Karel Kramář

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R.I.P
Karel

Karel Kramář (27 December 1860 – 26 May 1937) was a Czech politician. He was a representative of the major Czech political party, the Young Czechs, in the Austrian Imperial Council from 1891 to 1915 (where he was also known as Karl Kramarsch), becoming the party leader in 1897. During the First World War, Kramář was imprisoned for treason against Austria-Hungary but later released under an amnesty. In 1918, he headed the Czechoslovak National Committee in Prague, which declared independence on 28 October. Kramář became the first Prime Minister of the new state but resigned over policy differences less than a year later. Although he remained a member of the National Assembly until his death in 1937, his conservative nationalism was out of tune with the main political establishment, represented by the figures of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Edvard Beneš.

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Early life Kramář was born in Vysoké nad Jizerou (Hochstadt an der Iser), near the northern border of what is now the Czech Republic, into a wealthy family. He was the only one of five children to survive to school age. Kramář was educated at the universities of Prague, Strasbourg and Berlin, and also at the École libre des sciences politiques in Paris, completing his studies with a doctorate in law. In the 1880s, Kramář played a prominent role in the agitation against the fact that Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague offered instructions almost exclusively in German; demands were made for a Czech language university so that Czech students could be educated in their own language. The issue of whether the language of instruction at Charles-Ferdinand University would be German or Czech was an extremely controversial one in the early 1880s, leading to frequent fights on the streets of Prague between ethnic German and ethnic Czech students. Finally in 1882, the Emperor Franz-Josef approved breaking Charles-Ferdinand University into two independent branches, with one that offered instruction in Czech and another instruction in German.

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Early career Kramář became the leader of the Young Czech Party in Austria-Hungary and later of the National Democratic Party in Czechoslovakia. In 1896, Kramář become the Austrian Minister of Finance. Like other Slavic politicians in the Dual Monarchy, Kramář disliked the Compromise of 1867, which he felt had elevated the Magyars to a position of political power that their numbers did not warrant. Kramář believed that time and democracy in the form of universal suffrage would transform the Austrian Empire into a Slavic state, as the Slavic peoples were the most numerous of the various ethnic groups in the empire. Further, Kramář wanted the Austrian Empire to abandon its alliance with Germany in favor of an alliance with Russia. Like many other Young Czechs, Kramář was a Russophile, seeing Russia as the world's only Slavic great power that counterbalanced the dominant ethnic Germans of the Habsburg monarchy. Kramář's wife was a Russian socialite, the daughter of a Moscow industrialist and until 1917 they owned a lavish villa in the Crimea. Kramář was fascinated with Russian culture and loved Russian literature. Tomáš Masaryk often criticized Kramář for the contradiction between his push for universal suffrage and democracy in the Austrian…Citește mai mult

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World War I When the First World War began in 1914, Kramář resolved to work against the Habsburg monarchy, as he concluded that a victory for Germany and Austria would mark the end of the possibility of reform in the Austrian Empire. The way in which Austria-Hungary increasingly started to function as a satellite state of Germany led to increasing Czech support for independence during the war as it became clear that if the Central powers won, Slavic peoples of the Austrian Empire would likely never become the equals of the ethnic Germans and the Magyars. In the fall of 1914, Kramář advised the other Czech politicians to wait as "the Russians will do it for us alone". Kramář was referring to the Russian victories in Galicia in September 1914 that saw about 50% of the entire Austrian Army killed, wounded or captured, a crippling blow that ended whatever possibility that might had existed for Austria to be an equal partner with Germany and reduced the Austrians down to very much junior partners of the Germans. In March 1915, Kramář was together with Přemysl Šámal, Alois Rašín, Josef Scheiner and Edvard Beneš a founding member of an underground group called…Citește mai mult

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Independence On 31 October, Kramář, who had gone to Geneva to meet with Beneš, representing the Paris-based National Council, concluded that a new Czechoslovak state would be a parliamentary republic with Masaryk as president, Kramář as premier and Beneš as foreign minister. Kramář was impressed with Beneš's skills as a diplomat, reporting to Prague: "If you saw our Dr. Beneš and his mastery of global questions...you would take off your hat and say it was truly marvelous!" Formerly close associates, Masaryk and Kramář had been barely on speaking terms by 1914. Kramář, as the most prominent politician in Czechoslovakia, was named the country's first prime minister (14 November 1918 – 8 July 1919), much to the displeasure of Masaryk. When Masaryk was named president, he was in the United States lobbying for American support for Czechoslovakia, so Kramář, as the premier in Prague, largely ran Czechoslovakia in its first months. In January 1919, the Polish–Czechoslovak War between Poland and Czechoslovakia began over the Duchy of Teschen. The Teschen region, which had a Polish majority and a Czech minority, was very rich in coal. However, the main reason that Kramář gave the Poles an ultimatum, demanding their withdrawal from Teschen, was…Citește mai mult

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Views on Bolshevism and the Soviet Union Kramář saw Bolshevism as a dangerous German creation and believed that they would remain loyal to Germany. He also consistently rejected the idea of centralised production and the utopian vision of a classless society. Still, Kramář doubted the long-term viability of Bolshevism, which he thought was unpopular and maintained only through terror. He sincerely hoped that the Soviet Union would collapse during his lifetime.

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Further reading Lustigová, Martina (2007). Karel Kramář, první československý premiér. Praha: Vyšehrad. ISBN 978-80-7021-898-3. Preclík, Vratislav. Masaryk a legie (Masaryk and legions), váz. kniha, 219 pages, first issue vydalo nakladatelství Paris Karviná, Žižkova 2379 (734 01 Karvina, Czech Republic) ve spolupráci s Masarykovým demokratickým hnutím (Masaryk Democratic Movement, Prague), 2019, ISBN 978-80-87173-47-3, pages 35–53, 106–107, 111–112, 124–125, 128, 129, 132, 140–148, 184–199.

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External links Media related to Karel Kramář at Wikimedia Commons Works by or about Karel Kramář at Wikisource Joint Czech and Slovak Digital Parliamentary Library, 14 November 1918, 1st session in period 1918–20. Newspaper clippings about Karel Kramář in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW