Humpolec will have the statue of President Masaryk repaired

Humpolec (Pelhřimovsko) – Today, the statue of the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was taken from Humpolec. The city will have it restored by the Brno company Marston. At the same time, it will modify the area around it in Tyršovo square for about 250,000 crowns. Aneta Slavíková, the spokesperson for the city hall, told ČTK.

The park modification according to the design of landscape architect Eva Jonešová began at the end of April. The statue is expected to return to the area in front of the architecturally significant Medova villa designed by Josef Gočár at the end of July. The costs for restoration have not yet been precisely calculated; it was originally assumed that the statue could be repaired on site, Slavíková said.

The Humpolec statue of T. G. Masaryk is by sculptor Vincenc Makovský. According to educator and historian Zdeněk Škrabánek, it was first installed in 1937. The story of the statue is a barometer of the political situation, courage, or, on the contrary, hypocrisy, Škrabánek previously told ČTK.

The statue first disappeared from its original place in 1940. It was saved by then-mayor Emil Hrdlička, who was later executed by the Nazis, and several of his collaborators. They first hid it in the basement of the municipal school under firewood and coal. When the supplies of firewood began to dwindle and the hiding place was at risk of being revealed, they moved it to the former Beck farm. It was a prudent step, Škrabánek said. About a month after the statue was relocated, the German army occupied the school building.

Masaryk's statue returned to its pedestal in 1945, then in 1968, and in 1990. "The then-mayor Jan Vondrák told us that the statue of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was definitely not destroyed, that it certainly ended up at the state castle in Letovice. In the city archive, we really found evidence that it was taken there after its removal in 1972," said Jiří Fiala, the secretary of the city office, who was working in the building office at that time. The statue lay in a nearby shed at the castle. "It was lying in dirt; at first glance, we could see it was dirty, but fortunately not damaged," Fiala reminisces.

The initiators of the construction of Masaryk's statue in Humpolec first met in October 1936. They selected sculptor Makovský as the creator of the monument, who was also recommended by architect Gočár. More than 43,000 crowns were collected in a public collection for the statue. The statue was ceremoniously unveiled in the summer of 1937 in Tyršovo square, which architect Gočár helped to modify.