Czechs agog as national archive prepares to open mysterious envelope sealed for 20 years

By Jack Guy and Ivana Kottasová, CNN

(CNN) — Citizens of the Czech Republic are waiting with bated breath for a longstanding mystery to be solved: What were the last words of the country’s revered first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk?

The final thoughts of the statesman, who governed the Czechoslovak Republic from 1918 to 1935, are believed to have been recorded by his son Jan Masaryk just before his death in September 1937 and have been sealed in a letter ever since, according to Czech public radio, which has set up a special section of its website to cover the opening of the envelope on Friday.

Historian Dagmar Hájková, head of the department of modern social and cultural history of the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences, a public research institution that focuses on modern Czech history, told the radio station that Jan is thought to have written down his dying father’s words as he sat at his bedside.

“If we imagine the moment, he might have written it on his knee, in a hurry, nervously, so the handwriting might not be legible. It might also be more fragmentary and not in a form of a coherent speech,” she said.

Masaryk had been in poor health since 1934, said Hájková, so there is a chance that the letter could date from earlier than 1937, when it may have appeared that he might not live much longer.

While next to nothing is currently known about the contents of the letter, its subsequent journey has been well documented.

When Jan Masaryk died under suspicious circumstances just days after the Communist coup in 1948 he left the letter to his secretary, Antonín Sum. Sum smuggled it out of the country, which had become a Soviet satellite state in the aftermath of World War II.

Sum and Lumír Soukup, another former personal secretary of Jan Masaryk, kept the letter safe for decades before donating it to the Czech National Archive in 2005 on the condition that it remain sealed for 20 years.

That period comes to an end on September 19, meaning Czechs will finally find out what their first president said just before he died.

The case of the mysterious envelope has attracted a huge wave of interest across the country, with all major Czech media covering the event and social media full of speculation about the contents of the letter.

Many are anticipating words of wisdom or premonitions from Masaryk, perhaps a warning about the impending war or the threat coming from Russia.

“I don’t think it will be political. Maybe something about inter-generational relationships?” X user Lenka Lubicova said.

Others are looking for a more practical message. Klára Voláková, a teacher, said on X that she asked the children in her class what they thought was inside.

“They let their imagination run wild and so I got answers like ’a recipe for (traditional Czech dish) svíčková, strudel or other delicacies, or maybe information about his father,” she said, pointing to a long-running, and widely dismissed, conspiracy theory that Masaryk was in fact the son of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I.

The letter will be unsealed in a ceremony at Lány Castle, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Prague, with current President Petr Pavel in attendance, and Czech public radio will broadcast a live stream.

Masaryk, often simply referred to as TGM, was the founding father of independent Czechoslovakia after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Originally a philosophy professor from a poor, working-class background, he played a leading role in European affairs during and after World War I and served as Czechoslovakia’s first president, from 1918 to 1935.

Masaryk remains one of the country’s most revered historical figures and his legacy is cloaked in an almost mythical aura of admiration.

He is widely seen as an extraordinary statesman who possessed a unique blend of intellect and political ability, and who remained a humble and approachable father figure for his people throughout his long tenure.

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