TGM correspondence networks

Did T.G. Masaryk have many contacts abroad? Whom did he have written correspondence with during the First World War? How did these contacts help to establish the Czechoslovak state?

 

These are the questions that a new research project that we started at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences in 2018 will answer and through which traditional research on Masaryk has entered a new stage. The aim of the project is to make Masaryk’s correspondence —with an emphasis on the intellectual and political sphere— accessible with the tools of the current digital age to both Czech and foreign researchers as well as to the general public. A digital database is being created in which each document has a standardized metadata file (including, for example, the date the letter was sent, the name and address of the sender, the place it was sent from and where it was received, keywords and so on). Based on these data it will be possible to create specialized maps from different points of view (geographical, social, chronological) that will illustrate Masaryk’s correspondence networks before the First World War. It was through these contacts that Masaryk was able to internationally present a hitherto largely unknown Central European nation, to contribute to the strengthening of national identity and to integrate Czech and Slovak society into the cultural and state-building nations of the world. On the other hand, the numerous personalities he was in contact with through his correspondence undoubtedly influenced Masaryk’s own views and positions, for example through the Serbian and Irish questions.

 

The database of online documents that are being used to create the visualization of Masaryk’s correspondence networks can be found here: https://historicka-korespondence.cz/.