Charlotte Garrigue

Charlotte Garrigue-Masaryk (; née Garrigue; 20 November 1850 – 13 May 1923) was the American-born wife of the Czechoslovak philosopher, sociologist, and politician, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first President of Czechoslovakia.

Background Garrigue was born in Brooklyn to a Unitarian family with Huguenot ancestry on her father's side and Mayflower passengers on her mother's. She was the niece of Henry Jacques Garrigues and great-granddaughter of Christian Vilhelm Duntzfelt.

Career In 1877, while visiting a friend studying at a conservatory in Leipzig, Germany, Garrigue first met her future husband, Tomáš Masaryk, who was staying there after having earned his doctorate at the University of Vienna. They married a year later in the United States, after which they settled in Vienna. After the wedding, Masaryk's husband added her surname to his, thus becoming Tomáš Garrigue-Masaryk, as he is remembered in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (often abbreviated TGM). In 1881, the Masaryks moved to Prague, where Tomáš obtained a professorship at the University of Prague.

In the era before the First World War, Mrs. Masaryk became involved in many of the social, humanitarian, and cultural endeavours of Prague society. She joined the Social Democratic Workers' Party; however, she (in agreement with her husband) rejected the Marxist doctrine of the class struggle. For Garrigue, 'the woman question' was part of 'the social question.' Together with Karla Máchová, she organized a lecture series for women on socialism and advocated equality for women. All of these hardships caused her to suffer from depression and cardiac problems.

In December 1918, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk returned to Prague as the President of Czechoslovakia. The family lived in Prague Castle, often spending time at the chateau of Lány.

Personal life and death

Garrigue married Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, future president of a newly independent Czechoslovakia. Of the couple's five children, four reached adulthoodAlice, Herbert, Olga, and Jan, who later became a noted Czechoslovak diplomat and politician (Foreign Minister).

Mrs. Masaryk died in 1923, her husband in 1937. They are buried in a plot at Lány cemetery, where later also the remains of their children Jan and Alice were interred.