Jan Šrámek

11 August 1870, Grygov – 22 April 1956, Prague

Jan Šrámek graduated from the Piarist grammar school, seminary in Kroměříž and the Faculty of Theology in Olomouc. He was ordained a priest in 1893 and soon after that he became politically active and founded the Christian-Social Party.

After the formation of Czechoslovakia, he merged all the Czech Christian parties into the Czechoslovak People’s Party. He was a minister in all the governments of the First Republic. However, he engaged in conflicts with President Masaryk; by supporting Catholicism, Šrámek also, to a certain extent, deviated from and influenced the official policies of the office of the President.

After the Munich Agreement, Jan Šrámek emigrated to London, where he held the post of the Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile until 1945. After the war, he returned to Czechoslovakia and became Deputy Prime Minister. Although he did not agree with resignations of the democratic ministers in February 1948, eventually he joined them. Soon after that, he tried to leave Czechoslovakia but was unsuccessful. He spent the rest of his life in different prisons. He died in 1956 in Bulovka Hospital in Prague.