The Czech foreign minister who died mysteriously following the Communist coup in 1948 was Jan Masaryk. He was found dead on 10 March 1948 beneath the bathroom window of his apartment in Prague’s Černín Palace, where the Foreign Ministry was located.
Masaryk was the son of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Czechoslovakia’s founding president, and served as foreign minister during World War II and after the country’s liberation. He remained in office when the Communist Party seized power in February 1948, becoming the only senior minister in the new government who was neither a Communist nor a fellow traveler.
The official explanation initially treated his death as suicide, but the circumstances immediately prompted suspicion. Later investigations variously considered suicide, accidental death, and murder; a 2004 Czech police investigation concluded that another person was likely involved, while a later review did not settle the question definitively.
A common mix-up is confusing Jan Masaryk with his father, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who was president rather than foreign minister and died in 1937. Jan’s death remains one of the most enduring mysteries associated with the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia.