Petr Zenkl

Petr Zenkl (13 June 1884 – 2 November 1975) was a Czech politician, government minister, mayor of Prague, chairman of the Czechoslovak National Social Party (1945–1948), deputy prime minister of Czechoslovakia (1946–1948) and the chairman of the exile Council of Free Czechoslovakia (1949–1974).

Biography

Petr Zenkl was born as the eighth son of a small businessman, originally a tailor, in the South Bohemian town of Tábor. All of the children helped their father in his business and strived to earn money. His father was a Czech patriot, and consequently his children joined the Sokol movement. Zenkl studied at the gymnasium (grammar school) in Tábor and later graduated from the Philosophy Faculty of Charles University in Prague and in 1907 gained a doctorate. During his studies in Tábor he met a daughter of his history teacher, 16-year-old Pavla, and married her six years later in 1909. With American military help, he was able to fly through Frankfurt am Main and Paris to London, where he learned that his place as Mayor of Prague had been taken by the communist Václav Vacek. He was also informed that he had been elected chairman of his Czechoslovak National Social Party by the Revolutionary Committee of the party.

He took over his position as mayor in August 1945, replacing Vacek, and fulfilled his duties until May 1946, when elections took place and Václav Vacek returned to office. After the elections, as the chairman of the second strongest party (after the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) he became the Deputy Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak government in May 1946. In September 1947 Zenkl, together with minister Jan Masaryk and fellow National Socialist minister of justice Prokop Drtina, were victims of communist-orchestrated intimidation, when they received boxes containing explosives. In February 1948 Zenkl resigned, together with other non-communist government ministers, in order to convince the communist Minister of Interior Václav Nosek to cancel unconstitutional measures, which Nosek had instituted during his ministry.

After the communist coup d'état of 1948 Zenkl was under constant surveillance by the communist State Security apparatus. He managed, however, to escape with his wife to the West in August 1948. In subsequent years he became the head of the Czechoslovak political exile movement. From 1949 to1974 he was a chairman of the exile Council of Free Czechoslovakia, based in Washington, D.C. After the fall of communism in 1989, his remains were transferred from the United States to the Vyšehrad Cemetery in Prague. In October 1991 he was awarded, in memoriam, the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, II class, by President Václav Havel.

Works T. G. Masaryk and the Idea of European and World Federation (1955) Masarykova Československá republika (Masaryk's Czechoslovak Republic) (1955) T. G. Masaryk and the Idea of European and World Federation (1955) Communist Seizure of Power and the Press 1945-48 (1962) A history of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918-1948 (1973) Mozaika vzpomínek (Mosaic of Memories) (1997)

Footnotes