The Secret Birthday of the Czechoslovak state, or what happened in Prague in autumn 1914

Abstract

The Secret Birthday of the Czechoslovak state, or what happened in Prague in autumn 1914 The Czechoslovak state was officially formed in Prague on the 28th of October 1918. This date is the official birth date of the Czechoslovak state. In our opinion besides the official birth date there was a secret birth date as well. This secret birth date was in September 1914, at a park in Prague, where the two most important founding fathers of the Czechoslovak state – Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk university professor and Edvard Beneš teacher of the Prague commercial school – have met and decided to work together to overthrow the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and to form the Czech (and Slovak) state. In the current paper we wish to present the events leading to the birth of the Czechoslovak state from September 1914 to May 1915.