Czech police said Wednesday they had begun exhuming the remains of Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovak foreign minister, from Prague's Olsany Cemetery. In a statement posted to social media, police said they planned to examine the remains "using the most modern forensic methods." The exhumation aims to clarify the circumstances of his death nearly 80 years ago.
Masaryk was found dead on March 10, 1948, dressed only in pajamas, in a courtyard at the Foreign Ministry beneath his bathroom window. The circumstances surrounding the death have fueled decades of speculation, particularly given the timing during the height of the Cold War.
The Interior Ministry claimed at the time that Masaryk had committed suicide. Others have suggested his fall may have been accidental or that he was murdered by Soviet agents.
The son of Czechoslovakia's first president, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, he served as the country's top diplomat from 1940 to 1948, first for the government-in-exile during World War II and then for the post-war coalition government. After the Czechoslovak communist coup in February 1948, he remained in the post, refusing to step down.
The case has been reviewed several times since communism's collapse in 1989. Police did not specify when the examination of the remains would be completed.
