D.C. Statuary

Tomas Garrigue Masaryk

38.91125, -77.048417 | Political

An outdoor sculpture depicting the founding President of Czechoslovakia. It was offered to the United States by the Czech Republic and was inaugurated on Embassy Row on 19 September 2002 in the presence of Czech President Václav Havel, former Slovak President Michal Kováč, and Prague-born former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, was a Czech politician, sociologist and philosopher. After trying to reform the Austro-Hungarian monarchy into a federal state, with the help of the Allied Powers, he eventually succeeded in gaining Czechoslovak independence as a republic after World War I. He both founded and was the first President of Czechoslovakia and so is called the “President Liberator”.