Everything about Edvard Bene totally explained
Edvard Beneš (
May 28 1884 Kožlany,
Bohemia (then part of
Austria-Hungary) –
September 3 1948 Sezimovo Ústí,
Czechoslovakia) was a leader of the
Czechoslovak independence movement and the second
President of Czechoslovakia.
Youth
He 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. 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 he 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, he 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.
He was a member of the
Czechoslovak National Socialist Party (until 1925 called Czechoslovak Socialist Party) and a strong Czechoslovakist - he didn't consider
Slovaks and
Czechs to be separate ethnicities.
In 1935 he succeeded
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk to become President. He served as de jure President of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1948. From 1938 to 1945 he was in exile. He was elected only twice: on 14 December 1935 and on 19 June 1946, since Art. 58 para 5 of the Constitution stipulated: The former president shall stay in his or her function till the new president shall be elected. (
"Dřívější president zůstává ve své funkci, pokud nebyl zvolen president nový.") He was confirmed as the former president of the republic by the National Assembly on 28 October 1945 by unanimous vote.
(External Link
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Second exile
In October 1938, after the
Munich Agreement ceded the predominantly German speaking
Sudetenland to Germany, Beneš was forced to resign under German pressure. Fearing for his life, he went into exile in Putney,
London, living at 26 Gwendolen Avenue SW15 (blue plaque). Then in 1940 he organized the
Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile in London with
Jan Šrámek as Prime Minister and himself as President.
In November 1940 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 1941 Beneš and
František Moravec planned the
Operation Anthropoid, aiming at the assassination of
Reinhard Heydrich.
(External Link) This was implemented in 1942, resulting in brutal German reprisals such as the execution of thousands of Czechs and the eradication of two villages of
Lidice and
Ležáky.
Although oriented to the West he was also on friendly terms with Stalin. In 1943 he signed the entente between Czechoslovakia and the
Soviet Union in order to secure Czechoslovakia's political position, as well as his own.
Last years
At the end of
World War II, he returned home as the President of Czechoslovakia. He resented the
Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia on
25 February 1948 led by
Prime Minister Klement Gottwald, and resigned as President on
7 June 1948. Gottwald succeeded him as President. He died of natural causes at his villa in
Sezimovo Ústí,
Czechoslovakia on
September 3 1948. He is interred along with his wife in the garden of his villa and his bust is part of the gravestone.
The so-called
Beneš decrees (officially Decrees of the President of the Republic), which, among other things, expropriated citizens of
German and
Hungarian ethnicity, and paved the way for the eventual expulsion of the majority of Germans to 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.
Mr. Beneš wasn't mostly responsible for the shape of Decrees of President of the Republic. Decrees were in their aboslute majority prepared by government. Especially those adopted after occupation were prepared without influence of the president.
Footnotes
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