New museum dedicated to Alice Masaryk opens in Là¡ny
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Loading... - Noah Taylor
- 11 Jul 2022
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A new museum dedicated to Alice Masaryk, the daughter of the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and the co-founder of the Czechoslovak branch of the Red Cross, has opened in Lány in Central Bohemia. The institution is located near the presidential retreat in a building commissioned by Alice Masaryk for the local branch of the Red Cross.
The eldest daughter of Charlotte and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk became a prominent figure in Czechoslovakia between the wars, advocating social work and female emancipation.
After the First World War, part of which she spent in an Austrian jail, she co-founded and chaired the Czechoslovak branch of the International Red Cross.
Among other things she initiated the building of a house in Lány, which served as a branch for the local Red Cross, specifically as a counselling room for mothers with young children, a purpose it fulfilled until 1991.
The building has now been turned into a museum, dedicated to the legacy of Alice Masaryk, which is still not fully appreciated, says its director, Magdalena Elznicová Mikesková:
“Alice Masaryk was interested in social work from an early age. She worked in various associations that promoted, for example, the fight against alcohol abuse or ones that supported children. She herself volunteered as a nurse in the Red Cross in 1915 and treated wounded soldiers in the Pardubice quarantine facility. She was simply attracted to the field of social work and medicine."
The new museum in Lány showcases some of Alice Masaryk’s original furniture as well as a number of items linked to the history of the Czechoslovak Red Cross. Magdalena Elznicová Mikesková again. Read More...
