Radio speeches by T. G. Masaryk

In cooperation with the Czech Radio Archive, we offer an overview and a unique opportunity to listen to recordings with the voice of President T. G. Masaryk.

Since the 1920s, radio as a new medium gradually gained popularity. Regular radio broadcasts in Czechoslovakia began on 18 May 1923, transmitted from the military airport in Prague-Kbely by a private company called Radiojournal. Two years later, the Czechoslovak state acquired a majority stake (51%) in Radiojournal. From that point on, the radio broadcaster operated in alignment with the ideological, political, economic, and cultural interests of the Czechoslovak Republic.

President Masaryk was also aware of the importance of radio broadcasting. After all, he was one of the first Czechoslovak politicians to become personally acquainted with this medium. Already in 1922, he tried listening to a three-amp receiving radio station using headphones at Prague Castle. His interest in the new medium can also be traced in the official programme during the presidential visit to France in October 1923. On 17 October, T. G. Masaryk, accompanied by French President Millerand, visited the central radio station at the chateau in Sainte-Assise near Paris. After a tour of the premises and equipment, a greeting radiogram was sent out. A year later, the Military Telegraph Workshop produced a luxurious superheterodyne receiver for President Masaryk, which housed an eight-amp radio receiver and an electric gramophone in a mahogany cabinet. This rare item served Masaryk as his personal radio receiver in later years. The President regularly watched the weekly programmes in the Radiojournal magazine and chose to listen to whatever interested him at the time. Music programmes, political and news broadcasts, and occasionally sports broadcasts were of particular interest to him.

However, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was not only a passive consumer of radio broadcasting, but also became its active co-creator. In cooperation with the Czech Radio Archive, we offer the opportunity to listen to 10 of Masaryk's speeches and addresses in Czech, Slovak, English and German.

See the collection of Masaryk's speeches and addresses.