guide in '19 (an attractive young mother) told us that Czechs are the least religious people in the world according to polls.
Make of that what you will; I loved the place myself.
When a kid the first tv show I really loved was the NBC’s Mystery Movie anthology wheel Banacek. I thought Peppard was a Czech but I later found he was really Polish. Childhood disappointments.
At least Yeortuk and Georg Festrunk on SNL were from Bratislava and were wild and crazy Czechs.
Bratislava is in Slovakia. (Central Europe's motto should be "It's Complicated.")
Peppard was Czech? Or Banacek was supposed to be Czech?
I didn't watch that one much; I probably watched more of Mannix, starring Mike Connors of Armenian extraction.
Probably the best Pole was Banach one of the great mathematicians, he invented Functional Analysis, but when the Nazis took over he could not get a job because he was Jewish, and since he did not have a job he was going to be sent to the death camps. So someone at the university got him a job as a lice feeder. They were dong reasearch on how to kill lice and they needed to grow them so lice feeders were people who put little bags of lice on their legs and let the lice eat their blood. He could sit all day and do math and feed the lice. Yes this actually happened.
No the character was Polish American don’t know where Peppard was from. I thought he was Czech because of his name.
"Why September 19, 2025? Article doesn't say."
The son donated the letter with the condition that it not be opened for 20 years.
Is it a Czech thing to write a letter of advice or wisdom but not want anyone to receive it for decades?
IIRC George Peppard was from a bit of an upper-crusty family, originally French by way of Canada.
One of the things I read about Jan Masaryk's "mysterious" death was a Czech saying along the lines of, "Jan Masaryk was such a tidy man that he even closed the bathroom window after he jumped."
Why would you demand it not be opened for 20 years? He wrote the letter in 1937. It reminds me of the Brits who would keep things "secret" for 75 years, when 50 would do just as well.
The Czechs killed 200,000 Germans after WW II when they illegally and ethnically cleansed them from Czechoslovakia. They probably killed more German civilians than then the Nazis killed Czechs. Plus, I found it suprising that the most popular party after WW II was the communist party in the 46 elections. They call the 48 soviet takeover a "coup" but the coup was welcomed by most Czechs. Don't know what the slovaks thought.
it was as legit as the election in 2020, you understand now, except the Red Army was there to smooth things over,
next thing you'll tell me is the Stasi were just wonderful, sigh,
Post a Comment
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.