Rudolf Beran

Rudolf Beran (28 December 1887 – 23 April 1954) was a Czechoslovak politician who served as prime minister of the country before its occupation by Nazi Germany and shortly thereafter, before it was declared a protectorate. A leader of the Agrarian Party from 1933, he was appointed prime minister by President Emil Hácha on 1 December 1938.

Rudolf Beran
Prime Minister of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
In office 16 March 1939 – 27 April 1939
President	Emil Hácha
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Alois Eliáš
Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia
In office 1 December 1938 – 15 March 1939
President	Emil Hácha
Preceded by	Jan Syrový
Succeeded by	Jan Šrámek (in exile)
Personal details
Born	(1887-12-28)28 December 1887 Pracejovice, Austria-Hungary
Died	23 April 1954(1954-04-23) (aged 66) Leopoldov Prison, Czechoslovakia
Political party	Agrarian Party Party of National Unity National Partnership
Spouse	Marie Pilařová

Beran was somewhat ambivalent toward democracy. In the hope of appeasing the Germans after the Munich Agreement, he gathered most of the nonsocialist parties in the Czech lands into the Party of National Unity, with himself as its leader. He also subjected the press to tough censorship, but he presided over granting the Slovaks and Ruthenians' longstanding demands for autonomy. None of the measures was enough to prevent Slovakia from seceding on 14 March, or Germany from occupying the remainder of the country a day later. He then served as the first prime minister of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia until his retirement on 27 April 1939. After he retired, he settled on his farm. During World War II, he had contacts with members of the Czech resistance.

He was arrested in May 1941 by the Germans and spent years in various concentration camps. While he was in custody of the Gestapo in Prague, he had to answer several written questions submitted to him by K.H. Frank, Hitler's Staatsminister of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.^[1]

After the war, Beran was arrested as a collaborator by the Communist authorities, and in a manipulated political trial was sentenced to twenty years in prison.^[2] He died in Leopoldov Prison in 1954.

References

1. Lukes, Igor (1993). "Stalin and Beneš at the End of September 1938: New Evidence from the Prague Archives". Slavic Review. 52 (1): 28–48. doi:10.2307/2499583. ISSN 0037-6779. JSTOR 2499583. S2CID 163953051.
2. Lukes, Igor (1993). "Stalin and Beneš at the End of September 1938: New Evidence from the Prague Archives". Slavic Review. 52 (1): 28–48. doi:10.2307/2499583. ISSN 0037-6779. JSTOR 2499583. S2CID 163953051.

External links

• Members of Beran's government before occupation, 1.12.1938 - 15.3.1939 at the Wayback Machine (archived March 17, 2008) (in Czech)
• Members of Beran's government after the occupation, 16.3.1939 - 27.4.1939 at the Wayback Machine (archived May 26, 2008) (in Czech)
• Newspaper clippings about Rudolf Beran in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Literature: KULÍŠEK, Vítězslav, Politika druhé republiky (1938–1939): aneb první kolaps československé demokracie, Brno 2020, ISBN 978-80-270-7832-5

• https://kulisek-spisovatel.webnode.cz/politikadruherepubliky/