Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, sometimes anglicised Thomas Masaryk, was a Czechoslovak politician, statesman, sociologist and philosopher. Until 1914, he advocated restructuring the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a federal state. With the help of the Allied Powers, Masaryk gained independence for a Czechoslovak Republic as World War I ended in 1918. He co-founded Czechoslovakia together with Milan Rastislav Štefánik and Edvard Beneš and served as its first president, and so is called by some Czechs the "President Liberator" (Czech: Prezident Osvoboditel).