Prager Tagblatt
- The Slovaks Are Making Difficulties.
- Prince Cyril and His Legal Representatives.
- Stránský's Accusations.
The Prager Tagblatt of 13 November 1926 reported from Pressburg that Hlinka's Slovak People's Party had turned down the government's offer to replace the Ministry for Slovakia with a compatriot ministry in Prague. The party demanded to keep the existing ministry under one of its own members and resolved to stay out of the cabinet while negotiations continued. The same page followed the scandal around Prince Cyril of Coburg's lawyers. It described how the lawyer Dr. Eisler, before his arrest, had written to Minister Hodža accusing him of improprieties. The cabinet first decided to prosecute and then dropped the matter once Eisler signed a pledge of silence. A column headed "Stránský's Accusations" contained a passage mocking a leading politician for accepting a declaration of honour from a man held on suspicion of a common crime.
Translation
The Slovaks Are Making Difficulties.
Pressburg, November 12. The Slovak People's Party held a meeting today, attended by all the leading men of the party. On the course of the session it is stated "that the People's Party cannot be content with the government's offer to dissolve the Ministry for Slovakia and replace it with a compatriot ministry in Prague, since under all circumstances it must lay claim to a free ministry independent of Prague. The solution proposed by the government cannot satisfy the party, which strives for autonomy. The party expressly demands that the Ministry for Slovakia continue to exist in its present form and be filled by a member of the People's Party." It was resolved that for the time being the party would not enter the government, but would resume negotiations with Prague and keep negotiating until the government set conditions that the People's Party could accept in good conscience.
Prince Cyril and His Legal Representatives.
We learn in this connection that before his arrest Dr. Eisler addressed a letter to Dr. Hodža, with whom he had formerly had dealings, in which he reproached him with improprieties and asked him to bring certain differences before a court. Dr. Hodža, who had meanwhile become a minister, laid this letter before the Council of Ministers, which decided that the matter had to be prosecuted in the courts. In order to avoid a public sensation, however, this was not pursued. Dr. Eisler signed a written declaration to the effect that he had communicated the recriminations made in the letter to no third person, not even to the persons involved in his case. Thereupon the matter was declared settled.
Stránský's Accusations.
Quite curious to know why deputies and ministers accuse someone of having offended their honour, because their honourableness interests us more than questions concerning private persons. When we learn that the threatened prosecution leads not to court but to a settlement, because the arrested lawyer has given the minister satisfaction from custody, we at first shrug our shoulders at the taste of a prominent politician who accepts declarations of honour from a man held in custody on suspicion of a common crime.
Context
The Slovak People's Party's terms for entering the government
The Pressburg report shows Hlinka's party bargaining from strength. After the 1923 county elections it had become the largest party in Slovakia, and it won 34.4% of the vote there in the 1925 parliamentary elections. Its constitutional programme derived from the Pittsburgh Agreement, which promised Slovakia autonomy within Czechoslovakia. That background explains why the party insisted on a ministry independent of Prague. According to a speech attached to the Chamber of Deputies' record of 19 November 1926, Prime Minister Švehla had begun negotiating with the Slovak clericals about entering the government soon after the 1925 elections. The paper's report shows the sticking point a year later. The government offered to dissolve the Ministry for Slovakia and set up a compatriot ministry in Prague, while the party demanded that the existing ministry survive and go to one of its own members. The talks did eventually succeed. On 15 January 1927 the party joined the coalition after Jozef Tiso had opened negotiations while Hlinka was abroad. It took the Ministry of Health under Tiso and the Ministry for the Unification of Laws and State Administration under Marek Gažík. The cabinet posts it finally accepted therefore did not include the Ministry for Slovakia that this report has it demanding.
How a Coburg inheritance became a Prague bribery affair
The bribery affair that broke out in Prague in autumn 1926 grew out of disputes over the Coburg family's inheritance in Slovakia. The estate left by the late Philipp of Coburg was a forest property valued at the time at 520 million crowns. Prince Cyril and Prince Josias fought over it for years, and the two accounts at hand disagree on the starting point. The Slovak daily Pravda's history piece says Philipp named Cyril his heir and that Josias challenged this in court. A speech in the Chamber on 19 November 1926 instead said Philipp had made his nephew and political ally Josias heir to the 520-million estate. Cyril worked through lawyers. According to Pravda, one of them received a power of attorney to use 10 million crowns to influence Czechoslovak politicians. The 19 November speech dates the adoption of the fideicommissum law, which it accused of carrying a clause slipped in for Cyril, to 26 June 1924. The scandal itself came later. Deputy Moudrý told the Chamber on 23 November 1926 that the affair broke out only after Eisler's arrest. Pravda places the police detention of Baroness von Einem, Cyril's lawyer Norbert Eisler and the Viennese journalist Stefan Steiner in October 1926. The paper's item on Cyril's legal representatives belongs to this phase, when the lawyers' dealings with politicians had become the issue rather than the inheritance itself.
Why Eisler's letter mattered to Minister Hodža
Milan Hodža, the Agrarian minister named in the item, was a central figure in the politics of that autumn. Pravda credits him with a large share in creating the coalition of right-wing parties without the socialists. Ladislav Lipscher's 1986 study in the journal Bohemia describes him as the builder of the bourgeois coalition and an opponent of the Castle in 1926–1928. The paper reports that Eisler's letter accused Hodža of improprieties, that the cabinet first resolved to prosecute and then dropped the case to avoid a stir, and that Eisler signed a pledge of silence. A speech attached to the Chamber's record of 19 November 1926 gave a far more damaging version. It alleged that when Hlinka's people threatened to break off negotiations, Hodža arranged for Eisler to pay two million crowns to the Slovak clericals, and that Eisler was later jailed on suspicion of extortion. That speech was a sweeping attack on the whole bourgeois system, and its claims remain a political opponent's allegations. They do, however, explain why a quarrel between a lawyer and a minister became linked to the Slovak People's Party negotiations reported on the same page. Hodža firmly rejected every accusation of taking bribes. He regarded the campaign as a political attack by parties grouped around the Castle.
Stránský's accusations and the outcome of the honour dispute
The column's title refers to Jaroslav Stránský, the National Socialist publicist who, according to the account Pravda reports, stirred up the affair in Lidové noviny at Beneš's prompting. The excerpt objects that a threatened prosecution for injured honour ended in a settlement because the jailed lawyer gave the minister satisfaction from custody. Stránský himself faced court proceedings. On 23 November 1926 Deputy Moudrý told the Chamber that matters including the influence brought to bear on the Bratislava court would come up in the trial against Dr. Stránský, and that he would not anticipate that hearing. In the longer run the outcome favoured Hodža. Pravda reports that the deputies who had accused him of contacts with an agent of a foreign power had to apologize to him publicly, and that the probable corruption at the top was swept under the carpet. The column's complaint about honour declarations accepted from custody thus captures an early moment in a dispute that ended in Hodža's favour.
Original
Die Slowaken machen Schwierigkeiten.
Preßburg, 12. November. Die Slowakische Volkspartei hielt heute eine Versammlung ab, an der alle führenden Männer der Partei teilnahmen. Ueber den Verlauf der Sitzung wird erklärt, " daß die Volkspartei mit dem Angebot der Regierung, das Ministerium für die Slowakei aufzulösen und durch ein Landsmannministerium in Prag zu ersetzen, sich nicht zufriedenstellen könne, da sie unter allen Umständen den Anspruch auf ein freies, von Prag unabhängiges Ministerium erheben müsse. Die von der Regierung vorgeschlagene Lösung könne die Partei, die nach der Autonomie strebe, nicht befriedigen. Die Partei fordere ausdrücklich, daß das Ministerium für die Slowakei in seiner heutigen Form weiter bestehe und mit einem Mitglied der Volkspartei besetzt werde. " Es wurde beschlossen, daß die Partei vorläufig nicht in die Regierung eintrete, sondern die Verhandlungen mit Prag wieder aufnehme und solange verhandle, bis die Regierung Bedingungen stelle, welche die Volkspartei mit gutem Gewissen annehmen könne.
Prinz Cyrill und seine Rechtsvertreter.
Wir erfahren hiezu, daß Dr. Eisler vor seiner Verhaftung an Dr. Hodža, zu dem er früher in Beziehungen gestanden war, einen Brief gerichtet hat, in welchem er ihm Inkorrektheiten zum Vorwurf macht und ihn ersucht, gewisse Differenzen vor das gerichtliche Forum zu bringen. Dr. Hodža, der inzwischen Minister geworden war, legte diesen Brief dem Ministerrat vor, der entschied, daß die Angelegenheit gerichtlich verfolgt werden müsse. Es wurde aber, um Aufsehen in der Oeffentlichkeit zu vermeiden, hievon Abstand genommen. Dr. Eisler unterschrieb einen Revers des Inhaltes, er habe von den in dem Brief gemachten Rekriminationen keiner dritten Person, auch nicht den in seinem Prozeß verwickelten Personen, Mitteilung gemacht. Daraufhin wurde die Angelegenheit als erledigt erklärt.
Stranskys Anwürfe.
Recht neugierig, zu wissen, warum Abgeordnete und Minister jemanden beschuldigen, er habe sie an ihrer Ehre gekränkt, weil ihre Ehrenhaftigkeit uns mehr interessiert als Fragen, die sich auf Privatpersonen beziehen. Wenn wir erfahren, daß die angedrohte Verfolzung nicht zum Gericht, sondern zum Ausgleich führt, weil der verhaftete Advokat dem Minister aus der Haft Genugtuung gegeben hat, so zucken wir zunächst mit den Achseln, angesichts des Geschmacks eines hervorragenden Politikers, der Ehrenerklärungen annimmt von einem Menschen, der wegen Verdachtes eines gemeinen Verbrechens in Haft ist.