First Czechoslovak Republic
Czechoslovak Republic Československá republika | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1918–1938 | |||||||||||||||
Flag
Bottom (1918–1920) Top (1920–1938) Small coat of arms
(1920–1938) | |||||||||||||||
| Motto: Pravda vítězí / Pravda víťazí "Truth prevails" | |||||||||||||||
| Anthem: ’Kde domov můj’ (Czech) ’Where my home is’ ’Nad Tatrou sa blýska’ (Slovak) ’Lightning Over the Tatras’ | |||||||||||||||
The Czechoslovak Republic in 1933 | |||||||||||||||
| Capital and largest city | Prague | ||||||||||||||
| Official languages | Czechoslovak[1] | ||||||||||||||
| Common languages | |||||||||||||||
| Demonym(s) | Czechoslovak | ||||||||||||||
| Government | Unitary parliamentary republic | ||||||||||||||
| President | |||||||||||||||
• 1918–1935 | Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk | ||||||||||||||
• 1935–1938 | Edvard Beneš | ||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | |||||||||||||||
• 1918–1919 (first) | Karel Kramář | ||||||||||||||
• 1938 (last) | Jan Syrový | ||||||||||||||
| Legislature | National Assembly | ||||||||||||||
| Senate | |||||||||||||||
| Chamber of Deputies | |||||||||||||||
| Historical era | Interwar period | ||||||||||||||
• Independence declared | 18 October 1918 | ||||||||||||||
• Independence proclaimed | 28 October 1918 | ||||||||||||||
• Constitution adopted | 29 February 1920 | ||||||||||||||
| 30 September 1938 | |||||||||||||||
| Area | |||||||||||||||
• Total | 140,800 km2 (54,400 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||
| Population | |||||||||||||||
• 1921 | 13,410,750 | ||||||||||||||
• 1938 | 14,800,000 | ||||||||||||||
| Currency | Czechoslovak koruna | ||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
| Today part of | |||||||||||||||
The First Czechoslovak Republic,[a] often colloquially referred to as the First Republic,[b] was the first Czechoslovak state that existed from 1918 to 1938, a union of ethnic Czechs and Slovaks. The country was commonly called Czechoslovakia[c], a compound of Czech and Slovak; which gradually became the most widely used name for its successor states. It was composed of former territories of Austria-Hungary, inheriting different systems of administration from the formerly Austrian (Bohemia, Moravia, a small part of Silesia) and Hungarian territories (mostly Upper Hungary and Carpathian Ruthenia).
After 1933, Czechoslovakia remained the only de facto functioning democracy in Central Europe, organized as a parliamentary republic. Under pressure from its Sudeten German minority, supported by neighbouring Nazi Germany, Czechoslovakia was forced to cede its Sudetenland region to Germany on 1 October 1938 as part of the Munich Agreement. It also ceded southern parts of Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia to Hungary and the Trans-Olza region in Silesia to Poland. This, in effect, ended the First Czechoslovak Republic. It was replaced by the Second Czechoslovak Republic, which lasted less than half a year before Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.
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