Masaryk and the Trials for High Treason against South Slavs in 1909

Abstract

When Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, Professor of Philosophy at the Czech section of the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, spoke in the Chamber of Deputies of the Austrian Reichsrat on 14 May 1909 on behalf of the South Slays, his action no longer created the sensation as it once might have. The socially committed Czech teacher had become acquainted with the South Slays and learnt Serbo-Croat while studying in Vienna in the 1870s. In 1891 he had attended the banquet of a Slav student conference in Prague with the Istrian deputy of the Reichsrat, Vjekoslav Spinčić, and in 1892 he had participated in an important meeting of Slav students in Graz. As a Young Czech deputy in the Reichsrat, he had been elected in 1892 to the Austrian delegation that discussed common affairs with Hungary and, on 18–19 October 1892, he had delivered his first major speech on Bosnia and Herzegovina. In it he criticised the policy of the Finance Minister Benjamin von Kállay, who supervised the administration of these two occupied regions.¹